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How to Focus to Change Your Brain — Transcript

by Andrew Huberman · 16,164 words · 2,170 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast
0:02where we discuss science
0:03and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:05[upbeat music]
0:09My name is Andrew Huberman
0:10and I'm a professor of Neurobiology
0:12and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine.
0:15This podcast is separate
0:17from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
0:19It is however, part of my desire
0:21and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information
0:23about science and science related tools
0:25to the general public.
0:27In keeping with that theme.
0:29I want to thank the first sponsor of today's podcast.
0:32Our first sponsor is InsideTracker.
0:34InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform
0:37that analyzes blood factors and DNA related factors
0:41that helps you develop a personalized health plan.
0:45Many important factors related to our health
0:47and wellbeing can only be measured
0:49by a blood sample and by a DNA sample.
0:52I've been getting my blood work done for many years now.
0:55And I use InsideTracker
0:57because InsideTracker makes it very easy
0:59to not only get the blood work done,
1:01someone can come to your house
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1:08Oftentimes when we get blood work done
1:10there are all these numbers and all these levels
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1:14But one doesn't know what to do with that information
1:17InsideTracker has a terrific dashboard platform
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1:23And it also provides some very simple
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1:27in terms of exercise, nutrition
1:30and other lifestyle factors that can help guide your health
1:33and improve your health.
1:34If you'd like to try InsideTracker,
1:36you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman
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1:44Today's episode is also brought to us by Headspace.
1:47Headspace is a meditation app that makes meditating easy.
1:51I've been meditating on and off for about three decades now.
1:54And typically it's been more off than on.
1:57I think like a lot of people
1:58I find it hard to stick with a meditation practice.
2:01A few years ago, I started using the Headspace app.
2:04And when I did that,
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2:07First of all, the meditations in Headspace are backed
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2:22which was the airline I was using
2:24the meditations are offered as an alternative
2:27to watching a TV or a movie.
2:29And I found that I would arrive feeling much more refreshed
2:31than had I just sort of zoned out on the TV the whole time,
2:34or even if I had slept.
2:36And I'll continue to use Headspace regularly
2:38pretty much every day for a short meditation.
2:41And I personally derive tremendous benefits from it.
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2:57So you can go to headspace.com/specialoffer
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3:04The third sponsor of today's podcast is Madefor.
3:07Madefor as a behavioral science company
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3:18The company was founded by former Navy seal Patrick Dossett
3:22as well as Toms founder Blake Mycoskie.
3:25I'm the lead advisor of the scientific advisory board
3:27at Madefor and some of the other members
3:29of the advisory board include
3:30the head of the chronobiology unit
3:32at the national institute of health
3:34as well as psychiatrists from Harvard, UC Irvine
3:37and many other individuals who are serious about science
3:40and helped develop the Madefor program.
3:43If you want to try Madefor, you can go to getmadefor.com
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3:52Today we're talking about neuroplasticity
3:54which is this incredible feature of our nervous systems
3:58that allows it to change in response to experience.
4:01neuroplasticity is arguably
4:03one of the most important aspects of our biology.
4:07It holds the promise for each and all of us
4:09to think differently, to learn new things,
4:13to forget painful experiences
4:15and to essentially adapt to anything that life brings us
4:19by becoming better.
4:21Neuroplasticity has a long and important history
4:24and we're not going to review all of it in detail.
4:27But today what we are going to do is discuss
4:30what is neuroplasticity?
4:32As well as the different forms of neuroplasticity.
4:35We're going to talk about how to access neuroplasticity
4:39depending on how old you are
4:40and depending on the specific types of changes
4:42that you're trying to create.
4:44This is a topic for which there are lots of tools,
4:47as well as lots of biological principles
4:50that we can discuss.
4:51So let's get started.
4:53Most people are familiar with the word neuroplasticity.
4:56It's sometimes also called neural plasticity.
5:00Those are the same thing.
5:01So, if I say neuroplasticity or neural plasticity,
5:05I'm referring to the same process,
5:07which is the brain and nervous system's ability
5:09to change itself.
5:12There are a lot of reasons
5:13why the nervous system would do this.
5:16It could do it in response to some traumatic event.
5:20It could, for instance, create a sense of fear
5:23around a particular place
5:25or a fear of automobiles or planes.
5:27It could also occur when something positive happens,
5:30like the birth of our first child
5:32or when our puppy does something amusing
5:35or we see an incredible feat of performance in athleticism.
5:41The word neuroplasticity
5:43means so many things to so many different people
5:45that I thought it would be important
5:46to just first put a little bit of organizational logic
5:49around what it is and how it happens,
5:52because nowadays if you were to go online
5:54and Google the word neuroplasticity,
5:56you would find hundreds of thousands of references,
6:00scientific references
6:01as well as a lot of falsehoods about what neuroplasticity is
6:04and how to access it.
6:06As I mentioned before,
6:07we're going to talk about the science of it
6:08and we're going to talk about the tools
6:10that allow you to engage
6:11this incredible feature of your nervous system.
6:13And that's the first point,
6:15which is that all of us were born with a nervous system
6:18that isn't just capable of change,
6:20but was designed to change.
6:23When we enter the world,
6:26our nervous system is primed for learning.
6:30The brain and nervous system of a baby
6:33is wired very crudely.
6:36The connections are not precise.
6:38And we can see evidence of that
6:40in the fact that babies are kind of flopping,
6:42they're like a little potato bug with limbs.
6:45They can't really do much in terms of coordinated movement.
6:48They certainly can't speak
6:50and they can't really do anything with precision.
6:53And that's because we come into this world overconnected.
6:57We have essentially wires,
6:59those wires have names like axons and dendrites.
7:01Those are the different parts of the neurons
7:03discussed in episode one,
7:04but those little parts and those wires and connections
7:07are everywhere.
7:09Imagine a bunch of roads
7:11that are all connected to one another in kind of a mess,
7:14but there are no highways.
7:15They're all just small roads.
7:17That's essentially what the young nervous system is like.
7:19And then as we mature, as we go from day one of life
7:24to 10 years old, 20 years old, 30 years old,
7:28what happens is
7:30particular connections get reinforced and stronger
7:33and other connections are lost.
7:35So that's the first important principle
7:37that I want everyone to understand,
7:39which is that developmental plasticity,
7:41the neuroplasticity that occurs from the time we're born
7:44until about age 25 is mainly a process
7:49of removing connections that don't serve our goals well.
7:53Now, of course, certain events happen
7:55during that birth to 25 period
7:58in which positive events and negative events
8:01are really stamped down into our nervous system
8:03in a very dramatic fashion,
8:05by what we call one-trial learning.
8:07We experience something once
8:08and then our nervous system is forever changed
8:12by that experience.
8:13Unless of course, we go through some work
8:15to undo that experience.
8:17So, I want you to imagine in your mind
8:20that when you were brought into this world,
8:22you were essentially a widely connected web of connections
8:27that was really poor at doing any one thing.
8:31And that through your experience,
8:33what you were exposed to by your parents
8:34or rather caretakers,
8:36through your social interactions, through your thoughts,
8:39through the languages that you learn,
8:40through the places you traveled or didn't travel,
8:43your nervous system became customized
8:45to your unique experience.
8:47Now, that's true for certain parts of your brain
8:51that are involved in what we call
8:52representations of the outside world.
8:55A lot of your brain
8:56is designed to represent the visual world
8:58or represent the auditory world
9:00or represent the gallery of smells
9:03that are possible in the world.
9:06However, there are aspects of your nervous system
9:08that were designed not to be plastic.
9:11They were wired so that plasticity
9:13or changes in those circuits is very unlikely.
9:17Those circuits include things like,
9:19the ones that control your heartbeat,
9:21the ones that control your breathing,
9:23the ones that control your digestion,
9:24And thank goodness that those circuits were set up that way
9:27because you want those circuits to be extremely reliable.
9:30You never want to have to think about
9:32whether or not your heart will beat
9:33or whether or not you will continue breathing
9:34or whether or not you'll be able to digest your food.
9:37So many nervous system features like digestion
9:41and breathing and heart rate are hard to change.
9:45Other aspects of our nervous system
9:47are actually quite easy to change.
9:48And one of the great gifts of childhood,
9:50adolescence and young adulthood,
9:52is that we can learn through almost passive experience.
9:55We don't have to focus that hard
9:56in order to learn new things.
9:58In fact, children go from being able to speak
10:01no language whatsoever
10:03to being able to speak many many words
10:05and comprise sentences
10:06including words they've never heard before
10:08which is remarkable.
10:09It means that
10:10the portions of the brain involved in speech and language
10:13are actually primed to learn and create new combinations.
10:17What this tells us is that the young brain
10:20is a plasticity machine.
10:24But then right about age 25 plus or minus a year or two,
10:27everything changes.
10:29After age 25 or so,
10:32in order to get changes in our nervous system,
10:34we have to engage in a completely different set of processes
10:38in order to get those changes to occur
10:40and for them more importantly to stick around.
10:43And this is something that I think is vastly overlooked
10:46in the popular culture discussion about neuroplasticity.
10:49People always talk about fire together, wire together.
10:52Fire together wire together is true.
10:55It is the statement of my colleague at Stanford,
10:57Carla Shatz
10:58and it's an absolute truth
11:00about the way that the nervous system wires up
11:02early in development.
11:04But, fire together wire together
11:07doesn't apply in the same way after age 25.
11:11And so we have these little memes and these little quotes
11:15that, you know circulate on the internet
11:17like fire together, wire together
11:18or there's a famous quote
11:20from the greatest neurobiologist of all time, Ramón y Cajal.
11:24I think it goes something like, you know
11:25should somebody wish to change their nervous system
11:27they could be the sculptor of their nervous system
11:31in any way they want, something like that.
11:33And that sounds great.
11:34I mean, who wouldn't want to change their nervous system
11:36any way they want,
11:37but what's lost in those statements
11:39is how to actually accomplish that.
11:41And we're going to cover that today
11:43but please understand that early in development
11:46your nervous system is connected very broadly
11:49in ways that make it very hard to do anything well.
11:52From birth until about age 25
11:53those connections get refined
11:55mainly through the removal
11:57of connections that don't serve us
11:59and the incredible strengthening of connections
12:02that relate to either powerful experiences
12:04or that allow us to do things like walk and talk
12:06and do math, et cetera.
12:08And then after age 25,
12:10if we want to change those connections,
12:12those super highways of connectivity,
12:14we have to engage in some very specific processes.
12:17And those processes, as we'll soon learn are gated.
12:21Meaning you can't just decide to change your brain.
12:23You actually have to go through a series of steps
12:25to change your internal state
12:27in ways that will allow you to change your brain.
12:30I just want to acknowledge that
12:31Costello is snoring particularly loud today.
12:34Some of you seem very keen at picking up on his snoring,
12:38others of you can't hear his snoring.
12:41It's very low rumbling sound
12:44and whether or not you can or you can't
12:45probably relates to the sensitivity of your hearing.
12:47We're actually going to talk about perfect pitch today
12:49and range of auditory detection.
