Using Failures, Movement & Balance to Learn Faster

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

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.920 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | My name is Andrew Huberman

00:00:10.800 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.520 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.400 | This podcast is separate from my teaching

00:00:17.080 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:00:18.840 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:00:20.800 | to bring you zero cost to consumer information

00:00:22.920 | about science and science-related tools.

00:00:25.880 | In keeping with that theme,

00:00:26.920 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:00:29.760 | Our first sponsor is Headspace.

00:00:32.440 | Headspace is a meditation app that makes meditation easy.

00:00:35.880 | I've been meditating on and off now for about 30 years,

00:00:39.040 | although I confess more off than on.

00:00:41.560 | And that's because I think, like, for a lot of people,

00:00:44.220 | sticking to a meditation practice can be pretty challenging.

00:00:47.600 | I started using Headspace a few years ago,

00:00:49.920 | and I found that it's really allowed me

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00:01:06.660 | I started using these meditations

00:01:08.060 | while I was flying a few years back.

00:01:10.360 | On JetBlue flights,

00:01:11.280 | they started offering Headspace meditation,

00:01:12.960 | so that's where I initially started,

00:01:14.280 | and then I moved over to the app, and I really enjoy it,

00:01:17.120 | and I derive great benefit from it.

00:01:19.240 | If you'd like to try Headspace,

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00:01:39.420 | The second sponsor of today's podcast is Athletic Greens.

00:01:42.620 | Athletic Greens is an all-in-one

00:01:44.380 | vitamin mineral probiotic drink.

00:01:47.060 | I started using Athletic Greens in 2012,

00:01:50.100 | and I've been using it continuously ever since.

00:01:52.800 | I started using Athletic Greens

00:01:54.440 | because I found it rather dizzying to know

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00:02:07.980 | I mix mine with some lemon juice and some water.

00:02:10.260 | I'll drink it once or twice a day.

00:02:12.380 | The probiotics in Athletic Greens are also important to me

00:02:15.120 | because there are a lot of data now supporting

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00:02:27.400 | that having a healthy gut microbiome

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00:02:30.580 | So by taking Athletic Greens,

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00:02:33.940 | If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

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00:03:13.680 | The third sponsor of today's podcast is Made For.

00:03:16.480 | Made For is a behavioral science company

00:03:18.160 | that makes learning positive habits and growth mindset easy.

00:03:21.760 | I've been involved with Made For since the beginning

00:03:24.380 | as the lead of their scientific advisory.

00:03:27.080 | Other members of the scientific advisory include,

00:03:28.980 | for instance, the head of the Chronobiology Unit

00:03:31.040 | at the National Institutes of Mental Health,

00:03:33.160 | as well as psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School

00:03:35.620 | and elsewhere, all of whom are serious about science

00:03:38.080 | and science-related tools for developing positive habits

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00:03:42.520 | The program is a 10-month program

00:03:44.580 | during which each month you engage in a specific activity

00:03:47.960 | designed to encourage and cultivate positive habits

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00:03:53.220 | As well, we hold a monthly Zoom call

00:03:55.160 | during which we discuss the program, people's progress,

00:03:57.920 | and answer any questions they have directly.

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00:04:13.680 | Today, we're going to talk about

00:04:14.840 | how to change your nervous system for the better.

00:04:18.000 | As you recall, your nervous system

00:04:19.460 | includes your brain and your spinal cord,

00:04:22.280 | but also all the connections that your brain and spinal cord

00:04:25.240 | make with the organs of your body

00:04:27.500 | and all the connections that the organs of your body

00:04:30.320 | make with your brain and spinal cord.

00:04:32.520 | Now, this thing that we call the nervous system

00:04:34.180 | is responsible for everything we know,

00:04:36.800 | all our behavior, all our emotions,

00:04:39.400 | everything we feel about ourselves and the outside world,

00:04:42.080 | everything we think and believe, it's really at the center

00:04:45.160 | of our entire experience of life and who we are.

00:04:48.440 | Fortunately, in humans, unlike in other species,

00:04:53.440 | we can change our nervous system

00:04:55.520 | by taking some very specific and deliberate actions.

00:04:59.000 | And today, we're really going to focus on the actions,

00:05:02.140 | the motor commands and the aspects of movement and balance

00:05:07.140 | that allow us to change our nervous system.

00:05:09.840 | It turns out that movement and balance

00:05:12.280 | actually provide windows or portals into our ability

00:05:16.120 | to change our nervous system the way we want,

00:05:18.600 | even if those changes are not about learning new movements

00:05:22.600 | or learning how to balance, and soon you'll understand why.

00:05:26.320 | So today, we're going to talk a lot about

00:05:28.480 | the basic science of neuroplasticity.

00:05:31.520 | I promise to not use excessive nomenclature,

00:05:34.120 | there'll be a little bit,

00:05:35.240 | but I'll try and make it as clear as possible.

00:05:37.820 | And we're also going to talk a lot about protocols and tools

00:05:41.540 | that the scientific literature points to and supports

00:05:45.620 | for changing our nervous system.

00:05:47.400 | Again, not just for sake of learning new motor movements

00:05:50.380 | or how to balance better, but for how to feel differently

00:05:54.000 | about particular experiences, both past, present and future,

00:05:57.760 | as well as how to learn faster.

00:06:00.680 | We're not going to discuss hacks, a word I loathe,

00:06:03.640 | we're not going to discuss gimmicks,

00:06:05.600 | we're going to discuss mechanism and scientific data

00:06:09.160 | and the tools that those mechanisms and scientific data

00:06:12.020 | point to so that you can tailor your practices

00:06:15.300 | around learning to your specific needs and goals.

00:06:19.280 | So let's begin by just examining the big picture question,

00:06:23.100 | which is does the brain control behavior?

00:06:27.100 | And my hope is that everyone is immediately thinking yes.

00:06:30.580 | The brain and nervous system, we really should say,

00:06:33.240 | 'cause the brain is just one component of the nervous system

00:06:35.580 | controls our behavior.

00:06:37.800 | How does it do that?

00:06:39.300 | Well, there are a couple of different levels

00:06:41.060 | that it does that.

00:06:42.400 | First of all, if we're talking about movement,

00:06:45.140 | behavior generally means movement.

00:06:47.680 | If we're talking about movement,

00:06:50.080 | we have two categories of neurons

00:06:53.000 | that are very important to think about

00:06:54.560 | in the context of neuroplasticity.

00:06:56.200 | First of all, we have what are called lower motor neurons.

00:07:01.000 | These are motor neurons that live in our spinal cord.

00:07:04.760 | If for the aficionados out there,

00:07:06.520 | for those of you that might be head to medical school

00:07:08.500 | or just want to learn more about the anatomy,

00:07:09.940 | they live in the ventral horn of the spinal cord,

00:07:11.860 | but that doesn't matter.

00:07:13.260 | If you don't want to know that,

00:07:14.540 | just know that you have these things

00:07:15.680 | called lower motor neurons.

00:07:17.680 | These are neurons that are in the spinal cord,

00:07:20.180 | but they extend a wire that we call an axon

00:07:22.580 | out into the peripheral nervous system, into the body.

00:07:26.180 | And those neurons connect with muscle.

00:07:29.900 | They send electrical potentials out there

00:07:33.080 | that allow our muscles to twitch and to contract.

00:07:35.860 | As a little point of fact, actually,

00:07:39.500 | we don't have muscle memory.

00:07:41.020 | There's no such thing as muscle memory.

00:07:42.920 | Muscles are dumb.

00:07:44.300 | They don't know anything.

00:07:45.900 | They don't have a history.

00:07:47.260 | They don't have a memory.

00:07:48.320 | They don't know anything.

00:07:49.300 | It is the neurons that control those muscles

00:07:52.460 | and their firing patterns in which all the information

00:07:56.500 | for motor patterns are stored.

