How to Focus to Change Your Brain | Huberman Lab Essentials

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

00:00:02.320 | where we revisit past episodes

00:00:04.360 | for the most potent and actionable science-based tools

00:00:07.560 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:00:10.320 | My name is Andrew Huberman,

00:00:12.840 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:16.000 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:17.760 | Today, we're talking about neural plasticity,

00:00:20.280 | which is this incredible feature of our nervous systems

00:00:23.640 | that allows it to change in response to experience.

00:00:27.340 | Neural plasticity is arguably

00:00:29.280 | one of the most important aspects of our biology.

00:00:32.580 | It holds the promise for each and all of us

00:00:35.140 | to think differently, to learn new things,

00:00:38.760 | to forget painful experiences,

00:00:41.280 | and to essentially adapt to anything that life brings us

00:00:44.960 | by becoming better.

00:00:46.400 | So let's get started.

00:00:47.920 | Most people are familiar with the word neural plasticity,

00:00:51.160 | which is the brain and nervous system's ability

00:00:53.680 | to change itself.

00:00:55.600 | All of us were born with a nervous system

00:00:58.280 | that isn't just capable of change,

00:01:00.500 | but was designed to change.

00:01:02.960 | When we enter the world,

00:01:04.480 | our nervous system is primed for learning.

00:01:10.120 | The brain and nervous system of a baby

00:01:13.240 | is wired very crudely.

00:01:15.600 | The connections are not precise.

00:01:17.920 | And we can see evidence of that

00:01:19.680 | in the fact that babies are kind of flopping there

00:01:22.480 | like a little potato bug with limbs.

00:01:24.680 | They can't really do much in terms of coordinated movement.

00:01:27.680 | They certainly can't speak

00:01:29.720 | and they can't really do anything with precision.

00:01:32.580 | So I want you to imagine in your mind

00:01:35.800 | that when you were brought into this world,

00:01:37.840 | you were essentially a widely connected web of connections

00:01:42.800 | that was really poor at doing any one thing.

00:01:46.760 | And that through your experience,

00:01:48.320 | what you were exposed to by your parents or other caretakers

00:01:51.560 | through your social interactions, through your thoughts,

00:01:54.520 | through the languages that you learn,

00:01:56.240 | through the places you traveled or didn't travel,

00:01:58.480 | your nervous system became customized

00:02:00.780 | to your unique experience.

00:02:03.200 | Now, that's true for certain parts of your brain

00:02:06.820 | that are involved in what we call

00:02:08.080 | representations of the outside world.

00:02:10.600 | A lot of your brain is designed to represent the visual world

00:02:13.480 | or represent the auditory world

00:02:15.880 | or represent the gallery of smells

00:02:18.600 | that are possible in the world.

00:02:21.320 | However, there are aspects of your nervous system

00:02:23.760 | that were designed not to be plastic.

00:02:26.880 | They were wired so that plasticity

00:02:28.840 | or changes in those circuits is very unlikely.

00:02:31.800 | Those circuits include things like

00:02:33.860 | the ones that control your heartbeat,

00:02:35.780 | the ones that control your breathing,

00:02:37.640 | the ones that control your digestion.

00:02:39.400 | And thank goodness that those circuits were set up that way

00:02:42.180 | because you want those circuits to be extremely reliable.

00:02:45.000 | So many nervous system features like digestion

00:02:49.040 | and breathing and heart rate are hard to change.

00:02:52.760 | Other aspects of our nervous system

00:02:54.320 | are actually quite easy to change.

00:02:56.000 | And one of the great gifts of childhood,

00:02:57.960 | adolescence, and young adulthood

00:02:59.840 | is that we can learn through almost passive experience.

00:03:02.260 | We don't have to focus that hard

00:03:04.000 | in order to learn new things.

00:03:05.540 | And then after age 25,

00:03:07.680 | if we want to change those connections,

00:03:09.540 | those super highways of connectivity,

00:03:11.640 | we have to engage in some very specific processes.

00:03:14.720 | And those processes, as we'll soon learn, are gated,

00:03:18.200 | meaning you can't just decide to change your brain.

00:03:20.320 | You actually have to go through a series of steps

00:03:22.360 | to change your internal state

00:03:24.440 | in ways that will allow you to change your brain.

00:03:27.120 | Many of us have been captivated

00:03:29.920 | by the stories in the popular press

00:03:31.860 | about the addition of new neurons.

00:03:33.640 | This idea, oh, if you go running or you exercise,

00:03:36.020 | your brain actually makes new neurons.

00:03:38.440 | Well, I'm going to give you the bad news,

00:03:39.880 | which is that after puberty,

00:03:42.080 | the human brain and nervous system

00:03:43.960 | adds very few, if any, new neurons.

00:03:47.240 | So even though we can't add new neurons

00:03:49.400 | throughout our lifespan,

00:03:50.680 | at least not in very great numbers,

00:03:53.800 | it's clear that we can change our nervous system,

00:03:56.200 | that the nervous system is available for change,

00:03:59.200 | that if we create the right set of circumstances

00:04:01.920 | in our brain, chemical circumstances,

00:04:04.440 | and if we create the right environmental circumstances

00:04:07.480 | around us, our nervous system will shift into a mode

00:04:10.580 | in which change isn't just possible, but it's probable.

00:04:14.220 | As I mentioned before,

00:04:15.860 | the hallmark of the child nervous system is change.

00:04:19.200 | It wants to change.

00:04:20.420 | One of the ways in which we can all get plasticity

00:04:23.880 | at any stage throughout the lifespan

00:04:26.160 | is through deficits and impairments

00:04:28.120 | in what we call our sensory apparati,

00:04:30.280 | our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth.