12:52And so if you can hear Costello's snoring enjoy,
12:55if you can't, enjoy.
12:58I want to talk about how the nervous system changes.
13:01What are these changes?
13:04Many of us have been captivated
13:06by the stories in the popular press
13:08about the addition of new neurons.
13:10This idea, oh, if you go running or you exercise,
13:13your brain actually makes new neurons.
13:15Well, I'm going to give you the bad news first which is that,
13:18after puberty, so after about age 14 or 15,
13:22the human brain and nervous system adds very few
13:25if any new neurons.
13:28The idea that new neurons could be added to the brain
13:31is one that has a rich history in experimental science.
13:34It's clear that in rodents and in some non-human primates
13:39new neurons, a process called neurogenesis,
13:43can occur in areas of the brain, such as the olfactory bulb,
13:48which is of course involved in smell
13:50as well as a region of our hippocampus,
13:51a center of the brain involved in memory
13:53called the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus.
13:56And there is strong evidence
13:57that new neurons can be added to those structures
14:00throughout the lifespan.
14:02In humans, the evidence is a little bit more controversial.
14:05It's clear that we can add new neurons
14:07to our olfactory bulb.
14:09In fact, if any of you have ever
14:11had the unfortunate experience
14:13of being hit on the head too hard,
14:15the wires called axons from those olfactory neurons
14:19that live in your nose
14:20can get sheared off
14:21because they have to pass through a bony plate
14:23called the cribriform plate.
14:24And the cribriform plate can shear those axons
14:26and people can become what's called anosmic,
14:29they won't be able to smell.
14:30But over time, those neurons
14:33unlike most all central nervous system neurons
14:36can grow those connections back
14:38and even reestablish new neurons
14:41being added to the olfactory bulb.
14:43They come from elsewhere deep in the brain
14:45and they migrate through a pathway called
14:46the rostral migratory stream.
14:47You can Google these words
14:49and look up some of the descriptions of this
14:51if you'd like to learn more.
14:52So indeed there is some evidence
14:54that the neurons responsible for smell
14:56can be replaced throughout the lifespan.
14:58Certainly, in very young individuals
15:00from birth till about age 15 or so.
15:04Whether or not they're new neurons added to the hippocampus,
15:07the memory center of the human brain isn't clear.
15:09Many years ago, Rusty Gage's lab at the Salk Institute
15:13did a really important study
15:14looking at terminally ill cancer patients
15:17and injecting them with a label,
15:20a dye that is incorporated only into new neurons.
15:24And after these patients died, their brains were harvested.
15:27The brains were looked at and there were new neurons there,
15:31there was evidence for new neurons.
15:33Those results I think stand over time
15:36but what was not really discussed
15:39in the popular press discussion around those papers
15:42was that it was very few cells that were being added.
15:45And a number of papers have come along over the years
15:48mainly from labs at UCSF, although from others as well,
15:52showing that if there are new neurons
15:54added to the adult brain,
15:56it's an infinitesimally small number of new neurons.
16:00So that's the depressing part, we don't get new neurons.
16:02After we're born, we pretty much have the neurons
16:05that we're going to use our entire life.
16:06And yes, as we get older
16:07and we start to lose certain functions in our brain,
16:10we lose neurons.
16:12But all is not lost, so to speak,
16:15because there are other ways in which neurocircuits
16:18can create new connections and add new functions
16:21including new memory, new abilities
16:24and new cognitive functions.
16:27And those are mainly through the process
16:29of making certain connections,
16:31which of course are those things we call synapses,
16:34between neurons making those connections stronger.
16:37So they're more reliable,
16:38they're more likely to engage
16:40as well as removing connections.
16:42And the removal of connections is vital
16:45to say moving through a grieving process
16:47or removing the emotional load of a traumatic experience.
16:52So even though we can't add new neurons
16:54throughout our lifespan,
16:56at least not in very great numbers,
16:59it's clear that we can change our nervous system,
17:01that the nervous system is available for change,
17:04that if we create the right set of circumstances
17:07in our brain, chemical circumstances,
17:09and if we create the right
17:11environmental circumstances around us,
17:13our nervous system will shift into a mode in which
17:16change isn't just possible but it's probable.
17:20As I mentioned before,
17:21the hallmark of the child nervous system is change,
17:25it wants to change.
17:26The whole thing,
17:27everything from the chemicals
17:29that are sloshing around in there
17:31to the fact that there's a lot of space between the neurons.
17:34A lot of people don't know this, but early in development
17:35there's a lot of space between the neurons.
17:37And so the neurons can literally move around
17:39and sample different connections very easily
17:41removing some and keeping others.
17:43As we get older, the so-called extracellular space
17:46is actually filled up
17:48by things called extracellular matrix and glial cells.
17:51Glial means glue.
17:52Those cells are involved in a bunch of different processes
17:55but they start to fill in all the space
17:57kind of like pouring concrete between rocks.
17:59And when that happens, it becomes much harder
18:02to change the connections that are there.
18:05One of the ways in which we can all get plasticity
18:08at any stage throughout the lifespan
18:10is through deficits and impairments
18:12in what we call our sensory apparati,
18:15our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth,
18:17and there are some very dramatic
18:19and somewhat tragic examples of people,
18:21for instance who have genetic mutations
18:23where they're born without a nose
18:25and without any olfactory structures in the brain
18:28so they cannot smell.
18:30In that case areas of the brain
18:31that normally would represent smell
18:34become overtaken by areas of the brain
18:37involved in other things like touch and hearing and sight.
18:41In individuals that are blind from birth,
18:43the so-called occipital cortex,
18:45the visual cortex in the back,
18:47becomes overtaken by hearing.
18:51The neurons there will start to respond to sounds
18:53as well as braille touch.
18:55And actually there's a one particularly tragic incident
18:57where a woman who was blind since birth
19:01and because of neuroimaging studies,
19:03we knew her visual cortex was no longer visual,
19:06it was responsible for braille reading and for hearing,
19:09she had a stroke that actually took out
19:11most of the function of her visual cortex.
19:14So then she was blind, she couldn't braille read or hear.
19:17She did recover some aspect of function.
19:19Now, most people they don't end up in that
19:21highly unfortunate situation.
19:22And what we know is that for instance,
19:25blind people who use their visual cortex
19:28for braille reading and for hearing,
19:30have much better auditory acuity and touch acuity.
19:35Meaning they can sense things with their fingers
19:37and they can sense things with their hearing
19:39that typical sighted folks wouldn't be able to.
19:42In fact, you will find a much greater
19:45incidence of perfect pitch in people that are blind.
19:50And that tells us that the brain
19:52and in particular this area we call the neocortex,
19:54which is the outer part,
19:55is really designed to be a map
19:57of our own individual experience.
20:00So these, what I call experiments of impairment or loss
20:04where somebody is blind from birth or deaf from birth
20:06or maybe has a limb development impairment
20:12where they have a stump instead of an entire limb
20:14with a functioning hand,
20:16their brain will represent the body plan that they have,
20:21not some other body plan.
20:23But the beauty of the situation is that
20:25the real estate up in the skull, that neocortex,
20:29the essence of it is to be a customized map of experience.
20:33Now, it is true however,
20:35that if let's say I were to be blind when I'm 50,
20:40I'm 45 right now, I've always been sighted.
20:43If I was blind at 50,
20:44I'll probably have less opportunity
20:48to use my formerly visual cortex
20:51for things like braille reading and hearing
20:53because my brain has changed,
20:55it's just not the same brain I had when I was a baby.
20:57So there's actually a principle of biology,
21:00not many people know this,
21:01it's actually a principle neurology
21:03which is called the Kennard principle,
21:05which says, if you're going to have a brain injury,
21:08you want to have it early in life.
21:09And of course better to not have a brain injury at all
21:12but if you're going to have it
21:13you want to have it early in life.
21:14And this is based on a tremendous number of experiments
21:17examining the amount of recovery
21:20and the rate of recovery in humans
21:22that had lesions to their brain
21:24either early in life or later in life.
21:26So the Kennard Principle says
21:27better to have injuries early in life.
21:29Now, that's reassuring for the young folks,
21:32it's not so reassuring for the older folks.
21:34But there are aspects of neuroplasticity
21:36that have nothing to do with impairments.
21:38I mean earlier I said
21:40we're all walking around with this map,
21:42this representation of the world around us
21:44so we can see edges, we can see colors,
21:47except for folks that are color blind of course,
21:50and we also have a map of emotional experience.
21:53We have a map of whether or not
21:54certain people are trustworthy,
21:56certain people aren't trustworthy.
21:57A few years ago I was at a course
22:01and a woman came up to me and she said,
22:03you know, I wasn't teaching the course, I was in the course
22:07and she said, "I just have to tell you
22:08that every time you speak, it really stresses me out."
22:11And I said, "Well I've heard that before
22:14but do you want to be more specific?"
22:16And she said, "Yeah, your tone of voice
22:17reminds me of somebody
22:18that I had a really terrible experience with."
22:21I said, "Well, okay, well, I can't change my voice
22:23but I really appreciate that you acknowledge that
22:25and it also will help explain why
22:27you seem to cringe every time I speak",
22:30which I hadn't noticed until then
22:31but after that I did notice.
22:33She had a very immediate
22:34and kind of visceral response to my speech,
22:36perhaps some of you are having that right now.
22:38But in any event, over the period of this two-week course,
22:42she would come back every once in a while and say,
22:44"You know what I think, just by telling you
22:46that your voice was really difficult for me to listen to,
22:49it's actually becoming more tolerable to me."
22:51And by the end we actually became pretty good friends
22:53and we're still in touch.
22:54And so what this says is that the recognition of something
22:59whether or not that's an emotional thing
23:00or a desire to learn something else
23:02is actually the first step in neuroplasticity.
23:05And that's because
23:06our nervous system has two broad sets of functions.
23:10Some of those functions are reflexive.
23:12Things like our breathing, our heart rate, our obvious ones,
23:15but other aspects are reflexive like our ability to walk.
23:19If I get up out of this chair and walk out of the door,
23:21I don't think about each step that I'm taking
23:23and that's because I learned how to walk during development.
23:26But when we decide that we're going to shift
23:28some sort of behavior or some reaction
23:31or some new piece of information that we want to learn,
23:34it's something that we want to bring into our consciousness,
23:37that awareness is a remarkable thing
23:40because it cues the brain
23:42and the rest of the nervous system
23:44that when we engage in those reflexive actions
23:46going forward,
23:48that those reflexive actions
23:49are no longer fated to be reflexive.
23:53Now if this sounds a little bit abstract,
23:54we're going to talk about protocols for how to do this.
23:56But the first step in neuroplasticity
23:59is recognizing that you want to change something
24:01and you should immediately say, well,
24:03kids don't go into school and say,
24:05oh, I want to learn language
24:06or I want to learn social interactions,
24:08and that's the beauty of childhood.
24:09The whole brain has this switch flipped
24:12that is making change possible
24:14but after that we have to be deliberate.
24:16We have to know what it is exactly that we want to change.
24:20Or if we don't know exactly what it is
24:23that we want to change,
24:24we at least have to know that we want to change something
24:26about some specific experience.