00:07:58.840 | So your ability to walk is not muscle memory,

00:08:01.380 | it's neural memory.

00:08:03.140 | Now, the lower motor neurons,

00:08:06.500 | while smarter than the muscle, so to speak,

00:08:09.160 | are not the most brilliant of the motor neurons.

00:08:12.180 | They are generally involved in doing what they are told.

00:08:16.360 | And they are told what to do from two sources.

00:08:20.140 | We have circuits in our brainstem.

00:08:22.560 | So this would be kind of around your neck, deep in the brain

00:08:25.540 | that are called central pattern generators.

00:08:28.160 | These are sometimes called CPGs.

00:08:29.940 | Central pattern generators are what allow us

00:08:31.980 | to generate repetitive patterns of movement.

00:08:34.780 | So inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling,

00:08:37.360 | subconsciously is controlled by a central pattern generator.

00:08:41.160 | That just means a collection of neurons.

00:08:43.000 | If you really want to know,

00:08:43.840 | they're called the pre-bot singer neurons

00:08:45.220 | discovered by Jack Feldman and colleagues at UCLA.

00:08:47.860 | These neurons in the brainstem send information

00:08:51.020 | down the phrenic nerve and control the diaphragm.

00:08:54.620 | So it goes inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

00:08:57.700 | And you don't have to think about that.

00:08:58.860 | You could think about it and you could change the durations

00:09:01.120 | of inhales and exhales and change that up.

00:09:03.380 | But the motor neurons that control that are just responding

00:09:07.100 | to what the brain is telling it to do.

00:09:09.340 | The other central pattern generators

00:09:13.180 | include things like walking.

00:09:15.860 | The right limb, left limb, right limb, left limb pattern

00:09:19.840 | that we normally associate with walking

00:09:21.820 | was learned during childhood.

00:09:23.300 | And the central pattern generator, sometimes called CPGs,

00:09:26.640 | tell our lower motor neurons fire.

00:09:29.960 | Now you fire, now you fire.

00:09:31.400 | So they are literally saying right, left, right, left.

00:09:34.600 | They are the marching orders from the brainstem

00:09:37.000 | to the lower motor neurons.

00:09:38.400 | So these lower motor neurons do what they are told.

00:09:40.320 | They are obedient little soldiers

00:09:42.120 | and they do what they are told.

00:09:43.960 | And their job is to make the muscles contract

00:09:47.380 | at specific times.

00:09:49.440 | Okay, that's all simple.

00:09:52.140 | But then there are the upper motor neurons.

00:09:54.360 | The upper motor neurons actually reside in our motor cortex,

00:09:58.820 | way up on top of the brain.

00:10:01.000 | And they are involved in sending signals

00:10:04.360 | for deliberate action, okay?

00:10:06.720 | So they send signals to the lower motor neurons,

00:10:09.320 | which are the effectors,

00:10:10.280 | the ones that actually control the muscles,

00:10:12.840 | but the upper motor neurons are the ones

00:10:14.960 | that send very specific signals.

00:10:17.020 | For instance, the signals that would allow you

00:10:19.180 | to make a cup of coffee in the morning

00:10:20.960 | or to deliberately engage in any kind of behavior.

00:10:24.020 | Now you can probably make a cup of coffee in the morning

00:10:26.200 | without having to think about it too much.

00:10:27.640 | It's almost reflexive for you now,

00:10:29.640 | which means that a lot of the information

00:10:31.960 | about how to perform that particular movement

00:10:34.520 | has been passed off to circuitry

00:10:37.220 | that's now more or less in the brainstem

00:10:40.000 | and below the motor cortex.

00:10:42.240 | Now, why am I giving you all this detail?

00:10:44.360 | Well, if you want to change motor patterns,

00:10:48.200 | you have to know where in the circuitry changes are possible

00:10:51.760 | and you ought to know where the changes

00:10:54.260 | are most likely to occur.

00:10:56.300 | You also need to know how do you signal

00:10:58.980 | to the brain and nervous system that a change is necessary.

00:11:03.500 | So let's just pause there,

00:11:05.560 | return to the initial question that we started with,

00:11:07.800 | which is does the brain control behavior?

00:11:10.180 | And the answer is yes, and now you know how.

00:11:12.720 | It's upper motor neurons, lower motor neurons.

00:11:15.780 | You've got these things called central pattern generators

00:11:17.680 | and some connection with the muscle.

00:11:18.880 | So there you go.

00:11:19.720 | So we've just got basically what was the equivalent

00:11:22.680 | of the introduction to a college lecture

00:11:25.260 | on motor control in the nervous system,

00:11:27.560 | but the point today is all about plasticity.

00:11:30.240 | How can that be leveraged in order to open up

00:11:33.920 | this magical thing that we call plasticity

00:11:36.720 | in order to access changes to our emotional experience

00:11:40.480 | or to our belief system or to our ability to remember

00:11:45.480 | and use specific kinds of information

00:11:47.360 | for say math or language, et cetera?

00:11:50.400 | Well, what I'm not going to tell you

00:11:52.980 | is that you need to go running or you need to go biking

00:11:56.340 | or that simply going through motor patterns

00:11:59.260 | is going to open up plasticity,

00:12:00.840 | because I hate to tell you this,

00:12:02.320 | but as beneficial as exercise is,

00:12:04.960 | it does not open plasticity unless you do certain things.

00:12:09.960 | And I will tell you exactly

00:12:11.440 | what those certain things are today.

00:12:13.640 | To be clear, I think exercise is wonderful and healthy,

00:12:16.120 | can improve cardiovascular function,

00:12:17.640 | maintain strength, bone density, all that good stuff,

00:12:20.420 | but just working out or doing your exercise

00:12:23.600 | of various kinds will not change your nervous system.

00:12:26.680 | It will maintain it

00:12:27.880 | and it can certainly improve other health metrics,

00:12:30.320 | but it is not going to open up the window for plasticity.

00:12:33.920 | The question we need to ask

00:12:37.680 | is can behavior change the brain?

00:12:40.240 | We already agreed that the brain can change behavior,

00:12:43.240 | but can behavior change the brain?

00:12:46.200 | And the answer is yes, provided that behavior

00:12:50.000 | is different enough in specific ways

00:12:52.600 | from the behaviors that you already know how to perform.

00:12:55.840 | Let me repeat that.

00:12:56.920 | Can behavior change the brain?

00:12:58.880 | And the answer is yes,

00:13:00.420 | provided that behavior is different enough

00:13:03.160 | from the sorts of behaviors

00:13:04.480 | that you already know how to perform.

00:13:06.940 | And I should have added the word well,

00:13:09.280 | because you can't obviously perform a behavior

00:13:11.760 | that you don't know how to perform

00:13:13.540 | because you don't know how to do it yet.

00:13:14.920 | But there's a key element to accessing neuroplasticity

00:13:19.440 | that frankly, I don't see out there

00:13:22.000 | in the general discussion about neuroplasticity.

00:13:25.060 | In the general discussion about neuroplasticity

00:13:27.200 | and about learning, I hear all these gimmicks

00:13:29.200 | about using different ways to remember lots of people's names

00:13:32.240 | and arranging things into their first letters

00:13:34.600 | and mnemonics and all this kind of stuff,

00:13:36.320 | which frankly to me feels really gimmicky.

00:13:38.880 | And I think that if you look at super learners,

00:13:42.320 | they tend to be people that have a process

00:13:44.960 | of say extreme memory,

00:13:47.440 | but people who have extreme memory,

00:13:49.820 | generally the literature shows us

00:13:51.760 | are pretty poor at other things.

00:13:53.760 | So I don't think most of us are interested

00:13:56.240 | in walking around knowing how to remember everything.

00:13:58.880 | In fact, there are some interesting studies

00:14:00.900 | looking at humans who over-remember

00:14:04.600 | and they suffer tremendously

00:14:06.040 | because they remember all sorts of things

00:14:07.520 | like the number at the top of the receipt at the bodega

00:14:09.880 | that they bought at Coca-Cola 10 years ago.

