Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.760 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.960 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.240 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.440 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.480 | Today, we are discussing how to study and learn.

00:00:18.320 | That is, what the scientific data say

00:00:20.800 | is the best way to study in order to remember information

00:00:24.560 | and to be able to use that information effectively

00:00:27.320 | in different areas of your life.

00:00:29.160 | So for those of you that are still in school,

00:00:31.360 | this could be any stage of school,

00:00:32.800 | today's discussion will be very useful for you.

00:00:36.120 | However, even if you are not formally enrolled

00:00:38.280 | in any kind of school at the moment,

00:00:40.320 | today's discussion will also be extremely effective for you

00:00:43.880 | to be able to study and learn better information

00:00:47.160 | from, say, the internet, or podcasts,

00:00:50.160 | or any area of your life where you are seeking

00:00:52.800 | to learn and use new knowledge.

00:00:55.960 | Now, one of the most important things

00:00:57.400 | that you're going to learn today

00:00:58.820 | is that learning, that is, the best learning practices,

00:01:02.520 | are not intuitive.

00:01:04.480 | So before we dive in,

00:01:05.880 | keep in mind that whatever you believe

00:01:08.680 | about how best to learn for you is probably incorrect.

00:01:13.680 | And I confess this was humbling for me as well

00:01:16.360 | when I started to dive into this literature,

00:01:18.640 | because as somebody who was a student for many years,

00:01:22.040 | and in some sense still considers himself a student

00:01:24.600 | of science and health information because of this podcast,

00:01:27.560 | and certainly as somebody who still teaches

00:01:29.540 | university courses, both to medical students

00:01:31.680 | and graduate students,

00:01:32.520 | and to undergraduate students at Stanford,

00:01:35.740 | I thought I understood the whole teaching

00:01:37.920 | and learning process,

00:01:38.960 | but I too learned that it is anything but intuitive.

00:01:42.520 | In fact, most of what we believe

00:01:44.680 | about the best ways to study are absolutely false.

00:01:48.640 | Fortunately, today you will learn the best ways to study.

00:01:52.000 | Turns out there's a rich literature on this,

00:01:54.120 | dating back well over a hundred years,

00:01:56.080 | and the data are absolutely fascinating

00:01:58.400 | and incredibly actionable.

00:01:59.920 | It's incredibly interesting how the fields of education,

00:02:03.040 | the fields of psychology, and the fields of neuroscience

00:02:05.880 | have now come together to define the optimal strategies

00:02:09.560 | to study and learn.

00:02:11.420 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:14.320 | is separate from my teaching research roles at Stanford.

00:02:16.980 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:19.100 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:21.720 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:02:24.440 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:25.720 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:28.580 | Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep.

00:02:30.760 | Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers

00:02:32.400 | with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

00:02:35.400 | I've spoken many times before on this podcast

00:02:37.920 | about the critical need to get sleep,

00:02:39.480 | both enough sleep and enough quality sleep.

00:02:41.920 | Now, one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep

00:02:44.200 | is that your body temperature actually has to drop

00:02:46.320 | by about one to three degrees

00:02:47.860 | in order for you to fall and stay deeply asleep.

00:02:50.600 | And to wake up feeling refreshed,

00:02:52.400 | your body temperature actually has to increase

00:02:54.660 | by about one to three degrees.

00:02:56.360 | One of the best ways to ensure all of that happens

00:02:58.700 | is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment.

00:03:01.120 | And with Eight Sleep, it's very easy to do that.

00:03:03.640 | You program the temperature that you want

00:03:05.160 | at the beginning, middle, and the end of the night,

00:03:07.400 | and that's the temperature that you're going to sleep at.

00:03:09.440 | And it will track your sleep.

00:03:10.880 | It tells you how much slow wave sleep you're getting,

00:03:12.780 | how much rapid eye movement sleep you're getting,

00:03:14.620 | which is critical, and all of that also helps you

00:03:16.760 | dial in the exact parameters you need

00:03:18.920 | in order to get the best possible night's sleep for you.

00:03:21.420 | I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover

00:03:23.200 | for well over three years now,

00:03:24.620 | and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better.

00:03:27.920 | Eight Sleep recently launched

00:03:29.080 | their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra.

00:03:32.520 | The Pod 4 Ultra cover has improved cooling

00:03:34.560 | and heating capacity,

00:03:35.840 | higher fidelity sleep tracking technology,

00:03:38.560 | and the Pod 4 cover has snoring detection

00:03:41.200 | that will automatically lift your head a few degrees

00:03:43.540 | to improve airflow and stop your snoring.

00:03:45.640 | If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover,

00:03:47.400 | you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman

00:03:50.400 | to save $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra.

00:03:53.560 | Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK,

00:03:57.020 | select countries in the EU, and Australia.

00:03:59.600 | Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman.

00:04:02.840 | Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp.

00:04:06.100 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:04:07.960 | with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

00:04:11.600 | I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years.

00:04:14.360 | Initially, I didn't have a choice.

00:04:15.800 | It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school,

00:04:18.300 | but pretty soon I realized that therapy

00:04:20.000 | is an extremely important component to overall health.

00:04:22.800 | In fact, I consider doing regular therapy

00:04:24.960 | just as important as getting regular exercise.

00:04:27.520 | Now, there are essentially three things

00:04:28.920 | that great therapy provides.

00:04:30.280 | First of all, it provides good rapport

00:04:32.640 | with somebody that you can trust and talk to

00:04:34.540 | about the issues that are most critical to you.

00:04:37.040 | Second of all, it can provide support

00:04:39.080 | in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.

00:04:41.960 | And third, expert therapy should provide insights.

00:04:44.480 | With BetterHelp, they make it very easy

00:04:46.000 | for you to find an expert therapist

00:04:47.620 | with whom you have these critical components of therapy.

00:04:50.480 | Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy

00:04:52.620 | to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient

00:04:55.840 | and easy to fit into your busy schedule

00:04:57.920 | with no commuting to a therapist's office

00:04:59.760 | or looking for parking or sitting in a waiting room.

00:05:01.800 | If you'd like to try BetterHelp,

00:05:03.200 | go to betterhelp.com/huberman

00:05:05.960 | to get 10% off your first month.

00:05:07.880 | Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman.

00:05:11.240 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

00:05:14.440 | Waking Up is a meditation app

00:05:15.980 | that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs,

00:05:18.440 | mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more.

00:05:21.840 | I started practicing meditation

00:05:23.280 | when I was about 15 years old,

00:05:25.120 | and it made a profound impact on my life.

00:05:27.760 | And by now, there are thousands

00:05:29.120 | of quality peer-reviewed studies

00:05:30.700 | that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be

00:05:33.960 | for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety,

00:05:36.680 | improving our mood, and much more.

00:05:38.980 | In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app

00:05:41.280 | for my meditations because I find it

00:05:43.000 | to be a terrific resource for allowing me

00:05:45.040 | to really be consistent with my meditation practice.

00:05:48.000 | Many people start a meditation practice

00:05:50.120 | and experience some benefits,

00:05:51.400 | but many people also have challenges keeping up

00:05:53.600 | with that practice.

00:05:54.800 | What I and so many other people love

00:05:56.320 | about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot

00:05:58.400 | of different meditations to choose from,

00:06:00.160 | and those meditations are of different durations.

00:06:02.720 | So it makes it very easy to keep up

00:06:04.280 | with your meditation practice,

00:06:05.800 | both from the perspective of novelty,

00:06:07.720 | you never get tired of those meditations,

00:06:09.400 | there's always something new to explore

00:06:10.960 | and to learn about yourself

00:06:12.200 | and about the effectiveness of meditation,

00:06:14.640 | and you can always fit meditation into your schedule,

00:06:17.320 | even if you only have two or three minutes per day

00:06:20.120 | in which to meditate.

00:06:21.220 | I also really like doing yoga nidra

00:06:22.880 | or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest

00:06:25.260 | for about 10 or 20 minutes,

00:06:26.840 | because it is a great way to restore mental

00:06:29.080 | and physical vigor without the tiredness

00:06:31.280 | that some people experience when they wake up

00:06:32.700 | from a conventional nap.

00:06:34.000 | If you'd like to try the Waking Up app,

00:06:35.540 | please go to wakingup.com/huberman,

00:06:38.380 | where you can access a free 30-day trial.

00:06:40.480 | Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman

00:06:43.360 | to access a free 30-day trial.

00:06:45.440 | Okay, let's talk about how best to study and learn.

00:06:48.720 | And of course, people have different learning styles.

00:06:51.480 | Some people prefer to learn by reading.

00:06:53.880 | Some people prefer to study in a group.

00:06:55.580 | Some people prefer to highlight.

00:06:57.400 | Some people call themselves auditory learners.

00:07:00.000 | Other people consider themselves visual learners.

00:07:03.160 | But guess what?

00:07:04.420 | When one looks at the research on preferred learning styles,

00:07:08.120 | pretty much all of that melts away.

00:07:10.280 | It turns out that the best way to study and learn

00:07:13.400 | is defined not by the medium in which that material arrives,

00:07:17.720 | whether or not it's auditory or visual or combined,

00:07:20.660 | whether or not you review slides or a textbook,

00:07:23.020 | or you watch small videos.

00:07:25.500 | It turns out that the best way to study and learn

00:07:28.780 | is to access components of your memory systems

00:07:32.840 | that offset forgetting.

00:07:35.440 | This is a theme I'm going to return to over and over again

00:07:37.960 | throughout today's episode.

00:07:39.540 | Rather than think about studying

00:07:41.520 | to learn and retain information,

00:07:44.080 | I want you to think about studying

00:07:45.860 | to offset the natural process of forgetting

00:07:49.160 | that everybody experiences

00:07:51.040 | when they are exposed to new material of any kind,

00:07:53.880 | cognitive or motor learning,

00:07:56.280 | musical learning, math, et cetera.

00:07:58.600 | Okay, so keep this in mind throughout today's episode.

00:08:01.320 | The best way to learn

00:08:03.000 | is to think about offsetting

00:08:04.520 | the natural forgetting of new information.

00:08:07.800 | You're trying to inoculate against forgetting.

00:08:11.000 | That is the way to remember things.

00:08:12.640 | That is the way to gain mastery over them.

00:08:15.240 | And I'm going to teach you how to best do that

00:08:18.400 | using the data gleaned from the peer-reviewed literature.

00:08:22.320 | Now, before I do that,

00:08:23.240 | I want to talk about what learning is.

00:08:25.480 | I promise to make this fairly brief

00:08:27.380 | because I've covered learning

00:08:28.640 | and so-called neuroplasticity before on this podcast.

00:08:32.240 | For those of you that have heard those discussions,

00:08:33.960 | this will serve as a refresher.

00:08:35.600 | For those of you that have not heard those discussions,

00:08:38.040 | this will be thorough enough

00:08:39.160 | for you to be able to digest

00:08:40.440 | all the rest of today's information.

00:08:43.320 | Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature

00:08:45.760 | of your nervous system,

00:08:46.640 | which of course includes your brain and your spinal cord,

00:08:49.400 | which is the ability for your nervous system

00:08:52.160 | to change in response to experience.

00:08:54.560 | So any form of learning involves neuroplasticity.

00:08:58.480 | Neuroplasticity, we sometimes hear as neuroplasticity,

00:09:02.800 | two words, or neuroplasticity.

00:09:05.400 | Those are the same thing, essentially.

00:09:07.400 | The change that underlies neuroplasticity

00:09:09.700 | at the level of cells,

00:09:11.080 | which we call neurons or nerve cells,

00:09:13.340 | generally involves three different mechanisms.

00:09:16.460 | One is the strengthening of certain connections,

00:09:19.240 | what we call synaptic connections.

00:09:20.680 | Synapses are the location between neurons

00:09:24.020 | where they communicate with one another.

00:09:25.740 | It's actually a gap between the neurons.

00:09:27.420 | It is technically called the synaptic cleft.

00:09:29.760 | It's a gap.

00:09:30.600 | And within that gap,

00:09:32.100 | chemicals are passed across that gap

00:09:33.880 | that allow one neuron to activate other neurons,

00:09:36.920 | or many neurons to activate many other neurons,

00:09:39.480 | or to inhibit the activity of other neurons, okay?

00:09:42.700 | So one form of neuroplasticity

00:09:45.840 | is the strengthening of connections between neurons.

00:09:48.960 | Another form of neuroplasticity

00:09:50.740 | is the weakening of connections between neurons.

00:09:53.980 | And yet a third form of plasticity,

00:09:56.040 | which is often discussed in the media,

00:09:58.440 | but is very rare actually in the nervous system,

00:10:02.120 | especially the adult nervous system of humans,

00:10:05.120 | is neurogenesis, or the addition of new neurons.

00:10:08.880 | Let's just get this out of the way upfront

00:10:10.840 | because the addition of new neurons, again,

00:10:13.320 | grabs so much attention in media articles,

00:10:16.360 | but it's responsible for a near trivial amount

00:10:19.360 | of the sort of neuroplasticity

00:10:20.780 | that is important for today's discussion,

00:10:22.480 | or frankly, for most all discussions.

00:10:24.520 | It is true you have a specialized set of neurons

00:10:27.180 | in your olfactory bulb that are responsible for smell,

00:10:29.800 | as well as a specialized set of neurons

00:10:31.440 | in the so-called dentate gyrus of your hippocampus,

00:10:33.880 | an area of the brain that's important for memory,

00:10:37.480 | in which new neurons appear to be added

00:10:40.040 | throughout the lifespan.

00:10:41.160 | But this is not the major mechanism

00:10:43.020 | by which learning and memory occurs in humans.

00:10:45.720 | Rather, the major mechanism

00:10:47.460 | by which learning and memory occurs in humans

00:10:49.480 | is the strengthening of existing connections

00:10:52.200 | and the weakening of existing connections,

00:10:54.240 | or the formation of new connections

00:10:58.060 | between already existing neurons, not new neurons, okay?

00:11:03.180 | Now, the removal or weakening of connections

00:11:05.920 | between neurons being an important component

00:11:08.400 | of neuroplasticity is very important

00:11:10.400 | for sake of today's discussion.

00:11:12.120 | I want to emphasize that when we hear

00:11:13.760 | about weakening of connections,

00:11:15.220 | we often think, well, that means forgetting,

00:11:17.880 | or that means the brain is getting less good.

00:11:19.980 | However, so much of the neuroplasticity that underlies,

00:11:23.520 | for instance, the acquisition of a new motor skill

00:11:27.100 | is actually the reflection of removal of connections.

00:11:30.780 | So we don't want to project any kind of value

00:11:34.240 | onto a discussion about adding new connections,

00:11:36.760 | removing new connections.

00:11:38.080 | Let's just leave it at this level mechanistically.

00:11:41.320 | When you hear about neuroplasticity,

00:11:44.040 | just know that it could be the consequence

00:11:46.800 | of strengthening of connections,

00:11:49.040 | as well as weakening of connections.

00:11:52.080 | And that neither strengthening of connections

00:11:54.200 | in the nervous system, nor weakening of connections

00:11:56.560 | can map directly to the formation or removal

00:11:59.800 | of say, memories or information.

00:12:01.660 | Just know that these are the important mechanisms.

00:12:03.900 | In fact, if you look at a baby that is, let's say,

00:12:08.220 | I don't know, nine months old,

00:12:09.660 | their motor skills are not terrific, typically,

00:12:12.320 | compared to the motor skills that that child will have

00:12:14.680 | when they are six or seven years old.

00:12:16.540 | Just look at a kid trying to eat spaghetti

00:12:19.140 | or something of that sort,

00:12:20.180 | or eat anything when they're a small baby

00:12:22.300 | versus a toddler versus a young child

00:12:24.760 | versus an adolescent or teen.

00:12:27.380 | Despite the poor table manners of some adolescents

00:12:30.600 | and teens and some adults, for that matter,

00:12:33.100 | they are still exhibiting far more precise motor movements

00:12:37.300 | than they did as an infant, of course.

00:12:40.040 | And believe it or not, the improvement in motor coordination

00:12:44.620 | that one observes in humans and other species,

00:12:46.760 | for that matter, from birth until the adolescence

00:12:50.400 | and teen years and adult years

00:12:51.640 | is largely the reflection of the removal.

00:12:54.780 | That's right, the removal of neural connections

00:12:58.420 | as opposed to the formation of neural connections.

00:13:00.620 | However, the neural connections that remain

00:13:03.220 | become much more robust.

00:13:04.480 | They become much more reliable, okay?

00:13:06.320 | So that's the mechanistic backdrop

00:13:08.000 | for everything that we're gonna talk about today,

00:13:10.260 | which is how to study and learn.

00:13:12.600 | And as I mentioned earlier in my introduction,

00:13:15.860 | most of learning and remembering new material

00:13:19.060 | is about offsetting the forgetting process

00:13:21.480 | that naturally occurs any time we hear new information.

