Josh Turknett

This show is about how to build yours and how to get out of its way when it counts.

I'm Dr. Josh Turknett,

and this is Performance Neurology.

I am delighted to have with me on the podcast today, Ron Ruiz.

Hard Day's Night.

Clint, in doing some research on this particular topic, I came across the neurologist Josh Turknett.

He's not just a neurologist, he's also a musician.

He is the perfect person to talk to on this subject.

I'd be happy to join you and nerd out on musical memory.

Heck yeah.

Let me tell you a little bit about Josh Turknett.

He's an award-winning neurologist and musician and the author of Anyone Can Play Music, which looks at how the brain learns and encodes music.

This show is about how to build yours and how to get out of its way when it counts.

I'm Dr. Josh Turknett, and this is Performance Neurology.

So in my last episode with banjo player Bennett Sullivan, he told me about a night on Broadway that he'll never forget.

He was in his 20s playing in the pit for Bright Star, the Steve Martin musical.

So I really think that that part of human connection is, is critical to all of this.

And I will say that, um, I wrote a paper on this with my colleague Josh Turknett a few, a few years ago, talking about how the sort of potentially the primary driver of loss of function with age, and this was focusing on cognitive function, was s- stopping doing the things that maintain function, right? Stopping stimulating the brain.

Um, and then when I spoke to my friend Julian Abel-

Yeah

So, uh, yes.

And, um, the ...

My favorite story about xylitol is actually a, a colleague of mine, Greg Valentine, who I worked with at, at the University of Washington, he's run several clinical trials.

He's still running clinical trials looking at this.

But you know what I'm getting at? Yeah.

I think what I'm hearing you say, and cause I've heard Josh Turknett talk about this stuff and some other like smart, like neurologists and like, you know, meditation coaches and like all these people that are thinking about all these things, like a beginner's mindset, this curiosity factor, you know what I mean? Like being curious about it, like, cause that, that keeps the emotion out of it because like good versus bad triggers emotion and, When you do something badly, you're sad or angry about it.

When you do something good, you're happy about it, right? But if you can be curious about the process and instead of like viewing it as I'm doing a good thing or I'm doing a bad thing, it's like I'm doing the...

I'm doing the correct thing versus the incorrect thing or whatever, you know, like, you know, it's like, did I get the result that I was looking for or did I not get the result I was looking for? If you take more of a scientific method approach, right? Like, and, and say like, okay, I didn't get the result that I was working for.

Yeah, so I have a podcast.

It's the Better Brain Fitness Podcast that I do with a friend of mine who's a neurologist, Josh Turknett.

If you go to betterbrain.fitness as a URL, it's, you, it'll just link to a Substack.

You can sign up for the free one, and the podcast happens on there, but it also comes out on regular podcast platforms.