00:14:12.420 | This is useless information for most people.

00:14:16.120 | They don't do well in life really.

00:14:18.960 | So the goal isn't to remember everything,

00:14:20.720 | the goal is to be selective about your brain changes.

00:14:23.600 | And when we talk about brain changes,

00:14:25.200 | I want to highlight adaptive changes.

00:14:28.300 | There's a whole category of things

00:14:29.800 | that we're going to discuss

00:14:30.680 | when we talk about traumatic brain injury and dementia,

00:14:33.000 | a topic for a future episode,

00:14:35.480 | about all the things that happen

00:14:37.480 | when you have damaged your nervous system

00:14:39.520 | or you're missing neurons.

00:14:40.520 | But today, I really want to talk about

00:14:42.640 | something that I think is very near and dear

00:14:44.400 | to many of your hearts,

00:14:45.240 | which is what are the behaviors that you can engage in

00:14:47.880 | to access neuroplasticity

00:14:50.120 | so that then you can apply that plasticity

00:14:54.400 | to the specific things that you want to learn or unlearn.

00:14:57.420 | This is very important

00:14:59.720 | because I don't want people to get the impression

00:15:03.140 | that we're really talking about

00:15:04.080 | learning a bunch of motor movements.

00:15:05.880 | You may be an athlete, you might not be an athlete.

00:15:07.840 | You might want to learn how to dance, you might not.

00:15:10.260 | You might want to learn how to dance

00:15:11.560 | and get better at remembering and learning languages,

00:15:14.120 | for instance, or at unlearning

00:15:16.640 | some difficult emotional experience,

00:15:19.700 | meaning you want to remove the emotional load

00:15:21.680 | from a particular memory of an experience.

00:15:24.080 | What we're talking about today is using behavior as a gate

00:15:27.760 | to enter states of mind and body

00:15:30.840 | that allow you to access plasticity.

00:15:33.880 | So let's talk about the different kinds of plasticity

00:15:37.220 | that are available to us,

00:15:39.420 | because those will point directly

00:15:41.480 | towards the type of protocols that we should engage in

00:15:44.800 | to change ourselves for the better,

00:15:46.580 | the so-called adaptive plasticity.

00:15:48.500 | There is something called representational plasticity.

00:15:52.740 | Representational plasticity

00:15:54.200 | is just your internal representation of the outside world.

00:15:57.280 | So you have a map of auditory space, believe it or not,

00:16:00.220 | meaning you have neurons that respond

00:16:02.060 | when something over on my right happens,

00:16:04.300 | like I'm snapping my fingers over to my right,

00:16:06.360 | can't snap as well on my left,

00:16:07.560 | which is the whole thing into itself.

00:16:10.980 | Yeah, weak over there on the left side.

00:16:12.840 | But when I do that,

00:16:14.400 | there are different neurons respond to those.

00:16:17.320 | We have a map of visual space.

00:16:19.240 | Certain neurons are seeing things

00:16:20.500 | in certain portions of visual space and not others.

00:16:22.620 | We have a map of motor space,

00:16:25.300 | meaning when we move our limbs in particular directions,

00:16:27.760 | we know where those limbs are

00:16:30.020 | because even if we can't see them,

00:16:32.200 | we have what's called proprioceptive feedback.

00:16:34.440 | So we have knowledge about where our limbs are.

00:16:36.580 | In fact, people that lack certain neurons

00:16:38.920 | for proprioceptive feedback,

00:16:41.060 | they are very poor at controlling their motor behavior.

00:16:44.120 | They get injured a lot.

00:16:45.200 | It's actually a terrible situation.

00:16:47.520 | So we've got all these representations inside

00:16:51.920 | and we have maps of our motor commands.

00:16:56.160 | We know that, for instance,

00:16:57.340 | if I want to reach out and grab the pen in front of me,

00:16:59.180 | that I need to generate a certain amount of force,

00:17:01.460 | so I rarely overshoot.

00:17:03.260 | I rarely miss the pen, okay?

00:17:05.760 | So our maps of the motor world

00:17:08.480 | and our maps of the sensory world are merged.

00:17:11.440 | The way to create plasticity

00:17:16.520 | is to create mismatches or errors in how we perform things.

00:17:21.280 | And this, I think, is an amazing and important feature

00:17:24.220 | of neuroplasticity that is highly underappreciated.

00:17:27.960 | The way to create plasticity

00:17:30.800 | is to send signals to the brain that something is wrong,

00:17:35.340 | something is different, and something isn't being achieved.

00:17:38.820 | I think this will completely reframe

00:17:40.460 | the way that most people think about plasticity.

00:17:42.240 | Most of us think about plasticity as,

00:17:44.240 | okay, we're going to get into this optimal learning state

00:17:47.080 | or flow, and then suddenly we're going to be able

00:17:49.240 | to do all the things that we wish that we could do.

00:17:51.460 | Well, I hate to break it to you,

00:17:52.400 | but flow is an expression of what we already know how to do.

00:17:56.920 | It is not a state for learning.

00:17:58.760 | And I'm willing to go to bat

00:17:59.840 | with any of the flow anistas out there

00:18:02.880 | that want to challenge me on that one.

00:18:04.680 | Flow is an expression of nervous system capabilities

00:18:07.960 | that are already embedded in us.

00:18:10.760 | Errors and making errors out of sync

00:18:14.360 | with what we would like to do

00:18:16.080 | is how our nervous system is cued

00:18:18.360 | through very distinct biological mechanisms

00:18:20.960 | that something isn't going right,

00:18:23.480 | and therefore certain neurochemicals are deployed

00:18:26.680 | that'll signal the neural circuits that they have to change.

00:18:30.920 | So let's talk about the experiments

00:18:32.480 | that support what I just said,

00:18:33.640 | 'cause I'm about to tell you that making errors

00:18:36.160 | over and over and over again

00:18:38.280 | is the route to shaping your nervous system

00:18:40.280 | so that it performs better and better and better.

00:18:43.080 | And I'm not going to tell you that the last rep of a set

00:18:46.380 | where you hit failure in the gym

00:18:47.920 | is anything like neuroplasticity.

00:18:50.280 | You hear that too, that it's pushing to that point

00:18:53.240 | of a cliff where you just can't function anymore.

00:18:55.900 | That's the signal, that's not the signal.

00:18:57.900 | That's a distinct neuromuscular phenomenon

00:18:59.800 | that bears zero resemblance

00:19:01.520 | to what it takes to get neuroplasticity.

00:19:03.720 | So let's talk about errors and making errors

00:19:06.580 | and why and how that triggers the release of chemicals

00:19:09.720 | that then allow us to not just learn the thing

00:19:11.920 | that we're doing in the motor sense,

00:19:13.840 | play the piano, dance, et cetera,

00:19:15.940 | but it also creates an environment to mill you

00:19:18.720 | within the brain that allows us to then go learn

00:19:22.400 | how to couple or uncouple a particular emotion

00:19:25.320 | to an experience or better language learning

00:19:27.820 | or better mathematical learning.

00:19:29.760 | It's a really fundamental aspect of how we're built.

00:19:33.180 | And when you look at it,

00:19:34.480 | it's actually very straightforward.

00:19:36.000 | It's a series of logical steps

00:19:37.920 | that once you learn how to open those hatches,

00:19:40.120 | it becomes very straightforward to deploy.

00:19:43.020 | Last episode, we discussed some of the basic principles

00:19:45.680 | of neuroplasticity.

00:19:47.520 | If you didn't hear that episode, no problem.

00:19:50.520 | I'll just review it quickly,

00:19:52.300 | which is that it's a falsehood that everything that we do

00:19:56.440 | and experience changes our brain.