00:13:25.160 | So in keeping with what will ultimately reveal itself

00:13:29.040 | to be the dominant theme of today's discussion right now,

00:13:32.540 | and for reasons that will become clear later,

00:13:35.000 | I want you to take a brief quiz.

00:13:38.080 | Now, the moment people hear quiz or test,

00:13:40.720 | typically it spikes their adrenaline,

00:13:42.820 | they start feeling stressed, but don't worry,

00:13:44.280 | you're gonna keep your answers to yourself

00:13:46.920 | and you're doing this for a very specific purpose.

00:13:49.340 | Here's my question.

00:13:50.800 | This is a two question quiz.

00:13:53.060 | How many different ways, mechanistically speaking,

00:13:58.140 | does neuroplasticity occur?

00:14:01.840 | Is it one mechanism, two mechanisms, or three mechanisms?

00:14:05.800 | Or is it four or five?

00:14:07.200 | Okay, can you name in your head

00:14:12.440 | two of the three major changes

00:14:15.300 | that the nervous system can undergo

00:14:17.600 | which are reflective of neuroplasticity?

00:14:20.080 | Okay, so the answer to question was,

00:14:23.620 | is that there are three different modes of neuroplasticity

00:14:26.860 | as you recall, or as you may not have been able to recall.

00:14:29.580 | And by the way, if you were not able to recall

00:14:32.020 | the three different modes of neuroplasticity

00:14:34.100 | or mechanisms underlying neuroplasticity, that is fine.

00:14:37.460 | As you'll soon realize, recognizing the errors

00:14:41.020 | in your information retention is another critical

00:14:44.840 | and very useful way to retain more information,

00:14:47.800 | even if you got the answer wrong or you didn't know.

00:14:51.100 | In fact, especially if you got the answer wrong

00:14:53.740 | or you didn't know.

00:14:55.300 | So the three ways are the strengthening

00:14:58.380 | of neural connections,

00:14:59.420 | second, the weakening of neural connections,

00:15:01.320 | and third, through neurogenesis, the addition of new neurons.

00:15:04.940 | Why did I provide this quiz?

00:15:06.540 | Why did I test you?

00:15:07.500 | Well, as you'll soon learn,

00:15:09.580 | if you look across the total body of research

00:15:12.380 | on how best to study and learn,

00:15:14.500 | it involves doing exactly what we just did,

00:15:16.960 | which is to periodically stop and test yourself

00:15:20.140 | on the material that you learned.

00:15:22.400 | Testing is not just a way of evaluating

00:15:25.260 | what knowledge you've acquired

00:15:26.740 | and which knowledge you have not managed to acquire.

00:15:30.100 | It also turns out to be the best tool

00:15:33.140 | for offsetting forgetting of any kind.

00:15:35.460 | And I'll go into the data that supports that statement

00:15:37.980 | in a moment.

00:15:38.900 | So yes, today we're going to get a little bit meta

00:15:40.700 | in the sense that we're going to be learning

00:15:43.000 | about optimal studying strategies and applying those

00:15:45.700 | as we go through this podcast.

00:15:47.800 | And no, there will not be a test at the end,

00:15:50.280 | although you're welcome to give yourself a test at the end.

00:15:52.480 | I'm going to provide you with an excellent zero cost,

00:15:54.720 | very fast tool that you can use to evaluate your knowledge

00:15:58.000 | and your ability to study and learn better

00:16:00.320 | as a consequence of having listened to this podcast

00:16:03.520 | versus had you not listened to this podcast.

00:16:05.720 | So if ever there was an incentive to listen to the end,

00:16:08.720 | there it is.

00:16:09.540 | Okay, let's talk about some of the other practical aspects

00:16:11.720 | of studying and learning.

00:16:13.000 | I know a lot of you out there who want to learn

00:16:15.360 | and want to come up with the best studying strategies

00:16:18.340 | are trying to think about how to structure your day

00:16:20.480 | or how much to study or when to study.

00:16:22.880 | Let's get the most important things out of the way first.

00:16:25.720 | Neuroplasticity and learning,

00:16:28.240 | that is converting your studying efforts

00:16:30.440 | into retention of knowledge is a two-step process.

00:16:34.520 | You probably heard about active engagement.

00:16:36.940 | That's just a fancy set of words for focus,

00:16:39.900 | for really attending to the information

00:16:41.980 | that you're trying to learn.

00:16:43.120 | And it is very important

00:16:45.280 | anytime you're trying to learn new information.

00:16:47.640 | So focus goes with alertness.

00:16:50.180 | You can't be focused if you're not alert.

00:16:52.440 | This is prerequisite.

00:16:55.060 | So you need to be alert and you need to be focused

00:16:58.040 | in order to pay attention to the information

00:17:00.560 | that you're trying to learn.

00:17:01.840 | In fact, it is the process of being focused and attending

00:17:05.520 | that cues your nervous system that something is important,

00:17:09.400 | that something's different

00:17:10.400 | about whatever sensory experience you happen to be having

00:17:12.960 | when you're focused and attending,

00:17:14.940 | whether or not it's the information you're hearing

00:17:16.640 | or that you're looking at or both.

00:17:18.360 | That cue at the level of neurochemicals

00:17:22.740 | in your brain and body signals to the neurons,

00:17:25.600 | hey, you're going to have to change.

00:17:27.580 | You're going to have to alter your connections,

00:17:29.540 | either make them stronger or weaker

00:17:31.380 | or a combination of those things

00:17:33.240 | in order to make sure that your nervous system

00:17:35.780 | can retain and use the information at a future time.

00:17:39.520 | So that's step one.

00:17:40.540 | And of course, as a part of step one,

00:17:42.720 | most people, when they hear

00:17:44.320 | about optimal studying strategies, they want to know,

00:17:46.840 | you know, what should they do?

00:17:47.680 | What should they take in order to learn better?

00:17:50.160 | Well, here's what everyone should take

00:17:52.100 | in order to learn better,

00:17:52.960 | which is a great night's sleep the night before,

00:17:55.380 | limiting your external stress.

00:17:57.840 | Although some stress is good

00:17:59.120 | because it cues up your alertness.

00:18:00.760 | It actually allows you to remember certain things better.

00:18:03.160 | We'll talk about this a little bit later.

00:18:05.400 | No one can remove all stress from their life,

00:18:07.400 | but we know one thing for sure,

00:18:09.520 | your ability to be alert and focused

00:18:11.620 | is going to be greater if you slept well the night before.

00:18:14.840 | Okay, so sleep is without question the best nootropic.

00:18:18.460 | Right, the word nootropic means smart drug.

00:18:20.200 | I don't really like that term

00:18:21.800 | because learning involves all sorts of things.

00:18:23.740 | It's not just about being smart.

00:18:24.920 | It's about being able to attend.

00:18:26.500 | It's about sometimes being creative,

00:18:28.360 | flexible with ideas and information.

00:18:30.760 | Here's the point.

00:18:31.960 | You're going to need to get your sleep right

00:18:33.600 | in order to be able to study and learn

00:18:35.480 | at your absolute best.

00:18:37.120 | And I've done many episodes

00:18:38.380 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast about sleep.

00:18:39.920 | We have a newsletter about sleep,

00:18:41.240 | the details in a short PDF format,

00:18:44.400 | the various things you can do

00:18:45.440 | to get your sleep optimized, so to speak.

00:18:48.160 | You can find all that HubermanLab.com

00:18:49.960 | by putting sleep into the search function.

00:18:52.400 | We don't have time to discuss that material now,

00:18:54.860 | but get your sleep right

00:18:56.640 | so that you can be alert and focused

00:18:59.300 | when it comes time to learn.

00:19:01.200 | Now, the process of being alert and focused

00:19:04.380 | on particular material that you want to learn

00:19:06.800 | can be enhanced by just having a silent script

00:19:10.960 | within your head.

00:19:11.840 | Silent meaning you're not saying it out loud,

00:19:14.320 | where when you sit down to learn,

00:19:15.760 | you're looking at a book

00:19:16.720 | or you're listening to a lecture,

00:19:18.180 | perhaps a podcast like this.

00:19:20.380 | You're thinking, okay, I need to learn this.

00:19:21.960 | I need to learn this.

00:19:23.000 | You can voluntarily ramp up your level of focus

00:19:26.040 | and alertness by telling yourself

00:19:27.360 | that information is important.

00:19:29.560 | Don't be a passive participant in learning.

00:19:32.340 | This is the basis of active learning.

00:19:34.760 | By expecting the information to be so interesting

00:19:36.920 | that it pulls your level of attention

00:19:38.560 | and focus out of you.

00:19:39.520 | Rather, learn to engage your attention

00:19:41.760 | and focus voluntarily, volitionally, okay?

00:19:46.180 | When we hear about ADHD,

00:19:47.760 | attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,

00:19:50.320 | we know that people with ADHD can attend very rapidly.

00:19:55.080 | They can really pay close attention

00:19:57.000 | for long periods of time if they like a given topic

00:19:59.800 | or a given experience or activity.

00:20:03.240 | They have serious challenges, however,

00:20:05.400 | engaging their attention and alertness

00:20:07.400 | if they are not excited about an activity or information.

00:20:11.880 | And so it is the hallmark of all good learners

00:20:15.120 | to be able to voluntarily force yourself

00:20:19.560 | to attend and to focus.

00:20:21.480 | And when I say force yourself,

00:20:23.240 | that means a constant bringing back of your mind's attention

00:20:26.680 | to whatever it is you're trying to learn.

00:20:28.480 | It is meant to feel difficult.

00:20:31.560 | I say meant to feel difficult

00:20:32.800 | because that strain that you feel,

00:20:34.600 | that encouraging, or in some cases, forcing yourself

00:20:37.560 | to attend, sometimes even putting on a hoodie and hat,

00:20:40.160 | you know, literally putting blinders

00:20:41.560 | so that you can only attend to the material

00:20:43.360 | right in front of you,

00:20:45.280 | that straining that you feel reflects, in part,

00:20:49.060 | the release of neuromodulators like epinephrine,

00:20:51.500 | adrenaline in the brain and body,

00:20:53.360 | which serve to cue the neural circuits

00:20:55.600 | that they need to change at a later time, okay?

00:20:58.040 | So the strain that you feel in trying to learn,

00:21:00.300 | the strain that you feel in forcing yourself

00:21:02.440 | to learn how to focus, that is good.

00:21:04.560 | That's a cue to your nervous system

00:21:06.100 | that it's going to need to change,

00:21:08.160 | that neuroplasticity needs to take place.

00:21:11.280 | Think about it.

00:21:12.160 | If you didn't feel that strain

00:21:13.640 | and you were able to perform whatever it is

00:21:15.480 | that you were doing, or remember,

00:21:17.440 | whatever information it is

00:21:18.600 | that you're being exposed to seamlessly,

00:21:21.120 | well, then your nervous system wouldn't have to change

00:21:23.580 | because it already has the capabilities

00:21:25.920 | within the neural circuits.

00:21:27.560 | So that strain that you feel, that agitation is great.

00:21:31.240 | That's a cue that you are learning.

00:21:34.460 | Or that you've set the learning process in motion.

00:21:37.940 | Now, it's also the case that some people

00:21:40.300 | don't have great levels of focus and attention.

00:21:42.840 | And there are, of course, pharmacologic tools.

00:21:45.440 | I would encourage anyone that has clinically diagnosed ADHD

00:21:48.700 | to talk to their doctor

00:21:49.580 | about whether or not they should use prescription meds

00:21:51.980 | and or other methods.

00:21:53.820 | Great sleep is always going to be an important substrate

00:21:56.140 | for attention and focus for anybody,

00:21:58.580 | but especially for people with ADHD.

00:22:02.540 | I highly encourage anyone that's interested

00:22:04.640 | in enhancing their levels of focus and attention

00:22:07.400 | to also consider the non-pharmacologic approaches.

00:22:10.920 | So this is irrespective of whether or not

00:22:12.520 | you need pharmacologic approaches.

00:22:14.420 | Yes, being well hydrated.

00:22:15.700 | Yes, the appropriate amount of caffeine for you

00:22:18.260 | that allows you to be alert,

00:22:19.500 | but not shaking and agitated can be very useful.

00:22:23.500 | However, the scientific data also support the fact

00:22:26.420 | that doing a brief, say five to 10 minute

00:22:31.380 | mindfulness meditation each day.

00:22:32.860 | These are the data from Wendy Suzuki's laboratory

00:22:35.020 | at New York University,

00:22:36.860 | showing that people who do a 10 minute meditation per day,

00:22:41.140 | where they simply sit or lie down, close their eyes,

00:22:43.740 | focus on their breathing,

00:22:44.820 | their attention invariably drifts.

00:22:46.860 | They bring their attention back to their breathing.

00:22:49.740 | People who do that on a regular basis

00:22:51.500 | improve their level of focus.

00:22:53.260 | They improve their memory and recall ability.

00:22:55.640 | And of course, there are a bunch of other positive effects

00:22:57.620 | of that simple zero cost tool of mindfulness meditation.

00:23:02.060 | So if you're interested in improving your levels of focus

00:23:05.860 | and attention for sake of learning,

00:23:07.900 | I highly encourage you to explore the oh so valuable tool

00:23:12.900 | of mindfulness meditation,

00:23:15.060 | just five or 10 minutes per day done on a regular basis.

00:23:18.580 | You miss a day, no big deal.

00:23:19.580 | Just get right back to it the next day.

00:23:21.380 | Does it matter if you do it morning, afternoon, or night?

00:23:24.900 | No, some people find that doing it too late at night

00:23:27.580 | might disrupt their sleep.

00:23:28.980 | But if you think about meditation of the sort

00:23:30.900 | that I just described as a perceptual exercise,

00:23:34.600 | maybe you don't even call it meditation.

00:23:35.980 | You're just teaching yourself to focus.

00:23:37.720 | You could even do it with eyes open

00:23:39.180 | by focusing on a visual target, allowing yourself to blink.

00:23:42.040 | There are good data on this sort of approach as well.

00:23:44.540 | And then just making sure that your visual attention

00:23:47.920 | and cognitive attention comes back to that visual target

00:23:50.940 | over and over again.

00:23:51.860 | It's a deliberate process of bringing your attention

00:23:54.460 | back to a particular location.

00:23:57.940 | That is very valuable for improving your levels of focus.

00:24:00.900 | In fact, it is known to create significant improvements

00:24:04.880 | in your ability to focus,

00:24:06.100 | which is critical for your ability to study and learn.

00:24:09.300 | So I know that many people are interested in what to take,

00:24:12.260 | what to do at the level of kind of esoteric practices

00:24:16.040 | or things to buy.

00:24:17.140 | There is stuff out there.

00:24:18.820 | Again, I mentioned hydration, caffeine,

00:24:20.420 | great sleep, and so on.

00:24:22.020 | But the simple practice of mindfulness meditation,

00:24:25.180 | or just what I describe as a focusing perceptual exercise

00:24:28.660 | of bringing your attention back to the same location

00:24:30.620 | over and over again, deliberately,

00:24:32.260 | will train you to train your nervous system

00:24:35.140 | to bring your attention back to whatever it is

00:24:37.440 | you're trying to learn.

00:24:38.600 | Now, I've done other podcasts about how to focus,

00:24:41.580 | about attention specifically, and ADHD.

00:24:43.980 | Again, you can find all of those at hubermanlab.com.

00:24:46.420 | Simply put ADHD or focus or tools for focus

00:24:49.340 | into the search function.

00:24:50.380 | And it will take you to the exact timestamps

00:24:52.760 | in those episodes that are relevant.

00:24:55.220 | Right now, however, I want to talk about the second part

00:24:57.760 | of neuroplasticity, which is that the actual changes

00:25:02.120 | in the nervous system,

00:25:02.960 | the strengthening and weakening predominantly

00:25:05.380 | of connections between neurons that underlie learning

00:25:08.320 | do not occur during the focusing and learning,

00:25:11.500 | or rather the exposure to the material,

00:25:13.820 | but instead during deep sleep and sleep-like states.

00:25:18.200 | And again, I've done a lot of podcasts

00:25:19.740 | and talked a lot about tools for getting better sleep,

00:25:21.620 | but I just want to remind everybody

00:25:23.420 | that the actual reordering of the connections,

00:25:25.500 | the strengthening of connections between neurons

00:25:27.420 | that underlie learning,

00:25:28.260 | the weakening of those connections occurs during sleep

00:25:30.860 | in particular, during rapid eye movement sleep,

00:25:34.140 | which tends to predominate in the latter half of the night.

00:25:37.100 | So make sure that you're getting enough sleep for you.

00:25:39.180 | For some people it's six hours,

00:25:40.300 | for some people it's eight hours.