00:04:32.740 | In individuals that are blind from birth,

00:04:35.160 | the so-called occipital cortex,

00:04:36.900 | the visual cortex in the back,

00:04:38.680 | becomes overtaken by hearing.

00:04:42.480 | The neurons there will start to respond to sounds

00:04:45.200 | as well as braille touch.

00:04:46.600 | And actually there's a one particularly tragic incident

00:04:49.420 | where a woman who was blind since birth

00:04:52.660 | and because of neuroimaging studies,

00:04:55.200 | we knew her visual cortex was no longer visual,

00:04:58.040 | it was responsible for braille reading and for hearing.

00:05:01.380 | She had a stroke that actually took out

00:05:03.400 | most of the function of her visual cortex.

00:05:05.680 | So then she was blind, she couldn't braille read or hear.

00:05:08.720 | She did recover some aspect of function.

00:05:11.160 | Now, most people, they don't end up

00:05:12.400 | in that highly unfortunate situation.

00:05:14.520 | And what we know is that, for instance,

00:05:16.780 | blind people who use their visual cortex

00:05:20.280 | for braille reading and for hearing

00:05:22.360 | have much better auditory acuity and touch acuity,

00:05:26.880 | meaning they can sense things with their fingers

00:05:28.900 | and they can sense things with their hearing

00:05:30.680 | that typical sighted folks wouldn't be able to.

00:05:33.940 | In fact, you will find a much greater incidence

00:05:37.720 | of perfect pitch in people that are blind.

00:05:41.840 | And that tells us that the brain,

00:05:43.920 | and in particular this area we call the neocortex,

00:05:46.100 | which is the outer part,

00:05:47.440 | is really designed to be a map

00:05:49.320 | of our own individual experience.

00:05:51.560 | So these, what I call experiments of impairment or loss,

00:05:55.620 | where somebody is blind from birth or deaf from birth,

00:05:58.440 | or maybe has a limb development impairment

00:06:03.440 | where they have a stump instead of an entire limb

00:06:06.020 | with a functioning hand,

00:06:07.920 | their brain will represent the body plan that they have,

00:06:12.600 | not some other body plan.

00:06:14.600 | But the beauty of the situation

00:06:16.020 | is that the real estate up in the skull, that neocortex,

00:06:20.520 | the essence of it is to be a customized map of experience.

00:06:24.360 | A few years ago, I was at a course

00:06:28.600 | and a woman came up to me and she said,

00:06:30.840 | "I wasn't teaching the course, I was in the course."

00:06:32.500 | And she said, "I just have to tell you

00:06:33.840 | that every time you speak, it really stresses me out."

00:06:37.160 | And I said, "Well, I've heard that before,

00:06:39.380 | but do you want to be more specific?"

00:06:41.500 | And she said, "Yeah, your tone of voice reminds me

00:06:43.700 | of somebody that I had a really terrible experience with."

00:06:47.160 | I said, "Well, okay, well, I can't change my voice,

00:06:48.860 | but I really appreciate that you acknowledge that,

00:06:51.200 | and it also will help explain why you seem to cringe

00:06:54.700 | every time I speak," which I hadn't noticed until then.

00:06:57.000 | But after that, I did notice she had a very immediate

00:06:59.920 | and kind of visceral response to my speech.

00:07:01.640 | But in any event, over the period of this two-week course,

00:07:05.720 | she would come back every once in a while and say,

00:07:07.720 | "You know what, I think just by telling you

00:07:09.920 | that your voice was really difficult for me to listen to,

00:07:12.960 | it's actually becoming more tolerable to me."

00:07:14.900 | And by the end, we actually became pretty good friends,

00:07:16.820 | and we're still in touch.

00:07:17.900 | And so what this says is that the recognition of something,

00:07:22.380 | whether or not that's an emotional thing

00:07:23.980 | or a desire to learn something else,

00:07:26.100 | is actually the first step in neuroplasticity.

00:07:28.860 | If I get up out of this chair and walk out of the door,

00:07:31.020 | I don't think about each step that I'm taking,

00:07:32.820 | and that's because I learned how to walk during development.

00:07:35.420 | But when we decide that we're going to shift

00:07:37.580 | some sort of behavior or some reaction

00:07:40.660 | or some new piece of information that we want to learn

00:07:44.080 | is something that we want to bring into our consciousness,

00:07:46.600 | that awareness is a remarkable thing

00:07:49.600 | because it cues the brain

00:07:52.240 | and the rest of the nervous system

00:07:53.960 | that when we engage in those reflexive actions going forward,

00:07:57.560 | that those reflexive actions

00:07:59.080 | are no longer fated to be reflexive.

00:08:02.480 | Now, if this sounds a little bit abstract,

00:08:03.800 | we're going to talk about protocols for how to do this.

00:08:06.080 | But the first step in neuroplasticity

00:08:08.440 | is recognizing that you want to change something.

00:08:10.820 | We have to know what it is exactly that we want to change.

00:08:14.900 | Or if we don't know exactly what it is

00:08:17.440 | that we want to change,

00:08:18.400 | we at least have to know that we want to change something

00:08:20.680 | about some specific experience.

00:08:22.440 | Now, there are specific protocols

00:08:23.720 | that science tells us we have to follow

00:08:25.480 | if we want those changes to occur.

00:08:27.280 | What it is is it's our forebrain,

00:08:29.440 | in particular our prefrontal cortex,

00:08:31.360 | signaling the rest of our nervous system

00:08:34.520 | that something that we're about to do,

00:08:36.280 | hear, feel, or experience is worth paying attention to.

00:08:40.360 | So we'll pause there, and then I'm going to move forward.