00:19:58.360 | The brain changes when certain neurochemicals,

00:20:00.600 | namely acetylcholine, epinephrine, and dopamine

00:20:04.060 | are released in ways and in the specific times

00:20:07.880 | that allow for neural circuits to be marked for change,

00:20:10.840 | and then the change occurs later during sleep.

00:20:13.120 | I'll review that later,

00:20:13.980 | but basically you need a certain cocktail of chemicals

00:20:16.600 | released in the brain in order for a particular behavior

00:20:19.120 | to reshape the way that our brain works.

00:20:22.640 | So the question really is,

00:20:23.880 | what allows those neurochemicals to be released?

00:20:26.580 | And last episode, it talked all about focus.

00:20:28.960 | If you haven't seen or heard that episode,

00:20:31.500 | you might want to check it out

00:20:32.760 | about some specific tools and practices

00:20:35.060 | that can allow you to build up your capacity for focus

00:20:37.740 | and release certain chemicals in that cocktail.

00:20:40.320 | But today we're going to talk about the other chemicals

00:20:42.180 | in the cocktail, in particular dopamine.

00:20:45.560 | And we're really going to center our discussion

00:20:48.560 | around this issue of making errors and why making errors

00:20:53.420 | is actually the signal that tells the brain,

00:20:55.580 | okay, it's time to change, or more generally,

00:20:59.300 | it's time to pay attention to things so that you change.

00:21:03.220 | And I really want to distinguish this point really clearly,

00:21:07.380 | which is that I'm going to talk today a lot about motor

00:21:10.300 | and vestibular, meaning balance programs,

00:21:12.900 | but not just for learning motor commands and balance,

00:21:16.800 | not just for learning new motor skills and balance,

00:21:18.740 | but also for setting a stage or a kind of condition

00:21:21.980 | in your brain where you can go learn other things as well.

00:21:24.780 | So let's talk about some classic experiments

00:21:27.540 | that really nail down what's most important

00:21:31.020 | in this discussion about plasticity.

00:21:33.540 | So I mentioned last episode,

00:21:34.740 | and I'll just tell you right now, again,

00:21:36.460 | the brain is incredibly plastic from about birth

00:21:40.320 | until about age 25.

00:21:42.020 | Passive experience will shape the brain

00:21:44.620 | just because of the way that the chemicals

00:21:46.880 | that are sloshing around in there

00:21:48.380 | and the way that the neurons are arranged

00:21:50.000 | and all sorts of things.

00:21:51.200 | The brain's job is to customize itself

00:21:53.620 | in response to its experience.

00:21:55.080 | And then somewhere about 25,

00:21:57.280 | it's not like the day after your 26th birthday,

00:21:59.640 | plasticity closes, there's a kind of tapering off

00:22:02.380 | of plasticity and you need different mechanisms

00:22:06.120 | to engage plasticity as an adult.

00:22:08.220 | We're mostly going to be talking about adult plasticity today

00:22:11.520 | but I got a lot of questions about,

00:22:13.480 | well, what about if I'm younger than 25?

00:22:15.940 | First of all, that's great.

00:22:17.520 | I wish I had a time machine, but I don't.

00:22:22.200 | Because as I've said before,

00:22:23.820 | the stinger is when you're young,

00:22:25.540 | your brain is very plastic

00:22:26.660 | but you have less control over your experience.

00:22:28.620 | When you're older,

00:22:29.520 | generally you have more control over your experience

00:22:31.540 | but your brain is less plastic.

00:22:33.360 | So if you're already asking the question

00:22:35.080 | as a 20 year old or a 15 year old,

00:22:36.800 | what can I do now that's really gonna enhance my brain?

00:22:40.200 | I guess the simple question would answer,

00:22:42.080 | excuse me, would be an aside

00:22:43.600 | which we get the broadest education you can possible.

00:22:46.640 | That means math, chemistry, physics, literature, music,

00:22:50.600 | learn how to play an instrument.

00:22:51.760 | I'm saying that 'cause I wish I had, et cetera.

00:22:54.440 | Get a broad training in a number of things

00:22:56.560 | and find the thing that really captures your passion

00:22:59.000 | and excitement and then put a ton of additional effort there.

00:23:03.220 | That's what I recommend, including emotional development.

00:23:06.480 | Maybe a topic for a future episode.

00:23:08.560 | But if you are an adult or if you are a young person,

00:23:13.560 | knowing how to tap into these plasticity mechanisms

00:23:17.760 | is very powerful.

00:23:19.800 | You need these chemicals deployed in the nervous system

00:23:22.680 | in order to mark whatever nerve cells happen to be firing

00:23:25.880 | in the time afterward for change.

00:23:27.760 | And people are obsessed with asking,

00:23:30.720 | what supplements, what drugs, what conditions,

00:23:34.360 | what machines will allow for that?

00:23:37.000 | But there's a natural set of conditions that allow for that.

00:23:40.500 | When we came into this world,

00:23:42.360 | we learned to take our different maps of experience,

00:23:46.960 | our motor maps, our auditory maps, our visual maps,

00:23:50.460 | and to link them, we align those maps.

00:23:53.840 | The simplest example is the one I gave before.

00:23:56.000 | If I hear something off to my right, like a click,

00:23:58.480 | like that, it could come from my finger snapping

00:24:00.160 | or it could come from something generated by somebody else

00:24:03.660 | or something else to my right.

00:24:05.300 | I look to my right.

00:24:07.380 | If I hear it on the left, I look to my left.

00:24:09.900 | If I hear it right in front of me,

00:24:11.580 | I keep looking right in front of me.

00:24:12.860 | And if I hear it behind me, I turn around.

00:24:14.900 | And that's because our maps of visual space

00:24:18.720 | and our maps of auditory space and our maps of motor space

00:24:23.720 | are aligned to one another in perfect register.

00:24:27.120 | It's an incredible feature of our nervous system.

00:24:29.160 | It takes place in a structure called the superior colliculus,

00:24:31.700 | although you don't need to know that name.

00:24:33.900 | Superior colliculus has layers, literally stacks of neurons

00:24:38.140 | like in a sandwich where the zero point right in front of me

00:24:42.500 | or maybe 10 or 15 degrees off to my right

00:24:45.000 | or 10 or 15 degrees off to my left

00:24:47.220 | are aligned so that the auditory neurons,

00:24:50.540 | the ones that care about sounds at 15 degrees to my right,

00:24:54.340 | sit directly below the neurons that look at 15 degrees

00:24:58.140 | to my right in my visual system.

00:25:00.040 | And when I reach over to this direction,

00:25:03.100 | there's a signal that's sent down through those layers

00:25:05.960 | that says 15 degrees off to the right

00:25:07.740 | is the direction to look, it's the direction to listen,

00:25:11.180 | and it's the direction to move if I need to move.

00:25:14.200 | So there's an alignment.

00:25:15.700 | And this is really powerful.

00:25:16.940 | And this is what allows us to move through space

00:25:18.940 | and function in our lives in a really fluid way.

00:25:22.220 | It's set up during development,

00:25:24.220 | but there have been some important experiments

00:25:26.880 | that have revealed that these maps are plastic,

00:25:30.860 | meaning they can shift, they're subject to neuroplasticity,

00:25:34.140 | and there are specific rules that allow us to shift them.

00:25:38.280 | So here's the key experiment.

00:25:40.780 | The key experiment was done by a colleague of mine,

00:25:44.620 | who's now retired, but whose work is absolutely fundamental

00:25:47.460 | in the field of neuroplasticity, Eric Knudsen.

00:25:50.300 | The Knudsen lab and many of the Knudsen lab

00:25:52.860 | scientific offspring showed that if one

00:25:57.440 | is to wear prism glasses that shift the visual field,

00:26:01.300 | that eventually there'll be a shift

00:26:05.040 | in the representation of the auditory and motor maps too.

00:26:08.520 | Now, what they initially did

00:26:09.800 | is they looked at young subjects.