00:25:41.460 | And yes, there is something called the first night effect.

00:25:44.120 | The first night effect is the experimentally observed

00:25:48.340 | phenomenon whereby information that you learn on a given day

00:25:52.540 | is mostly consolidated during the night's sleep

00:25:55.360 | that you have on that first night after the learning occurs.

00:25:59.260 | Does this mean that if you get a poor night's sleep

00:26:01.160 | on the first night after learning something

00:26:02.920 | that you are forever going to forget that information,

00:26:06.760 | that it cannot be consolidated into your neural circuits?

00:26:09.300 | No, however, it's very clear

00:26:12.180 | that the first night after learning,

00:26:14.900 | you want to get the best sleep possible.

00:26:16.740 | So if your learning bouts, your studying

00:26:18.820 | is going late into the night

00:26:19.980 | and you're drinking a lot of caffeine,

00:26:21.260 | be mindful that the sleep that you get

00:26:23.260 | after drinking that caffeine late into the day,

00:26:25.700 | the all-nighters that you're pulling,

00:26:27.100 | those are not serving your learning well.

00:26:29.400 | So you need to structure your life as a student of any kind

00:26:33.620 | so that you can get focus and attention

00:26:36.620 | to what it is you want to learn,

00:26:37.980 | and you can get sleep to the best of your ability.

00:26:40.340 | And of course, people who are raising young kids

00:26:42.500 | or who have stress in their lives for whatever reason,

00:26:45.500 | perhaps won't be able to optimize their sleep

00:26:47.580 | on that first night or even subsequent nights,

00:26:49.780 | but do your best to get your sleep right.

00:26:51.620 | It's the single best thing you can do

00:26:53.540 | for your mental health, for your physical health,

00:26:55.340 | and for learning and performance of any kind.

00:26:57.860 | And it's really worth the effort.

00:27:00.180 | Now, with an understanding of the mechanisms,

00:27:04.020 | the focus and alertness

00:27:07.220 | and the sleep phase of neuroplasticity,

00:27:11.580 | what are some other things that you can do

00:27:13.220 | to enhance whatever studying and learning you've obtained?

00:27:16.820 | I already talked about a tool,

00:27:18.060 | a behavioral tool for enhancing focus.

00:27:19.700 | What about a behavioral tool for enhancing plasticity

00:27:22.260 | if your sleep is great,

00:27:23.940 | or especially if your sleep isn't great?

00:27:25.700 | And there, I highly recommend you explore

00:27:28.180 | non-sleep deep rest or NSDR.

00:27:30.340 | There's a script for this in the "Show Note" captions.

00:27:32.980 | NSDR, sometimes referred to as yoga nidra,

00:27:35.460 | although those things are similar but different,

00:27:38.180 | is a 10 or 20 minute practice

00:27:40.460 | that you can do to restore your mental and physical vigor

00:27:43.500 | if you haven't slept enough.

00:27:44.420 | So you could do it first thing in the morning

00:27:45.620 | when you wake up if you feel you haven't slept enough.

00:27:48.020 | You can do it in the afternoon.

00:27:49.580 | You can do it in the middle of the night

00:27:50.780 | if you're not able to sleep

00:27:52.100 | and offset some of the sleep loss

00:27:53.980 | that you otherwise would have experienced.

00:27:56.780 | NSDR is a very powerful tool

00:27:59.620 | in order to enhance neuroplasticity.

00:28:02.420 | And I'll talk more about this in a future episode.

00:28:04.720 | There's a lot of exciting data coming out

00:28:06.320 | about NSDR and yoga nidra.

00:28:08.620 | But if you're sleeping well, and even if you aren't,

00:28:11.620 | I highly encourage you to incorporate a 10 or 20 minute NSDR

00:28:15.380 | into your schedule someplace.

00:28:17.100 | Again, where you place it in your schedule

00:28:19.200 | isn't as important as the fact that you do it

00:28:21.980 | in order to enhance neuroplasticity.

00:28:24.340 | That is the reordering of connections between neurons

00:28:26.700 | to serve the studying and learning that you're doing.

00:28:29.360 | Now let's talk about

00:28:30.260 | how the best students structure their days.

00:28:32.500 | Turns out there are great studies on this.

00:28:35.500 | There's a really nice paper.

00:28:38.140 | In fact, that surveyed close to 700 students.

00:28:42.860 | These were medical students,

00:28:44.500 | approximately equal number of male and female students

00:28:48.860 | and analyze the most useful learning habits.

00:28:51.500 | That is the learning habits associated

00:28:53.580 | with the most successful students.

00:28:55.200 | Now, anytime you do a study like this

00:28:57.060 | where people take surveys,

00:28:58.500 | there's always the issue of causality.

00:29:01.100 | In fact, we can pretty much set aside

00:29:02.860 | any possible causality.

00:29:04.140 | For instance, I'm about to tell you

00:29:05.400 | that the very best performing students

00:29:07.060 | tend to study for about three or four hours per day.

00:29:09.960 | But you could easily say,

00:29:11.500 | well, they're the best students

00:29:12.620 | because they study three or four hours per day.

00:29:15.460 | They don't study three or four hours per day

00:29:17.260 | because they're the best students.

00:29:18.260 | And you'd be exactly right, okay?

00:29:20.180 | We can get into all sorts of discussions

00:29:21.900 | about correlation versus causation,

00:29:23.780 | about reverse causality and on and on.

00:29:26.600 | However, none of that is the point here.

00:29:28.460 | The point here is to establish

00:29:30.380 | what are the habits that the most successful students

00:29:33.640 | seem to incorporate over and over again,

00:29:35.720 | regardless of what classes they're taking,

00:29:37.360 | regardless of where they are

00:29:39.240 | in their arc of their learning trajectory.

00:29:41.480 | And so what we know based on this study,

00:29:43.540 | and I'll provide a link to it in the show note captions,

00:29:46.200 | is that there are at least 10 study habits

00:29:49.000 | that the highly effective students use.

00:29:50.600 | I'm going to focus on the top five or six

00:29:53.300 | just for sake of time,

00:29:54.780 | because it turns out that most of the effect,

00:29:57.640 | it appears, of being a better student

00:29:59.880 | can be attributed to these top five or six habits.

00:30:03.240 | First of all, they set aside time to study.

00:30:06.840 | They literally schedule time to study.

00:30:08.820 | Now this probably serves several roles.

00:30:10.800 | The first one is that they are able

00:30:13.000 | to clear out other distractions.

00:30:14.740 | And in fact, that's the second thing that they do.

00:30:17.320 | They are very effective where they make it a point

00:30:19.800 | of putting their phone away and off,

00:30:22.320 | of isolating themselves.

00:30:23.720 | That's right, they're not studying with other people.

00:30:25.900 | They study alone, which is not to say

00:30:28.180 | that people who study with others

00:30:29.480 | cannot be effective in their studying,

00:30:31.620 | but the best performing students seem to study alone.

00:30:35.040 | They put their phone away.

00:30:36.540 | They tell their friends and families

00:30:39.400 | that they are not going to be able to be reached

00:30:41.600 | during that time.

00:30:42.920 | And yes, they study for three or four hours per day,

00:30:46.600 | but they break that up

00:30:48.040 | into a couple of different sessions typically,

00:30:50.160 | two or three sessions.

00:30:51.240 | So they're not doing a three or four hour studying

00:30:53.000 | about all in one shot.

00:30:54.360 | So they're managing their time,

00:30:57.960 | they're eliminating distractions,

00:30:59.680 | and they're studying for a consistent amount of time,

00:31:03.980 | at least five days per week, okay?

00:31:05.900 | Presumably they're taking some weekends off,

00:31:07.660 | although that wasn't made clear from this paper.

00:31:09.860 | The other thing that they do, and this is very important,

00:31:11.820 | is that they make an effort to then teach their peers,

00:31:14.900 | to teach other students in the class.

00:31:16.920 | Now, some of you may be thinking,

00:31:18.480 | and I'm thinking back to college here, mostly,

00:31:21.220 | that if you spend all this time learning the information

00:31:23.400 | and you are in a competitive scenario

00:31:25.140 | with the other students,

00:31:26.220 | that teaching them the information

00:31:27.780 | is kind of a freebie for them and it's harder for you,

00:31:30.460 | meaning you're putting yourself

00:31:31.420 | at a competitive disadvantage,

00:31:33.140 | or you're giving them an unfair advantage

00:31:35.380 | for not having done the work.

00:31:37.000 | Now, while this paper didn't do an analysis

00:31:38.740 | of whether or not these students

00:31:39.680 | that served as the learners from the other students

00:31:43.040 | got an unfair advantage,

00:31:44.340 | it's very clear that students who make it a point

00:31:47.880 | to learn material in isolation,

00:31:49.620 | then bring that material to other students

00:31:51.500 | in the same course and teach them,

00:31:53.520 | perform exceedingly well

00:31:55.220 | in comparison to the other students.

00:31:56.940 | So don't be afraid to be a teacher of your peers

00:32:00.020 | in order to test, this is key,

00:32:02.020 | to test and develop mastery of the material.

00:32:06.140 | Now, in my laboratory for years,

00:32:08.820 | we used to have a saying,

00:32:09.820 | which I simply picked up from the laboratories

00:32:12.180 | I was trained in, I didn't come up with the saying,

00:32:13.740 | which was, "Watch one, do one, teach one."

00:32:15.980 | And that was referring to doing surgeries or suturing

00:32:19.100 | or doing an antibody reaction or a Western blot

00:32:22.140 | or things that you do in laboratories.

00:32:25.300 | Watch one, do one, teach one.

00:32:27.520 | Watch one, do one, teach one,

00:32:28.740 | of course should be reserved to anything

00:32:30.220 | where no one's going to be put in danger

00:32:32.060 | by the watch one, do one, teach one procedure, right?

00:32:34.520 | Some procedures, especially in laboratories,

00:32:36.900 | can be dangerous given the materials you use, et cetera.

00:32:40.100 | And of course, today we're talking about learning

00:32:41.640 | and studying generally.

00:32:42.660 | So provided it's safe, watch one, do one, teach one

00:32:45.620 | is an excellent means to learn,

00:32:48.940 | that is to study new material,

00:32:50.620 | to develop proficiency and even mastery.

00:32:53.460 | And over time, perhaps even virtuosity.

00:32:55.740 | We'll return to that later, those distinctions.

00:32:58.100 | So going back to this idea

00:33:00.500 | that the best students set aside time,

00:33:02.300 | they designate time to study alone without distractions,

00:33:06.980 | that is sure to help them anchor their focus and attention.

00:33:10.080 | They know that they're going to need to use their focus

00:33:12.540 | and attention during that time.

00:33:13.820 | And we know with absolute certainty that focus

00:33:17.240 | and attention are a limited but renewable resource

00:33:21.780 | in the human brain.

00:33:22.620 | The longer you're awake,

00:33:23.460 | the more is the buildup of a molecule called adenosine

00:33:26.500 | in your brain and body.

00:33:27.340 | It makes you sleepy, makes it harder to focus.

00:33:29.760 | When you sleep, adenosine levels are pushed down again.

00:33:32.380 | You're able to focus again, you feel more alert.

00:33:34.700 | You can think of adenosine

00:33:35.620 | as limiting your attentional budget,

00:33:37.660 | which is not to say that some people don't study best

00:33:39.620 | in the afternoon or in the evening

00:33:41.780 | or even late at night, right?

00:33:43.140 | I recall times during university when I'd study

00:33:45.500 | between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.,

00:33:47.820 | I don't do that any longer.

00:33:48.900 | But scheduling time where you know you're going to need

00:33:53.200 | to be focused and attending is perhaps one

00:33:56.480 | of the most important things toward being able to focus

00:33:59.900 | and attend to the material.

00:34:01.020 | Now, if you're taking courses,

00:34:02.820 | you probably are going to be a slave

00:34:04.780 | to the timing of the courses.

00:34:05.820 | You aren't going to be able to tell the instructor,

00:34:07.580 | "Okay, listen, I want you to do this course at 3 p.m.

00:34:10.580 | "because that's when you learn best or at 8 a.m.

00:34:12.900 | "because that's when you happen to be able to attend best."

00:34:15.380 | However, to the extent that you have any control

00:34:17.700 | over the time in which you're going to study,

00:34:19.300 | keeping that at a regular time or times,

00:34:21.900 | perhaps one block early in the day,

00:34:23.360 | one block later in the day,

00:34:24.900 | perhaps two blocks early in the day, and so on,

00:34:27.460 | is going to be beneficial.

00:34:28.500 | It turns out that's also supported

00:34:30.140 | by the research literature,

00:34:31.540 | that the brain, just like with its sleep-wake cycles,

00:34:36.420 | that entrain to a regular schedule,

00:34:38.780 | that is, your brain and body get used to being active

00:34:41.580 | and inactive at particular times based

00:34:43.580 | on your exposure to sunlight, your exposure to activities,

00:34:46.940 | your social rhythms, et cetera.

00:34:48.860 | If you regularly, meaning for the course of about three days

00:34:51.860 | make it a point to focus and study at particular times,

00:34:55.820 | again, pulling your attention back,

00:34:57.260 | it's not an automatic process,

00:34:58.420 | but pulling your attention back to a specific location,

00:35:01.660 | perhaps on a page or that you're listening to in a lecture,

00:35:04.900 | your body and brain will start to entrain to that rhythm

00:35:09.260 | such that you will be able to focus and attend better

00:35:12.580 | simply by virtue of the regularity of the timing

00:35:15.900 | of the exposure to the material, okay?

00:35:17.780 | So you probably need about two or three days

00:35:20.300 | to break into a regular schedule of focusing and attending

00:35:23.500 | and studying at a given time or times.

00:35:27.060 | Allow yourself that transition period,

00:35:28.720 | but then make it a point to schedule those times to study,

00:35:32.740 | set aside your phone, tell people you're going offline,

00:35:36.420 | turn off the Wi-Fi if you need to or have to.

00:35:39.020 | You may need it for your studying, I don't know,

00:35:40.980 | depends on what you're studying,

00:35:42.300 | but limit distractions at all costs

00:35:44.620 | and learn to just focus on the material.

00:35:47.380 | And this is a skill,

00:35:48.700 | this is the most important thing to understand,

00:35:50.140 | it's a skill to be able to focus and study.

00:35:52.780 | And it's a skill that you can learn very quickly,

00:35:55.340 | especially if you schedule it for regular times

00:35:57.780 | and you give yourself two or three days

00:36:00.120 | in which to adapt to those schedules and times

00:36:02.300 | and then try and stick to them as regularly as possible,

00:36:04.860 | perhaps even on the weekends, if you're approaching,

00:36:07.340 | you know, the end of the quarter or semester,

00:36:10.020 | perhaps even on the weekend,

00:36:12.060 | even if you're not in the quarter or semester.

00:36:14.580 | Keeping those regular times will entrain your nervous system

00:36:17.600 | to study and learn at its best at those particular times.

00:36:21.740 | I'd like to take a quick break

00:36:22.980 | and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

00:36:25.620 | By now, many of you have heard me say

00:36:27.220 | that if I could take just one supplement,

00:36:28.980 | that supplement would be AG1.

00:36:31.080 | The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality

00:36:33.620 | and most complete

00:36:34.500 | of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

00:36:37.260 | What that means is that it contains

00:36:38.680 | not just vitamins and minerals,

00:36:40.060 | but also probiotics, prebiotics and adaptogens

00:36:43.460 | to cover any gaps you may have in your diet

00:36:45.900 | and provide support for a demanding life.

00:36:48.180 | For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods

00:36:50.020 | and minimally processed foods,

00:36:51.240 | which I do for most of my food intake,

00:36:53.180 | it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits

00:36:55.180 | and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients

00:36:57.860 | and adaptogens from food alone.

00:37:00.060 | For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012

00:37:03.500 | and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid morning

00:37:06.160 | and again in the afternoon or evening.

00:37:08.180 | When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy,

00:37:10.600 | my immune system and my gut microbiome.

00:37:13.180 | These are all critical to brain function, mood,

00:37:15.340 | physical performance and much more.

00:37:17.560 | If you'd like to try AG1,

00:37:19.020 | you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman

00:37:22.140 | to claim their special offer.

00:37:23.720 | Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs

00:37:25.860 | plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2.

00:37:28.720 | Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman

00:37:32.340 | to claim that special offer.

00:37:33.960 | Before I move into specific ways to study

00:37:36.620 | in order to maximally offset forgetting,

00:37:40.340 | notice I didn't say in order to learn,

00:37:42.220 | but rather to maximally offset forgetting,

00:37:44.740 | AKA learning, stably learning material.

00:37:48.160 | There's one other point that I wanted to pass along

00:37:50.500 | from this really nice study on the study habits

00:37:53.060 | of highly effective medical students

00:37:55.020 | that I've been referring to.