24:28In this case, I believe that she came and told me
24:31that my voice was really awful for her to listen to
24:33not to make me feel bad or for any other reason
24:36except that she wanted it to not be the case.
24:40And she knew I wasn't going to stop talking.
24:42So she decided to call it to her consciousness
24:44and mine as well.
24:45So that's important.
24:47If you want to learn something
24:48or you want to change your nervous system in any way,
24:51whether or not it's because of some impairment
24:53or because of something that you want to acquire,
24:56a cognitive skill, a motor skill, an emotional skill,
25:00the first thing is recognizing what that thing is.
25:03And that often can be the hardest thing to identify
25:06but the brain has the self recognition mechanisms
25:09and those self recognition mechanisms
25:11are not vague, spiritual or mystical
25:16or even psychological concepts.
25:18They are neurochemicals.
25:20We're going to talk next about the neurochemicals
25:23that stamp down particular behaviors
25:26and thoughts and emotional patterns
25:28and tell the rest of the nervous system,
25:30this is something to pay attention to
25:32because this is in the direction of the change
25:35that I want to make.
25:36So I'll repeat that, there are specific chemicals
25:39that when we are consciously aware
25:41of a change we want to make
25:43or even just that we want to make some change,
25:45chemicals are released in the brain
25:48that allow us the opportunity to make those changes.
25:51Now, there are specific protocols
25:52that science tells us We have to follow
25:54if we want those changes to occur.
25:56But that self-recognition is not a kind of murky concept.
26:02What it is is it's our fore brain,
26:04in particular our prefrontal cortex,
26:06signaling the rest of our nervous system
26:09that something that we're about to do,
26:11hear, feel or experience is worth paying attention to.
26:15So we'll pause there and then I'm going to move forward.
26:17One of the biggest lies in the universe
26:20that seems quite prominent right now
26:22is that every experience you have changes your brain.
26:26People love to say this.
26:27They love to say, your brain is going to be different
26:29after this lecture
26:30or that your brain is going to be different after today's class
26:32than it was two days ago.
26:33And that's absolutely not true.
26:36The nervous system doesn't just change
26:38because you experienced something
26:39unless you're a very young child.
26:43The nervous system changes
26:44when certain neurochemicals are released
26:47and allow whatever neurons are active in the period
26:51in which those chemicals are swimming around,
26:54to strengthen or weaken the connections of those neurons.
26:59Now, this is best illustrated
27:00through a little bit of scientific history.
27:03The whole basis of neuroplasticity
27:06is essentially ascribed to two individuals,
27:08although there were a lot more people
27:09that were involved in this work.
27:11Those two individuals
27:12go by the name David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel.
27:15David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel started off at Johns Hopkins,
27:18moved to Harvard medical school.
27:20And in the seventies and eighties,
27:22they did a series of experiments,
27:24recording electrical activity in the brain.
27:29They were in the visual cortex,
27:30meaning they put the electrodes in the visual cortex,
27:33and they were exploring how vision works
27:35and how the visual brain organizes all the features
27:38of the visual world to give us these
27:40incredible things We call visual perceptions.
27:42But Hubel was a physician.
27:46And he was very interested in what happens
27:50when for instance, a child comes into the world
27:52and they have a cataract,
27:53the lens of their eye, isn't clear but it's opaque.
27:57Or when a kid has a lazy eye
27:59or the eyes have what's called strabismus,
28:01which is when the eyes either deviate outward or inward.
28:05These are very common things of childhood,
28:07especially in particular areas of the world.
28:09And what David and Torsten did is they figured out
28:13that there was a critical period
28:16in which if clear vision did not occur,
28:20the visual brain would completely rewire itself,
28:24basically to represent
28:25whatever bit of visual information was coming in.
28:28So they did these experiments
28:30to kind of simulate a droopy eye or a deviating eye
28:34where they would close one eyelid
28:35and then what they found is that the visual brain
28:37would respond entirely to the open eye.
28:39There was sort of a takeover of the visual brain
28:42representing the open eye.
28:45Many experiments in many different sensory systems
28:48followed up on this.
28:49There are beautiful experiments for instance,
28:51from Gregg Recanzone's lab up at UC Davis
28:54and Mike Merzenich's lab at UCSF
28:57showing that for instance
28:58if two fingers were taped together early in development,
29:01so they weren't moving independently,
29:03the representation of those two fingers
29:05would become fused in the brain
29:06so that the person couldn't actually distinguish
29:09the movements and the sensations
29:11of the two fingers separately, pretty remarkable.
29:14All of this is to say that David and Torsten's work,
29:18for which they won a noble prize,
29:20they shared it with Rogers Barry,
29:23their work showed that
29:25the brain is in fact a customized map of the outside world,
29:28we said that already.
29:29But that what it's doing is it's measuring
29:32the amount of activity for a given part of our body,
29:35one eye or the other, or our fingers,
29:38this finger or that finger
29:39and all of those inputs are competing
29:41for space in the brain.
29:43Now this is fundamentally important
29:45because what it means is that
29:47if we are to change our nervous system in adulthood,
29:51we need to think about not just what we're trying to get,
29:54but what we're trying to give up.
29:56We can't actually add new connections
29:58without removing something else.
30:00And that might seem like kind of a stinger
30:02but it actually turns out to be a great advantage.
30:05One of the key experiments that David and Torsten did
30:09was an experiment where they closed both eyes,
30:11where they essentially removed all visual input
30:14early in development.
30:16Now this is slightly different than blindness
30:17because it was transient,
30:18it was only for a short period of time.
30:20But what they found is when they did that
30:22there was no change.
30:23However, if they would close just one eye
30:26there was a huge change.
30:28So when people tell you,
30:29oh at the end of today's lecture,
30:31or at the end of something
30:32your brain is going to be completely different,
30:34that's simply not true.
30:35If you're older than 25
30:37your brain will not change
30:39unless there's a selective shift in your attention
30:42or a selective shift in your experience
30:45that tells the brain it's time to change.
30:49And those changes occur
30:50through the ways I talked about before
30:52strengthening and weakening of particular connections,
30:54they have names like long-term potentiation,
30:56long-term depression, which has nothing to do
30:57with emotional depression by the way,
30:59spike-timing-dependent plasticity.
31:00I threw out those names not to confuse you,
31:03but for those of you that would like
31:05more in-depth exploration of those,
31:07please you can go google those and look them up,
31:09there are great Wikipedia pages for them
31:11and you can go down the paper trail.
31:12I might even touch on them on some subsequent episodes.
31:15But the important thing to understand is that
31:17if we want something to change,
31:19we really need to bring an immense amount of attention
31:22to whatever it is that we want to change.
31:25This is very much linked to the statement I made earlier
31:27about, it all starts with an awareness.
31:30Now, why is that attention important?
31:33Well, David and Torsten won their Nobel prize
31:36and they certainly deserved it.
31:37They probably deserved two
31:38because they also figured out how vision works.
31:39And I might be biased
31:40'cause they're my scientific great-grandparents
31:42but I think everybody in the field of Neuroscience agrees
31:45that Hubel and Wiesel, as they're called
31:48H&W for those in the game,
31:51absolutely deserved a Nobel prize for their work
31:54because they really unveiled the mechanisms of brain change
31:57of plasticity.
31:59David passed away a few years ago, Torsten is still alive,
32:01he's in his late 90s,
32:02he's still at the Rockefeller university.
32:04He's sharp as a tack.
32:05He still jogs several miles a day.
32:07He's really into art and a number of other things.
32:09He's also a super nice guy.
32:11Hubel was a really nice guy as well,
32:12also he was a great Frisbee player I discovered
32:14'cause he beat me in a game of ultimate when he was like 80,
32:17which still, it has me a little bit irked.
32:20But anyway, Hubel and Wiesel
32:22did an amazing thing for science
32:25that will forever change
32:26the way that we think about the brain.
32:28However, they were quite wrong
32:30about this critical period thing.
32:32The critical period was this idea that
32:35if you were to deprive the nervous system of an input,
32:38say closing one eye early in development
32:41and the rest of the visual cortex is taken
32:43over by the representation of the open eye,
32:45that you could never change that
32:47unless you intervened early.
32:49And this actually formed the basis
32:51for why a kid that has a lazy eye or a cataract
32:55why, even though there's some issues
32:56with anesthesia in young children,
32:59why now we know that you want to get in there early
33:01and fix the cataract or fix the strabismus
33:05it's what ophthalmologists do.
33:07However, their idea that you had to do it early
33:11or else there was no opportunity to rescue
33:14the nervous system deficit later on
33:16turned out wasn't entirely true.
33:20In the early 90s, a graduate student
33:22by the name of Gregg Recanzone was in the laboratory
33:25of a guy named Mike Merzenich at UCSF.
33:27And they set out to test this idea
33:30that if one wants to change their brain,
33:33they need to do it early in life
33:34because the adult brain simply isn't plastic
33:37it's not available for these changes.
33:39And they did a series of absolutely beautiful experiments,
33:44by now I think we can say proving
33:46that the adult brain can change
33:49provided certain conditions are met.
33:51Now, the experiments they did are tough.
33:55They were tough on the experimenter
33:56and they were tough on the subject.
33:57I'll just describe one.
34:00Let's say you were a subject in one of their experiments.
34:01You would come into the lab and you'd sit down at a table
34:05and they would record from or image your brain
34:09and look at the representation of your fingers
34:11the digits as we call them.
34:13And there would be a spinning drum,
34:15literally a like a stone drum in front of your metal drum
34:20that had little bumps.
34:21Some of the bumps were spaced close together,
34:23some of them were spaced far apart.
34:25And they would do these experiments
34:27where they would expect their subjects to press a lever
34:31whenever for instance, the bumps got closer together
34:34or further apart and these were very subtle differences.
34:36So in order to do this you really have to pay attention
34:39to the distance between the bumps
34:41and these were not braille readers
34:43or anyone skilled in doing these kinds of experiments.
34:47What they found was that as people paid
34:49more and more attention to the distance between these bumps
34:52and they would signal when there was a change
34:54by pressing a lever,
34:56as they did that there was very rapid changes
34:58plasticity in the representation of the fingers.
35:02And it could go in either direction.
35:03You could get people very good at detecting the distance
35:06between bumps, that the distance was getting smaller
35:09or that the distance was getting greater.
35:11So people could get very good at these tasks
35:13that you're kind of hard to imagine how they would translate
35:15to the real world for a non braille reader.
35:17But what it told us is that these maps of touch
35:21were very much available for plasticity.
35:23And these were fully adult subjects.
35:26They're not taking any specific drugs.
35:28They don't have any impairments that we're aware of.
35:30And what it showed, what it proved
35:32is that the adult brain is very plastic.
35:34And they did some beautiful control experiments
35:37that are important for everyone to understand
35:39which is that sometimes they would bring people in
35:40and they would have them touch these bumps
35:43on this spinning drum but they would have the person
35:46pay attention to an auditory cue.
35:48Every time a tone would go off,
35:49or there was a shift in the pitch of that tone,
35:51they would have to signal that.