00:26:12.040 | And what they did is they moved the visual world

00:26:16.080 | by making them wear prism glasses,

00:26:18.440 | so that, for instance, if my pen is out in front of me

00:26:21.800 | at five degrees off center,

00:26:23.600 | so just a little bit off center,

00:26:24.880 | if you're listening to this,

00:26:25.700 | this would be like just a little bit to my right,

00:26:28.280 | but in these prism glasses,

00:26:30.460 | I actually see that pen way over far on my right.

00:26:34.760 | So it's actually here, but I see it over there

00:26:37.880 | because I'm wearing prisms on my eyes.

00:26:39.920 | What happens is in the first day or so,

00:26:41.820 | you ask people or you ask animal subjects or whatever

00:26:45.120 | to reach for this object and they reach to the wrong place

00:26:49.420 | because they're seeing it where it isn't.

00:26:51.580 | This gets especially complicated

00:26:53.900 | when you start including sounds,

00:26:55.360 | when you have a thing off to your right making a sound,

00:26:59.580 | but the thing is actually right here.

00:27:01.700 | So you're hearing the sound at one location

00:27:03.860 | and you're seeing the object at another location

00:27:06.140 | because you're wearing these prisms.

00:27:07.600 | So your image of the world is totally distorted.

00:27:10.360 | Or in experiments done by other groups,

00:27:13.840 | they wear glasses, subjects wear glasses

00:27:16.360 | that completely invert the visual world

00:27:18.920 | so that everything is upside down,

00:27:20.620 | which is an extreme example of these representational maps

00:27:24.040 | being flipped or shifted.

00:27:25.500 | But what you find is that in young individuals,

00:27:29.760 | within a day or two,

00:27:31.560 | they start adjusting their motor behavior

00:27:34.600 | in exactly the right way

00:27:36.680 | so that they always reach to the correct location.

00:27:39.080 | So they hear a sound at one location,

00:27:40.720 | they see the object that ought to make that sound

00:27:43.440 | at a different location,

00:27:44.560 | and they somehow are able to adjust their motor behavior

00:27:48.120 | to reach to the correct location.

00:27:50.520 | It's incredible.

00:27:51.680 | It's absolutely incredible.

00:27:52.720 | Or in the case of the people who look at the world

00:27:54.560 | upside down,

00:27:55.840 | they somehow are able to navigate this upside down world

00:27:59.800 | even though we're completely used to

00:28:01.840 | our feet being on the floor and not on the ceiling

00:28:03.980 | and people not walking at us

00:28:05.120 | by hanging off the ceiling like bats.

00:28:07.320 | Amazing.

00:28:08.640 | And what it tells us is that these maps

00:28:11.000 | that are aligned to one another

00:28:12.520 | can move and shift and rotate and even flip themselves.

00:28:17.520 | And it happens best in young individuals.

00:28:21.200 | If you do this in older individuals,

00:28:23.760 | in most cases it takes a very long time

00:28:26.740 | for the maps to shift.

00:28:27.760 | And in some cases they never shift.

00:28:29.600 | So this is a very experimental scenario,

00:28:31.680 | but it's an important one to understand

00:28:33.460 | because it really tamps down the fact

00:28:36.840 | that we have the capacity to create dramatic shifts

00:28:41.060 | in our representation of the outside world.

00:28:43.160 | So how can we get plasticity as adult

00:28:49.480 | that mimics the plasticity that we get when we are juveniles?

00:28:53.160 | Well, the Knudsen lab and other labs have looked at this

00:28:56.160 | and it's really interesting.

00:28:57.960 | First of all, we have to ask

00:28:59.020 | what is the signal for plasticity?

00:29:00.720 | Is it just having prism glasses on?

00:29:02.760 | No, because they did that experiment and ruled that out.

00:29:05.760 | Is it just the fact that the visual thing

00:29:08.600 | is over to my, appears to be far over to my right

00:29:11.360 | when in fact it's right in front of me?

00:29:13.040 | No.

00:29:14.000 | The signal that generates the plasticity

00:29:17.820 | is the making of errors.

00:29:21.180 | It's the reaches and failures

00:29:23.480 | that signal to the nervous system

00:29:26.040 | that this is not working

00:29:29.140 | and therefore the shifts start to take place.

00:29:32.600 | And this is so fundamentally important

00:29:34.640 | because I think most people think,

00:29:36.740 | oh, well, practice is gonna be,

00:29:38.440 | I have to access beginner's mind,

00:29:40.340 | which is a great concept actually.

00:29:41.640 | It's about approaching things,

00:29:42.640 | expecting to make errors, which is great.

00:29:44.480 | I think I am a believer in beginner's mind.

00:29:47.360 | But people understandably get frustrated.

00:29:50.880 | Like they're trying to learn a piece on the piano

00:29:52.640 | and they don't know, they can't do it.

00:29:54.080 | Or they're trying to write a piece of code

00:29:55.460 | or they're trying to access some sort of motor behavior

00:29:57.800 | and they can't do it.

00:29:58.880 | And the frustration drives them crazy.

00:30:00.740 | And like, I can't do it, I can't do it.

00:30:01.900 | When they don't realize that the errors themselves

00:30:05.540 | are signaling to the brain and nervous system,

00:30:07.560 | something's not working.

00:30:09.000 | And of course the brain doesn't understand the words,

00:30:11.480 | something isn't working.

00:30:13.280 | The brain doesn't even understand frustration

00:30:15.040 | as an emotional state.

00:30:16.640 | The brain understands the neurochemicals that are released,

00:30:20.720 | namely epinephrine and acetylcholine.

00:30:24.680 | But also, and we'll get into this, the molecule dopamine,

00:30:27.560 | when we start to approximate the correct behavior

00:30:30.200 | just a little bit,

00:30:31.900 | and we start getting a little bit right.

00:30:34.260 | So what happens is when we make errors,

00:30:37.000 | the nervous system kind of, I don't wanna say freaks out

00:30:39.760 | because it's a very mechanistic and controlled situation,

00:30:42.380 | but the nervous system starts releasing neurotransmitters

00:30:45.080 | and neuromodulators that say,

00:30:46.880 | we better change something in the circuitry.

00:30:49.000 | And so errors are the basis for neuroplasticity

00:30:52.240 | and for learning.

00:30:53.300 | And I wish that this was more prominent out there.

00:30:56.400 | I guess this is why I'm saying it.

00:30:58.520 | And humans do not like this feeling of frustration

00:31:02.000 | and making errors.

00:31:03.220 | The few that do, do exceedingly well in whatever pursuits

00:31:07.400 | they happen to be involved in.

00:31:09.080 | The ones that don't, generally don't do well.

00:31:12.040 | They generally don't learn much.

00:31:13.520 | And if you think about it, why would your nervous system

00:31:15.720 | ever change?

00:31:16.980 | Why would it ever change?

00:31:18.480 | Unless there was something to be afraid of,

00:31:20.760 | something that made us feel awful will signal

00:31:22.620 | that the nervous system needs to change,

00:31:24.360 | or there's an error in our performance.

00:31:26.800 | So it turns out that the feedback of these errors,

00:31:30.040 | the reaching to the wrong location

00:31:32.560 | starts to release a number of things.

00:31:34.880 | And now you've heard about them many times,

00:31:36.600 | but this would be epinephrine.

00:31:37.920 | It increases alertness, acetylcholine focus.

00:31:41.760 | And this is why frustration that leads us

00:31:44.280 | to just kind of quit and walk away from the endeavor

00:31:46.600 | is the absolute worst thing.

00:31:48.500 | But because if acetylcholine is released,

00:31:51.080 | it creates an opportunity to focus on the error margin,

00:31:55.240 | the distance between what it is that you're doing

00:31:57.680 | and what it is that you would like to do.

00:31:59.800 | And then the nervous system starts to make changes

00:32:03.760 | almost immediately in order to try

00:32:05.440 | and get the behavior right.