00:08:42.520 | One of the biggest lies in the universe

00:08:45.040 | that seems quite prominent right now

00:08:47.200 | is that every experience you have changes your brain.

00:08:51.100 | People love to say this.

00:08:52.280 | They love to say your brain is going to be different

00:08:54.480 | after this lecture,

00:08:55.440 | that your brain is going to be different

00:08:56.600 | after today's class than it was two days ago.

00:08:58.800 | And that's absolutely not true.

00:09:01.160 | The nervous system doesn't just change

00:09:03.400 | because you experience something

00:09:04.600 | unless you're a very young child.

00:09:07.120 | The nervous system changes

00:09:09.840 | when certain neurochemicals are released

00:09:12.840 | and allow whatever neurons are active in the period

00:09:16.800 | in which those chemicals are swimming around

00:09:19.840 | to strengthen or weaken the connections of those neurons.

00:09:24.000 | So when people tell you,

00:09:25.360 | "Oh, at the end of today's lecture

00:09:27.160 | or at the end of something,

00:09:28.560 | your brain is going to be completely different,"

00:09:30.680 | that's simply not true.

00:09:31.760 | If you're older than 25, your brain will not change

00:09:34.960 | unless there's a selective shift in your attention

00:09:38.560 | or a selective shift in your experience

00:09:41.320 | that tells the brain it's time to change.

00:09:45.080 | And those changes occur through strengthening

00:09:47.480 | and weakening of particular connections.

00:09:49.640 | But the important thing to understand

00:09:51.740 | is that if we want something to change,

00:09:54.040 | we really need to bring an immense amount of attention

00:09:57.380 | to whatever it is that we want to change.

00:09:59.560 | This is very much linked to the statement I made earlier

00:10:02.040 | about it all starts with an awareness.

00:10:05.040 | Now, why is that attention important?

00:10:07.520 | In the early '90s,

00:10:09.240 | a graduate student by the name of Greg Rechenzone

00:10:11.320 | was in the laboratory of a guy named Mike Merzenich at UCSF.

00:10:15.200 | And they set out to test this idea

00:10:17.800 | that if one wants to change their brain,

00:10:20.400 | they need to do it early in life

00:10:21.960 | because the adult brain simply isn't plastic.

00:10:24.360 | It's not available for these changes.

00:10:26.800 | And they did a series of absolutely beautiful experiments.

00:10:30.540 | By now, I think we can say proving

00:10:34.040 | that the adult brain can change

00:10:36.540 | provided certain conditions are met.

00:10:39.080 | Now, the experiments they did are tough.

00:10:42.460 | They were tough on the experimenter

00:10:43.740 | and they were tough on the subject.

00:10:45.200 | I'll just describe one.

00:10:46.480 | Let's say you were a subject in one of their experiments.

00:10:49.200 | You would come into the lab and you'd sit down at a table

00:10:52.320 | and they would record from or image your brain

00:10:56.720 | and look at the representation of your fingers,

00:10:58.860 | the digits as we call them.

00:11:01.000 | And there would be a spinning drum,

00:11:02.660 | literally like a stone drum in front of you

00:11:05.680 | or metal drum that had little bumps.

00:11:07.800 | Some of the bumps were spaced close together,

00:11:09.800 | some of them were spaced far apart.

00:11:11.720 | And they would do these experiments

00:11:13.420 | where they would expect their subjects

00:11:15.600 | to press a lever whenever, for instance,

00:11:18.880 | the bumps got closer together or further apart.

00:11:21.400 | And these were very subtle differences.

00:11:23.200 | So in order to do this,

00:11:24.040 | you really have to pay attention

00:11:26.080 | to the distance between the bumps.

00:11:28.020 | And these were not braille readers

00:11:29.600 | or anyone skilled in doing these kinds of experiments.

00:11:32.460 | What they found was that as people paid

00:11:35.520 | more and more attention to the distance between these bumps,

00:11:39.160 | and they would signal when there was a change

00:11:40.660 | by pressing a lever.

00:11:42.560 | As they did that, there was very rapid changes,

00:11:45.240 | plasticity in the representation of the fingers.

00:11:48.520 | And it could go in either direction.

00:11:50.120 | You could get people very good

00:11:51.680 | at detecting the distance between bumps

00:11:54.200 | that the distance was getting smaller

00:11:55.680 | or the distance was getting greater.

00:11:58.040 | So people could get very good at these tasks

00:11:59.880 | that you're kind of hard to imagine

00:12:01.440 | how they would translate to the real world

00:12:02.920 | for a non-braille reader.

00:12:04.200 | But what it told us is that these maps of touch

00:12:07.520 | were very much available for plasticity.

00:12:10.000 | And these were fully adult subjects.

00:12:12.520 | What it proved is that the adult brain is very plastic.

00:12:15.320 | And they did some beautiful control experiments

00:12:17.440 | that are important for everyone to understand,

00:12:19.520 | which is that sometimes they would bring people in

00:12:21.160 | and they would have them touch these bumps

00:12:23.940 | on this spinning drum,

00:12:25.560 | but they would have the person pay attention

00:12:27.240 | to an auditory cue.

00:12:28.440 | Every time a tone would go off,

00:12:29.920 | or there was a shift in the pitch of that tone,

00:12:32.400 | they would have to signal that.

00:12:33.700 | So the subject thought they were doing something

00:12:35.080 | related to touch and hearing.

00:12:36.240 | And all that showed was that it wasn't just the mere action

00:12:40.120 | of touching these bumps.

00:12:41.840 | They had to pay attention to the bumps themselves.

00:12:44.120 | If they were placing their attention

00:12:46.280 | on the auditory cue on the tone,

00:12:49.360 | well, then there was plasticity

00:12:50.880 | in the auditory portion of the brain,

00:12:52.780 | but not on the touch portion of the brain.