35:53So the subject thought they were doing something
35:54related to touch and hearing and all that showed was that
35:57it wasn't just the mere action of touching these bumps.
36:01They had to pay attention to the bumps themselves.
36:03If they were placing their attention
36:05on the auditory cue on the tone,
36:08well then there was plasticity in the auditory portion
36:11of the brain but not on the touch portion of the brain.
36:14And this really spits in the face of this thing
36:17that you hear so often which is every experience
36:20that you have is going to change the way your brain works.
36:22Absolutely not.
36:25The experiences that you pay super careful attention to
36:29are what open up plasticity
36:31and it opens up plasticity to that specific experience.
36:36So the question then is why?
36:38And Merzenich and his graduate students and postdocs
36:41went on to address this question of why.
36:43And it turns out the answer
36:45is a very straightforward neurochemical answer.
36:48And inside of that answer is the opportunity
36:51for any of us to change our brain at any point
36:54throughout our lifespan,
36:55essentially for anything that we want to learn,
36:57that could be subtracting an emotion
37:00from an experience we've had,
37:02it could be building a greater range of emotion,
37:05it could be learning new information
37:07like learning a new language.
37:09It could be learning new motor skill, like dance or sport
37:14or it could be some combination of cognitive motor.
37:17So for instance, an air traffic controller has to do a lot
37:20with their mind in addition to a lot with their hands.
37:22So it's not just cognitive,
37:24it's not just motor but combined.
37:26So we're going to talk about what that chemical is
37:28but to just give you an important hint,
37:32that chemical is the same chemical of stress.
37:35This is not a discussion about stress per se.
37:38In a future podcast episode, we'll talk all about stress
37:41and tools to deal with stress,
37:43something my lab works on quite extensively.
37:45And it's a topic that I enjoy discussing.
37:48But this is a topic about brain change.
37:50And what I just told you
37:51is that in order to change the brain
37:53you have to pay careful attention.
37:55And the immediate question should be well, why?
37:59Well, the answer is that when we pay careful attention
38:02there are two neurochemicals,
38:04neuromodulators as they're called,
38:06that are released from multiple sites in our brain
38:10that highlight the neural circuits
38:13that stand a chance of changing.
38:16Now it's not necessarily the case that they're going to change,
38:19but it's the first gate that has to open
38:21in order for change to occur.
38:23And the first neurochemical is epinephrin, also adrenaline.
38:27We call it adrenaline
38:28when it's released from the adrenal glands
38:30above our kidneys, that's in the body,
38:32we call it epinephrin in the brain,
38:34but they are chemically identical substances.
38:37Epinephrin is released from a region in the brainstem
38:41called locus coeruleus.
38:43Fancy name, you don't need to know it unless you want to.
38:46Locus coeruleus sends out these little wires
38:50we call axons such that it hoses the entire brain
38:55essentially in this neurochemical, epinephrin.
38:58Now it's not always hosing the brain with epinephrin.
39:00It's only when we are in high states of alertness
39:03that this epinephrin is released.
39:05But the way this circuit is designed, it's very nonspecific.
39:09It's essentially waking up the entire brain
39:11and that's because the way that epinephrin works
39:13by binding particular receptors
39:15is to increase the likelihood that neurons will be active.
39:19So no alertness, no neuroplasticity.
39:23However, alertness alone is not sufficient.
39:26As we would say, it's necessary
39:28but not sufficient for neuroplasticity.
39:31We know this is true also from the work of Hubel and Wiesel
39:34where they looked at brain plasticity
39:36in response to certain experiences
39:39in subjects that were either awake or asleep.
39:42And I hate to break it to you
39:44but you cannot just simply listen to things in your sleep
39:47and learn those materials.
39:50Later I'll talk about how you can do certain things
39:52in your sleep that you're unaware of
39:53that can enhance learning of things that you were aware of
39:56while you were awake.
39:57But that is not the same as just listening to some music
40:01or listening to a tape while you sleep
40:03and expecting it to sink in, so to speak.
40:07Epinephrin is released when we pay attention
40:10and when we are alert.
40:12But the most important thing for getting plasticity
40:14is that there'll be epinephrin which equates to alertness,
40:17plus the release of this neuromodulator, acetylcholine.
40:21Now acetylcholine is released from two sites in the brain.
40:25One is also in the brainstem and it's named different things
40:29in different animals, but in humans
40:31the most rich site of acetylcholine neurons
40:34or neurons that make acetylcholine
40:36is the parabigeminal nucleus or the parabrachial region.
40:41There are a number of different names
40:42of these aggregates of neurons.
40:43You don't need to know the names,
40:44all you need to know is that you have an area
40:46in your brainstem and that area sends wires,
40:50these axons up into the area of the brain
40:52that filters sensory input.
40:55So we have this area of the brain called the thalamus
40:57and it is getting bombarded with all sorts
40:59of sensory input all the time.
41:01Costello snoring off to my right,
41:03the lights that are in the room,
41:05the presence of my computer to my left,
41:07all of that is coming in.
41:09But when I pay attention to something
41:11like if I really hone in on Costello snoring,
41:14I create a cone of attention
41:15and what that cone of attention reflects
41:18is that acetylcholine is now amplifying the signal of sounds
41:24that Costello is making with his snoring
41:27and essentially making that signal greater
41:30than all the signal around it,
41:31what we call signal-to-noise goes up.
41:33So those of you with an engineering background
41:35will be familiar with signal-to-noise.
41:37Those of you who do not have an engineering background,
41:38don't worry about it.
41:39All it means is that one particular shout in the crowd
41:43comes through, Costello's snoring becomes more salient,
41:46more apparent relative to everything else going on.
41:49Acetylcholine acts as a spotlight
41:52but epinephrin for alertness.
41:54acetylcholine spotlighting these inputs.
41:57Those two things alone are not enough to get plasticity.
42:00There needs to be this third component.
42:02And the third component is acetylcholine released
42:04from an area of the forebrain called nucleus basalis.
42:08If you really want to get technical,
42:10it's called nucleus basalis of Meynert.
42:13For any of you that are buddying physicians
42:15or going to medical school, you should know that.
42:19If you have acetylcholine released from the brainstem,
42:22acetylcholine released from nucleus basalis and epinephrin,
42:26you can change your brain.
42:27And I can say that with confidence
42:29because Merzenich and Recanzone
42:31as well as other members of the Merzenich lab,
42:34Michael Kilgard and others
42:35did these incredible experiments where they stimulated
42:39the release of acetylcholine from nucleus basalis
42:42either with an electrode or with some other methods
42:44that we'll talk about.
42:46And what they found was when you stimulate
42:49these three brain regions, locus coeruleus,
42:52the brainstem source of acetylcholine
42:54and then the basal forebrain source of acetylcholine.
42:57When you have those three things
43:00whatever you happen to be listening to, doing
43:03or paying attention to immediately in one trial
43:08takes over the representation
43:10of a particular area of the brain.
43:12You essentially get rapid massive learning in one shop.
43:16And this has been shown again and again and again
43:19in a variety of papers
43:20also by a guy named Norman Weinberger from UC Irvine.
43:23And it is now considered a fundamental principle
43:26of how the nervous system works.
43:27So while Hubel and Wiesel talked about critical periods
43:30in developmental plasticity,
43:31it's very clear from the work of Merzenich
43:33and Weinberg and others, that if you get these three things,
43:37if you can access these three things
43:39of epinephrin, acetylcholine from these two sources,
43:43not only will the nervous system change, it has to change.
43:46It absolutely will change.
43:49And that is the most important thing
43:51for people to understand if they want to change their brain.
43:53You cannot just passively experience things
43:56and repetition can be important,
43:59but the way to use repetition to change your brain
44:01is fundamentally different.
44:03So now let's talk about how we would translate
44:05all the scientific information and history
44:08into some protocols that you can actually apply,
44:10because I think that's what many of you're interested in.
44:12And I'm willing to bet that most of you are not interested
44:15in lowering electrodes into your nucleus basalis
44:17and frankly, neither am I.
44:19In episode one of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
44:22I described the various ways that people can monitor
44:25and change their nervous system.
44:27Those ways include brain machine interface, pharmacology,
44:30behavioral practices,
44:32and those behavioral practices of course
44:34can include some dos, do this
44:36and some don'ts, don't do that, et cetera
44:39In thinking about neuroplasticity,
44:41I want to have a very frank conversation
44:43about what one can do
44:44but also acknowledge this untapped capacity
44:47that I'm just not hearing about out there,
44:49which is one can also combine behavioral practices
44:53with pharmacology.
44:54One can combine behavioral practices
44:57with brain machine interface, and you don't have to do that.
45:00In fact, I'm not recommending you do anything in particular.
45:03As always, I'll say it again,
45:06I'm not a physician, so I don't prescribe anything.
45:09I'm a professor, so I profess a lot of things.
45:11What you do with your health
45:12and your medical care is up to you.
45:13You're responsible for your health and wellbeing.
45:15So I'm not going to tell you what to do or what to take.
45:18I'm going to describe what the literature tells us
45:21and suggests about ways to access plasticity.
45:24We know we need epinephrin, that means alertness.
45:26Most people accomplish this through a cup of coffee
45:29and a good night's sleep.
45:30So I will say you should master your sleep schedule
45:33and you should figure out how much sleep you need
45:36in order to achieve alertness when you sit down to learn.
45:40All the tools and more science than probably
45:42you ever wanted to hear about sleep
45:44and how to get better at sleeping and timing your sleep
45:46et cetera and naps and all of that
45:48is in episodes two, three, four, and five
45:50of the Huberman Lab Podcast.
45:52So I encourage you to refer to those
45:53if your sleep is not where you would like it to be.
45:57Your ability to engage in deliberate focused alertness
46:00is in direct proportion to how well you are sleeping
46:03on a regular basis.
46:04I think that's kind of an obvious one.
46:06So get your sleep handled.
46:09But once that's in place,
46:11the question then is how do I access this alertness?
46:15Well, there are a number of ways.
46:16Some people use some pretty elaborate
46:18psychological gymnastics.
46:20They will tell people that they're going to do something
46:23and create some accountability.
46:25That could be really good.
46:26Or they'll post a picture of themselves online
46:28and they'll commit to learning a certain amount
46:30losing, excuse me, a certain amount of weight
46:32or something like this.
46:33So they can use either shame-based practices
46:37to potentially embarrass themselves
46:39if they don't follow through.
46:40They'll write cheques to organizations that they hate
46:42and insist that they'll cash them
46:43if they don't actually follow through
46:46or they'll do it out of love,
46:48you know, they'll decide that they're going
46:49to run a marathon or learn a language or something
46:54because of somebody they love
46:55or they want to devote it to somebody.
46:57The truth is that from the standpoint of epinephrin
47:01and getting alert and activated, it doesn't really matter.
47:03Epinephrin is a chemical and your brain does not distinguish
47:06between doing things out of love or hate, anger or fear.
47:10It really doesn't, all of those promote autonomic arousal
47:14and the release of epinephrin.