00:32:06.800 | And when you start getting it even a little bit right,

00:32:09.080 | that third molecule comes online or is released,

00:32:11.960 | which is dopamine,

00:32:13.240 | which allows for the plastic changes to occur very fast.

00:32:16.240 | Now, this is what all happens very naturally

00:32:18.200 | in young brains, but in old brains,

00:32:21.020 | it tends to be pretty slow except for in two conditions.

00:32:25.200 | So let me just pause and just say this.

00:32:26.920 | If you are uncomfortable making errors

00:32:29.360 | and you get frustrated easily,

00:32:32.640 | if you leverage that frustration toward drilling deeper

00:32:38.820 | into the endeavor, you are setting yourself up

00:32:41.500 | for a terrific set of plasticity mechanisms to engage.

00:32:46.040 | But if you take that frustration

00:32:47.380 | and you walk away from the endeavor,

00:32:49.360 | you are essentially setting up plasticity

00:32:52.280 | to rewire you according to what happens afterwards,

00:32:55.260 | which is generally feeling pretty miserable.

00:32:57.340 | So now you can kind of start to appreciate why it is

00:32:59.780 | that continuing to drill into a process

00:33:02.020 | to the point of frustration,

00:33:03.260 | but then staying with that process for a little bit longer,

00:33:06.500 | and I'll define exactly what I mean by a little bit,

00:33:08.920 | is the most important thing for adult learning,

00:33:13.920 | as well as childhood learning,

00:33:15.640 | but adult learning in particular.

00:33:17.200 | Now, the Newton Lab did two very important sets

00:33:19.680 | of experiments.

00:33:21.160 | The first one was published in "Nature,"

00:33:24.640 | very important study,

00:33:26.560 | which showed that juveniles can make these massive shifts

00:33:31.020 | in their map representations,

00:33:32.260 | meaning you can shift the visual world using visual prisms

00:33:35.400 | a huge amount, and very quickly young individuals

00:33:39.460 | can shift their representations of the world

00:33:41.860 | so that they learn to reach to the correct location.

00:33:44.140 | They get a lot of plasticity all at once,

00:33:47.520 | and it happens very fast in a period of just a couple days.

00:33:51.320 | In adults, it tends to be very slow,

00:33:54.180 | and most individuals never actually accomplish

00:33:56.760 | the full map shift.

00:33:58.840 | They don't get the plasticity.

00:34:00.400 | And here we're talking about map shifts,

00:34:01.720 | but this could be learning a new language,

00:34:04.640 | this could be any number of different things

00:34:06.080 | that one were attempting.

00:34:07.320 | So what we're saying is what I already said before,

00:34:09.540 | which is that we learn very well as youngsters,

00:34:11.720 | but not as adults after 25.

00:34:14.520 | But then what they did is they started making

00:34:18.600 | the increment of change smaller.

00:34:20.680 | So instead of shifting the world a huge amount

00:34:24.520 | by putting prisms that shifted the visual world

00:34:27.760 | all the way over to the right,

00:34:29.360 | they did this incrementally.

00:34:30.760 | So first they put on prisms that shifted it

00:34:32.800 | just a little bit, and just like seven degrees,

00:34:35.660 | I believe was the exact number.

00:34:37.040 | And then it was 14 degrees, and then it was 28 degrees.

00:34:40.240 | And so what they found was that the adult nervous system

00:34:42.960 | can tolerate smaller and smaller errors over time,

00:34:47.200 | but that you can stack those errors

00:34:49.580 | so that you can get a lot of plasticity.

00:34:51.240 | Put simply, incremental learning as an adult

00:34:54.480 | is absolutely essential.

00:34:55.760 | You are not going to get massive shifts

00:34:57.940 | in your representations of the outside world.

00:35:00.120 | So how do you make small errors as opposed to big errors?

00:35:03.560 | Well, the key is smaller bouts of focused learning

00:35:08.560 | for smaller bits of information.

00:35:13.000 | It's a mistake to try and learn a lot of information

00:35:17.080 | in one learning bout as an adult.

00:35:19.560 | What these papers from the Knudsen Lab show,

00:35:21.980 | and what others have gone on to show,

00:35:24.160 | is that the adult nervous system is fully capable

00:35:26.560 | of engaging in a huge amount of plasticity,

00:35:30.320 | but you need to do it in smaller increments

00:35:32.460 | per learning epoch or per learning episode.

00:35:35.920 | So how would you do this?

00:35:36.840 | Well, let's say, for instance, I'm terrible at free throws.

00:35:39.920 | So let's say I wanted to learn free throws.

00:35:41.600 | I'm 45 years old, so I'm well past the 25 and under mark.

00:35:45.540 | I'm going to make errors.

00:35:48.600 | I'm going to make a lot of errors.

00:35:50.600 | If I go into learning free throws,

00:35:53.560 | knowing that errors are the gate to plasticity,

00:35:58.560 | well, then I feel a little bit better,

00:36:00.840 | but I still have to aim for the rim of the basket

00:36:03.400 | or the net, basically showing how little

00:36:07.400 | I know about basketball.

00:36:08.380 | But I think I know the general themes around basketball.

00:36:10.640 | It involves a net, a backboard, and a ball, of course.

00:36:13.520 | So I go to the free throw line and I'll throw.

00:36:15.820 | How long should I go?

00:36:16.720 | Well, until I'm hitting the point of frustration,

00:36:20.240 | and at that point, continuing probably for anywhere

00:36:24.480 | from 10 to 100 more trials should be my limit, right?

00:36:28.860 | That should be my limit if I want to improve

00:36:31.500 | some specific aspect of the motor behavior.

00:36:34.000 | And so the question then is,

00:36:36.040 | what should I be paying attention to?

00:36:37.600 | What should I be focusing on?

00:36:38.640 | Well, obviously trying to get the ball into the basket,

00:36:40.840 | but the beauty of motor learning is that the circuits

00:36:43.560 | for auditory and visual and motor

00:36:46.160 | more or less teach themselves.

00:36:48.080 | I don't necessarily have to be paying attention

00:36:50.340 | to exactly what the contact of my fingers with the ball

00:36:55.340 | or some random feature like whether or not

00:36:57.600 | I'm bending my knees or not.

00:36:59.160 | The key is to try a number of different parameters

00:37:02.200 | until I start to approximate the behavior

00:37:04.680 | that I want to get a little bit better

00:37:06.280 | and then trying to get consistent about that.

00:37:08.640 | Now, many of you involved in sports learning will say,

00:37:10.800 | okay, well, that's obvious, it's just incremental learning.

00:37:13.380 | But the key thing is in those errors.

00:37:15.800 | By isolating the errors and making a number of errors

00:37:19.880 | in a particular aspect of the motor movement,

00:37:22.080 | it signals to the brain that it's plastic.

00:37:24.200 | And if I leave that episode of going

00:37:27.440 | and trying to learn how to shoot free throws,

00:37:30.020 | my brain is still plastic.

00:37:31.620 | Plasticity is a state of the brain and nervous system.

00:37:34.880 | It's not just geared toward the specific thing

00:37:37.120 | I'm trying to learn.

00:37:38.320 | So there are two aspects to plasticity

00:37:40.160 | that I think we really need to highlight.

00:37:41.440 | One is that there's plasticity geared toward the thing

00:37:44.720 | that you are trying to learn specifically.

00:37:46.760 | And then there are states of mind and body

00:37:48.880 | that allow us to access plasticity.

00:37:51.720 | Now, toward the end of this episode,

00:37:53.120 | I'm going to spell out specific protocols

00:37:54.840 | in a little more detail.

00:37:55.780 | That free throw example might not correlate

00:37:59.280 | with what you want to learn.

00:38:00.720 | Actually, I don't have a huge desire to learn free throws.

00:38:02.800 | I've more or less given up on basketball

00:38:05.080 | and free throws in particular.