00:37:57.020 | And that is when one examined

00:37:59.700 | or these people were asked about their motivation

00:38:02.920 | for studying, the best performing students

00:38:06.140 | had an interesting answer.

00:38:07.540 | They had a very long-term understanding

00:38:10.900 | of how, or belief rather,

00:38:13.020 | about how their success in medical school

00:38:16.660 | would impact their family,

00:38:19.300 | how it would impact their life arc,

00:38:21.080 | how it would change them.

00:38:22.620 | And they weren't particular about the ways

00:38:24.580 | in which it would change them or their family.

00:38:26.400 | In fact, it was a rather broad, abstract, aspirational way

00:38:30.460 | of thinking about their study efforts.

00:38:32.940 | So what I like so much about this paper is that,

00:38:36.300 | you know, in addition to having a fairly large sample size,

00:38:39.060 | close to 700 students that were evaluated,

00:38:41.420 | and yes, it's purely, you know,

00:38:43.580 | self-report and this kind of thing.

00:38:45.920 | Nonetheless, it bridges the two extremes

00:38:49.060 | of studying and learning.

00:38:50.380 | You know, it gets right down into the nitty gritty

00:38:52.200 | of how long they study, when they study,

00:38:54.220 | the things they do to limit distraction

00:38:56.180 | that we just discussed.

00:38:57.980 | But it also gets to their underlying

00:39:00.200 | psychological motivations and the thing that they use

00:39:02.860 | in order to pull them forward through their study efforts,

00:39:05.940 | perhaps, especially when their desire is waning

00:39:09.500 | or their level of fatigue is increasing.

00:39:11.980 | I don't know that, I'm speculating here,

00:39:13.780 | but this is this aspirational component

00:39:16.700 | of going to medical school,

00:39:18.380 | which it turns out in the country

00:39:19.620 | in which this study was done,

00:39:21.460 | only very, very select few of the very best students

00:39:24.780 | are able to achieve that.

00:39:26.620 | And they have to learn the information

00:39:27.780 | in a different language altogether, which is incredible.

00:39:31.260 | I always marvel at that.

00:39:32.380 | You know, I have friends that did their PhD thesis

00:39:34.580 | in Italy, they're Italian by birth.

00:39:37.340 | They now happen to run a laboratory in Italy

00:39:40.340 | and they had to do their PhD training and write papers

00:39:43.300 | and give their thesis dissertation and defense in English,

00:39:47.380 | even though English was their second language.

00:39:49.420 | So talk about a challenge.

00:39:50.620 | And that's just one example that I can think of.

00:39:54.260 | There are many examples of that.

00:39:55.860 | These students that I'm referring to in this study

00:39:59.740 | are not necessarily constantly thinking about

00:40:03.180 | how their efforts will transform themselves

00:40:05.740 | and their families,

00:40:06.980 | but they certainly were able to report

00:40:09.420 | what it was specifically that they are seeking,

00:40:11.700 | what they're aspiring to,

00:40:13.300 | besides just trying to do as well as they can

00:40:15.940 | getting into and through medical school.

00:40:17.980 | So the high-level aspirational stuff within you,

00:40:22.020 | whatever that is for you,

00:40:23.220 | it's going to be highly individual,

00:40:25.500 | is certainly important.

00:40:27.020 | And it offers a bookend to the nuts and bolts

00:40:30.540 | kind of stuff that you're going to do,

00:40:32.300 | I would hope,

00:40:33.140 | in order to best study and learn the specific material.

00:40:35.980 | So the specific actions that you're going to take each day

00:40:38.380 | to learn specific bits of information

00:40:40.180 | that will pull you toward those important aspirations.

00:40:43.420 | And now again, if you love the material you're learning,

00:40:46.820 | this aspirational component is probably not as important.

00:40:50.100 | I can recall during university and graduate school

00:40:53.220 | and so on, thinking, oh my goodness,

00:40:55.860 | this is like the coolest thing I've ever heard.

00:40:57.260 | I've probably said that about a million different topics.

00:40:59.340 | Like, oh my goodness, circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms,

00:41:01.660 | melatonin, neural circuits, dopamine.

00:41:03.380 | I was just awash with excitement about what I was learning.

00:41:06.140 | But of course, sometimes I would take a course

00:41:07.940 | where the material was,

00:41:09.540 | I don't know if it was more challenging or not,

00:41:10.980 | but I had a harder time getting engaged by the material,

00:41:14.180 | either by virtue of how it was being taught to me

00:41:16.460 | or the material itself.

00:41:17.940 | So the ability to attach to some aspirational goal,

00:41:20.460 | to pull you through, can be very valuable.

00:41:24.060 | You're not going to love every topic you have to learn.

00:41:26.940 | However, I will say that, at least in my experience,

00:41:31.140 | some of the courses that I look back on most fondly

00:41:33.940 | are the courses that I struggled with the most.

00:41:36.820 | And in fact, that's the basis of the next

00:41:39.500 | and easily one of the most important studying tools.

00:41:42.980 | So a key theme in all of the excellent literature,

00:41:47.100 | that is the peer-reviewed research on how best to study,

00:41:50.900 | is that studying that feels challenging

00:41:53.220 | is the most effective.

00:41:54.900 | I know nobody wants to hear this.

00:41:56.700 | Everyone wants to hear about flow.

00:41:58.940 | Everybody wants to hear about information

00:42:01.400 | just sinking into their brain by osmosis.

00:42:03.500 | I think it was a Garfield cartoon

00:42:05.000 | where he talked about learning by osmosis.

00:42:07.140 | There's this very cute real-world video

00:42:09.060 | of a kid in a classroom.

00:42:11.280 | I believe it's in China where he's taking the book

00:42:14.200 | and he puts it on his head.

00:42:15.100 | Maybe I can find this clip.

00:42:16.140 | And he's just kind of like trying to wash it into his brain.

00:42:18.200 | It's super cute clip, but guess what?

00:42:20.220 | That doesn't work.

00:42:21.200 | I mean, it works to put the book on your head.

00:42:23.020 | It doesn't work.

00:42:23.900 | It's not going to get the information into your brain.

00:42:27.060 | Perhaps someday there will be ways

00:42:28.740 | to rapidly download information into neural circuits.

00:42:31.580 | Right now, we know, we've known for hundreds,

00:42:35.140 | if not thousands of years,

00:42:36.580 | that effort is the cornerstone of learning.

00:42:41.580 | So I know there are probably some groans about that.

00:42:43.980 | I know some of you perhaps were hoping

00:42:45.440 | that today I was going to tell you how to study

00:42:47.720 | so that studying wasn't painful.

00:42:50.140 | I think I can accomplish that by the end of today's episode.

00:42:54.060 | But in order to do that, let's take another quiz.

00:42:56.960 | Okay, so here's the quiz.

00:42:58.220 | Again, you can answer these questions in your head.

00:43:00.340 | You don't have to tell anyone,

00:43:02.060 | but you could write them down

00:43:02.940 | or say them out loud if you want.

00:43:04.880 | The first question is,

00:43:06.500 | when during either your states of alertness or sleep,

00:43:13.380 | does the remodeling of neural connections occur?

00:43:17.900 | I like to think this is a pretty easy one.

00:43:20.500 | Okay, the answer is during sleep.

00:43:22.680 | The second question is, what is one behavioral tool

00:43:27.100 | that you can use to improve focus?

00:43:29.120 | The answer is simple mindfulness meditation,

00:43:33.860 | which I prefer you think of simply as a perceptual exercise.

00:43:36.740 | So again, just sit or lie down, close your eyes,

00:43:39.740 | focus on your breath.

00:43:40.580 | When your attention drifts,

00:43:41.940 | bring your attention back to your breath and so on.

00:43:45.500 | Or if you prefer, you can do this eyes open

00:43:47.680 | by focusing on a visual target,

00:43:49.860 | either a foot or two feet or three feet away,

00:43:51.740 | whatever distance is comfortable for you,

00:43:54.120 | allowing yourself to blink as needed,

00:43:55.660 | but forcing yourself to focus on that visual target

00:43:59.460 | for say one to three minutes,

00:44:01.460 | maybe even three to five minutes,

00:44:02.700 | maybe even 10 minutes.

00:44:03.720 | Again, please blink, you don't want your eyes to dry.

00:44:06.540 | Both those tools will improve your ability to attend,

00:44:09.540 | to focus to other material when the time comes, okay?

00:44:12.860 | The circuits for focus and attention themselves

00:44:15.300 | are subject to neuroplasticity.

00:44:17.860 | And then the third question is,

00:44:20.200 | can you name or list off in your mind three tools

00:44:24.540 | that the most effective students have been shown to use?

00:44:27.340 | I can think of limiting distraction

00:44:32.640 | by virtue of putting away phones

00:44:34.120 | and telling others you won't be in contact with them too.

00:44:37.720 | And I'm getting these out of order, I realize,

00:44:40.480 | is to isolate, to study alone.

00:44:42.820 | And the third that I can recall

00:44:45.000 | is to teach others in the same course, okay?

00:44:50.220 | You can probably think of a few others.

00:44:52.340 | Now, why are we taking these silly little quizzes?

00:44:55.560 | Well, it turns out they're not so silly

00:44:58.720 | when one considers that hopefully

00:45:00.780 | you'll remember the information from today

00:45:03.980 | so that you don't have to listen to it over and over again,

00:45:06.660 | but that if ever there was a strongly research-supported tool

00:45:11.660 | in the literature, in the peer-reviewed literature

00:45:14.020 | about how students can learn information better,

00:45:16.880 | it's testing.

00:45:18.820 | And I know, I know, I know we think of tests

00:45:21.620 | as a way to evaluate our knowledge,

00:45:24.940 | but it turns out that testing is one of the best ways

00:45:27.400 | to build our knowledge, to retain our knowledge,

00:45:30.500 | and again, to offset forgetting.

00:45:32.860 | Now, the study of testing as a learning tool,

00:45:36.180 | not just as a way to evaluate

00:45:38.400 | how much information we've learned,

00:45:40.220 | goes back over a hundred years.

00:45:42.140 | There's a classic study that was done in 1917

00:45:44.620 | where grade school aged children read biographies.

00:45:49.620 | So they read biographies,

00:45:51.300 | and then the kids were divided into different groups.

00:45:54.860 | One group read and reread and reread those biographies

00:45:59.680 | over and over.

00:46:01.220 | Another group read the biographies once,

00:46:04.020 | and then were tested on those biographies.

00:46:07.180 | But get this, they tested themselves on those biographies

00:46:10.760 | simply by having to think about the information

00:46:13.820 | that they had read and trying to remember the information,

00:46:17.500 | like what was the biography?

00:46:18.520 | Who is the person?

00:46:19.360 | Who are they married to?

00:46:20.180 | What did they do?

00:46:21.020 | When did they go to school?

00:46:22.460 | What did they do in school?

00:46:23.620 | What did they do in the world?

00:46:24.860 | What role did they play in life?

00:46:27.340 | So they essentially tested their own knowledge

00:46:30.140 | simply by going into their own head and asking themselves

00:46:32.540 | what they could remember about those biographies.

00:46:34.980 | Now, keep in mind here that even though it's fairly apparent

00:46:40.800 | that reading a biography two, three, four times

00:46:44.620 | might seem more passive than testing oneself on a biography

00:46:48.780 | that they had read just once, right?

00:46:51.480 | You could imagine that thinking about the biography

00:46:54.020 | involves more effort, and indeed it does.

00:46:56.680 | But keep in mind also that the kids in the second group

00:46:59.360 | were only exposed to the biography once.

00:47:01.920 | And yet when you look at the percent of accurate recall

00:47:06.920 | of information from those biographies,

00:47:09.960 | the children that read the biography once

00:47:12.780 | and then made a deliberate point

00:47:15.720 | to think about that biography in their own mind

00:47:17.840 | to effectively test themselves on that material

00:47:20.560 | just within their heads over and over,

00:47:23.340 | but an equal number of times as the kids

00:47:25.400 | that read the biographies directly on a page over and over,

00:47:29.440 | vastly outperformed the kids

00:47:31.420 | that read the biographies over and over.

00:47:33.060 | Put differently, reading and rereading material

00:47:36.240 | and rereading material is far less effective

00:47:40.680 | than reading material and then thinking about that material,

00:47:44.040 | testing yourself on that material,

00:47:45.620 | forcing yourself to bring that material to mind

00:47:47.720 | in your own mind.

00:47:49.320 | And this is not just for sake of remembering

00:47:52.960 | more volume of material,

00:47:54.660 | but also accuracy of recall of that material.

00:47:58.800 | And that at least to me was pretty surprising at first

00:48:02.080 | until one starts to explore subsequent studies

00:48:05.340 | of the role of testing as a learning tool.

00:48:07.960 | And then you start to realize that testing yourself

00:48:10.600 | is far and away the best tool for studying and learning,

00:48:14.480 | not just for evaluating your knowledge,

00:48:16.680 | but for actually studying and incorporating that knowledge

00:48:20.980 | into your neural circuits.

00:48:23.160 | Okay, so I realized that anytime I or somebody else

00:48:25.320 | talks about a study that was done in 1917,

00:48:27.440 | we think of people in these, you know,

00:48:29.640 | like wooden shoes and in these school houses

00:48:33.000 | that look so different and kids dress so different.

00:48:36.500 | Let's get a little more modern here.

00:48:39.060 | Keep in mind, however,

00:48:39.900 | that the nervous system hasn't really changed much

00:48:42.740 | in tens of thousands of years.

00:48:44.320 | Nonetheless, I think it's nice to think about

00:48:47.380 | a more recent study of how best to study.

00:48:51.260 | And this study, which by the way,

00:48:53.420 | we'll provide a link to in the show note captions,

00:48:55.260 | as well as a couple of reviews

00:48:56.700 | that include results from similar studies.

00:48:59.100 | Again, I'm pointing to a body of research,

00:49:01.360 | not just one study here.

00:49:02.780 | Looked at whether or not studying material four times.

00:49:08.620 | So study, study, study, study was better

00:49:13.620 | in terms of locking that information into people's minds,

00:49:18.060 | allowing them to use that information flexibly,

00:49:20.460 | which is an element of creativity,

00:49:22.380 | essentially given the mastery of the material.

00:49:24.620 | Then a different group, which studied once,

00:49:28.100 | studied the material twice,

00:49:29.380 | studied the material three times,

00:49:31.360 | then was tested on the material.

00:49:33.880 | Or a third group that studied material once,

00:49:40.240 | then took one, two, yes, three tests on the material.

00:49:45.120 | Now, so what I just described was three groups,

00:49:47.920 | all of whom read a passage.

00:49:49.680 | This was a passage about animals, about biology,

00:49:53.240 | some other topics too in different experiments.

00:49:55.680 | Again, three groups, one group studies four times.

00:49:59.140 | They study the material one, two, three, four times,

00:50:01.900 | then later they take a test.

00:50:05.180 | The second group studies one, two, three times,

00:50:09.320 | takes a test on that material,

00:50:11.440 | and then later takes a test.

00:50:14.160 | The third group studies the material once,

00:50:16.480 | then takes three tests on the material,

00:50:19.240 | and then later takes a test.

00:50:21.160 | So what's analyzed and compared

00:50:23.000 | between these different groups

00:50:24.600 | is their performance on that final test, okay?

00:50:28.320 | What I put in as the fifth bin there, right?

00:50:31.820 | 'Cause it was, think about it as SSSS,

00:50:34.620 | so study, study, study, study, and then later test.

00:50:36.940 | Or SSST, study, study, study, test, and then later test.

00:50:41.740 | Or STTT, study, test, test, test, and then later test.

00:50:45.500 | So what's compared and contrasted

00:50:47.400 | is performance on the test some period of time later.

00:50:50.380 | Now, some experiments made that final test of the material

00:50:55.300 | a couple of days later,

00:50:56.620 | other experiments made it a couple of weeks later,

00:50:58.960 | other experiments made it much later,

00:51:01.120 | months or even a year later, okay?

00:51:03.340 | The point here is twofold.

00:51:06.680 | First of all, based on everything I've told you thus far,

00:51:10.480 | you can probably guess who performed best

00:51:13.520 | on the test that occurred some period of time later, okay?

00:51:16.900 | Right.

00:51:18.920 | The performance on that final test

00:51:23.240 | was essentially proportional to the number of tests

00:51:26.860 | one had already taken on the material, okay?

00:51:29.780 | That should be pretty much obvious

00:51:30.940 | given the way we've been going today

00:51:33.620 | in this description of tests as a way to offset forgetting.

00:51:37.220 | Okay, so the more tests that you take

00:51:39.100 | as a way to expose yourself to the material,

00:51:43.520 | the better you're going to perform on that material

00:51:45.580 | at some later point.

