Summarise the biography of Andrew Huberman and his most popular achievements.

Andrew D. Huberman is an American neuroscientist and tenured associate professor in the department of neurobiology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine who has made contributions to the brain development, brain plasticity, and neural regeneration and repair fields. Much of his work is focused on the visual system, including the mechanisms controlling light-mediated activation of the circadian and autonomic arousal centers in the brain, as well as brain control over conscious vision or sight.[better source needed] Huberman has been credited with coining the term "Non-Sleep Deep Rest" (NSDR), which he earlier referred to as Yog Nindra, which is to practices that place the brain and body into shallow sleep to accelerate neuroplasticity and help offset mental and physical fatigue.[better source needed]

Graduate and postdoctoral research
From 1998 to 2000, Huberman worked in the laboratory of Irving Zucker, as well as working with Marc Breedlove, at University of California, Berkeley, as part of a team that defined how early androgen exposure impacts development, and he performed the first experiments defining the structure of binocular visual pathways that set the circadian clock in the hypothalamus. From 2000 to 2004, working as a PhD student in the laboratory of Barbara Chapman at the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis, Huberman discovered that neural activity and axon guidance molecules work in concert to ensure proper wiring of binocular maps in the brain. Huberman was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow researcher in the laboratory of Ben A. Barres from 2005 to 2010.

Huberman was an assistant professor of neurobiology and neuroscience at University of California, San Diego, from 2011 to 2015. His lab pioneered using genetic tools to study the visual system function, development and disease. Among the Huberman Lab's discoveries was the finding that specific types of retinal neurons degenerate early in glaucoma a common blinding disease depleting sight in over 70 million people, for which there is no cure.

After moving to Stanford in 2016, Huberman discovered and published the use of non-invasive methods such as visual stimulation to enhance regeneration of damaged retinal neurons, leading to partial recovery from blindness, especially when the stimulation is paired with specific forms of gene therapy. The work was covered extensively in the popular press, including Time magazine and Scientific American and is part of the National Eye Institute's Audacious Goals Initiative to restore vision to the blind[citation needed]. The Huberman Lab extended those findings to develop a human clinical trial using virtual reality technology to stimulate regeneration and plasticity of damaged retinal and other visual system neurons.

In 2017, the Huberman Lab created a virtual reality platform for probing the neural mechanisms underlying pathological fear and anxiety. That work involved collecting 360-degree video of various fear-inducing scenarios such as heights and claustrophobia as well as atypical fear-inducing situations such as swimming with great white sharks. The Huberman VR platform is aimed at making discoveries that will lead to developing new tools for humans to adjust their state in order to promote adaptive coping with stress. The first installment of that work was published in Current Biology, in 2021 as a collaboration with neurosurgeon and neuroscientist Edward Chang (UCSF), wherein they reported that specific patterns of insular cortex brain activity correlate with and may predict anxiety responses.

In May, 2018, Huberman Laboratory published an article in the journal Nature reporting its discovery of two new mammalian brain circuits: one that promotes fear and paralysis, and another that promotes "courageous"/confrontational reaction, to visually-evoked threats. That discovery prompted the now ongoing exploration of how these brain regions may be involved in humans suffering from anxiety-related disorders such as phobias and generalized anxiety.

In 2020, Huberman initiated a collaboration with the laboratory of David Spiegel in the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, to systematically study how particular patterns of respiration (i.e., breathing/breathwork) and the visual system influence the autonomic nervous system, stress, and other brain states, including sleep.

In 2021, Huberman launched the "Huberman Lab" podcast with the goal of translating neuroscience into tools that can be applied in everyday life. It is a top podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. He was originally inspired to start the podcast after his appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast. Huberman also covers the evidence on supplements which include Tongkat Ali (Eurycoma Longifolia), Fadogia Agrestis and many others.

Andrew Huberman is a neuro scientists, currently working as a professor at Stanford school of medicine. He is focused on visual system and a pioneer in the field. He also runs "Huberman Lab" podcast which is very successfull on Apple podcasts and Spotify.,