Why Are Waking Brain States the Next Problem in Neuroscience?

Andrew Huberman says waking brain states are the most important thing to resolve right now, and that the work is doable. Sleep already has names: slow-wave sleep, deep sleep, and stages N1, N2, and N3. A chapter of his book Protocols covers that architecture, including how warming the bed or the room in the morning brings more REM. He says eye-mask tools might even dial sleep in more precisely than changing the room temperature. None of that vocabulary describes a person who is awake.

He cannot name the state of the interview beyond alert, focused, and enjoying the discussion. REM is a label for rapid eye movements, not for how the state feels. The missing map is which waking states fit which activities. Once that map exists, writing to the nervous system could generate the states with temporal and spatial precision. He is not the person who will build it. He no longer runs a lab.