00:12:54.640 | And this really spits in the face of this thing

00:12:58.320 | that you hear so often,

00:13:00.000 | which is every experience that you have

00:13:01.600 | is going to change the way your brain works.

00:13:03.400 | Absolutely not.

00:13:05.520 | The experiences that you pay super careful attention to

00:13:10.120 | are what open up plasticity.

00:13:12.160 | And it opens up plasticity to that specific experience.

00:13:16.520 | So the question then is why?

00:13:19.120 | And Merzenich and his graduate students and postdocs

00:13:21.680 | went on to address this question of why.

00:13:24.000 | And it turns out the answer

00:13:25.880 | is a very straightforward neurochemical answer.

00:13:29.040 | And the first neurochemical is epinephrine, also adrenaline.

00:13:32.420 | We call it adrenaline when it's released

00:13:34.920 | from the adrenal glands above our kidneys,

00:13:37.400 | that's in the body.

00:13:38.220 | We call it epinephrine in the brain,

00:13:39.680 | but they are chemically identical substances.

00:13:42.480 | Epinephrine is released from a region in the brainstem

00:13:45.720 | called locus coeruleus.

00:13:47.640 | Epinephrine is released when we pay attention

00:13:50.120 | and when we are alert.

00:13:52.020 | But the most important thing for getting plasticity

00:13:54.520 | is that there be epinephrine, which equates to alertness,

00:13:57.880 | plus the release of this neuromodulator acetylcholine.

00:14:01.720 | Now, acetylcholine is released from two sites in the brain.

00:14:05.800 | One is also in the brainstem

00:14:08.280 | and it's named different things in different animals,

00:14:10.240 | but in humans, the most rich site of acetylcholine neurons

00:14:14.440 | or neurons that make acetylcholine

00:14:16.240 | is the parabigeminal nucleus or the parabrachial region.

00:14:21.200 | All you need to know is that you have an area

00:14:22.480 | in your brainstem and that area sends wires,

00:14:26.400 | these axons up into the area of the brain

00:14:29.160 | that filters sensory input.

00:14:31.480 | So we have this area of the brain called the thalamus

00:14:33.560 | and it is getting bombarded

00:14:34.960 | with all sorts of sensory input all the time.

00:14:37.200 | But when I pay attention to something,

00:14:39.200 | I create a cone of attention,

00:14:40.800 | what we call signal to noise goes up.

00:14:42.960 | So those of you with an engineering background

00:14:44.640 | will be familiar with signal to noise.

00:14:46.240 | Those of you who do not have an engineering background,

00:14:47.960 | don't worry about it.

00:14:48.800 | All it means is that one particular shout in the crowd

00:14:52.180 | comes through, acetylcholine acts as a spotlight.

00:14:56.480 | But epinephrine for alertness,

00:14:58.680 | acetylcholine spotlighting these inputs,

00:15:01.160 | those two things alone are not enough to get plasticity.

00:15:04.360 | There needs to be this third component.

00:15:06.000 | And the third component is acetylcholine released

00:15:08.440 | from an area of the forebrain called nucleus basalis.

00:15:11.920 | If you really want to get technical,

00:15:14.040 | it's called nucleus basalis of minert.

00:15:16.960 | For any of you that are budding physicians

00:15:19.480 | or going to medical school, you should know that.

00:15:21.860 | If you have acetylcholine released from the brainstem,

00:15:24.820 | acetylcholine released from nucleus basalis and epinephrine,

00:15:29.120 | you can change your brain.

00:15:30.460 | And this has been shown again and again and again

00:15:33.800 | in a variety of papers.

00:15:35.200 | And it is now considered a fundamental principle

00:15:37.920 | of how the nervous system works.

00:15:39.280 | If you can access these three things of epinephrine,

00:15:42.560 | acetylcholine from these two sources,

00:15:45.040 | not only will the nervous system change, it has to change.

00:15:48.720 | It absolutely will change.

00:15:51.160 | And that is the most important thing

00:15:53.880 | for people to understand if they want to change their brain.

00:15:55.800 | So now let's talk about how we would translate

00:15:58.160 | all the scientific information into some protocols

00:16:01.180 | that you can actually apply.

00:16:02.440 | Because I think that's what many of you are interested in.

00:16:04.200 | What you do with your health and your medical care

00:16:05.900 | is up to you.

00:16:06.740 | You're responsible for your health and wellbeing.

00:16:08.600 | So I'm not going to tell you what to do or what to take.

00:16:11.440 | I'm going to describe what the literature tells us

00:16:14.260 | and suggests about ways to access plasticity.

00:16:16.960 | We know we need epinephrine.

00:16:18.320 | That means alertness.

00:16:19.580 | Most people accomplish this through a cup of coffee

00:16:21.920 | and a good night's sleep.

00:16:23.080 | So I will say you should master your sleep schedule

00:16:26.800 | and you should figure out how much sleep you need

00:16:29.160 | in order to achieve alertness when you sit down to learn.

00:16:31.920 | But once that's in place,

00:16:34.300 | the question then is how do I access this alertness?

00:16:37.700 | Well, there are a number of ways.

00:16:39.140 | Some people use some pretty elaborate

00:16:41.680 | psychological gymnastics.

00:16:43.200 | They will tell people that they're going to do something

00:16:46.160 | and create some accountability.

00:16:47.840 | That could be really good.

00:16:49.060 | Or they'll post a picture of themselves online

00:16:51.200 | and they'll commit to learning a certain amount,

00:16:53.240 | losing, excuse me, a certain amount of weight

00:16:54.840 | or something like this.

