Masud Husain
Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, expert on motivation and apathy, author of Our Brains, Our Selves
Masud Husain (Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, expert on motivation and apathy, author of Our Brains, Our Selves) has appeared as a guest on 1 episode in TMT. Topics they speak about most include Alzheimer's disease, Dopamine, Apathy.
In their words
Positions and remarks grouped by topic, each with the exact quote and where it was said.
Alzheimer's disease
Husain says healthy older adults who score high for apathy have twice the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
“if they score highly for apathy, they have twice the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease than people who don't”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 2:02:13
Husain notes that perhaps 20 to 30 percent of people who never had dementia show Alzheimer pathology at post-mortem.
“perhaps 20% to 30% of these individuals who never had dementia have Alzheimer pathology”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 2:00:26
Husain cites evidence that maintaining social relationships and curiosity substantially lowers dementia risk.
“people who keep relationships, increase or maintain the number of social relationships they have, they have a far less risk of developing dementia than those who don't”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 1:05:55
Dopamine
Husain warns high-performing students that stimulants may worsen rather than improve their performance due to the inverse U-shaped dopamine curve.
“So just think twice about taking some stimulant that you want to get a better grade, because actually the evidence would be that you might get worse from doing it”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 1:47:30
Husain explains that dopamine modulates wanting, while liking or hedonic pleasure appears linked to opioid neurotransmitters.
“wanting, pursuit of a goal is mediated or modulated at least by dopamine, whereas actually the liking, the pleasure you might get from an outcome is not”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 1:16:30
Husain says evidence that doom scrolling produces dopamine hits is not strong.
“I think the evidence that there are dopamine hits when you're doing this isn't really very strong”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 1:15:03
Apathy
Husain says apathy and depression are separable, with some people showing pure apathy, others pure depression, and some both.
“there are some people who have pure apathy, no depression, like David, and there are other people who can be depressed, they can be sad, they can be hopeless about the future”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 50:23
Husain recounts that his patient David's apathy, caused by tiny basal ganglia strokes, was reversed after three months on ropinirole when levodopa had failed.
“three months after we started this medication, he came back. David came back to see us. And I did not recognize this guy in the waiting room”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 9:53
Motivation
Husain advises breaking large projects into smaller tasks to lower the activation energy required to start.
“What if you could break it down into smaller tasks which bring down that mountain, the activation energy required to get that small thing done?”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 33:04
Husain recommends planning one's day or week in advance because every on-the-fly decision carries a brain energy cost.
“Every decision has a cost in terms, as we've seen, the brain having to put in, invest fuel to make that decision”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 33:51
Effort-reward decision making
Husain reports that apathetic students showed greater activity in reward-effort regions, indicating they expend more brain energy to make the same decision.
“It's showing us that apathetic people use more brain energy when they're making this decision. They have a bigger activation energy barrier to overcome”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 25:54
Husain says that motivated and apathetic people both work for high rewards, but apathetic people differ in declining low-reward options.
“We find that everyone is willing to work for high rewards. But the difference between motivated people and apathetic people is at the level of the low rewards”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 9:31
Attention
Husain says attention training benefits tend to be task-specific and recommends cutting distractions such as notifications instead.
“what you could do is to cut out things that are distracting for you. These are simple things that people will be very familiar with. Make sure you don't get notifications”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 2:12:51
Multiple sclerosis
Husain says multiple sclerosis treatment has been transformed from only corticosteroids to a wide range of immune therapies.
“Now, there are a huge range of immune therapies for multiple sclerosis, which has transformed the lives of people with that diagnosis and the disability in that condition”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 2:08:17
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Husain believes ADHD is real for some people but compatible with overdiagnosis, given variable testing and subjective thresholds.
“I think it is a real issue for some people. Interestingly, the number of people who remain with the diagnosis of ADHD into adulthood, if they had it as children, can reduce”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 1:49:56
Parkinson's disease
Husain reports that in Parkinson's patients, both reward incentives and added dopamine increase eye-movement velocity, supporting a motivation-to-act account.
“if you add dopamine to a patient with Parkinson's disease, that velocity increases even further. You've increased the vigor of a simple thing like an eye movement”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 1:25:09
Addiction and recovery
Husain argues that the same dopamine circuitry is hypoactive in apathy and hijacked into hyperactivity by addictive drugs.
“there's absolute convergence between this circuitry on the one hand being hypoactive and leading to apathy, on the other hand being hyperactive and leading to addictive states”
Huberman Lab: How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husain (Aug 24, 2026) · Listen from 1:12:47
Appearances
How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud HusainHuberman Lab · Aug 24, 2026 · 2 h 21 min
Andrew Huberman and Oxford neurologist Masud Husain discuss the neuroscience of motivation, apathy, dopamine, effort-reward decisions, attention, ADHD, and Alzheimer's resilience.
Often appears with
- Andrew Huberman · 1 shared episode