Revolutionizing our understanding of mental illness with optogenetics | Karl Deisseroth M.D., Ph.D.

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Karl Deisseroth. Karl's a former classmate of mine from Stanford where he received his MD and PhDs. He completed his clinical training in psychiatry and he also did a postdoctoral fellowship there at Stanford at the same period of time. He's currently a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and bioengineering at Stanford. Now, over the past 16 years, Karl's lab has focused on combining neuroscience and bioengineering to basically create a set of revolutionary tools that have done something for the first time ever in neuroscience, which is basically to allow the use of genetic engineering to input light-sensitive channels into very specific neurons. In fact, into any neuron that they choose to put these into.
This then allows Karl and his team, and of course now others who have been able to follow in his footsteps, to use photons, that is to say to use light, to turn on and turn off very selective neurons. This is something that was absolutely impossible until about a decade ago.
This tool is referred to as optogenetics.
And as its name suggests, it's opto, it's light, it's genetics, it uses this genetic engineering tool to put these channels, these light sensitive channels into neurons. And this has opened up a field of neurobiology that basically has allowed investigators like Karl to ask questions that have never been asked or answered before. And in this discussion today, we go into not just how Karl and his team came up with these unbelievable ideas and how they refine the tools, but now what they've learned as a result of doing this. Now this work has not gone unnoticed in the scientific community. Karl has won virtually every scientific award out there. And in fact, previously, just this month, he was awarded the very prestigious Lasker Award for his optogenetic light activated molecular research. Now it's worth pointing out to those who might not be aware that about 50% of Lasker winners go on to win the Nobel Prize. And though I would never jinx Karl by saying this directly to his face, I don't think there's anybody in the field who does not believe that Karl will indeed win the Nobel Prize in the not too distant future. And of course, he is entirely deserving of it when you understand the nature of this work and how it has completely changed our understanding of the human mind. In this episode, we talk not just about his background and how it led him to these discoveries in his chosen career path, but we also dive into some of the deeper questions about mental illness. Remember, Karl is a practicing psychiatrist and it's his interest in the human condition that really guides his research. And so we dive quite deep into depression, anxiety, autism, we touch briefly on some personality disorders, but truthfully, we kind of run out of time about two and a half hours into this episode and truthfully, we had really only got through about half of the material that I had wanted to talk about. So it's safe to say that Karl will absolutely be back on this podcast because there's still so much we want to talk about. The other thing I want to make sure you are all aware of before we jump into this is that Karl has recently written a remarkable book called Projections, a book that I think I mentioned in the podcast, I've read twice. And his ability to write is perhaps only rivaled by his ability to conduct Nobel Prize worthy science. He is a remarkable writer and you don't need to be afraid of this book being written by such an esteemed scientist. It reads like a piece of poetry and it really is a remarkable book and a remarkable journey into not just his personal journey, but also into the eye of mental illness. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Karl Deisseroth. And I think I feel safe in saying that this is a part one. Hey Karl, it is so good to see you today, although admittedly across video, but it's like a little blast from the past from, I don't know, 20 years ago, right?