00:16:56.000 | So they can use either shame-based practices

00:17:00.480 | to potentially embarrass themselves

00:17:02.040 | if they don't follow through.

00:17:03.040 | They'll write checks to organizations that they hate

00:17:05.200 | and insist that they'll cash them

00:17:06.500 | if they don't actually follow through.

00:17:09.220 | Or they'll do it out of love.

00:17:11.020 | They'll decide that they're going to run a marathon

00:17:14.680 | or learn a language or something

00:17:16.820 | because of somebody they love

00:17:18.100 | or they want to devote it to somebody.

00:17:20.280 | The truth is that from the standpoint of epinephrine

00:17:23.780 | and getting alert and activated,

00:17:25.700 | it doesn't really matter.

00:17:26.620 | Epinephrine is a chemical

00:17:28.080 | and your brain does not distinguish

00:17:29.300 | between doing things out of love or hate, anger, or fear.

00:17:33.420 | It really doesn't.

00:17:34.260 | All of those promote autonomic arousal

00:17:37.220 | and the release of epinephrine.

00:17:38.460 | So I think for most people,

00:17:41.060 | if you're feeling not motivated to make these changes,

00:17:43.460 | the key thing is to identify not just one,

00:17:45.820 | but probably a kit of reasons,

00:17:47.940 | several reasons as to why you would want

00:17:49.860 | to make this particular change.

00:17:51.540 | And being drawn toward a particular goal

00:17:54.380 | that you're excited about can be one.

00:17:55.940 | Also being motivated to not be completely afraid,

00:17:59.980 | ashamed, or humiliated for not falling through

00:18:01.780 | on a goal is another.

00:18:03.140 | Come up with two or three things,

00:18:04.700 | fear-based perhaps, love-based perhaps,

00:18:07.480 | or perhaps several of those in order to ensure alertness,

00:18:12.480 | energy, and attention for the task.

00:18:14.940 | And that brings us to the attention part.

00:18:17.100 | Now, it's one thing to have an electrode

00:18:18.460 | embedded into your brain

00:18:19.420 | and increase the amount of acetylcholine.

00:18:21.840 | It's another to exist in the real world

00:18:23.660 | outside the laboratory and have trouble focusing,

00:18:26.860 | having trouble bringing your attention

00:18:29.020 | to a particular location in space for a particular event.

00:18:32.620 | And there's a lot of discussion nowadays

00:18:34.660 | about smartphones and devices

00:18:37.220 | creating a sort of attention deficit,

00:18:39.280 | almost at a clinical level for many people,

00:18:42.220 | including adults.

00:18:43.780 | I think that's largely true.

00:18:45.580 | And what it means, however,

00:18:47.300 | is that we all are responsible for learning

00:18:49.060 | how to create depth of focus.

00:18:51.940 | There are some important neuroscience principles

00:18:54.900 | to get depth of focus.

00:18:56.820 | I want to briefly talk about the pharmacology first,

00:18:59.060 | because I always get asked about this.

00:19:00.420 | People say, "What can I take

00:19:01.780 | to increase my levels of acetylcholine?"

00:19:03.840 | Well, there are things you can take.

00:19:05.600 | Nicotine is called nicotine

00:19:08.260 | because acetylcholine binds to the nicotinic receptor.

00:19:11.740 | There are two kinds of acetylcholine receptors,

00:19:13.460 | muscarinic and nicotinic,

00:19:14.540 | but the nicotinic ones are involved

00:19:16.020 | in attention and alertness.

00:19:17.740 | I have colleagues,

00:19:20.140 | these are not my kind of like bro science buddies,

00:19:23.720 | I have those friends too.

00:19:25.220 | This is a Nobel prize winning colleague

00:19:28.100 | who chews Nicorette while he works.

00:19:30.340 | But when I asked him, "Why are you doing this?"

00:19:31.660 | He said, "Well, increases my alertness and focus."

00:19:34.700 | Now, I've tried chewing Nicorette,

00:19:35.940 | it makes me super jittery.

00:19:37.540 | I don't like it because I can't focus very well.

00:19:39.880 | It kind of takes me too far up

00:19:41.240 | the level of autonomic arousal.

00:19:43.020 | I've got friends that dip Nicorette all day.

00:19:45.420 | If you're going to go down that route,

00:19:46.980 | you want to be very careful

00:19:48.420 | how much you rely on those all the time,

00:19:50.940 | because the essence of plasticity

00:19:53.500 | is to create a window of attention and focus

00:19:55.840 | that's distinct from the rest of your day.

00:19:57.980 | So what are some ways that you can increase acetylcholine?

00:20:01.220 | How do you increase focus?

00:20:02.980 | The best way to get better at focusing

00:20:07.320 | is to use the mechanisms of focus that you were born with.

00:20:11.780 | And the key principle here

00:20:13.660 | is that mental focus follows visual focus.

00:20:17.620 | We are all familiar with the fact

00:20:20.080 | that our visual system can be unfocused, blurry,

00:20:23.260 | or jumping around,

00:20:24.780 | or we can be very laser focused on one location in space.

00:20:28.760 | What's interesting and vitally important

00:20:31.200 | to understanding how to access neuroplasticity

00:20:33.940 | is that you can use your visual focus

00:20:36.760 | and you can increase your visual focus

00:20:39.180 | as a way of increasing your mental focus abilities

00:20:42.900 | more broadly.

00:20:44.060 | So I'm going to explain how to do that.

00:20:45.700 | Plasticity starts with alertness.

00:20:48.380 | That alertness can come from a sense of love,

00:20:51.540 | a sense of joy, a sense of fear, doesn't matter.

00:20:54.700 | There are pharmacologic ways to access alertness too.

00:20:59.000 | The most common one is of course caffeine.