00:51:46.460 | Now, of course, at some point you have to be exposed

00:51:48.260 | to the material for the first time, right?

00:51:50.140 | That's why it's studying and learning.

00:51:51.940 | But after one exposure to new material,

00:51:54.220 | taking more tests on that material,

00:51:55.920 | even if you don't perform that well on those tests,

00:51:59.560 | as long as you're able to see the accurate answers

00:52:02.080 | to those tests and compare your answers to those answers

00:52:04.920 | will lead to better performance on the ultimate test

00:52:07.800 | and retention of that material at some later time.

00:52:10.300 | Put differently,

00:52:12.240 | it's not about how many times you study the material

00:52:15.740 | or how many times you're exposed to the material.

00:52:17.960 | It's about being exposed to the material,

00:52:20.320 | doing your best to focus and attend to that material,

00:52:22.780 | and then self-testing yourself on that material.

00:52:26.340 | Or as the case may be,

00:52:27.340 | if an instructor is the one giving you the test,

00:52:30.940 | but nonetheless taking tests on that material,

00:52:34.140 | not just once, but ideally two or three times,

00:52:37.540 | that's what really locks the material

00:52:39.820 | into your neural circuits.

00:52:40.900 | That's what's going to lead to the most pervasive change,

00:52:44.260 | the most durable change, we should say,

00:52:46.860 | in your neural circuits that carry that material,

00:52:50.100 | that hold that material in your mind,

00:52:51.520 | what we call neural encoding, okay?

00:52:54.820 | So the more times you test yourself

00:52:57.720 | or that you are tested on material,

00:52:59.280 | the better your retention of that material.

00:53:01.600 | Now, some people will immediately say,

00:53:03.480 | well, goodness, what if I learned it and then I'm tested

00:53:06.760 | and I'm somehow consolidating the wrong

00:53:09.160 | or inaccurate material?

00:53:10.280 | But it doesn't appear to be the case.

00:53:11.880 | As long as you learn what the correct answers

00:53:14.120 | to the tests are, even if you're getting, you know,

00:53:16.340 | 40 or 50% or less accurate on those tests that you take,

00:53:20.080 | immediately after the studying period,

00:53:22.100 | that's still going to be a better strategy

00:53:25.280 | than rereading the material,

00:53:26.800 | which ought to be somewhat surprising.

00:53:29.080 | It certainly was surprising to me,

00:53:31.340 | but you know what's even more surprising

00:53:32.960 | and a little scary and that we all should know,

00:53:34.920 | and I wish I had learned when I was like

00:53:36.400 | in the second grade, is that if you ask students,

00:53:41.400 | how confident are you in the material that you just learned?

00:53:46.040 | How well do you think you would perform on a test?

00:53:48.640 | What you see consistently in these studies, I'm chuckling,

00:53:52.160 | because it's kind of mind-blowing,

00:53:54.320 | is that the students who studied the material,

00:53:57.080 | that is who were exposed to the material four times,

00:54:00.240 | think that they are going to perform best

00:54:02.520 | on the ultimate exam.

00:54:05.000 | However, the students that study the material once

00:54:07.680 | and then are tested three times on that material,

00:54:10.440 | they think that ultimately

00:54:14.080 | they're going to perform least well.

00:54:17.000 | For instance, they ask them their confidence,

00:54:18.380 | how well do you think you would perform

00:54:19.640 | on a test of this material in two weeks,

00:54:21.880 | or in a year, or in six months, or even tomorrow?

00:54:24.960 | They report, that is the students

00:54:27.120 | in the study, test, test, test group,

00:54:30.520 | report much lower confidence in the material,

00:54:33.960 | much lower sense of mastery of the material

00:54:36.720 | compared to the students

00:54:37.640 | that were exposed to the material four times,

00:54:40.040 | who are saying, yeah, I think I would do pretty well

00:54:42.400 | or very well, and guess what?

00:54:44.160 | The exact opposite is true.

00:54:45.760 | Put differently, when you're exposed to material

00:54:48.280 | over and over and over again,

00:54:50.000 | you think you've learned the material.

00:54:51.740 | In fact, your confidence that you've learned the material

00:54:54.120 | increases with each subsequent exposure to the material,

00:54:57.840 | but actually you haven't learned it at all

00:55:00.440 | compared to the people that are exposed to the material

00:55:04.240 | and then take tests on the material,

00:55:05.960 | oftentimes straining to get the answers right on those tests.

00:55:08.940 | In fact, sometimes getting those answers dead wrong

00:55:12.600 | and then realizing they get those answers dead wrong,

00:55:14.680 | or sometimes they just sense it, but guess what?

00:55:17.120 | Testing yourself once, twice, maybe three times

00:55:20.760 | prior to the ultimate test of your knowledge

00:55:23.240 | of that material is far and away the best way

00:55:26.680 | to lock that material into those neural circuits.

00:55:30.160 | Now, I say, I wish I had learned this when I was a student

00:55:32.440 | because to some extent I used a self-testing approach.

00:55:37.080 | The one most salient example of that is I took a course

00:55:41.000 | when I was in college, I still remember,

00:55:43.080 | it was Biosciences 169L, Neuroanatomy Laboratory

00:55:47.200 | taught by Ben Rees, he's still there, I believe.

00:55:50.900 | And he was known then, and I'm sure still now

00:55:54.420 | if he's still teaching as extremely challenging professor,

00:55:59.380 | extremely challenging, not as a person,

00:56:01.320 | not his personality, but a ton of detail and rigor

00:56:05.260 | and high, high, high expectation

00:56:07.640 | for this laboratory course in neuroanatomy,

00:56:09.560 | which involved lectures,

00:56:11.560 | it involved in a neuroanatomy textbook

00:56:13.440 | where you'd look at essentially panels

00:56:15.500 | of different brain sections from different species,

00:56:17.280 | different types of stains of different brain tissue.

00:56:19.740 | Mind you, this is an undergraduate course.

00:56:21.440 | And then there was a laboratory component,

00:56:23.200 | hence the L in 169L, where you'd have to go

00:56:25.520 | from microscope station to microscope station,

00:56:28.280 | identifying structures based simply

00:56:31.440 | on what you could see down the microscope.

00:56:33.620 | And therefore you had to know what the stain was,

00:56:36.680 | what was essentially visible to you on the slide

00:56:39.280 | because certain stains reveal certain things

00:56:40.960 | like what we call the cell body of neurons

00:56:43.160 | versus the sort of wires,

00:56:45.540 | what we call the axons between neurons, et cetera, et cetera.

00:56:48.480 | I remember thinking, this is a really hard course.

00:56:51.800 | It was a very difficult course.

00:56:53.600 | And my mode of studying for the course involved,

00:56:56.760 | of course, going to class, doing the dissection.

00:56:59.280 | We dissected a sheep brain at that time.

00:57:01.420 | So we're literally dissecting an actual brain.

00:57:05.760 | We're doing microscope work.

00:57:07.400 | We're learning about it from the textbook and from lecture.

00:57:10.120 | And there was a ton of new nomenclature

00:57:11.960 | about rostral, caudal, dorsal, ventral,

00:57:14.260 | all the stuff of neuroanatomy.

00:57:16.600 | And then at some point I made the decision,

00:57:19.720 | perhaps on the basis of sheer overwhelm,

00:57:22.380 | to study for neuroanatomy by laying down on my bed

00:57:27.120 | in my studio apartment, I lived alone,

00:57:31.000 | and closing my eyes and flying through the nervous system

00:57:36.000 | from different entry points, through the ear,

00:57:39.240 | review my cochlear anatomy,

00:57:41.480 | through the eye, review my retinal anatomy,

00:57:43.800 | through the dorsal surface of the brain,

00:57:47.040 | thinking about the sulci and gyri,

00:57:48.620 | and then the corpus callosum.

00:57:49.800 | And I can still see it in my mind's eye.

00:57:52.960 | So my process of studying for neuroanatomy,

00:57:55.440 | yes, involved exposure to the material,

00:57:57.920 | but it involved hours upon hours

00:58:00.680 | of thinking about the material within my own brain.

00:58:05.460 | So it's a little bit meta unto itself there.

00:58:08.620 | As a consequence, I like to think,

00:58:10.640 | in fact, I believe with some confidence

00:58:13.520 | that I have a very high mastery of neuroanatomy

00:58:17.680 | in different species as well.

00:58:19.560 | Now, that's my particular area of expertise.

00:58:21.840 | I don't think I'm any kind of savant

00:58:23.320 | with respect to neuroanatomy.

00:58:24.360 | I just spent hours upon hours learning the material

00:58:27.000 | and then reviewing the material within my mind.

00:58:30.820 | So in other words, testing myself,

00:58:32.880 | here's what I would do if I were moving down a trajectory

00:58:35.960 | of a neural tract, for instance,

00:58:38.320 | between, say, the hippocampus and a neighboring structure,

00:58:41.620 | and I didn't know what was next,

00:58:43.420 | I would then go look it up in the textbook,

00:58:44.840 | and then I'd go back to this mental exercise,

00:58:47.580 | visualization-type studying.

00:58:49.100 | It really wasn't studying is the point.

00:58:51.900 | The point is that I was testing myself.

00:58:54.120 | I was trying to find the points

00:58:55.700 | in which I no longer had the knowledge to move further

00:58:59.300 | through, in this case, my mental image of the brain,

00:59:01.780 | but through the material.

00:59:03.180 | And this is the key aspect of testing.

00:59:05.740 | It's not about just knowing how many things you get right,

00:59:09.460 | how many things you get wrong.

00:59:10.780 | It's about recognizing exactly what you know and don't know.

00:59:14.300 | And an important component of testing

00:59:16.160 | is running up against those things where you say,

00:59:18.460 | "Ugh, I can't remember.

00:59:19.900 | "I don't know what comes next."

00:59:21.040 | Or I'm certain that that structure is the fimbria,

00:59:23.760 | and then you go and you look and you go,

00:59:25.000 | "Ugh, it's not the fimbria."

00:59:26.240 | But guess what?

00:59:27.080 | I'll never forget, for instance,

00:59:29.460 | the location of the habenula or what it looks like,

00:59:32.620 | a structure of which, by the way,

00:59:33.920 | since these names are kind of esoteric,

00:59:36.140 | at that time, we didn't know what it does.

00:59:37.360 | It turns out it's involved in disappointment.

00:59:40.040 | It's key to the depression circuit,

00:59:41.640 | so the circuits that underlie depression

00:59:43.160 | in some individuals.

00:59:44.580 | It is suppressed by viewing of morning sunlight.

00:59:47.840 | We know that too.

00:59:48.920 | And by getting too much artificial light exposure

00:59:51.440 | in the middle of the night,

00:59:52.280 | you enhance activity of the habenula.

00:59:54.740 | Beautiful work not done by my laboratory,

00:59:56.560 | but by other laboratories demonstrates that.

00:59:59.360 | So what I just did for you there

01:00:01.120 | was hopefully teach you a little something

01:00:02.800 | about neuroanatomy and depression,

01:00:04.900 | but more importantly, to just illustrate

01:00:07.180 | that how you test yourself can be highly individual

01:00:09.820 | to the ways in which you learn best.

01:00:12.600 | Now, that contradicts what I said earlier,

01:00:14.860 | which is that this notion

01:00:16.000 | that people have different learning styles,

01:00:17.520 | and some people are verbal learners,

01:00:18.920 | and some people are auditory learners, and et cetera,

01:00:22.380 | doesn't really hold up so well anymore,

01:00:25.140 | but which, by the way, is not to say

01:00:27.340 | there isn't any research to support it.

01:00:29.080 | It's just that it's heavily contradicted

01:00:30.760 | by other research that contradicts that idea.

01:00:33.500 | But your approach, your mode of best testing yourself

01:00:38.500 | on material for sake of offsetting the forgetting process,

01:00:41.580 | and for identifying where you have gaps in your knowledge,

01:00:44.460 | or where you thought you knew something, but you don't,

01:00:46.580 | or you knew something, but it's wrong,

01:00:48.900 | that can be accomplished

01:00:50.520 | through the approach that's best for you,

01:00:52.620 | which in my case turned out to be lying down

01:00:54.700 | and thinking about the material in my head.

01:00:56.340 | And still to this day, when I read a paper,

01:00:59.820 | I try, I don't always do this,

01:01:01.280 | but what I try to do is then take a walk in my yard

01:01:03.600 | or outside, and I try and think

01:01:05.040 | about the key components of that paper,

01:01:06.680 | and think about some of the graphs

01:01:08.080 | that are especially important,

01:01:09.760 | which is what I'm going to do now.

01:01:11.280 | I'd like to take a brief break

01:01:12.400 | to thank one of our sponsors, Element.

01:01:14.680 | Element is an electrolyte drink

01:01:16.120 | that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

01:01:18.280 | That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium,

01:01:20.480 | and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar.

01:01:24.140 | Now, I and others on the podcast have talked a lot

01:01:26.280 | about the critical importance of hydration

01:01:28.260 | for proper brain and bodily function.

01:01:30.440 | Research shows that even a slight degree

01:01:32.120 | of dehydration can really diminish cognitive

01:01:34.840 | and physical performance.

01:01:36.080 | It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes

01:01:38.400 | in order for your body and brain to function at their best.

01:01:41.120 | The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium

01:01:43.680 | are critical for the functioning

01:01:45.080 | of all the cells in your body,

01:01:46.280 | especially your neurons or nerve cells.

01:01:48.260 | To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts

01:01:49.720 | of hydration and electrolytes,

01:01:51.340 | I dissolve one packet of Element

01:01:52.800 | in about 16 to 32 ounces of water

01:01:54.700 | when I wake up in the morning,

01:01:55.880 | and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

01:01:58.480 | I also drink Element dissolved in water

01:02:00.200 | during any kind of physical exercise I'm doing,

01:02:02.360 | especially on hot days if I'm sweating a lot

01:02:04.320 | and losing water and electrolytes.

01:02:06.480 | If you'd like to try Element,

01:02:07.680 | you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman,

01:02:10.400 | spelled drinkelement.com/huberman,

01:02:14.240 | to claim a free Element sample pack

01:02:15.960 | with the purchase of any Element drink mix.

01:02:18.240 | Again, that's drinkelement.com/huberman

01:02:21.380 | to claim a free sample pack.

01:02:22.980 | Okay, so I like to think that we're establishing

01:02:24.720 | that testing yourself or testing your students

01:02:27.600 | or being tested by your teacher

01:02:30.060 | is the best way to offset forgetting.

01:02:33.300 | Let's look at the literature

01:02:35.560 | that actually supports that statement directly.

01:02:38.240 | Because in the previous experiment I described,

01:02:40.120 | it was either study, study, study, study,

01:02:41.720 | or study, study, study, test,

01:02:43.880 | or study, test, test, test,

01:02:45.200 | and then later everybody takes a test at the same time.

01:02:48.280 | A variance on that was done

01:02:50.460 | where they had one group of students study material.

01:02:54.440 | So this is new material.

01:02:55.880 | And when I say study,

01:02:56.800 | I mean they were exposed to the material for the first time.

01:02:59.800 | And I realize this is a little bit of a problem

01:03:02.920 | 'cause we're using the word study when,

01:03:05.120 | in fact, I'm trying to make the point

01:03:06.340 | that testing yourself is studying, okay?

01:03:08.720 | So forgive me, but this is the way it's mapped out

01:03:11.520 | in these experiments and these papers,

01:03:13.120 | should you look them up in our show note captions.

01:03:15.620 | One group is exposed to the material,

01:03:19.180 | what we call studying,

01:03:20.440 | and then takes a test immediately after.

01:03:23.280 | They are told what they got right,

01:03:24.880 | what they got wrong on that test,

01:03:26.180 | and what the correct answers are.

01:03:27.600 | And then sometime later after a delay,

01:03:31.400 | they take a test of the same material.

01:03:33.960 | Another group studies,

01:03:35.880 | that is they're exposed to the material,

01:03:37.400 | then there's a delay, okay?

01:03:39.360 | That delay could be days, it could be weeks.

01:03:42.020 | This experiment has been done every which way,

01:03:44.520 | it seems by now.

01:03:45.520 | Then they're tested,

01:03:48.160 | and then there's another delay,

01:03:50.080 | and then they take a test at the same time

01:03:52.840 | that group one did, okay?

01:03:54.660 | So again, it's study, test,

01:03:56.760 | long delay, test for group one,

01:03:59.000 | or study, delay, test,

01:04:01.480 | delay, test for group two.

01:04:03.420 | Remember the final test is taken

01:04:04.600 | at the same time by everybody.

01:04:06.060 | Or group three, study,

01:04:09.200 | that is they're exposed to the material,

01:04:10.640 | then a long, long, long, long, long delay,

01:04:12.240 | then a test, and then the ultimate test, okay?