47:15So I think for most people
47:18if you're feeling not motivated to make these changes
47:20the key thing is to identify not just one
47:23but probably at kit of reasons, several reasons as to why
47:26you would want to make this particular change
47:28and being drawn toward a particular goal
47:31that you're excited about can be one,
47:33also being motivated to not be completely afraid, ashamed,
47:38or humiliated for not following through
47:39on a goal is another.
47:40I just want to briefly mention one little aside there
47:42because I've got a friend who's a physician,
47:44he's a cardiologist who has a really interesting theory.
47:47This is just theory, but I think it will resonate
47:49with a lot of people, which is that,
47:51you've all heard of this molecule dopamine
47:53that gives us the sense of reward
47:55when we accomplish something.
47:57Well, we also want to be able to access dopamine
47:59while we're working towards things,
48:01enjoy the process as they say,
48:02'cause it has all sorts of positive effects
48:04gives us energy, et cetera.
48:06With my friend, what he says is, you know,
48:08there's many many instances where someone will come to him
48:10and say, "You know what, I'm going to write a book."
48:13And he says, "Oh, that's great.
48:15I'm sure the book's going to be terrific
48:16and you really should write a book."
48:17And then they never go do it.
48:18And his theory is, if you get so much dopamine
48:21from the reward of people saying,
48:22Oh yeah, you're absolutely going to be able to do that,
48:24you might not actually go after the reward
48:27of the accomplishment itself.
48:29So be aware these positive reinforcements also.
48:32I'm not saying people should flagellate themselves
48:34to the point of victory in whatever they're pursuing,
48:36but motivation is a tricky one.
48:39So I suggest that everyone asks themselves
48:42what is it that I want to accomplish?
48:44And what is it that's driving me to accomplish this
48:47and come up with two or three things.
48:49Fear-based perhaps, love-based perhaps
48:52or perhaps several of those in order to ensure
48:56alertness, energy and attention for the task.
48:59And that brings us to the attention part.
49:02Now it's one thing to have an electrode embedded
49:03into your brain and increase the amount of acetylcholine.
49:06It's another to exist in the real world
49:08outside the laboratory and have trouble focusing.
49:11Having trouble bringing your attention
49:14to a particular location in space for a particular event.
49:17And there's a lot of discussion nowadays about smartphones
49:21and devices creating a sort of attention deficit,
49:25almost at a clinical level for many people,
49:27including adults.
49:28I think that's largely true.
49:30And what it means, however, is that we all are responsible
49:33for learning how to create depth of focus.
49:37There are some important Neuroscience principles
49:39to get depth of focus.
49:41I want to briefly talk about the pharmacology first
49:44because I always get asked about this.
49:45People say, "What can I take to increase my levels
49:47of acetylcholine?"
49:48Well, there are things you can take.
49:50Nicotine is called nicotine
49:53because acetylcholine binds to the nicotinic receptor.
49:56There are two kinds of acetylcholine receptors,
49:58muscarinic and nicotinic,
49:59but the nicotinic ones are involved
50:00in attention and alertness.
50:03I have colleagues, these are not my, you know
50:07kind of like bro, science buddies, I have those friends too,
50:10this is a Nobel prize winning colleague
50:13who chews Nicorette while he works.
50:15He used to be a smoker.
50:17He quit smoking because of fear of lung cancer,
50:19seemed like a smart choice,
50:21but he missed the level of focus
50:23that he could bring to his work.
50:26This is somebody who has had very long career.
50:28And if you ever meet with him,
50:29unfortunately I can't name him.
50:32If you ever meet with him what you realize is he chews
50:33about five pieces of Nicorette an hour,
50:35which I am not suggesting people do.
50:37But when I asked him, "Why are you doing this?"
50:39He said, "Well, increases my alertness and focus."
50:42And also his theory and I want to really underscore
50:45that it's theory not scientifically supported yet,
50:47is that it offsets Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
50:50It is true that nucleus basalis
50:53is the primary site of degeneration in the brain,
50:56in people that have dementia and Parkinson's
50:59and it's what leads to a lot of their inability
51:01to focus their attention, not just deficits and plasticity.
51:05So he might be onto something.
51:07Now I've tried chewing Nicorette, it makes me super jittery.
51:10I don't like it because I can't focus very well.
51:12It kind of takes me too far up
51:13the level of autonomic arousal.
51:15I've got friends that dip Nicorette all day,
51:18some of whom are scientists, writers and artists
51:21and musicians are familiar with the effects of nicotine
51:24from the era where a lot of people smoked
51:26and fortunately fewer people smoke now.
51:28So if you're interested in the pharmacology,
51:30there are supplements and things
51:32that can increase cholinergic transmission in the brain.
51:35I'm not suggesting you do this
51:36but if you're going to go down that route,
51:39you want to be very careful how much you rely
51:41on those all the time.
51:43Because the essence of plasticity is to create a window
51:47of attention and focus that's distinct
51:49from the rest of your day.
51:50That's what's going to create a mark in your brain
51:53and the potential for plasticity.
51:55Things that increase acetylcholine,
51:57besides nicotine or Nicorette,
52:01the nicotine could come from a variety of sources
52:03or things like alpha-GPC or choline.
52:07There are a number of these things.
52:08I would encourage you to go to examine.com, the website
52:11and just put in acetylcholine
52:13and it will give you a list of supplements
52:15as well as some of the dangers of these supplements
52:17that are associated with cholinergic transmission.
52:19But I would be remiss and I would be lying
52:22if I didn't say that there are a lot of people out there
52:24who are using cholinergic drugs
52:28in order to increase their level of focus.
52:31And since we're coming up on the Olympics,
52:33I don't want to get anyone in trouble
52:34but I'm well aware that the fact that the sprinters
52:37are really into cholinergic drugs
52:39because not only is acetylcholine important for the focus
52:42that allows them to hear the gun
52:44and be first out the blocks on the sprints.
52:46That's a lot of where the race is won,
52:49hearing that gun and being the quickest on reaction time.
52:51So they take cholinergic agents for that
52:53as well as acetylcholine is the molecule
52:57that controls nerve to muscle contraction.
52:59So your speed of reflexes is actually controlled
53:01by this nicotinic transmission as well.
53:04So lots to think about in terms of acetylcholine
53:06in sport and mental acuity, not just plasticity.
53:11Now for most of you,
53:12you probably don't want to chew Nicorette,
53:14definitely don't want to smoke cigarettes
53:15or take supplements for increasing acetylcholine.
53:18So what are some ways that you can increase acetylcholine?
53:21And there, it's going to sound
53:23like a bit of a circular argument but you to increase focus.
53:26How do you increase focus?
53:28You know, people are so familiar with sitting down,
53:30reading a couple pages of a book
53:32and realizing that none of it sunk in
53:33or talking to someone and seeing their mouth move,
53:36maybe even nodding your head subconsciously
53:39and none of it sinks in.
53:41This can be very damaging for school, work performance
53:44and relationships as many of you know.
53:48Costello incidentally never seems to pay attention
53:50to anything I say while looking directly at me,
53:53which contradicts what I'm about to say,
53:55which is that the best way to get better at focusing
54:00is to use the mechanisms of focus that you were born with.
54:04And the key principle here is that mental focus
54:08follows visual focus.
54:11We are all familiar with the fact that our visual system
54:13can be unfocused, blurry or jumping around
54:17or we can be very laser focused on one location in space.
54:21What's interesting and vitally important
54:23to understanding how to access neuroplasticity
54:26is that you can use your visual focus
54:29and you can increase your visual focus as a way
54:32of increasing your mental focus abilities more broadly.
54:37So I'm going to explain how to do that.
54:38Plasticity starts with alertness.
54:41And as I mentioned before,
54:43that alertness can come from a sense of love,
54:46a sense of joy, a sense of fear, doesn't matter.
54:50There are pharmacologic ways to access alertness too.
54:53The most common one is of course caffeine
54:56which if you watch the sleep episodes,
54:58you know reduces this molecule
55:00that makes us sleepy called adenosine.
55:02I drink plenty of caffeine.
55:04I'm a heavy user of caffeine.
55:07I don't think abuser of caffeine.
55:09I think in reasonable amounts
55:10provided we can still fall asleep at night,
55:12caffeine can be a relatively safe way
55:15to increase epinephrin.
55:17Now, many people are now also using Adderall.
55:21Adderall chemically looks a lot like amphetamine
55:25and basically it is amphetamine.
55:27It will increase epinephrin release from locus coeruleus,
55:30it will wake up the brain
55:31and that's why a lot of people rely on it.
55:33It does have a heavy basis for use
55:38in certain clinical syndromes prescribed
55:40such as attention deficit.
55:43However, it also has a high probability of abuse
55:47especially in those who are not prescribed it.
55:50Adderall will not increase focus, it increases alertness.
55:53It does not touch the acetylcholine system.
55:56And if those of you that are taking Adderall say,
55:58"Well, it really increases my focus overall",
56:01that's probably because your autonomic nervous system
56:03is just veering towards what we call parasympathetic.
56:06You're really just very sleepy
56:08and so it's bringing your levels of alertness up.
56:11As I mentioned, Adderall is very problematic
56:13for a number of people as it can be habit forming.
56:16Learning on Adderall does not always translate
56:19to high-performance off or on Adderall at later times.
56:23And the Adderall discussion is a broader one
56:26that perhaps we should have with a psychiatrist in the room
56:28at some point because it is a very widely abused drug
56:32at this point in time.
56:34The acetylcholine system
56:36and the focus that it brings is available
56:39as I mentioned through pharmacology,
56:41but also through these behavioral practices.
56:43And the behavioral practices
56:45that are anchored in visual focus are going to be the ones
56:48that are going to allow you to develop great depth
56:51and duration of focus.
56:53So let's think about visual focus for a second.
56:56When we focus on something visually, we have two options.
57:01We can either look at a very small region of space
57:04with a lot of detail and a lot of precision
57:07or we can dilate our gaze and we can see big pieces
57:10of visual space with very little detail.
57:12It's a trade-off.
57:13We can't look at everything at high resolution.
57:15This is why we have these,
57:16the pupil more or less relates to the fovea of the eye
57:19which is the area in which we have the most receptors,
57:22the highest density of receptors that perceive light.
57:25And so our acuity is much better
57:26in the center of our visual field than our periphery.
57:29It's a simple experiment you can do right now.
57:31If you're listening to this, you can still do it.
57:33You can hold your feet or your hands out in front of you.
57:34Provided that you're sighted you should be able to see
57:36how many fingers you have in front of you.
57:38For me, it's five.
57:39I still got all five fingers, amazingly enough.
57:43If I move my hand off to the side,
57:45I can't see them with precision,
57:47but as I moved them back into the center of my visual field
57:50I can see them with precision.
57:51And that's because the density,
57:53the number of pixels in the center of my visual field
57:55is much higher than it is in the periphery.
57:57When we focus our eyes, we do a couple of things.
58:00First of all, we tend to do that
58:02in the center of our visual field
58:03and our two eyes tend to align
58:05in what's called a vergence eye movement
58:06towards a common point.