00:21:01.620 | Many people are now also using Adderall.

00:21:05.260 | Adderall will not increase focus, it increases alertness.

00:21:08.860 | It does not touch the acetylcholine system.

00:21:11.280 | The acetylcholine system and the focus that it brings

00:21:15.060 | is available, as I mentioned, through pharmacology,

00:21:18.260 | but also through these behavioral practices.

00:21:20.540 | And the behavioral practices that are anchored

00:21:23.460 | in visual focus are going to be the ones

00:21:25.560 | that are going to allow you to develop great depth

00:21:28.700 | and duration of focus.

00:21:30.660 | So let's think about visual focus for a second.

00:21:33.420 | When we focus on something visually, we have two options.

00:21:38.100 | We can either look at a very small region of space

00:21:41.680 | with a lot of detail and a lot of precision,

00:21:44.500 | or we can dilate our gaze and we can see big pieces

00:21:47.220 | of visual space with very little detail.

00:21:49.160 | It's a trade-off.

00:21:50.000 | We can't look at everything at high resolution.

00:21:52.100 | This is why we have these, the pupil more or less relates

00:21:55.060 | to the fovea of the eye, which is the area

00:21:57.460 | in which we have the most receptors,

00:21:58.940 | the highest density of receptors that perceive light.

00:22:01.940 | And so our acuity is much better in the center

00:22:04.140 | of our visual field than in our periphery.

00:22:06.620 | When we focus our eyes, we do a couple things.

00:22:09.500 | First of all, we tend to do that in the center

00:22:11.980 | of our visual field, and our two eyes tend to align

00:22:14.220 | in what's called avergence eye movement

00:22:15.620 | towards a common point.

00:22:17.740 | The other thing that happens is the lens of our eye moves

00:22:20.080 | so that our brain now no longer sees the entire visual world

00:22:23.880 | but is seeing a small cone of visual imagery.

00:22:27.480 | That small cone of visual imagery or soda straw view

00:22:30.840 | of the world has much higher acuity, higher resolution

00:22:35.040 | than if I were to look at everything.

00:22:37.680 | Now you say, of course, this makes perfect sense,

00:22:39.760 | but that's about visual attention, not mental attention.

00:22:42.280 | Well, it turns out that focus in the brain is anchored

00:22:47.400 | to our visual system.

00:22:48.760 | I'll talk about blind people in a moment,

00:22:50.300 | but assuming that somebody is sighted,

00:22:52.940 | the key is to learn how to focus better visually

00:22:56.180 | if you want to bring about higher levels

00:22:59.020 | of cognitive or mental focus.

00:23:00.860 | When we move our eyes slightly inward,

00:23:04.060 | maybe you can tell that I'm doing this like so,

00:23:07.260 | basically shortening or making the interpupillary distance

00:23:11.220 | as it's called smaller, two things happen.

00:23:14.140 | Not only do we develop a smaller visual window

00:23:17.380 | into the world, but we activate a set of neurons

00:23:21.220 | in our brainstem that trigger the release

00:23:24.100 | of both norepinephrine, epinephrine, and acetylcholine.

00:23:28.220 | Norepinephrine is kind of similar to epinephrine.

00:23:30.380 | So in other words, when our eyes are relaxed in our head,

00:23:33.680 | when we're just kind of looking

00:23:34.520 | at our entire visual environment,

00:23:35.740 | moving our head around, moving through space,

00:23:37.620 | we're in optic flow, things moving past us,

00:23:39.900 | or we're sitting still, we're looking broadly at our space,

00:23:43.220 | we're relaxed.

00:23:44.860 | When our eyes move slightly inward

00:23:47.300 | toward a particular visual target,

00:23:49.200 | our visual world shrinks, our level of visual focus goes up,

00:23:53.200 | and we know that this relates to the release

00:23:55.940 | of acetylcholine and epinephrine at the relevant sites

00:23:58.780 | in the brain for plasticity.

00:24:00.940 | Now, what this means is that if you have a hard time

00:24:03.740 | focusing your mind for sake of reading or for listening,

00:24:08.320 | you need to practice and you can practice

00:24:10.820 | focusing your visual system.

00:24:12.900 | Now, this works best if you practice

00:24:15.460 | focusing your visual system at the precise distance

00:24:18.540 | from the work that you intend to do for sake of plasticity.

00:24:21.740 | So how would this look in the real world?

00:24:23.940 | Let's say I am trying to concentrate

00:24:26.260 | on something related to, I don't know, science.

00:24:29.300 | I'm reading a science paper and I'm having a hard time,

00:24:31.100 | it's not absorbing.

00:24:32.820 | Spending just 60 to 120 seconds

00:24:36.220 | focusing my visual attention on a small window of my screen,

00:24:40.620 | meaning just on my screen with nothing on it,

00:24:43.420 | but bringing my eyes to that particular location

00:24:46.780 | increases not just my visual acuity for that location,

00:24:50.020 | but it brings about an increase in activity

00:24:53.180 | in a bunch of other brain areas that are associated

00:24:56.540 | with gathering information from this location.

00:25:01.060 | So put simply, if you want to improve

00:25:04.020 | your ability to focus, practice visual focus.

00:25:07.780 | Now, you may ask, well, what about the experiment

00:25:11.340 | where people were feeling this rotating drum

00:25:13.660 | or listening to the auditory cue?

00:25:14.940 | That doesn't involve vision at all.

00:25:16.300 | Ah, if you look at people who are learning things

00:25:18.860 | with their auditory system,

00:25:21.320 | they will often close their eyes.

00:25:22.900 | And that's not a coincidence.