00:38:07.560 | But I think that it's important to understand

00:38:10.300 | that motor movements are the most straightforward way

00:38:13.480 | to access states of plasticity.

00:38:15.400 | And that can be for sake of learning the motor movement

00:38:17.640 | or for sake of accessing plasticity more generally.

00:38:20.340 | One very important aspect to getting plasticity as an adult

00:38:26.200 | is not just smaller increments, meaning shorter bouts.

00:38:30.640 | So I gave an example of another 100 free throws or something

00:38:33.480 | but going out there and just getting my 10,000 free throws

00:38:37.000 | all at once or packing as much as I can into one episode

00:38:41.280 | is not going to be as efficient for me

00:38:43.480 | as shorter bouts of intense learning as an adult.

00:38:47.720 | Because the error signals are not as well defined.

00:38:51.200 | To my nervous system,

00:38:52.040 | it's not going to know what needs to change.

00:38:54.320 | And so this is really the key element

00:38:55.940 | of incremental learning,

00:38:57.220 | is that you're trying to signal to the nervous system

00:38:59.160 | at least one component that needs to change.

00:39:01.100 | The nervous system needs to know what the error is.

00:39:04.040 | Now, when I shoot free throws, Lord knows,

00:39:06.840 | there are a lot of different kinds of errors that happen.

00:39:08.640 | Probably the way I'm bending my knees, the arc of the ball,

00:39:11.000 | the way I'm organizing my shoulder

00:39:12.400 | is probably where my eyes are, lots of things.

00:39:15.120 | So which ones to focus on.

00:39:17.160 | And that's what I said before,

00:39:18.220 | the beauty of the motor system is

00:39:19.680 | I don't have to worry about all of that.

00:39:21.840 | I just need to get the reps in a number of times

00:39:25.400 | and the nervous system will figure out

00:39:27.360 | how far off my motor commands are

00:39:30.460 | at the level of these maps that I described earlier,

00:39:32.800 | how far those deviate from the desired behavior,

00:39:37.800 | getting the ball into the basket.

00:39:40.120 | And it will start making adjustments.

00:39:42.540 | But as I make adjustments,

00:39:45.020 | or as my nervous system makes adjustments for me,

00:39:47.280 | the key thing is to not start adding a variety of new errors

00:39:51.040 | because then it gets confused.

00:39:52.200 | And so this is why short learning bouts

00:39:54.260 | are absolutely essential.

00:39:55.880 | So let's say it's for learning an instrument as an adult.

00:39:59.040 | Probably anywhere from seven minutes to 30 minutes

00:40:04.040 | provided that you're fully attending, you're very focused,

00:40:09.240 | is going to be a pretty significant stimulus

00:40:12.760 | to inspire plasticity in the nervous system.

00:40:15.320 | Now, there is one way to get a lot of plasticity

00:40:19.020 | all at once as an adult.

00:40:20.180 | There is that kind of Holy grail thing of, you know,

00:40:23.740 | getting massive plasticity as you would

00:40:27.680 | when you were a young person, but as an adult.

00:40:31.320 | And the Knudsen lab revealed this

00:40:34.760 | by setting a very serious contingency on the learning.

00:40:39.760 | What they did was they had a situation

00:40:42.400 | where subjects had to find food

00:40:46.280 | that was displaced in their visual world,

00:40:48.080 | again, by putting prisms.

00:40:49.640 | And they had to find the food and the food made a noise.

00:40:52.680 | There was a noise set kind of the location of the food

00:40:54.680 | through an array of speakers.

00:40:56.640 | Basically, what they found was that

00:40:58.760 | if people have to adjust their visual world

00:41:01.240 | in order to get food, the plasticity would eventually occur,

00:41:04.360 | but it was very slow as an adult.

00:41:06.800 | It was very, very slow.

00:41:08.960 | Unless they actually had to hunt that food.

00:41:12.700 | They actually, in order to eat at all,

00:41:17.240 | they needed plasticity.

00:41:18.960 | And then what happened was remarkable.

00:41:21.380 | What they observed is that the plasticity as an adult

00:41:24.900 | can be as dramatic, as robust as it is in a young person

00:41:29.820 | or in a young animal subject,

00:41:32.260 | provided that there's a serious incentive

00:41:35.000 | for the plasticity to occur.

00:41:37.180 | And this is absolutely important to understand,

00:41:39.420 | which is that how badly we need or want the plasticity

00:41:44.120 | determines how fast that plasticity will arrive,

00:41:47.760 | which is incredible because the brain is just neurons

00:41:51.300 | and soup of chemicals.

00:41:52.540 | So what this, but this means that

00:41:54.540 | the importance of something,

00:41:55.660 | how important something is to us,

00:41:57.460 | actually gates the rate of plasticity

00:41:59.780 | and the magnitude of plasticity.

00:42:01.900 | And this is why just passively going through most things,

00:42:06.220 | going through the motions, as we say,

00:42:07.900 | or just getting our reps in, quote unquote,

00:42:10.700 | is not sufficient to get the nervous system to change.

00:42:14.900 | This study, a beautiful study

00:42:17.300 | published in the Journal of Neuroscience

00:42:19.860 | shows that if we actually have to accomplish something

00:42:24.800 | in order to eat or in order to get our ration of income,

00:42:29.900 | we will reshape our nervous system very, very quickly.

00:42:33.200 | So the nervous system has a capacity to change

00:42:37.700 | at a tremendous rate to an enormous degree

00:42:40.780 | at any stage of life,

00:42:43.540 | provided it's important enough that that happened.

00:42:46.860 | And I think some of you might be saying,

00:42:48.380 | well, duh, that's obvious.

00:42:49.740 | If it's really crucial,

00:42:51.140 | then of course it's going to change faster,

00:42:53.240 | but it didn't have to be that way.

00:42:55.020 | And for most people who are trying to learn

00:42:57.020 | how to learn faster or learn better,

00:43:00.300 | they probably, in most cases,

00:43:04.260 | they are hitting a limit

00:43:07.100 | because the need to change is not crucial enough.

00:43:11.820 | And I think there are a number of places

00:43:13.640 | where this has an important relevance

00:43:15.260 | in the people who are battling addiction, for instance.

00:43:19.620 | I will be the first to say that I sympathize with the fact

00:43:22.420 | that addictions have a biological component.

00:43:25.700 | There's clearly cases where people struggle tremendously

00:43:29.100 | to change their behavior and their nervous system,

00:43:31.140 | in some cases, is so disrupted

00:43:32.980 | by whatever substance they've been abusing

00:43:35.100 | or behavior that they've been engaging in

00:43:36.940 | that it's that much harder for them to change.

00:43:39.540 | But we've also seen incredible examples

00:43:42.080 | where when people have to change

00:43:44.620 | from an internal standpoint,

00:43:46.580 | from their own belief and desire to change,

00:43:49.660 | that massive change is possible.

00:43:52.140 | And so I think that the studies that Knudsen did

00:43:55.140 | showing that incremental learning

00:43:56.980 | can create a huge degree of plasticity as an adult,

00:44:00.460 | as well as when the contingency is very high,

00:44:04.400 | meaning we need to eat or we need to make an income

00:44:07.340 | or we need to do something that's vitally important for us,

00:44:10.980 | that plasticity can happen in these enormous leaps,

00:44:15.220 | just like they can in adolescence and young adulthood,

00:44:19.140 | that points to the fact

00:44:20.160 | that it has to be a neurochemical system.

00:44:22.820 | There has to be an underlying mechanism, right?

00:44:25.660 | This wasn't a case of sticking a wire into the brain

00:44:28.460 | or taking a particular drug.

00:44:30.220 | All the chemicals that we're about to talk about

00:44:33.140 | are released from drugstores, if you will,

00:44:36.400 | chemical stores that already reside in all of our brains.

00:44:39.820 | And the key is how to tap into those stores.