58:08The other thing that happens is the lens of our eye moves
58:10so that our brain now no longer sees the entire visual world
58:14but is seeing a small cone of visual imagery.
58:18[door banging] If it...
58:19That was the dog bumping into the wall, forgive me.
58:22That small cone of visual imagery
58:24or soda straw view of the world has much higher acuity,
58:28higher resolution than if I were to look at everything.
58:32Now you see, of course, this makes perfect sense
58:34but that's about visual attention, not mental attention.
58:37Well, it turns out that focus in the brain
58:41is anchored to our visual system.
58:43I'll talk about blind people in a moment
58:45but assuming that somebody is sighted,
58:48the key is to learn how to focus better visually,
58:51if you want to bring about higher levels of cognitive
58:55or mental focus, even if you're engaged in a physical task.
58:58Now there's a remarkable phenomenon in animals
59:02where animals that have their eyes on the side of their head
59:05are scanning the entire visual environment all the time.
59:08They're not focused on anything.
59:09Think you're grazing animals, your cows, your sheep
59:11your birds, et cetera.
59:13But think about a bird picking up seeds on the beach
59:16or on concrete.
59:18That bird's head is up here.
59:20It's up about a foot off the ground,
59:22or if it's a small bird about six inches off the ground
59:24and its eyes are on the side of its head
59:26and yet it has this tiny beak
59:27that can quickly pick up these little seeds off the ground
59:30with immense precision.
59:32Now, if you try to do that by staring off
59:35to the sides of the room and picking up items
59:37in front of you with high precision at that tiny scale,
59:40little tiny objects, you will miss almost every time.
59:43They do it perfectly and they don't smash their beak
59:45into the ground and damage it,
59:46they do it with beautiful movement acuity also.
59:50So how do they do it?
59:51How do they create this focus or this awareness
59:55of what's in front of them?
59:56It turns out as they lower their head,
59:58their eyes, very briefly move inward,
1:00:02in what's called a vergence eye movement.
1:00:04Now their eyes can't actually translocate in their head,
1:00:07they're fixed in the skull, just like yours and mine are.
1:00:10But when we move our eyes slightly inward,
1:00:13maybe you can tell and do it's like so
1:00:17basically shortening or making the inter pupillary distance
1:00:21as it's called smaller.
1:00:23Two things happen.
1:00:24Not only do we develop a smaller visual window
1:00:27into the world, but we activate a set of neurons
1:00:31in our brainstem that trigger the release
1:00:34of both norepinephrine, epinephrin and acetylcholine.
1:00:38Norepinephrine is kind of similar to epinephrin.
1:00:40So in other words, when our eyes are relaxed in our head
1:00:43when we're just kind of looking
1:00:44at our entire visual environment, moving our head around,
1:00:46moving through space we're in optic flow,
1:00:48things moving past us or we're sitting still,
1:00:51we're looking broadly at our space, we're relaxed.
1:00:54When our eyes move slightly inward
1:00:57toward a particular visual target
1:00:59our visual world shrinks, our level of visual focus goes up
1:01:03and we know that this relates
1:01:05to the release of acetylcholine and epinephrin
1:01:07at the relevant sites in the brain for plasticity.
1:01:10Now, what this means is that
1:01:12if you have a hard time focusing your mind
1:01:15for sake of reading or for listening, you need to practice
1:01:19and you can practice focusing your visual system.
1:01:22Now this works best if you practice
1:01:25focusing your visual system at the precise distance,
1:01:28from the work that you intend to do for sake of plasticity.
1:01:31So how would this look in the real world?
1:01:33Let's say, I am trying to concentrate on something
1:01:37related to, I don't know, science,
1:01:39I'm reading a science paper and I'm having a hard time,
1:01:41it's not absorbing.
1:01:42I might think that I'm only looking at the paper
1:01:45that I'm reading.
1:01:46I'm only looking at my screen,
1:01:47but actually my eyes are probably darting around a bit.
1:01:49Experiments have been done on this.
1:01:51Or I'm gathering information from too many sources
1:01:54in the visual environment.
1:01:55Now, presumably because it's me,
1:01:57I've already had my coffee, I'm hydrated.
1:01:59I'm well rested, I slept well.
1:02:01And I still experienced these challenges in focusing
1:02:05spending just 60 to 120 seconds focusing my visual attention
1:02:10on a small window of my screen,
1:02:12meaning just on my screen with nothing on it,
1:02:15but bringing my eyes to that particular location
1:02:19increases not just my visual acuity for that location
1:02:22but it brings about an increase in activity
1:02:25in a bunch of other brain areas that are associated
1:02:28with gathering information from this location.
1:02:33So put simply, if you want to improve your ability to focus
1:02:38practice visual focus.
1:02:40Now, if you wear contacts
1:02:42or you wear corrective lenses, that's fine.
1:02:45You of course would want to use those.
1:02:46You don't want to take those off and use a blurry image.
1:02:50The finer the visual image and the more that you can hold
1:02:53your gaze to the visual image,
1:02:55the higher your levels of attention will be.
1:02:58Many times on Instagram and here I've been teased
1:03:00for not blinking very often.
1:03:02That's actually a practiced thing.
1:03:04We blink more as we get tired, which as you hear it
1:03:07you'll probably just say, duh.
1:03:08As we get tired, the neurons in the brainstem
1:03:11that are responsible for alertness
1:03:12and that hold the eyelids open
1:03:14start to falter and our eyelids start to close.
1:03:16This is why it's hard, the words,
1:03:18"I could barely keep my eyes open"
1:03:20which may be how you feel right now.
1:03:22But assuming that you're paying attention and you're alert,
1:03:25when you're very alert, your eyes are wide,
1:03:28your eyes are open.
1:03:29And as you get tired, your eyelids start to close.
1:03:32Blinks, actually reset our perception of time and space.
1:03:36This was shown in a beautiful paper in Current Biology.
1:03:38I'll be sure to post the reference in the notes.
1:03:41And blinking of course is necessary to lubricate the eyes.
1:03:45People blink because their eyes might get dry.
1:03:47But if you can keep focused by blinking less
1:03:51and by focusing your eyes to a particular location
1:03:53that's probably pretty creepy for you to experience
1:03:55as I'm doing this.
1:03:56But the more that you can do this
1:03:57the more that you can maintain a kind of a cone
1:04:00or a tunnel of mental focus.
1:04:02And so I'm sort of revealing my practice
1:04:04which is that I've worked very hard through blinking contest
1:04:09with my 14-year-old niece who still beats me every time
1:04:11and it really bothers me,
1:04:12but also just through my own self practice
1:04:15of learning to blink less and focus my visual attention
1:04:19on a smaller region of space.
1:04:21Now for me, that's important
1:04:22because I'm mainly learning things on a computer screen.
1:04:26If you're going to be doing sport, it's quite a bit different
1:04:29and we can discuss how you might translate to that to sport.
1:04:31In fact, in the next episode, I'm going to talk all about
1:04:34how plasticity and the focus mechanisms relate
1:04:37to learning of movement practices and coordinated movements.
1:04:40It's an entire discussion unto itself
1:04:42but the same principle holds.
1:04:44So we need alertness.
1:04:45You can get that through mental tricks of motivation,
1:04:50fear or love, whatever it is,
1:04:52pharmacology, please do it healthfully.
1:04:55You know, caffeine if that's in your practice,
1:04:57certainly want to be well hydrated
1:04:59that increases actually will increase alertness.
1:05:02Well, having a very full bladder will increase alertness
1:05:04although you don't want your alertness to be so high
1:05:06that all you can think about
1:05:08is the fact that you have to go urinate
1:05:10'cause that's very distracting.
1:05:11You don't want your alertness to go through the roof.
1:05:15You need focus and visual focus is the primary way
1:05:18in which we start to deploy these neurochemicals.
1:05:21Now you may ask, well, what about the experiment
1:05:24where people were feeling this rotating drum
1:05:27or listening to the auditory cue
1:05:28that doesn't involve vision at all?
1:05:30If you look at people who are learning things
1:05:34with their auditory system,
1:05:35they will often close their eyes.
1:05:36And that's not a coincidence.
1:05:38If somebody is listening very hard, please don't ask them
1:05:41to look you directly in the eye
1:05:43while also asking that they listen to you.
1:05:45That's actually one of the worst ways
1:05:46to get somebody to listen to you.
1:05:47If you say, now listen to me and look me in the eye.
1:05:49The visual system will take over
1:05:50and they'll see your mouth move,
1:05:51but they're going to hear their thoughts
1:05:53more than they're going to hear what you're saying.
1:05:55Closing the eyes is one of the best ways
1:05:58to create a cone of auditory attention.
1:06:00And this is what low vision or no vision folks do.
1:06:03They have tremendous capacity to focus their attention
1:06:06in particular locations.
1:06:08Incidentally does anyone know the two animals
1:06:10that have the best hearing in the world?
1:06:12The absolute best hearing is many orders of magnitude
1:06:15better than humans.
1:06:17It turns out it's the elephant.
1:06:18That might not surprise you, they have huge ears
1:06:21and the moth which probably will surprise you.
1:06:23I didn't even know that moths could hear.
1:06:25but now it explains why they're so hard to catch.
1:06:30If you are not sighted, you learn how to do this
1:06:33with your hearing.
1:06:34If you're somebody who braille reads,
1:06:36you learn how to do this with your fingers.
1:06:37If you look at great piano players like Glenn Gould,
1:06:42they often times will turn their head to the side.
1:06:46You think about some of the great musicians
1:06:50like Stevie Wonder that were blind, right?
1:06:53He would look away because he had no reason
1:06:55to look at the keys, but oftentimes they'll orient an ear
1:06:58or one side of their head to the keys on the piano.
1:07:01As I mentioned before, people who are non-sighted
1:07:03have better pitch.
1:07:03So we have these cones of attention that we can devote.
1:07:06And for most people, vision is the primary way
1:07:09to train up this focus of building these cones of attention.
1:07:12So you absolutely have to focus
1:07:13on the thing that you're trying to learn.
1:07:15And you will feel some agitation
1:07:17because of the epinephrin in your system.
1:07:19If you're feeling agitation and it's challenging to focus
1:07:23and you're feeling like you're not doing it right
1:07:24chances are you're doing it right.
1:07:26And you can practice this ability to stare
1:07:29for long periods of time without blinking.
1:07:31I know it's a little eerie for people to watch,
1:07:34but if your goal is to learn how to control
1:07:36that visual window for sake of controlling your focus,
1:07:39it can be an immensely powerful portal
1:07:41into these mechanisms of plasticity,
1:07:43because we know it engages things like nucleus basalis
1:07:46and these other brainstem mechanisms.
1:07:49I get a lot of questions about attention deficit
1:07:51hyperactivity disorder, ADHD,
1:07:53and attention deficit disorder.
1:07:56Some people actually have clinically diagnosed ADD and ADHD.
1:07:59And if you do, you should certainly work
1:08:01with a good psychiatrist to try and figure out
1:08:04the right pharmacology and/or behavioral practices for you.
1:08:08Many people, however, have given themselves a low grade ADHD
1:08:12or ADD because of the way that they move
1:08:15through their world.