00:25:24.440 | If somebody is listening very hard,

00:25:27.180 | please don't ask them to look you directly in the eye

00:25:29.100 | while also asking that they listen to you.

00:25:31.060 | That's actually one of the worst ways

00:25:32.480 | to get somebody to listen to you.

00:25:33.320 | If you say, now listen to me and look me in the eye,

00:25:35.620 | the visual system will take over

00:25:36.820 | and they'll see your mouth move,

00:25:37.980 | but they're going to hear their thoughts

00:25:39.140 | more than they're going to hear what you're saying.

00:25:41.780 | Closing the eyes is one of the best ways

00:25:44.080 | to create a cone of auditory attention.

00:25:46.700 | And this is what low vision or no vision folks do.

00:25:49.280 | They have tremendous capacity to focus their attention

00:25:52.140 | in particular locations.

00:25:53.660 | And for most people, vision is the primary way

00:25:56.320 | to train up this focus ability in these cones of attention.

00:25:58.980 | So you absolutely have to focus on the thing

00:26:00.960 | that you're trying to learn.

00:26:02.180 | And you will feel some agitation

00:26:04.460 | because of the epinephrine in your system.

00:26:06.100 | If you're feeling agitation and it's challenging to focus

00:26:10.180 | and you're feeling like you're not doing it right,

00:26:11.720 | chances are you're doing it right.

00:26:13.780 | So once you get this epinephrine, this alertness,

00:26:15.820 | you get the acetylcholine released

00:26:17.900 | and you can focus your attention.

00:26:19.620 | Then the question is for how long?

00:26:21.220 | And in an earlier podcast,

00:26:22.720 | I talked about these ultradian cycles

00:26:24.460 | that last about 90 minutes.

00:26:26.220 | The typical learning bout should be about 90 minutes.

00:26:29.240 | I think that learning bout will no doubt include

00:26:33.140 | five to 10 minutes of warmup period.

00:26:35.140 | I think everyone should give themselves permission

00:26:37.380 | to not be fully focused in the early part of that bout,

00:26:40.940 | but that in the middle of that bout,

00:26:42.820 | for the middle hour or so,

00:26:43.780 | you should be able to maintain focus

00:26:45.420 | for about an hour or so.

00:26:46.820 | So that for me means eliminating distractions.

00:26:49.460 | That means turning off the Wi-Fi.

00:26:51.300 | I put my phone in the other room.

00:26:52.820 | I encourage you to try experiencing what it is

00:26:55.720 | to be completely immersed in an activity

00:26:57.860 | where you feel the agitation

00:26:59.320 | that your attention is drifting,

00:27:00.400 | but you continually bring it back.

00:27:01.980 | And that's an important point,

00:27:03.180 | which is that attention drifts,

00:27:05.020 | but we have to re-anchor it.

00:27:06.300 | We have to keep grabbing it back.

00:27:07.780 | And the way to do that, if you're sighted,

00:27:09.460 | is with your eyes.

00:27:10.660 | That as your attention drifts and you look away,

00:27:12.460 | you want to try and literally maintain visual focus

00:27:15.700 | on the thing that you're trying to learn.

00:27:17.100 | That's the trigger for plasticity.

00:27:19.360 | But the real secret is that neural plasticity

00:27:24.020 | doesn't occur during wakefulness.

00:27:26.700 | It occurs during sleep.

00:27:28.820 | We now know that if you focus very hard on something

00:27:34.900 | for about 90 minutes or so,

00:27:36.300 | maybe you even do several bouts of that per day,

00:27:38.380 | if you can do that.

00:27:40.060 | Some people can.

00:27:40.900 | Some people can only do one focused bout of learning.

00:27:44.220 | That night and the following nights while you sleep,

00:27:47.040 | the neural circuits that were highlighted, if you will,

00:27:49.980 | with acetylcholine transmission will strengthen

00:27:52.900 | and other ones will be lost,

00:27:55.000 | which is wonderful because that's the essence of plasticity.

00:27:58.040 | And what it means is that when you eventually wake up

00:28:00.780 | a couple of days or a week later,

00:28:01.980 | you will have acquired the knowledge forever.

00:28:04.780 | Unless you go through some process to actively unlearn it.

00:28:08.380 | So mastering sleep is key

00:28:09.820 | in order to reinforce the learning that occurs.

00:28:11.860 | But let's say you get a really poor night of sleep

00:28:14.140 | after a bout of learning.

00:28:15.940 | Chances are, if you sleep the next night

00:28:18.380 | or the following night, that learning will occur.

00:28:21.460 | There's a stamp in the brain

00:28:22.940 | where this acetylcholine was released.

00:28:24.540 | It actually marks those synapses neurochemically

00:28:27.520 | and metabolically so that those synapses

00:28:30.220 | are more biased to change.

00:28:31.860 | Now, if you don't ever get that deep sleep,

00:28:34.100 | then you probably won't get those changes.

00:28:36.400 | There's also a way in which you can bypass the need

00:28:40.540 | for deep sleep, at least partially,

00:28:42.340 | by engaging in what I call non-sleep deep rest,

00:28:45.580 | these NSDR protocols.

00:28:47.420 | But I just want to discuss the science of this.

00:28:48.860 | There was a paper that was published

00:28:50.900 | in Cell Reports last year that shows that if people did,

00:28:55.100 | it was a spatial memory task,

00:28:56.420 | actually quite difficult one where they had to remember

00:28:58.260 | the sequence of lights lighting up.

00:29:00.340 | And if they're just two or three lights

00:29:01.900 | in a particular sequence, it's easy.

00:29:03.100 | But as you get up to 15 or 16 lights

00:29:05.900 | and numbers in the sequence,

00:29:08.060 | it actually gets quite challenging.