01:04:16.000 | The test that everybody takes at the same time.

01:04:18.800 | Can you guess which group performed best?

01:04:21.340 | And the essence of this experiment,

01:04:22.880 | if you're listening to this

01:04:23.760 | and it's not clear in your mind,

01:04:24.840 | is you're either exposed to the material

01:04:26.960 | and tested very soon after,

01:04:28.500 | and then take a test after a delay,

01:04:30.960 | say a week or two weeks later,

01:04:32.520 | or you're exposed to the material,

01:04:35.160 | there's a delay of a few days,

01:04:36.640 | then you take a test,

01:04:37.720 | and then another few days,

01:04:38.640 | and then you take a test,

01:04:39.480 | so it's more evenly spaced.

01:04:41.160 | Or if you were assigned to the third group,

01:04:43.120 | you'd study,

01:04:44.200 | you're not going to see the material

01:04:45.720 | or be tested on it until a day or two

01:04:48.060 | before the big test,

01:04:49.560 | then you're tested on it,

01:04:50.480 | you get your answers back,

01:04:51.380 | and then you're tested on it again.

01:04:52.580 | You could imagine that the last group

01:04:54.260 | might perform best

01:04:55.380 | because they're re-exposed to the material,

01:04:57.700 | they're told what the correct answers are,

01:04:59.380 | so they know what they got wrong,

01:05:00.820 | they know what they got right,

01:05:01.780 | and then the next day,

01:05:03.220 | they're taking the test again.

01:05:04.680 | I would have thought that group would perform best,

01:05:07.080 | but it turns out the opposite is true.

01:05:09.840 | It's pretty wild.

01:05:11.380 | The best performance comes

01:05:12.660 | from being exposed to material,

01:05:14.500 | what in this experiment they're called studying, okay?

01:05:16.620 | So they read a passage

01:05:18.260 | or they learn some math material

01:05:19.540 | or language material

01:05:20.620 | or music material

01:05:21.580 | or motor learning,

01:05:22.720 | then they take a test very soon after,

01:05:25.340 | even same day or next day.

01:05:26.820 | And then there's a long delay

01:05:28.580 | and then they take the test.

01:05:29.540 | That group performs best.

01:05:31.400 | Put differently,

01:05:32.460 | test yourself very soon,

01:05:35.020 | if not the same day,

01:05:36.020 | certainly the next day or so,

01:05:38.000 | very soon after being exposed to material

01:05:40.140 | for the first time,

01:05:41.900 | as opposed to the last group,

01:05:43.200 | which performs worst.

01:05:45.100 | They perform worse.

01:05:46.140 | Being exposed to material,

01:05:47.600 | then there's a long period of time,

01:05:48.820 | then you're tested on that material.

01:05:50.620 | You are told what you got right,

01:05:52.260 | what you got wrong.

01:05:53.080 | And then the next day you take a test again,

01:05:55.160 | even with overlapping questions

01:05:57.420 | to the test you took just the day before.

01:05:59.020 | And that group performs worst.

01:06:00.640 | And the group that studied had a gap test,

01:06:03.840 | they had a gap test,

01:06:04.700 | they perform somewhere in the middle.

01:06:06.540 | What does this tell us?

01:06:07.740 | What it tells us is so important

01:06:09.980 | vis-a-vis neuroplasticity,

01:06:11.340 | vis-a-vis best learning strategies.

01:06:13.140 | This is something that,

01:06:14.140 | goodness, I wish I had learned

01:06:16.380 | when I was in graduate school,

01:06:19.420 | when I was an undergraduate,

01:06:20.940 | when I was in high school and elementary school.

01:06:23.700 | Goodness, even when I was in kindergarten,

01:06:25.740 | I wish I had learned this.

01:06:27.040 | Test yourself on the material

01:06:30.060 | that you were just exposed to

01:06:31.340 | very soon after your first exposure to it,

01:06:34.500 | because that offsets the natural forgetting

01:06:39.500 | of new material that the brain is exposed to.

01:06:42.480 | This is absolutely the hallmark

01:06:45.080 | of all the impressive data

01:06:47.360 | about testing as a tool for learning.

01:06:50.920 | Testing oneself or your students,

01:06:53.440 | or being tested if you're the student by your teacher

01:06:56.980 | as a tool, not just for evaluating performance,

01:07:00.300 | for knowing what you know and don't know,

01:07:01.940 | but for consolidating that information

01:07:05.120 | in your neural circuits.

01:07:06.700 | And when I say consolidating that information

01:07:08.660 | in your neural circuits,

01:07:09.620 | I realize it's a mouthful.

01:07:11.780 | What we know is that this business

01:07:14.880 | of putting the testing soon after exposure to new material

01:07:18.120 | is about offsetting the forgetting of that material.

01:07:21.480 | So you might say, "Wait, if that's true,

01:07:23.600 | "how come studying the material and then waiting

01:07:25.400 | "and then taking two tests right back to back

01:07:27.280 | "where you're learning the material again during the test,

01:07:29.320 | "that should be the best performing group."

01:07:31.120 | Ah, well, there seems to be something

01:07:32.760 | fundamentally different about first exposure to material

01:07:37.040 | versus testing yourself on that material.

01:07:39.240 | And we don't know exactly what that is.

01:07:41.180 | There's some interesting neural imaging data in humans

01:07:44.600 | that this has to do something with this notion

01:07:47.800 | of familiarity with material.

01:07:49.840 | This is very simple, so this is easy to understand

01:07:51.960 | even though it involves a little bit of memory,

01:07:53.920 | neuroscience nomenclature.

01:07:55.360 | Familiarity with something, recognizing it

01:07:59.680 | is not the same thing as having agility with that thing,

01:08:03.560 | of having mastery of that thing,

01:08:05.520 | is not the same thing as having mastery of the material,

01:08:08.040 | of having committed it to memory, okay?

01:08:10.620 | So when you read something over and over and over,

01:08:13.640 | you see it over and over, you hear it over and over,

01:08:16.200 | you think about it over and over, of course,

01:08:17.920 | you're reading it or you're hearing about it.

01:08:20.280 | And you think that you're learning the material,

01:08:22.700 | that your neural circuits are changing,

01:08:24.960 | but it's a pretty passive process

01:08:26.600 | or even if it's a difficult chapter to read

01:08:28.920 | or a difficult passage of music.

01:08:31.200 | The difference is when you're tested on material,

01:08:35.480 | something happens in your performance of or recalling of,

01:08:40.360 | if it's just cognitive or you're writing it down

01:08:42.680 | or you're told to play the music or do the motor movement,

01:08:46.620 | something happens in the error,

01:08:48.740 | the getting wrong of certain things

01:08:51.260 | that cues your nervous system to lock in the information

01:08:54.640 | that you have right and to remember what you have wrong

01:08:57.540 | so that you then correct it,

01:08:58.940 | which is far and away different

01:09:00.820 | than exposure and re-exposure and re-exposure, okay?

01:09:05.620 | So it's a prerequisite to learning

01:09:07.360 | that you need to see the material for the first time,

01:09:09.700 | you can't just start testing yourself on material

01:09:11.420 | you've never been exposed to.

01:09:12.460 | I suppose you could, but you're gonna get it,

01:09:14.580 | I would imagine mostly wrong, we're all wrong.

01:09:18.060 | But this business of using testing

01:09:20.660 | very soon after first exposure to material

01:09:23.640 | as a tool to study in order to offset forgetting

01:09:27.740 | is clearly tapping into this difference

01:09:29.620 | between familiarity with something

01:09:31.980 | for which we know certain brain areas are activated

01:09:35.820 | versus recollection, being able to take that material

01:09:40.340 | and bring it to memory,

01:09:42.260 | bring it to your focused attention and use that material.

01:09:45.340 | I realize this is a bit abstract

01:09:46.860 | and some of this is still being parsed.

01:09:48.460 | If you're interested in the neuroscience

01:09:50.060 | of familiarity with something

01:09:51.580 | versus your ability to actually recall something

01:09:54.180 | and have mastery of that material,

01:09:56.560 | there's a really nice review

01:09:58.580 | that I provide a link to in the show note caption,

01:10:01.360 | it's published in the journal Hippocampus.

01:10:02.880 | I always chuckle at the fact that there's a journal

01:10:05.060 | that named after a brain structure.

01:10:06.500 | After all, as far as I know,

01:10:07.680 | there isn't a journal called Retina or Amygdala.

01:10:10.980 | And I have a brief anecdote from graduate school

01:10:14.140 | whereby I learned that there was this journal, Hippocampus,

01:10:17.540 | and I was at a grad,

01:10:18.900 | it was my first graduate student gathering

01:10:21.540 | in graduate school.

01:10:22.380 | And the guy who hosted it turns out is a luminary

01:10:25.760 | in the field of learning and memory.

01:10:27.920 | And I was saying, you know, this is ridiculous.

01:10:29.780 | Like there's a journal called Hippocampus

01:10:31.460 | and here I am first year graduate student.

01:10:33.460 | He goes, yeah, there is.

01:10:34.420 | And I said, yeah, that's something so silly.

01:10:35.720 | Like who are the idiots that name a journal

01:10:39.420 | after a brain structure?

01:10:40.960 | Turns out there's also a journal called Cerebral Cortex

01:10:43.100 | and there's probably one about spinal cord.

01:10:44.620 | So it turns out I was the idiot saying this.

01:10:46.660 | And the guy I was talking to,

01:10:48.260 | who of course was the host of the party said,

01:10:50.380 | yeah, actually, that's my journal.

01:10:51.860 | I founded the journal Hippocampus.

01:10:53.420 | So you can look them up.

01:10:54.820 | So at this point, you're going to take a test

01:10:56.980 | and it's a super easy test, okay?

01:10:58.980 | I realized we're a bit into the material

01:11:00.940 | and we're all probably fatiguing a little bit.

01:11:04.160 | Marveling, I hope at what an incredible tool testing

01:11:07.220 | and in particular self-testing soon after

01:11:09.900 | being exposed to new material is.

01:11:12.140 | And the question is this,

01:11:13.860 | and by the way, this is an open-ended question.

01:11:16.220 | You're not supposed to know the answer

01:11:17.900 | 'cause I haven't told you the answer yet,

01:11:19.500 | but I want you to think about this.

01:11:21.260 | If one looks at the majority of data in this whole field

01:11:27.060 | of testing as a studying tool,

01:11:29.540 | how much improvement do you think you get

01:11:33.060 | from testing yourself once on new material?

01:11:36.480 | Do you think it's a 10% improvement, a 20% improvement?

01:11:41.040 | So here I'm just comparing to testing yourself

01:11:42.700 | once on material that you were just exposed to

01:11:45.540 | for the first time versus not testing yourself at all, okay?

01:11:49.000 | How much do you think you improve?

01:11:51.360 | The answer is about 50%, five, zero.

01:11:55.800 | And I can say that on the basis of the fact

01:11:58.360 | that in studies of musical learning,

01:12:01.360 | of mathematical learning, of language learning,

01:12:03.340 | of motor learning,

01:12:04.660 | when subjects are exposed to new material

01:12:06.580 | and then tested at some period of time later,

01:12:09.100 | the percentage of information they get right

01:12:12.540 | or that they are able to perform something correctly

01:12:16.980 | diminishes over time,

01:12:18.840 | especially because they're not doing any practice

01:12:21.620 | and no testing in the intervening time.

01:12:23.840 | This was built into these experiments.

01:12:26.020 | And then you simply ask

01:12:27.260 | how much of the material was forgotten

01:12:30.180 | if they just were exposed to the material.

01:12:33.240 | So in the case of say music learning,

01:12:35.040 | this would be, you know,

01:12:35.880 | your teacher sits down next to you

01:12:37.120 | and shows you the scales on the piano,

01:12:39.760 | but then you're not practicing them in between.

01:12:41.560 | Versus, or perhaps another example would be

01:12:44.720 | somebody gives you a lecture

01:12:45.760 | about a particular phase in history,

01:12:47.820 | and then you're not being exposed to the material again,

01:12:50.280 | and you're not self-testing.

01:12:51.280 | Versus if you just take one test,

01:12:54.040 | even a self-directed test of the material immediately after,

01:12:57.320 | irrespective of how well you perform.

01:12:59.600 | You have the amount of forgetting.

01:13:02.220 | Okay, I want you to think about self-testing in this way,

01:13:05.400 | because we're thinking about optimal studying strategies.

01:13:08.240 | You have the amount of forgetting that would normally occur.

01:13:12.400 | This is oh so important.

01:13:13.620 | In fact, I don't even know that most neuroscientists

01:13:15.960 | think about learning and neuroplasticity this way.

01:13:18.860 | Most everybody, including neuroscientists,

01:13:21.920 | are taught, were taught, continue to be taught

01:13:24.800 | that you're exposed to new material.

01:13:26.080 | You focus, okay, then during sleep,

01:13:27.560 | there's remodeling of the connections.

01:13:29.000 | All that's true.

01:13:30.680 | But we really need to think about how most information

01:13:33.680 | that comes into our nervous system each day is forgotten.

01:13:37.080 | Most of it is completely discarded.

01:13:38.700 | There are some rare clinical deficits

01:13:41.360 | where people remember everything.

01:13:43.320 | And I'll tell you, these people really struggle in life.

01:13:46.180 | They do not do well in work, in relationships.

01:13:49.800 | They remember every little detail of everything,

01:13:52.240 | and it is incredibly disruptive to their quality of life.

01:13:56.200 | It's nothing you want.

01:13:57.720 | You want to have a great memory for the right things.

01:14:00.600 | So when you self-test material,

01:14:04.120 | you have the amount of forgetting that occurs

01:14:07.360 | compared to if you're just exposed to the material.

01:14:09.960 | I want you to keep that fact in mind

01:14:12.320 | because that fact is the one

01:14:13.880 | that really hit me upside the head

01:14:15.800 | and made me realize, goodness gracious,

01:14:18.560 | how I wish that I'd self-tested myself

01:14:21.560 | on material that I wanted to remember over time

01:14:24.620 | rather than reading it over and over.

01:14:26.320 | I had this elaborate process for studying

01:14:28.360 | that I used all through college and graduate school,

01:14:30.120 | and it worked pretty well for me

01:14:31.480 | where I'd read and highlight,

01:14:32.760 | then I'd write out my notes.

01:14:33.880 | Then I would write little paragraphs about that stuff.

01:14:35.980 | Now, some of that probably mimicked self-testing.

01:14:39.220 | Indeed, it had to have.

01:14:40.360 | And then of course I would take the quizzes

01:14:41.880 | and I would go to office hours.

01:14:43.480 | Once I got serious about school,

01:14:44.560 | I got really serious about school.

01:14:46.000 | And of course I still forget things.

01:14:47.520 | I've made errors on this podcast before,

01:14:49.680 | in part from going too fast or making a joke

01:14:51.680 | that people didn't perceive as a joke.

01:14:53.640 | So the whole story there, but in any case,

01:14:55.300 | of course I make errors.

01:14:56.340 | Of course, I've forgotten certain things

01:14:58.300 | and sometimes I misspeak.

01:15:00.380 | I always strive to get things accurately.

01:15:01.820 | We correct things in the show note captions.

01:15:03.860 | If they're called out to us,

01:15:04.820 | we're now using AI to review the podcast

01:15:07.640 | and adjust anywhere using insertions

01:15:09.580 | or actually replacing those words if we need to

01:15:12.180 | and so on and so forth.

01:15:13.180 | But yes, we all forget things.

01:15:15.060 | We all make errors.

01:15:16.620 | But if I had just known that testing myself on material

01:15:21.720 | while walking out of class or soon after getting home

01:15:24.220 | or later that evening or the next day

01:15:26.180 | would allow me to perform so much better

01:15:29.700 | on an exam, a midterm or a final exam.

01:15:32.700 | And of course I still would have studied

01:15:33.940 | because I was committed and you should still study

01:15:35.720 | as much as you feel is necessary

01:15:37.420 | to get mastery of the material for you.

01:15:39.780 | However, if I had known that testing oneself

01:15:43.700 | or being tested soon after exposure to material

01:15:46.060 | would have the amount of forgetting

01:15:47.780 | even out to a year later,

01:15:49.980 | I definitely would have saved myself a lot of time.

01:15:53.260 | Let's talk about some specifics of ways

01:15:55.300 | that you can self-test or if you're a teacher

01:15:57.660 | or if you have good dialogue with your teacher

01:15:59.380 | and they are open-minded,

01:16:01.300 | perhaps they are open to hearing about

01:16:02.820 | what are the best forms of testing oneself

01:16:05.900 | as a tool for learning.

01:16:07.400 | The best tests are open-ended, short answer,

01:16:14.820 | very minimal prompt tests.

01:16:18.240 | Not unlike the type that we've taken today

01:16:20.400 | during this podcast.