1:08:16They are looking at their phone a lot of the time.
1:08:19It's actually very easy to anchor your attention
1:08:21to your phone for the following reason.
1:08:22First of all, it's very restricted in size.
1:08:25So it's very easy to limit your visual attention
1:08:29to something about this big.
1:08:30It's one of the design features of the phone.
1:08:33The other, is that just as you've probably heard
1:08:36a picture is worth a thousand words,
1:08:39well, a movie is worth 10,000 pictures.
1:08:42Anytime we're looking at things that have motion,
1:08:45visual motion, our attentional system
1:08:48will naturally gravitate towards them, towards those movies.
1:08:52It's actually much harder to read words on a page
1:08:55than it used to be for many people,
1:08:57because we're used to seeing things spelled out for us
1:09:00in YouTube videos or videos
1:09:01where things move in a very dramatic.
1:09:05It is true that the more that we look
1:09:07at those motion stimulate,
1:09:10the more that we're seeing movies of things
1:09:11and things that are very dramatic and very intense,
1:09:14the worst we're getting at attending to things
1:09:17like text on a page or to listening to something
1:09:21like a podcast and extracting the information
1:09:23so much so that I think many people have asked me,
1:09:26"Hey you know what, why aren't you providing intense visuals
1:09:29for us to look at?"
1:09:30Well, frankly, it's because a lot of people
1:09:31are consuming this content through pure auditory,
1:09:34through, it's by listening.
1:09:35And I want them to be able to digest all the material.
1:09:38But in addition to that,
1:09:39if you think about the areas of life
1:09:42that dictate whether or not we become successful,
1:09:45independent, healthy individuals,
1:09:48most of those involve the kind of boring practices
1:09:52of digesting information on a page.
1:09:55Boring because it's not as exciting in the moment perhaps
1:09:58as watching a movie or something being spoonfed to us.
1:10:02But the more attention that we can put to something,
1:10:04even if it's fleeting and we feel like
1:10:06we're only getting little bits and pieces,
1:10:08shards of the information as opposed to the entire thing,
1:10:11that has a much more powerful effect
1:10:13in engaging this cholinergic system for plasticity
1:10:16than does, for instance, watching a movie.
1:10:19And that's because when we watch a movie,
1:10:22the entire thing can be great, it can be awesome.
1:10:24It can be this overriding experience
1:10:26but I think for all those experiences,
1:10:28if you're somebody who's interested in building your brain
1:10:30and expanding your brain
1:10:32and getting better at various things,
1:10:34in feeling better, doing better, et cetera,
1:10:37one has to ask how much of my neurochemical resources
1:10:40am I devoting to the passive experience
1:10:43of letting something, just kind of overwhelm me
1:10:45and excite me,
1:10:46versus something that I'm really trying to learn
1:10:48and take away.
1:10:49And now there's another
1:10:50I enjoy movie content and TV content all the time.
1:10:53I scroll Instagram often.
1:10:55But we are limited in the extent to which we can grab a hold
1:11:00of these acetylcholine release mechanisms or epinephrin.
1:11:03And I think that we need to be careful
1:11:06that we don't devote all our acetylcholine and epinephrin,
1:11:10all our dopamine for that matter
1:11:12to these passive experiences of things
1:11:14that are not going to enrich us and better us.
1:11:17So that's a little bit of an editorial on my part
1:11:20but the phone is rich with movies,
1:11:23it's rich with information.
1:11:25The real question is
1:11:26is the information rich for us in ways that grow us
1:11:31and cultivate smarter, more emotionally, you know
1:11:37emotionally evolved people, or is it creating
1:11:41what's it doing for our physical wellbeing for that matter?
1:11:44So I don't want to tell people what to do or not to do
1:11:47but think carefully about how often you're focusing
1:11:50on something and how good you are or poor you are
1:11:53at focusing on something that's challenging.
1:11:56So once you get this epinephrin, this alertness,
1:11:58you get the acetylcholine released
1:12:00and you can focus your attention.
1:12:03Then the question is for how long?
1:12:04And in an earlier podcast,
1:12:06I talked about these ultradian cycles
1:12:07that lasts about 90 minutes.
1:12:09The typical learning about should be about 90 minutes.
1:12:12I think that learning about will no doubt
1:12:15include five to 10 minutes of warmup period.
1:12:18I think everyone should give themselves permission
1:12:20to not be fully focused in the early part of that about.
1:12:24But that in the middle of that about
1:12:26for the middle hour or so
1:12:27you should be able to maintain focus
1:12:28for about an hour or so.
1:12:30So that for me means eliminating distractions.
1:12:32That means turning off the wifi.
1:12:34I put my phone in the other room.
1:12:36If I find myself reflexively getting up to get the phone
1:12:39I will take the phone and lock it in the car outside.
1:12:41If I find myself going to get it anyway,
1:12:43I am guilty of giving away the phone for a period of time
1:12:48or even things more dramatic,
1:12:50I've thrown it up on my roof before
1:12:52so I can't get to it till the end of the day.
1:12:54That thing is pretty compelling
1:12:56and we come up with all sorts of reasons
1:12:57why we need it, to be in contact with it
1:12:59but I encourage you to try experiencing
1:13:02what it is to be completely immersed in an activity
1:13:05where you feel the agitation that your attention is drifting
1:13:07but you continually bring it back.
1:13:09And that's an important point
1:13:10which is that attention drifts, but we have to re-anchor it.
1:13:13We have to keep grabbing it back.
1:13:15And the way to do that, if you're sighted is with your eyes.
1:13:18That as your attention drifts, and you look away
1:13:20you want to try and literally maintain visual focus
1:13:23on the thing that you're trying to learn.
1:13:24Feel free to blink, of course,
1:13:26but you can greatly increase your powers of focus
1:13:28and the rates of learning which is anchored
1:13:31in all the work of Merzenich, Hubel and Wiesel and others.
1:13:34Now that's the trigger for plasticity,
1:13:37but the real secret is that neuroplasticity
1:13:41doesn't occur during wakefulness.
1:13:44It occurs during sleep.
1:13:46We now know that if you focus very hard on something
1:13:52for about 90 minutes or so,
1:13:54maybe you even do several bouts of that per day.
1:13:56If you can do that, some people can,
1:13:58some people can only do one focus about of learning,
1:14:01that night and the following nights, while you're asleep
1:14:04the neural circuits that were highlighted if you will
1:14:07with acetylcholine transmission will strengthen
1:14:10and other will be lost,
1:14:12which is wonderful because that's the essence of plasticity.
1:14:15And what it means is that when you eventually wake up
1:14:18a couple of days or a week later,
1:14:19you will will have acquired the knowledge forever
1:14:22unless you go through some process to actively unlearn it.
1:14:24And we will talk about unlearning in a later episode.
1:14:29So mastering sleep is key
1:14:30in order to reinforce the learning that occurs.
1:14:32But let's say you get a really poor night of sleep
1:14:35after a about of learning.
1:14:37Chances are, if you sleep the next night
1:14:39or the following night that learning will occur.
1:14:42There's a stamp in the brain
1:14:44where this acetylcholine was released.
1:14:45It actually marks those synapses neurochemically
1:14:48and metabolically, so that those are synopses
1:14:51are more biased to change.
1:14:52Now, if you don't ever get that deep sleep
1:14:55then you probably won't get those changes.
1:14:58There's also a way in which you can bypass the need
1:15:01for deep sleep at least partially by engaging
1:15:04in what I call Non Sleep Deep Rest, these NSDR protocols.
1:15:08But I just want to discuss the signs of this.
1:15:09There was a paper that was published in Cell Reports
1:15:13last year that shows that if people did,
1:15:16it was a spatial memory task, actually quite difficult one
1:15:18where they had to remember the sequence of lights
1:15:20lighting up and if they're just two or three lights
1:15:21in a particular sequence it's easy
1:15:24but as you get up to 15 or 16 lights
1:15:26and numbers in the sequence
1:15:28it actually gets quite challenging.
1:15:30If immediately after,
1:15:33and it was immediately after the learning
1:15:35the actual performance of this task,
1:15:37people took a 20 minute Non Sleep Deep Rest protocol
1:15:42or took a shallow nap, so lying down,
1:15:45feet slightly elevated perhaps,
1:15:47just closing their eyes, no sensory input,
1:15:50the rates of learning were significantly higher
1:15:52for that information than where the two just had
1:15:56a good night's sleep the following night.
1:15:58So you can actually accelerate learning
1:15:59with these NSDR protocols or with brief naps,
1:16:0290 minutes or less.
1:16:04So the key to plasticity in childhood is to be a child.
1:16:09The key to plasticity in adulthood is to engage alertness,
1:16:13engage focus and then to engage Non Sleep Deep Rest
1:16:18and deep sleep while you're in your typical about of sleep.
1:16:22I always get asked,
1:16:23"How many bouts of learning can I perform?"
1:16:26Well, I know people that train up
1:16:28these visual focus mechanisms to the point where they can do
1:16:32several 90 minute bouts throughout the day,
1:16:35as many as three or four.
1:16:36And some of them are also inserting
1:16:38Non Sleep Deep Rest as well.
1:16:40Now that can get pretty tricky.
1:16:41A lot of people find that they can recover best
1:16:45from these intense bouts of focused learning
1:16:48by doing some motor activity
1:16:51where you get into self-generated optic flow.
1:16:53And that should make sense
1:16:55if you've ever heard me lecture about stress
1:16:56which I've done a little bit in various podcasts.
1:16:59When we are in a mode of self-generated optic flow
1:17:01like walking or running or cycling
1:17:03and things are just floating past us on our retina,
1:17:06we're not really looking anywhere in particular,
1:17:08so this is the opposite of a tight window of focus.
1:17:11When we do that,
1:17:12there are areas of the brain like the amygdala
1:17:14which are involved in releasing epinephrin
1:17:17and create alertness.
1:17:18At the extremes, it creates fear but certainly alertness,
1:17:21those are all shut down.
1:17:22So it's its own form of non sleep deep rest.
1:17:25So some people find it much more pleasurable and practical
1:17:29to engage in a focused about of learning
1:17:33and then go do some activity that involves
1:17:36what we would essentially call worldlessness
1:17:38where you're not really thinking about much of anything.
1:17:40And so for those of you that listen
1:17:41to audio books or podcasts while you run
1:17:43you may want to consider whether or not
1:17:44that's how you want to spend your time right now.
1:17:47I'd love it if you were listening to this podcast
1:17:49while you run or cycle, but I'm much more interested
1:17:52in you actually getting the benefits of neuroplasticity
1:17:55than just listening to me for the sake of listening to me.
1:17:58So for many people letting the mind drift
1:18:02where it's not organized in thought
1:18:04after a period of very deliberate focused effort
1:18:07is the best way to accelerate learning
1:18:09and depth of learning.
1:18:10And there are good scientific data
1:18:11to support these sorts of things,
1:18:12including the Cell Reports paper
1:18:14that I mentioned a few moments ago.
1:18:16I want to synthesize some of the information
1:18:18that we've covered up until now.