00:29:09.860 | If immediately after, and it was immediately after

00:29:13.300 | the learning, the actual performance of this task,

00:29:16.020 | people took a 20 minute non-sleep deep rest protocol

00:29:20.020 | or took a shallow nap.

00:29:24.000 | So lying down, feet slightly elevated, perhaps,

00:29:26.580 | just closing their eyes, no sensory input.

00:29:29.340 | The rates of learning were significantly higher

00:29:31.820 | for that information than were to just had a good night's

00:29:35.860 | sleep the following night.

00:29:37.200 | So you can actually accelerate learning

00:29:38.820 | with these NSDR protocols or with brief naps,

00:29:41.420 | 90 minutes or less.

00:29:42.980 | For many people, letting the mind drift

00:29:46.040 | where it's not organized in thought

00:29:48.220 | after a period of very deliberate focused effort

00:29:50.860 | is the best way to accelerate learning

00:29:52.700 | and depth of learning.

00:29:53.620 | I want to synthesize some of the information

00:29:55.480 | that we've covered up until now.

00:29:57.100 | Today, I want to make sure that these key elements

00:30:00.120 | that form the backbone of neuroplasticity

00:30:02.620 | are really embedded in people's minds.

00:30:05.140 | First of all, plasticity occurs throughout the lifespan.

00:30:08.180 | If you want to learn as an adult, you have to be alert.

00:30:12.660 | It might seem so obvious,

00:30:13.900 | but I think a lot of people don't think about

00:30:16.420 | when in their 24 hour cycle, they're most alert.

00:30:19.640 | Just ask yourself, when during the day

00:30:21.540 | do you typically tend to be most alert?

00:30:23.620 | That will afford you an advantage

00:30:26.380 | in learning specific things during that period of time.

00:30:29.340 | So don't give up that period of time

00:30:31.120 | for things that are meaningless, useless,

00:30:33.680 | or not aligned with your goals.

00:30:35.240 | That epinephrine released from your brainstem

00:30:38.280 | is going to occur more readily

00:30:40.960 | at particular phases of your 24 hour cycle

00:30:43.600 | than others during the waking phase, of course.

00:30:47.120 | You should know when those are.

00:30:48.660 | Increasing acetylcholine can be accomplished

00:30:51.160 | pharmacologically through nicotine.

00:30:53.220 | However, there are certain dangers

00:30:55.500 | for many people to do that, as well as a cost.

00:30:59.260 | Financial cost.

00:31:00.340 | Learning how to engage the cholinergic system

00:31:04.080 | through the use of the visual system.

00:31:05.540 | Practicing, how long can you maintain focus

00:31:08.480 | with blinks as you need them?

00:31:10.560 | But how long can you maintain visual focus

00:31:13.800 | on a target, just on a piece of paper,

00:31:16.560 | set a few feet away in the room

00:31:18.740 | or at the level of your computer screen?

00:31:20.440 | These are actually things that people do in communities

00:31:22.920 | where high levels of visual focus are necessary.

00:31:25.460 | What we're really talking about here

00:31:26.680 | is trying to harness the mechanisms of attention

00:31:29.360 | and get better at paying attention.

00:31:31.400 | You may want to do that with your auditory system,

00:31:33.060 | not with your visual system,

00:31:34.740 | either because you're low vision or no vision,

00:31:37.120 | or because you're trying to learn something

00:31:38.480 | that relates more to sounds.

00:31:39.840 | You should also ask yourself whether or not

00:31:41.760 | you're trying to focus too much for too long during the day.

00:31:45.440 | I know some very high-performing individuals,

00:31:49.400 | very high-performing in a variety of contexts,

00:31:52.160 | and none of them are focused all day long.

00:31:54.040 | Many of them take walks down the hallway,

00:31:56.240 | sometimes mumbling to themselves

00:31:57.520 | or not paying attention to anything else.

00:31:59.000 | They go for bike rides, they take walks.

00:32:01.180 | They are not trying to engage their mind

00:32:03.480 | at maximum focus all the time.

00:32:05.920 | Very few people do that

00:32:07.800 | because we learn best in these 90-minute bouts

00:32:10.440 | inside of one of these ultradian cycles.

00:32:12.500 | And I should repeat again that within that 90-minute cycle,

00:32:15.620 | you should not expect yourself to focus

00:32:17.180 | for the entire period of one 90-minute cycle.

00:32:19.240 | The beginning and end are going to be a little bit flickering

00:32:21.500 | in and out of focus.

00:32:22.680 | How do you know when one of these 90-minute cycles

00:32:24.880 | is starting?

00:32:26.320 | Well, typically when you wake up

00:32:27.360 | is the beginning of the first 90-minute cycle,

00:32:28.960 | but it's not down to the minute.

00:32:30.640 | You'll be able to tap into your sense

00:32:32.960 | of these 90-minute cycles

00:32:34.040 | as you start to engage in these learning practices,

00:32:36.720 | should you choose.

00:32:38.280 | And then of course, getting some non-sleep deep rest

00:32:40.680 | or just deliberate disengagement,

00:32:42.880 | such as walking or running or just sitting,

00:32:47.880 | eyes closed or eyes open kind of mindlessly,

00:32:50.240 | it might seem in a chair,

00:32:51.360 | just letting your thoughts move around

00:32:52.720 | after a learning about will accelerate

00:32:55.400 | the rate of plasticity.

00:32:56.600 | And then of course, deep sleep.

00:32:57.840 | Many of you have very graciously asked

00:32:59.680 | how you can help support the Huberman Lab Podcast.

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00:33:35.560 | Thanks so much for your time and attention.

00:33:37.020 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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How to Focus to Change Your Brain | Huberman Lab Essentials

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