01:16:22.080 | As compared to multiple choice tests.

01:16:25.020 | Multiple choice questions allow for familiarity

01:16:28.320 | of names, of facts.

01:16:30.600 | It's going to be A, B, C, D,

01:16:32.000 | and sometimes E is A and C and so on and so forth.

01:16:36.780 | And within each of those A, B, C, D, E answers

01:16:40.040 | and you're looking for the right answer,

01:16:41.400 | you're looking for the familiarity,

01:16:42.980 | the recognition of something.

01:16:44.160 | Yes, this, not that.

01:16:45.480 | Okay, that's the best answer, you circle C, okay?

01:16:48.320 | This kind of thing.

01:16:49.400 | As opposed to an open-ended question

01:16:51.060 | where you have to write out your answer,

01:16:52.600 | you have to recall the information, right?

01:16:55.760 | It requires a much greater degree of mastery

01:16:58.460 | of the information than does familiarity

01:17:01.280 | or recognition of the material.

01:17:03.880 | So the best tests as study tools

01:17:07.160 | are going to be open-ended, short answer questions

01:17:10.180 | or even long answer questions.

01:17:12.200 | Now there's one exception to this,

01:17:14.400 | which are multiple choice tests that include tricks.

01:17:17.760 | Okay, if you've ever taken the GRE,

01:17:19.720 | the Graduate School Entrance Exam,

01:17:21.760 | or the LSAT, or the MCAT,

01:17:24.700 | there are some questions in there

01:17:25.920 | that are very straightforward,

01:17:27.360 | but in those standardized tests,

01:17:29.440 | they tend to include some "trick questions"

01:17:32.900 | in which those questions don't allow you

01:17:35.120 | to just recognize the correct answer

01:17:37.020 | and distinguish it from the other incorrect answers,

01:17:39.920 | but rather they have answers in there

01:17:42.760 | that on first blush look like the right answer

01:17:45.920 | and people have a tendency to circle those and move on

01:17:49.080 | or to select those and move on.

01:17:51.220 | But if you think about the material a little more deeply,

01:17:54.160 | it turns out those "obvious answers"

01:17:57.040 | are actually the incorrect answers.

01:17:59.300 | So there are versions of multiple choice tests

01:18:02.000 | where it requires a greater degree of mastery

01:18:05.420 | of the material,

01:18:06.260 | where simple familiarity won't serve you

01:18:08.380 | and you actually have to be able to recall

01:18:10.420 | the different components of information

01:18:12.240 | leading into that.

01:18:13.580 | But those are a bit more rare,

01:18:15.480 | certainly in the context of other kinds of learning,

01:18:18.380 | like musical learning.

01:18:19.400 | Although I suppose for music theory,

01:18:21.040 | that could be relevant.

01:18:22.360 | But when I say music learning,

01:18:23.680 | I'm just kind of defaulting to the idea

01:18:25.640 | of the mechanics of musical learning,

01:18:27.240 | but of course there's music theory, et cetera.

01:18:29.680 | So what I'm effectively saying is the ultimate exam,

01:18:33.120 | the final exam, the midterm exam,

01:18:35.000 | the exam that's administered to you,

01:18:36.400 | rarely do you have control over the format of that exam.

01:18:39.280 | Sometimes it's mixed format,

01:18:41.040 | but the different ways in which you self-test

01:18:43.400 | as a form of studying are really key.

01:18:45.960 | And ideally you would make these open-ended.

01:18:49.120 | In other words, you would not simply rely

01:18:51.320 | on multiple choice.

01:18:53.480 | You would rely on a form of self-testing

01:18:56.040 | or that you give your students

01:18:57.240 | or that your teacher gives you

01:18:58.280 | that requires you to think about the material

01:19:00.840 | with some degree of depth,

01:19:02.080 | with some degree of effort.

01:19:03.240 | And of course you're going to get certain things wrong.

01:19:05.360 | Now, I would hope that if testing is being used

01:19:07.400 | as a learning tool, as opposed to just for evaluation,

01:19:11.560 | but here we're talking about using testing

01:19:13.880 | as a learning tool, that it wouldn't impact,

01:19:17.880 | at least not at that moment,

01:19:19.400 | your final performance in the course or whatever it is.

01:19:22.520 | Rather, it is testing for sake of learning.

01:19:25.000 | Now, we know from the literature

01:19:27.480 | that students don't like pop quizzes.

01:19:31.000 | I gave you a few today and forgive me.

01:19:32.920 | They don't like pop quizzes.

01:19:34.360 | And we know this in the form of the reduction

01:19:37.760 | in teaching evaluation scores, okay?

01:19:40.520 | Having received teaching evaluation scores

01:19:42.520 | of different, let's say, values over the years.

01:19:45.520 | And I always take the feedback seriously.

01:19:47.560 | One salient comment that just leapt into my mind

01:19:51.720 | was the fact that I ended up mentioning

01:19:53.240 | my bulldog Costello too often in class.

01:19:56.120 | So here I'm mentioning him again,

01:19:57.560 | just to get back at that one student

01:19:59.000 | that said I mentioned him too much.

01:20:00.160 | I mentioned him as much as I want.

01:20:01.740 | The point here is that when students evaluate

01:20:05.200 | their teachers, they tend to punish their teachers

01:20:08.120 | for pop quizzes.

01:20:09.960 | Does that mean pop quizzes aren't effective?

01:20:11.840 | No, but you know what's more effective?

01:20:13.640 | Telling students at the outset of class

01:20:15.560 | or telling yourself at the outset

01:20:17.280 | of any kind of learning expedition,

01:20:20.360 | 'cause this isn't just about the classroom,

01:20:22.920 | that you're going to take a bunch of exams,

01:20:24.520 | that you're going to use testing or quizzes,

01:20:27.440 | whatever you want to call them,

01:20:28.320 | as a form of teaching and learning.

01:20:32.040 | And that you can expect five tests or five quizzes

01:20:35.560 | during the course of being presented the material

01:20:37.960 | or that you are going to test yourself

01:20:39.820 | every day after the material.

01:20:41.040 | Now, sometimes you have to go from one class

01:20:42.680 | to the next class.

01:20:43.520 | There isn't an opportunity to test yourself,

01:20:45.000 | but guess what's not going to be helpful?

01:20:46.920 | Walking out of class and getting immediately

01:20:48.460 | onto your phone.

01:20:49.760 | We know that that probably inhibits your ability

01:20:51.920 | to remember the material

01:20:53.200 | because it's going to enhance forgetting

01:20:55.040 | because you do have this key opportunity

01:20:57.880 | right after being exposed to new material

01:21:00.240 | to help offset the forgetting

01:21:01.960 | by testing yourself on that material

01:21:03.720 | as soon as possible after being exposed to it.

01:21:06.540 | So again, even though I did not attend school

01:21:09.960 | in an era where we had smartphones and texting,

01:21:13.000 | I recall walking out of class

01:21:14.640 | and just walking out of class and going on my bicycle.

01:21:18.540 | But of course there were people to talk to,

01:21:21.640 | there were other things to attend to.

01:21:23.320 | If you're really serious about learning material,

01:21:25.760 | take a few seconds, maybe even a few minutes

01:21:27.880 | after being exposed to that material

01:21:29.280 | and think about that material, test yourself on it.

01:21:31.560 | And if you find that you don't know the material,

01:21:34.240 | you're confused by it or overwhelmed by it, great.

01:21:37.200 | You just accomplished the first step

01:21:39.020 | in cuing your nervous system to the fact

01:21:40.880 | that it needs to learn that material

01:21:42.960 | and you've created an opportunity

01:21:44.760 | for enhanced neuroplasticity,

01:21:46.560 | which is really what all of this stuff

01:21:48.320 | about testing as a form of studying is about.

01:21:51.280 | You're going to test yourself

01:21:52.640 | so that you figure out what you don't know

01:21:55.040 | so that you then look up that material,

01:21:56.880 | test yourself on it again,

01:21:58.600 | so that ultimately you forget very little of it, if any.

01:22:03.600 | Now, there are other components

01:22:04.880 | to learning a neuroplasticity

01:22:06.200 | that I've talked about on previous podcasts

01:22:07.840 | that are just too interesting not to mention,

01:22:09.440 | but I'm just going to mention them in brief,

01:22:11.000 | things like gap effects.

01:22:13.040 | Gap effects are oh so cool

01:22:14.520 | and they've been demonstrated

01:22:15.560 | for lots of different forms of learning.

01:22:17.280 | Gap effects are what I just did,

01:22:20.800 | which is to take periodic pauses

01:22:23.640 | in the learning of material as short as five to 10 seconds,

01:22:27.100 | but even as long as 30 seconds,

01:22:28.640 | during which, guess what?

01:22:30.200 | Your hippocampus, the neurons in your hippocampus

01:22:33.220 | repeat information that you've been exposed to

01:22:35.540 | for the first time at a rate 20 to 30 times faster

01:22:40.160 | than typical, just as it does

01:22:43.160 | during rapid eye movement sleep.

01:22:44.820 | So if you are a teacher and/or if you are a learner,

01:22:48.560 | periodically throughout an episode, a class,

01:22:53.140 | or whatever of trying to learn new motor skills

01:22:55.180 | or music skills or whatever kind of learning,

01:22:57.440 | pause and let your hippocampus

01:23:01.360 | generate more repetitions of that material

01:23:03.680 | than it would otherwise if you just tried to barrel through.

01:23:06.340 | So I realize as we've gone through today's discussion

01:23:08.780 | that words like test and quiz,

01:23:11.140 | evaluation, offsetting, forgetting,

01:23:13.700 | all of that stuff can spike people's cortisol.

01:23:16.800 | It can give us flashbacks

01:23:18.800 | to uncomfortable classroom experiences

01:23:20.960 | related to being called on, cold called for the answer,

01:23:25.120 | a vicious trick that instructors play.

01:23:27.740 | Keep in mind that testing as a form of studying,

01:23:30.480 | whether or not self-directed or given to you by a teacher

01:23:34.080 | is not for sake of evaluation at the level of,

01:23:36.920 | okay, you get an exam at the end of a lecture

01:23:41.920 | and then you do your best to answer those questions

01:23:44.320 | and then you turn it in and it impacts your grade.

01:23:47.160 | No, this is about being told or revealing to yourself

01:23:52.000 | how much you know and don't know.

01:23:53.840 | And then of course being told the correct answer

01:23:55.560 | so that you can compare your answers to the correct answers

01:23:58.360 | and doing this frequently and ideally very soon

01:24:01.100 | after being exposed to the material.

01:24:02.580 | That's one of the key things

01:24:04.360 | that I keep coming back to again and again here

01:24:06.660 | because it's something that frankly was not done

01:24:10.280 | while I was in school for whatever reason.

01:24:13.400 | And I think that's largely

01:24:14.700 | because when people hear the word testing,

01:24:17.260 | they think of evaluation and if anything,

01:24:19.680 | at least in the United States over the last 30 years,

01:24:22.380 | but in particular over the last 15 years,

01:24:24.780 | there's been this tendency to shift away

01:24:26.580 | from formal evaluation.

01:24:28.540 | I personally believe that one can learn

01:24:30.780 | in many different styles and many different contexts.

01:24:33.700 | I, of course, as a university professor

01:24:36.340 | believe that for certain topics,

01:24:38.380 | in particular science and medicine and health,

01:24:40.300 | but other topics as well, of course,

01:24:42.180 | that formal rigorous coursework

01:24:44.260 | is by far the best way to learn information for me.

01:24:47.120 | But that regardless of whether or not you're learning

01:24:50.980 | just from YouTube or you're learning from podcasts

01:24:53.540 | or you're learning from books

01:24:54.380 | or you're learning from the school of life, as it were,

01:24:57.700 | from experience, that testing as a form of studying

01:25:01.660 | is absolutely key.

01:25:03.320 | And gosh, there's such a beautiful body of research.

01:25:06.340 | In fact, I'll link to several studies,

01:25:07.740 | including a review entitled Testing Enhances Learning,

01:25:10.280 | a review of the literature,

01:25:12.320 | as well as a beautiful article, Test Enhanced Learning,

01:25:16.240 | which gets into this.

01:25:17.320 | And there's a wonderful book about this

01:25:19.000 | that I'll also provide a link to in the show note captions.

01:25:21.840 | All of course, authored by researchers

01:25:24.600 | who have worked squarely in this field

01:25:26.180 | and compare the data on testing as a studying tool

01:25:28.800 | to other forms of studying and learning.

01:25:31.560 | So it's a really impressive literature

01:25:34.140 | that I do believe we all should have known about.

01:25:36.840 | And that's why I'm passing it on to you now.

01:25:39.680 | Now, before we wrap up,

01:25:40.880 | I want to make sure that I emphasize

01:25:42.240 | some of the other key components to studying and learning

01:25:45.240 | that have nothing to do with testing as a studying tool.

01:25:48.400 | And those are the role of emotion,

01:25:53.200 | the role of story,

01:25:55.460 | and the role of what's called interleaving.

01:25:58.760 | Now, in terms of emotion,

01:25:59.760 | I think we all inherently understand

01:26:01.760 | that more emotionally laden experiences

01:26:04.860 | are remembered more durably.

01:26:06.600 | We tend not to forget them.

01:26:07.720 | In fact, this is the basis of things like PTSD,

01:26:10.920 | post-traumatic stress disorder.

01:26:12.640 | It is the reality that one trial learning

01:26:16.060 | that is exposure to something and never forgetting it

01:26:18.960 | occurs very readily

01:26:20.700 | when the thing that we're exposed to is negative

01:26:24.680 | or has a very heavy negative emotional salience.

01:26:28.720 | So it could be something we read or something we see.

01:26:31.560 | Sometimes it's something that happens to us.

01:26:33.960 | You know, I don't like the idea of that, but this is true.

01:26:37.280 | Your nervous system is wired such,

01:26:39.480 | neuroplasticity is such that stressful experiences,

01:26:44.480 | because they deploy such massive amounts

01:26:48.080 | of adrenaline epinephrine,

01:26:49.560 | as well as other neuromodulators,

01:26:51.280 | allow very quickly for the milieu,

01:26:55.480 | the environment of the neural circuits

01:26:57.440 | that led up to that experience

01:26:59.480 | to strengthen their connections with one trial,

01:27:01.980 | so-called one trial learning.

01:27:03.600 | This is why, sadly,

01:27:06.800 | although at the same time, from an adaptive perspective,

01:27:09.440 | we say, fortunately, if you were to step outside today

01:27:13.040 | and God forbid, see somebody get hit by a car,

01:27:15.960 | you would remember that.

01:27:18.120 | Chances are you would remember that forever.

01:27:20.260 | Now, that does not mean that the emotional components

01:27:23.860 | of that memory are necessarily going to stay within you.

01:27:27.400 | There are tools for the treatment of PTSD,

01:27:31.440 | such as the different ones that come to mind

01:27:33.880 | are, you know, systematic exposure therapy,

01:27:37.160 | where you're re-exposed to that idea or memory,

01:27:40.940 | sometimes even circumstance,

01:27:42.580 | with, of course, the support of a trained professional,

01:27:46.120 | typically a psychiatrist or psychologist.

01:27:49.000 | And the emotional load of that experience

01:27:51.520 | is gradually uncoupled from your memory of the experience.

01:27:55.040 | There's things like EMDR.

01:27:56.740 | There are pharmacologic approaches.

01:27:58.480 | Some of these are combined

01:27:59.420 | with the sorts of things I've described.

01:28:00.940 | I've done entire episodes about stress and PTSD.

01:28:03.440 | Again, you can find those at hubermanlab.com

01:28:05.160 | by putting stress PTSD into the search function.

01:28:07.740 | However, we know that it is the same neuromodulators,

01:28:14.160 | mainly epinephrine and norepinephrine,

01:28:16.000 | deployed at massive amounts in those moments

01:28:18.360 | where something very stressful happens

01:28:20.200 | that allows the neural circuits

01:28:21.660 | that led up to the circumstance,

01:28:24.180 | as well as the neural circuits that encoded

01:28:26.120 | that visual scene and scenes like it, or sounds like it,

01:28:29.980 | to be locked in and linked to the stress response.

01:28:33.240 | Now, what this is really all saying

01:28:35.600 | is that negative stuff is remembered

01:28:38.520 | typically the first time and every time,

01:28:40.940 | and very durably over time.

01:28:43.120 | As compared to positive experiences,

01:28:45.760 | which as far as peak experiences go, right,

01:28:48.560 | birth of your first child, a wedding,

01:28:51.000 | a wonderful professional or personal experience,

01:28:54.880 | those two can be one trial learning and memory.

01:28:58.120 | But most things that we are exposed to

01:28:59.860 | are not at those extremes, either negative or positive.