1:18:20This entire month is about neuroplasticity.
1:18:23Today's episode has covered a lot,
1:18:25but by no means has it covered all of the potential
1:18:29for neuroplasticity and protocols for plasticity.
1:18:32We will get into all of it.
1:18:34But today I want to make sure that these key elements
1:18:37that form the backbone of neuroplasticity
1:18:40are really embedded in people's minds.
1:18:42First of all, plasticity occurs throughout the lifespan.
1:18:46Early, from birth until 25,
1:18:49mere exposure to a sensory event can create plasticity.
1:18:54That could be a good thing or a bad thing.
1:18:56We're going to talk about unlearning the bad stuff,
1:18:58traumas, et cetera in a subsequent episode this month.
1:19:04If you want to learn as an adult, you have to be alert.
1:19:08It might seem so obvious
1:19:10but I think a lot of people don't think about
1:19:12when in their 24 hour cycle, they're most alert.
1:19:17There are four episodes devoted to that 24-hour cycle
1:19:21and the cycles of alertness and sleep.
1:19:23I encourage you to listen to those
1:19:24if you haven't had the opportunity to yet
1:19:27or just ask yourself when during the day do you typically
1:19:30tend to be most alert?
1:19:31That will afford you an advantage
1:19:33in learning specific things during that period of time.
1:19:36So don't give up that period of time
1:19:38for things that are meaningless, useless,
1:19:41or not aligned with your goals.
1:19:43That'd be a terrible time to get into passive observance
1:19:47or just letting your time get soaked away by something.
1:19:51That is a valuable asset, that epinephrin,
1:19:54released from your brainstem is going to occur more readily
1:19:58at particular phases of your 24-hour cycle than others,
1:20:02during the waking phase of course.
1:20:05You should know when those are.
1:20:07And then you could start to think about
1:20:10the behavioral practices, maybe the pharmacologic practices
1:20:13like caffeine, hydration, et cetera
1:20:15that will support heightened levels of alertness.
1:20:19Attention is something that can be learned
1:20:20and attention is critical for creating that condition
1:20:25where whatever it is that you are engaging in
1:20:28will modify your brain in a way
1:20:31that you won't have to spend so much attention on it
1:20:34going forward.
1:20:35That's the essence of plasticity,
1:20:36that things will eventually become reflexive.
1:20:38The language that you're learning,
1:20:39the motor movement, the cognitive skill,
1:20:41the ability to suppress an emotional response
1:20:44or to engage in emotional response
1:20:46depending on what your goals are
1:20:47and what's appropriate for you.
1:20:50Increasing acetylcholine can be accomplished
1:20:52pharmacologically through nicotine.
1:20:54However, there are certain dangers
1:20:57for many people to do that as well as the cost,
1:21:00financial cost,
1:21:03learning how to engage the cholinergic system
1:21:05through the use of the visual system,
1:21:07practicing how long can you maintain focus
1:21:10with blinks as you need them,
1:21:13but how long can you maintain visual focus on a target,
1:21:16just on a piece of paper set a few feet away in the room
1:21:20or at the level of your computer screen.
1:21:22These are actually things that people do in communities
1:21:24where high levels of visual focus are necessary.
1:21:27Now, the other way to get high levels of visual focus
1:21:29and alertness is to have a panic
1:21:31or to have a situation that's very, very bad.
1:21:33You will be immediately focused on everything
1:21:36related to that situation, but that's unfortunate.
1:21:39What we're really talking about here is trying to
1:21:41harness the mechanisms of attention
1:21:43and get better at paying attention.
1:21:45You may want to do that with your auditory system,
1:21:47not with your visual system,
1:21:48either because you're low vision or no vision,
1:21:51or because you're trying to learn something
1:21:52that relates more to sounds than to what you see.
1:21:54But for most people they're trying to learn information,
1:21:57cognitive information, or they're trying to learn how to
1:21:59hear the nuance in their partner's explanations
1:22:02of their emotionally challenging events, et cetera.
1:22:05And just remember, by the way, what I said earlier,
1:22:08which is that if you really want somebody to listen to you
1:22:11and really hear what you're saying and what's underlying it,
1:22:14you should not, and cannot expect them
1:22:16to look directly at you while you do that.
1:22:18That's actually going to limit their ability to focus.
1:22:20I'm trying to rescue a few folks out there
1:22:22who might be in this struggle.
1:22:24I of course have never been in this struggle.
1:22:28And that was supposed to be a joke.
1:22:30I'm very familiar with that struggle
1:22:32but I know that one can get better at listening,
1:22:35one can get better at learning,
1:22:37one can get better at all sorts
1:22:39of things by anchoring in these mechanisms.
1:22:42Now, of course you can also combine protocols.
1:22:44You can decide to combine pharmacology
1:22:48with these learning practices.
1:22:50Many people in communities do that.
1:22:53Many people are doing that naturally
1:22:55by drinking their coffee
1:22:56right before they do their learning.
1:22:58But I would also encourage you to think about
1:23:00how long those learning bouts are.
1:23:02If you think you have ADD or ADHD,
1:23:06see a clinician but you should also ask yourself
1:23:09are you giving up the best period of focus
1:23:11that you have each day naturally
1:23:13to some other thing like social media
1:23:16or some other activity that doesn't serve you well
1:23:19or are you devoting that period to the opportunity to learn?
1:23:23You should also ask yourself whether or not
1:23:25you're trying to focus too much for too long during the day.
1:23:30I know some very high performing individuals,
1:23:33very high-performing in a variety of contexts
1:23:36and none of them are focused all day long.
1:23:37Many of them take walks down the hallway,
1:23:40sometimes mumbling to themselves,
1:23:41they're not paying attention to anything else.
1:23:42They go for bike rides, they take walks.
1:23:45They are not trying to engage their mind
1:23:47at maximum focus all the time.
1:23:49Very few people do that because we learn best
1:23:53in these 90 minute bouts
1:23:54inside of one of these ultradian cycles.
1:23:56And I should repeat again, that within that 90-minute cycle,
1:23:59you should not expect yourself to focus
1:24:01for the entire period of one 90-minute cycle.
1:24:03The beginning and end are going to be a little bit
1:24:05flickering in and out of focus.
1:24:06How do you know when one of these 90-minute cycles
1:24:09is starting, or typically when you wake up
1:24:11os the beginning of the first 90-minute cycle,
1:24:13but it's not down to the minute.
1:24:14You'll be able to tap into your sense
1:24:17of these 90-minute cycles
1:24:18as you start to engage in these learning practices
1:24:20should you choose.
1:24:22And then of course getting some non sleep deep rest
1:24:24or just deliberate disengagement,
1:24:27such as walking or running,
1:24:30or just sitting, eyes closed or eyes open
1:24:33you kind of mindlessly it might seem in a chair,
1:24:35just letting your thoughts move around
1:24:36after a learning about will accelerate
1:24:39the rate of plasticity
1:24:40that's been shown in quality peer reviewed studies.
1:24:45And then of course, deep sleep.
1:24:46And so what we can start to see is that
1:24:49plasticity is your natural right early in life.
1:24:55But after about age 25
1:24:57you have to do some work in order to access it.
1:25:00But fortunately, these beautiful experiments
1:25:03of Hubel and Wiesel and Merzenich and Weinberger and others
1:25:06point in the direction of what allows us
1:25:09to achieve plasticity,
1:25:10it points to the neurochemicals and the circuits.
1:25:12And we now have behavioral protocols
1:25:14that allow us to do that.
1:25:18I also really want to emphasize
1:25:19that there's an entire other aspect of behavioral practices
1:25:23that will allow us to engage in plasticity
1:25:26that don't involve intense focus on emotionality
1:25:29but involve a lot of repetition.
1:25:32So there's another entire category of plasticity
1:25:35that involves doing what seemed like almost mundane things
1:25:40but doing them over and over again repeatedly
1:25:44and incorporating the reward system that involves dopamine.
1:25:47So today I talked about the kind of plasticity
1:25:49that comes from extreme focus.
1:25:50You would get that extreme focus and alertness naturally
1:25:53through a harder, difficult event that you didn't want.
1:25:56That's the kind of stinger
1:25:57but your brain is designed to keep you safe
1:25:59so it wants to get one trial learning
1:26:01from things like touching a hot stove
1:26:03or engaging with a really horrible person.
1:26:08You can get incredible plasticity of positive experiences
1:26:12of things that you want by engaging this high focus regime
1:26:16and then rest, non sleep deep rest, and sleep.
1:26:19And there's another aspect of plasticity
1:26:21which we will explore next episode
1:26:24as well as when we explore movement-based practices
1:26:28for enhancing plasticity and plasticity of movement itself.
1:26:32And those are not of the high attention
1:26:35kind of high emotionality
1:26:37or in the intensity of the experiences
1:26:41that I described today.
1:26:42Those are more about repetition and reward and repeat,
1:26:45repetition, reward, repeat,
1:26:47and they are used for a distinctly different category
1:26:51of behavioral change more of which relate to habits
1:26:54as opposed to learning of particular types of information
1:26:58that allow us to perform physically,
1:27:03cognitively or adjust our emotional system.
1:27:06So I'm going to stop there.
1:27:07I'm sure there are a lot of questions.
1:27:09Please put your questions in the comment section below
1:27:11and please remember that this entire month
1:27:13we're going to be exploring neuroplasticity.
1:27:16So this discussion/lecture,
1:27:20I wish it was more of a back and forth,
1:27:21but this is what the format offers us.
1:27:24So please do put your questions in the comment section
1:27:27and I will address them in the other episodes coming soon
1:27:30on neuroplasticity.
1:27:32As I say that I'm reminded
1:27:34that many of you are listening to this on Apple or Spotify
1:27:38and therefore there isn't an opportunity
1:27:40to leave comments aside from the rating section on Apple.
1:27:44So if you have specific topics related to neuroplasticity
1:27:48that you would like me to cover
1:27:49in the subsequent episodes this month
1:27:51please go to the YouTube, subscribe,
1:27:54but as well please put your question in the comment section
1:27:58for this episode and I'll be sure to read them and respond.
1:28:01Many of you have very graciously asked
1:28:03how you can help support the Huberman Lab Podcast.
1:28:06Best way to do that is to subscribe on YouTube.
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1:28:38That's a great way to help us.
1:28:40Today and in previous episodes,
1:28:42I've talked a number of times about supplements.
1:28:44I'm very pleased that we're partnering with Thorne,
1:28:47T-h-o-r-n-e supplements
1:28:49because Thorne has the very high levels of stringency
1:28:53in terms of product quality and precision
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1:29:16any supplements that you purchase.
1:29:18I've also listed there a gallery of supplements
1:29:20that I take, including magnesium glycinate.
1:29:23I know in previous episodes,
1:29:24I talked about magnesium threonate
1:29:27as a sleep aid that I take.
1:29:28magnesium glycinate and magnesium threonate
1:29:31are essentially interchangeable.
1:29:33Thanks so much for your time and attention,
1:29:35and as always thank you for your interest in science.
1:29:37[upbeat music]

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