Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex
How to live longer by doing hard things.
For more information, please watch Andrew Huberman’s podcast with esteemed guest David Goggins here.
I have been in constant pursuit of an answer to the question, Is it a moral necessity to be better? This is a loaded question and requires a fair bit of nuance to answer. I am far from having a satisfactory answer to this question; however, I was very intrigued when I heard Huberman discuss with Goggins the research finding evolving the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, or aMCC for short.
In layman’s terms, the more you pursue that which you do not want to do, the more there is significant mental friction between thinking about the act and doing the act. The more your MMC grows,
Ok, thanks, got it. Who cares?
You should care.
In this study, it was realized that the bigger the aMCC, the more likely you are to live longer. The core of this function is rooted in delayed gratification. The longer it takes for you to see the reward, the more effort it takes to do the thing, and the greater the chance that it will grow your MMC.
The aMMc is smaller in obese people and gets larger when they diet. It’s larger in athletes and is larger and continues to get larger in people who see themselves as challenged and overcoming those challenges.
Yet it can’t just be hard; it has to be mentally hard, as in, something you don’t want to do. There are plenty of hard dudes out there who have no problem tackling a marathon or cold plunge and are, in fact, happy about it. So maybe you should take up something academic—something that is challenging and makes you groan inside. As that inner voice says, you don’t have to do that. That is a great indication that that is the thing you need to do.
The same goes for you academics, who can easily and happily solve complex equations. You should try a cold shower or whatever turns on that inner voice.
I bet you can hack this as well. Though there is no empirical data, we know that the story we tell ourselves is very important. Remember that the aMMC is shown to grow in people who see themselves as challenged and then overcome.
If you are someone who thinks that what they do is never enough, I wonder if your aMMC will grow as much. Again, I have no data to back that up, but I do think it is a valid point. This goes back to the point of writing out your goals and to-dos and then doing them, then going back and looking at everything you were able to accomplish.
Start telling yourself the story that you are the kind of person who does hard things, and hard things will get done. If you do not tell that story, then they will not get done.
So get that journal, write down those to-dos, goals, and visions, and start doing the impossible.