01:29:03.940 | However, we know that any kind of story,

01:29:07.740 | any kind of emotional emphasis on material,

01:29:10.860 | either in the delivery of that material,

01:29:12.900 | but certainly in the way that that material

01:29:15.780 | is perceived by you,

01:29:17.060 | like getting really excited

01:29:18.340 | about something you want to learn,

01:29:19.720 | or thinking something's really awful,

01:29:21.860 | is likely to be more readily

01:29:24.220 | and stably committed to your memory.

01:29:26.500 | And that's because of these neuromodulators

01:29:28.460 | like epinephrine and norepinephrine,

01:29:30.020 | but other neuromodulators as well,

01:29:32.060 | that wire those experiences into your neural circuits.

01:29:34.960 | Again, these neuromodulators, epinephrine, norepinephrine,

01:29:37.460 | we also hear about acetylcholine, dopamine, et cetera,

01:29:40.420 | they can operate at low levels

01:29:42.980 | and sort of background levels.

01:29:45.500 | They can create subtle fluctuations

01:29:47.900 | in mood, focus, and attention,

01:29:49.420 | or they can create massive shifts

01:29:51.420 | in mood, focus, and attention,

01:29:52.660 | depending on their levels, their timing,

01:29:54.260 | and much, much more.

01:29:55.780 | The point here is that if you're a teacher

01:29:58.240 | and/or if you are a learner,

01:30:00.160 | paying attention to your internal state

01:30:02.980 | as you're trying to learn is very key.

01:30:05.340 | We've all had that teacher,

01:30:06.900 | that lecture that just kind of drones things out

01:30:09.040 | and monotone.

01:30:09.880 | If you need to learn the material

01:30:11.300 | coming out of a source like that, person or otherwise,

01:30:14.340 | you're going to have to ramp up

01:30:15.540 | your level of internal attention consciously

01:30:17.980 | in order to bring about some emotional salience,

01:30:20.740 | some intensity to the way it's perceived.

01:30:23.940 | And you can do that just through your own thinking,

01:30:27.020 | as opposed to the situation

01:30:29.060 | where you have a super dynamic teacher

01:30:30.900 | who's telling you things with wide eyes

01:30:32.600 | and perhaps even cracking jokes.

01:30:34.040 | By the way, the teachers that crack jokes

01:30:35.480 | get lower teacher evaluations

01:30:37.800 | than those that don't crack jokes or swear.

01:30:39.920 | Didn't you know that?

01:30:40.760 | Teachers that crack jokes and swear,

01:30:42.640 | they're perceived as more likable,

01:30:43.920 | but they get lower overall evaluations typically.

01:30:46.560 | They're seen as less professional

01:30:48.120 | and therefore less good teachers by their students.

01:30:51.660 | So I try not to make too many jokes

01:30:53.600 | or swear in my lectures.

01:30:56.160 | The point being that we all have

01:30:59.120 | those really wonderful dynamic teachers.

01:31:01.080 | Yes, it's much easier to learn and remember that material.

01:31:04.480 | You still need to test yourself on it,

01:31:06.000 | but it's much easier to learn that material

01:31:08.080 | for the very reasons I stated before.

01:31:10.420 | It's a lesser example of more deployment

01:31:13.240 | of the neuromodulators in you, the learner,

01:31:15.840 | that is exposed to that material, okay?

01:31:18.240 | So emotion matters.

01:31:19.880 | So much so that in a beautiful review

01:31:22.240 | about learning and memory from the great James McGaugh,

01:31:24.720 | one of the luminaries in modern neuroscience

01:31:26.800 | and psychology of memory,

01:31:28.520 | he talked about a medieval practice, this is pre-wild,

01:31:31.560 | whereby people and kids, kids are people of course,

01:31:35.820 | but adults and kids were taught information

01:31:39.680 | and then thrown, literally thrown into cold water.

01:31:43.180 | Why?

01:31:44.020 | To deploy adrenaline and consolidate memory

01:31:46.560 | of the material they were exposed to.

01:31:48.460 | Now, I know we've covered deliberate cold exposure

01:31:51.160 | on this podcast before.

01:31:52.880 | No, I'm not saying you need to do a cold plunge

01:31:54.920 | after being exposed to new material, but guess what?

01:31:57.860 | They were doing that many hundreds of years ago

01:31:59.840 | and it makes sense logically based on all our understanding

01:32:04.140 | of the neurobiology underlying things like PTSD,

01:32:07.320 | underlying emotion-laden memory formation and consolidation

01:32:11.240 | and our ability to remember things

01:32:13.720 | that were emotionally laden,

01:32:15.000 | much better than things that were less emotionally laden.

01:32:17.680 | So if you want to take a cold shower

01:32:19.900 | after learning some material

01:32:21.140 | or even better testing yourself mentally on that material

01:32:25.080 | while in a cold shower or cold plunge, you certainly can.

01:32:27.960 | Just don't stay in there too long, use best practices.

01:32:31.120 | If you want to know what those best practices are

01:32:32.880 | for deliberate cold exposure,

01:32:34.680 | you can check out our deliberate cold exposure newsletter

01:32:36.880 | at hubermanlab.com, it's completely zero cost.

01:32:39.360 | You don't even need to sign up.

01:32:40.340 | You simply go to newsletter in the menu tab

01:32:42.200 | and you can find that PDF.

01:32:44.600 | And now because you are becoming proficient

01:32:46.520 | in an understanding of neuroplasticity and learning

01:32:48.560 | and testing and neuromodulators like epinephrine,

01:32:50.960 | yes, drinking caffeine will increase your levels

01:32:53.540 | of epinephrine, not strikingly so,

01:32:56.860 | but enough that it probably helps you learn things

01:32:59.180 | a little bit better.

01:33:00.020 | Should you drink the coffee after?

01:33:01.280 | Listen, that's getting a little bit too down in the details.

01:33:04.640 | The most important components to learning

01:33:06.640 | are that you be alert so that you can attend,

01:33:09.340 | so you can pay attention to the material

01:33:11.400 | you're trying to learn and then testing yourself later.

01:33:13.740 | And of course the other component,

01:33:16.000 | which is getting sufficient amounts

01:33:17.660 | of great sleep each night.

01:33:19.340 | And I highly recommend doing NSDR.

01:33:22.020 | I mentioned gap effects before.

01:33:23.980 | Those are very, very cool.

01:33:25.340 | I just used another one now.

01:33:28.040 | And the final tool for studying

01:33:30.440 | that I believe is not discussed enough

01:33:32.380 | and is a bit counterintuitive.

01:33:33.660 | So it's a fun one to just mention.

01:33:35.660 | And that perhaps you can explore

01:33:37.140 | in your own studying and learning adventures

01:33:39.580 | is interleaving of information.

01:33:41.580 | This one's kind of wild actually.

01:33:43.920 | Turns out that if your instructor or you

01:33:48.840 | takes information about something

01:33:50.860 | that they're trying to teach you

01:33:51.700 | or you're trying to learn,

01:33:53.060 | maybe it's piano, maybe it's neuroscience,

01:33:55.420 | maybe it's how to learn better.

01:33:57.140 | And every once in a while

01:33:58.100 | throws in a little anecdote about something.

01:34:00.780 | Let's just say, or mention something about the Olympics

01:34:05.780 | or incorporate something that seems pseudo random

01:34:09.740 | because it's not actually related

01:34:11.460 | to the material you're trying to learn.

01:34:13.580 | Turns out that that acts not as a gap

01:34:16.300 | in the same sense that gap effects,

01:34:17.700 | which are times in which you do nothing

01:34:20.420 | in order to get more repetitions

01:34:22.060 | of the material that you just heard in your hippocampus,

01:34:24.980 | but rather those breaks of interleaving information,

01:34:28.580 | not just getting a steady barrage,

01:34:30.360 | like drinking from a fire hose of new information

01:34:32.620 | from start to finish,

01:34:34.220 | turn out to enhance overall learning ability.

01:34:37.100 | Probably we think at a mechanistic level

01:34:41.220 | because the neural circuits

01:34:42.660 | are able to generate more repetition,

01:34:44.220 | similar to gap effects.

01:34:45.880 | But actually in a very interesting way,

01:34:48.300 | also because by injecting other information

01:34:53.300 | that seems totally unrelated, random or pseudo random,

01:34:58.120 | it allows the brain areas

01:34:59.540 | that are responsible for encoding information

01:35:02.300 | to take whatever new information you're learning

01:35:04.740 | and to incorporate it with existing knowledge

01:35:07.380 | or even distantly related knowledge.

01:35:09.300 | So does this mean that you should learn math

01:35:11.580 | and history in the same lecture?

01:35:12.900 | Well, I think that might be a bit overwhelming,

01:35:14.660 | kind of like drinking from two fire hoses.

01:35:16.240 | Here we're talking about interleaving,

01:35:18.320 | challenging information that's new to you

01:35:20.960 | with little anecdotes,

01:35:23.120 | little bits of information that perhaps are new to you,

01:35:25.320 | but don't require a lot of challenge,

01:35:27.200 | which is of course why every once in a while

01:35:28.720 | I throw in a little anecdote about my bulldog

01:35:31.240 | or learning neuroanatomy or something of that sort.

01:35:34.760 | It's not just to provide a break,

01:35:36.220 | it's to provide examples that are related,

01:35:38.800 | but not central to the material

01:35:40.240 | that we've been talking about today,

01:35:41.880 | which is all about how to study and learn optimally.

01:35:45.760 | Okay, so I realize that many of you

01:35:48.160 | are not students any longer,

01:35:49.840 | although some of you are,

01:35:51.240 | but in many ways, we are all students.

01:35:53.400 | We are all constantly being exposed

01:35:55.280 | to all sorts of information out in the world.

01:35:56.980 | And goodness knows, thank goodness we don't remember it all,

01:36:01.360 | but there is of course information

01:36:03.020 | that we would like to remember,

01:36:04.540 | that we would really like to consolidate in our memory

01:36:08.140 | and be able to have some mastery over.

01:36:10.340 | Earlier I said I would distinguish

01:36:11.760 | between unskilled, skilled, mastery, and virtuosity,

01:36:14.060 | and I'll do that now.

01:36:15.360 | Unskilled of course means that we have limited understanding

01:36:18.100 | let alone ability to use information.

01:36:20.800 | Skilled typically means we know and can recognize

01:36:23.300 | and use information in basic ways or even advanced ways.

01:36:27.880 | Mastery typically means that we have, you know,

01:36:30.580 | close to the full depth of knowledge in a given area

01:36:33.260 | and that we can use it pretty flexibly.

01:36:35.480 | And virtuosity, at least my definition of virtuosity,

01:36:38.560 | is where we actually have such mastery of material

01:36:42.760 | that we can use it in ways

01:36:44.920 | that we still don't even know how we can use,

01:36:48.040 | meaning that we can inject elements

01:36:50.320 | or we even invite elements of uncertainty

01:36:53.160 | and kind of spontaneity into the use of that material.

01:36:55.560 | Here I'm thinking of great musicians,

01:36:57.180 | I'm thinking of great athletes

01:36:58.440 | where they know all the plays, they know all the moves,

01:37:00.840 | it's all scripted into their nervous system

01:37:02.440 | and they can deploy those at any time

01:37:03.960 | so they have real mastery.

01:37:05.400 | But in order to display their incredible abilities,

01:37:10.280 | their virtuosity, they actively invite in the X factor,

01:37:14.520 | the uncertainty such that sometimes they find themselves

01:37:17.320 | playing their instrument or singing

01:37:19.320 | or performing athletically or mathematically

01:37:22.160 | or what have you in ways that even surprise them.

01:37:25.960 | And that of course is a lot to expect of ourselves.

01:37:28.840 | I think most of us would be content to have skill

01:37:32.840 | and mastery of the things that we care about

01:37:35.000 | and should we achieve virtuosity, then wonderful.

01:37:38.680 | But one of the main points of today's discussion

01:37:40.720 | was to arm you with an understanding of neuroplasticity

01:37:43.680 | in the context of studying and learning,

01:37:45.720 | to really understand that so much of learning

01:37:48.320 | stably and consolidating information over time

01:37:51.640 | is to offset the forgetting process.

01:37:53.760 | And that testing is not just a tool

01:37:55.860 | for evaluating our knowledge,

01:37:57.320 | but rather a tool for evaluating

01:37:59.440 | and reinforcing and building our knowledge.

01:38:02.400 | Put differently, that testing is an excellent tool,

01:38:05.760 | if not the best tool for studying.

01:38:08.760 | And I think that's an important reframe

01:38:10.560 | that others have brought about

01:38:12.040 | and that I really want to highlight, underline

01:38:14.480 | and boldface during today's discussion.

01:38:17.320 | It's one that I certainly wish I had applied more

01:38:20.180 | in my educational trajectory.

01:38:21.720 | And it's one that I plan to deploy further

01:38:24.260 | in my seeking out of new knowledge

01:38:27.160 | in terms of the podcast and neuroscience,

01:38:29.160 | but in other areas of my life as well.

01:38:31.160 | Because from the existing literature

01:38:32.960 | and hopefully from the way it was presented to you today,

01:38:35.840 | you probably realize that it is near infinite,

01:38:39.520 | if not infinite, that we can apply testing

01:38:43.120 | as a tool for studying, self-testing, testing of others,

01:38:46.340 | using testing as a way to really probe

01:38:48.840 | what we know and don't know

01:38:49.960 | and to really offset that forgetting process.

01:38:52.080 | And in that sense, it is really nicely aligned

01:38:55.600 | with what we know about neuroplasticity.

01:38:58.120 | And it's also something that we can use freely

01:39:01.200 | and that you can use covertly,

01:39:03.220 | that you can apply in your own seeking out

01:39:05.720 | of knowledge and new skills of all kinds,

01:39:08.320 | classroom or otherwise.

01:39:10.240 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

01:39:12.740 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

01:39:14.420 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

01:39:16.920 | Another terrific zero cost way to support us

01:39:18.820 | is to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple.

01:39:21.720 | And on both Spotify and Apple,

01:39:23.160 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

01:39:25.560 | Please check out the sponsors mentioned

01:39:27.280 | at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

01:39:29.400 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

01:39:32.160 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

01:39:34.860 | or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider

01:39:36.800 | for the "Huberman Lab" podcast,

01:39:38.320 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

01:39:40.720 | I do read all the comments.

01:39:42.460 | For those of you that haven't heard,

01:39:43.600 | I have a new book coming out.

01:39:44.800 | It's my very first book.

01:39:46.400 | It's entitled "Protocols,

01:39:47.820 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

01:39:49.960 | This is a book that I've been working on

01:39:51.140 | for more than five years,

01:39:52.280 | and that's based on more than 30 years

01:39:54.620 | of research and experience.

01:39:56.160 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep,

01:39:59.240 | to exercise, to stress control,

01:40:01.720 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

01:40:04.200 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

01:40:07.560 | for the protocols that are included.

01:40:09.620 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

01:40:13.520 | There you can find links to various vendors.

01:40:15.880 | You can pick the one that you like best.

01:40:17.640 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

01:40:19.440 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

01:40:22.260 | If you're not already following me on social media,

01:40:24.440 | I'm Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

01:40:27.140 | So that's Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter,

01:40:30.000 | Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

01:40:31.600 | And on all those platforms,

01:40:33.300 | I cover science and science-related tools,

01:40:35.280 | some of which overlaps with the content

01:40:36.840 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

01:40:38.160 | but much of which is distinct from the content

01:40:40.360 | on the Huberman Lab podcast.

01:40:41.680 | Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

01:40:44.840 | If you haven't already subscribed

01:40:46.020 | to our Neural Network Newsletter,

01:40:47.520 | our Neural Network Newsletter

01:40:48.880 | is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that has protocols,

01:40:52.460 | which are one- to three-page PDFs

01:40:54.680 | that describe things like optimizing your sleep,

01:40:57.780 | how to optimize your dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

01:41:00.540 | We have a foundational fitness protocol

01:41:02.420 | that describes resistance training, sets and reps,

01:41:04.740 | and all of that, as well as cardiovascular training

01:41:06.940 | that's supported by the scientific research.

01:41:09.100 | And we have protocols related

01:41:10.460 | to neuroplasticity and learning.

01:41:13.020 | Again, you can find all that at completely zero cost

01:41:15.200 | by going to HubermanLab.com.

01:41:16.880 | Go to the Menu tab in the right corner,

01:41:18.980 | scroll down to Newsletter.

01:41:20.400 | You put in your email,

01:41:21.320 | and we do not share your email with anybody.

01:41:24.400 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion,

01:41:26.920 | all about how to study and learn.

01:41:29.280 | And last, but certainly not least,

01:41:31.660 | thank you for your interest in science.

01:41:33.780 | (upbeat music)

01:41:36.360 | (upbeat music)

Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

Chapters