Do You Have a Digital Concussion?

The basic idea: Stanford's Dr. Andrew Huberman studies how the brain allows us to sense, evaluate and respond to the world around us. In recent weeks, he's become concerned about the consequences of so many of us working remotely, which causes us to spend huge amounts of time staring intensely at our computer and phone.

"There's a known phenomenon in the visual system," says Dr. Huberman, "Whereby when we look at things up close, the lens of our eyes has to move in and the pupils dilate. It's a process called accommodation... when we're stressed or even if we just have a heightened state of alertness and attention, the pupils also dilate and that's in order to be able to track whatever it is that's stressing us in our environment and make everything else fade away."

He was responding to a question from comedian Nicole Arbour, who basically said that since coming indoors, she and her friends were experiencing what she called a digital concussion. She described having chronically dilated larger pupils of the eyes, along with headaches and dizziness.

A bit more background: Let's jump to the good news. There's an easy cure.

Dr. Huberman explains, "The remedy is to make sure that you're getting some time each day—ideally, an hour or more—viewing things off in the distance. You can't just spend all day and all night on your screen and then expect your visual system to relax. It's like a muscle that's having to work really, really, really hard."

This research caught my eye last evening, after I had a very similar experience on Friday. I had a tense, stressful day on my computer. By 3 p.m., I was beat and forced myself to go on a short but tough hike. The first hour was horrible and my legs felt like logs. But as I got higher up the mountain, my energy increased, until I came to this vista:

I sat on a rock and stared at the horizon. My mood lifted. The world seemed brighter. The effect lasted deep into the weekend.

Dr. Huberman tells a story about lions that helps us to understand this. "Most of the time, lions lay around during the day. They’re in a very parasympathetic state. Their gaze is not fixated on anything in particular. They’re licking themselves. They’re sleeping.

"At some point during the day or week, they decide to hunt. Then everything changes about their physiology. They start to anchor their vision in what’s called vergence eye movement, where their eyes now move together. They have to make some very careful space-time assessments about how fast animals are moving. They’re using theory of mind to consider how visible they are to that other animal?

"Then they go out, they eat, and then go back to this parasympathetic state."

Humans have the capability to transition back and forth between these modes, he summarizes, but working from home, we get stuck in these intense, attention-consuming modes. That can have profoundly negative physical and emotional consequences.

So, every day, spend at least an hour looking off into the distance. If you can get outside safely, do it. But even if you only look out the window, make sure you relax and look towards the horizon.

I highly recommend following Dr. Huberman on Instagram, where he offers explanations such as the one I shared here. He is @hubermanlab. I also took his lion story from a podcast transcript.

Bruce Kasanoff is a social media ghostwriter for entrepreneurs. His job is to write down your best ideas and observations, even better than you described them to him.