00:44:43.240 | And so we're gonna next talk about

00:44:45.140 | what are the specific behaviors

00:44:47.320 | that liberate particular categories of chemicals

00:44:51.460 | that allow us to make the most of incremental learning

00:44:54.620 | and that set the stage for plasticity

00:44:57.780 | that is similar enough

00:44:59.680 | or mimics these high contingency states,

00:45:02.640 | like the need to get food

00:45:03.900 | or really create a sense of internal urgency,

00:45:06.900 | chemical urgency, if you will.

00:45:08.980 | If you've heard previous episodes of this podcast,

00:45:12.180 | you may have heard me talk about ultradian rhythms,

00:45:14.140 | which are these 90-minute rhythms

00:45:16.780 | that break up our 24-hour day.

00:45:20.240 | They help break up our sleep into different cycles of sleep

00:45:23.580 | like REM sleep and non-REM sleep.

00:45:25.200 | And in waking states, they help us,

00:45:27.020 | or I should say they break up our day

00:45:30.540 | in ways that allow us to learn best

00:45:32.600 | within 90-minute cycles, et cetera.

00:45:34.540 | So some of you might be saying,

00:45:35.560 | "Wait, you've been talking about ultradian cycles

00:45:37.260 | "and a moment ago you were talking about

00:45:38.900 | "7-minute or 12-minute or 30-minute learning cycles."

00:45:42.080 | Today we're really talking about how to tap into plasticity

00:45:46.080 | through the completion of a task

00:45:49.340 | or working towards something repetitively and making errors.

00:45:53.540 | And so just to frame this

00:45:56.000 | in the context of the ultradian cycle,

00:45:58.460 | you might sit down,

00:45:59.880 | decide that you're going to learn conversational French,

00:46:04.080 | which would mean that you probably

00:46:05.160 | don't already speak French.

00:46:06.560 | So you're going to sit down,

00:46:07.860 | you're going to decide you're going to learn some nouns

00:46:10.800 | and some verbs, you might do some practice sets.

00:46:13.020 | The ultradian cycle says that for the first

00:46:15.660 | five to 10 minutes of doing that,

00:46:17.880 | your mind is going to drift

00:46:19.220 | and your focus will probably kick in

00:46:21.300 | provided that you're restricting your visual world

00:46:24.880 | to just the material in front of you,

00:46:26.720 | something we talked about last episode,

00:46:28.860 | somewhere around the 10 or 15-minute mark.

00:46:31.000 | And then at best, you're probably going to get

00:46:32.940 | about an hour of deliberate kind of tunnel vision

00:46:37.420 | learning in there, your mind will drift.

00:46:39.860 | And then toward the end of that,

00:46:42.160 | what is now an hour and 10 or hour and 20-minute cycle,

00:46:45.440 | you're going to, your brain will start to flicker in and out.

00:46:48.440 | You might start thinking about what you need to eat

00:46:50.240 | or the fact that you have to use the bathroom or something.

00:46:52.020 | And then by the 90 minutes,

00:46:53.180 | it's probably time to just stop the learning bout

00:46:55.040 | and go do something else,

00:46:56.720 | maybe return for a second learning bout later,

00:46:59.300 | but maybe take a nap afterwards or something

00:47:02.160 | to enhance the learning,

00:47:03.200 | but that it's going to happen within about a 90-minute block

00:47:06.760 | you're going to go through that cycle of learning.

00:47:09.440 | But when I refer to the seven or 12 or 30 minutes

00:47:12.760 | of making errors, what I mean is when you're really

00:47:15.200 | in a mode of repeating errors, not deliberately,

00:47:19.400 | you're trying your best to accomplish something

00:47:21.120 | and you're failing.

00:47:22.440 | You're absolutely failing.

00:47:24.020 | You're trying to remember, say, the sign language alphabet.

00:47:28.320 | I was trying to teach myself this recently

00:47:30.060 | and then I kept repeating and repeating

00:47:31.620 | and then get to a certain point where I kept making errors,

00:47:33.840 | making errors, making errors.

00:47:35.920 | You want to keep making errors for this period of time

00:47:39.780 | that I'm saying will last anywhere

00:47:41.320 | for about seven to 30 minutes.

00:47:42.640 | It is exceedingly frustrating,

00:47:44.920 | but that frustration, it liberates the chemical cues

00:47:48.860 | that signal that plasticity needs to happen

00:47:50.960 | and they also signal the particular neurons that are active.

00:47:55.260 | So in the case of sign language,

00:47:57.180 | it might be the ones that control my hand movements

00:47:59.040 | as well as me thinking about what the different letters are.

00:48:02.140 | It's signaling different components within the networks

00:48:05.960 | between the brain and body.

00:48:07.520 | And it's trying to figure out, wait,

00:48:09.200 | where are these errors coming from?

00:48:10.880 | Where are the errors coming from?

00:48:11.900 | Ah, it's those neurons.

00:48:13.540 | They're making the mistakes.

00:48:14.840 | They're making the mistakes.

00:48:15.800 | They're making the mistakes.

00:48:17.180 | And it essentially highlights that pathway for change.

00:48:21.580 | And it is the case that when we come back a day

00:48:23.600 | or two later in a learning bout after a nap

00:48:25.800 | or a night or two of deep rest,

00:48:27.920 | then what we find is that we can remember certain things

00:48:31.040 | and the motor pathways work

00:48:32.360 | and we don't always get it perfectly,

00:48:33.820 | but we get a lot of it right

00:48:35.600 | whereas we got it wrong before.

00:48:37.040 | So that seven to 30 minute intense learning bout

00:48:41.440 | is within the ultradian cycle.

00:48:43.020 | And I wanna be clear about that.

00:48:45.080 | And some people can tolerate many of these per day.

00:48:47.440 | Most people can only tolerate one or two, maybe three.

00:48:51.720 | This is intense work.

00:48:52.920 | If shooting free throws, you could probably do it all day.

00:48:55.880 | But what I'm talking about

00:48:57.360 | is really trying to accelerate plasticity

00:49:00.280 | by having a period of the seven to 30 minutes

00:49:04.300 | per learning bout that is specifically about making errors.

00:49:09.300 | I wanna really underscore that.

00:49:12.500 | And it's not about, as I mentioned before,

00:49:15.120 | coming up with some little hack or trick

00:49:16.920 | or something of that sort.

00:49:19.720 | It's really about trying to cue the nervous system

00:49:22.640 | that something needs to change

00:49:23.960 | because otherwise it simply won't change.

00:49:26.560 | Now, there's another aspect to learning.

00:49:30.480 | I think it's only fair to mention,

00:49:31.720 | which is that we can all learn very easily

00:49:36.440 | when there's something very bad happens to us.

00:49:38.440 | And I don't wish this on anyone,

00:49:41.020 | but it is the case that if something really terrible happens

00:49:43.440 | that we will have a lifetime memory for that event.

00:49:47.300 | There are processes that allow us to uncouple

00:49:50.160 | the emotional load of that event.

00:49:51.600 | I talked about some of those a few episodes back,

00:49:55.040 | the episode on dreams, trauma, and hallucinations,

00:49:57.620 | and we're gonna return to trauma release, PTSD,

00:50:00.640 | and some of those other themes in a future episode.

00:50:03.000 | But the reason why negative experiences

00:50:06.840 | can be wired into us so quickly

00:50:08.840 | is because our nervous system's main job is to keep us safe.

00:50:12.260 | But at a deeper level,

00:50:13.660 | it's because negative experiences cue us

00:50:16.420 | to the fact that whatever's happening that's really bad

00:50:18.420 | is very different than the other things

00:50:20.360 | that tend to happen before.

00:50:22.460 | So most of our experience doesn't remap us,

00:50:25.180 | but those negative experiences

00:50:26.940 | deploy high levels of norepinephrine,

00:50:29.240 | high levels of acetylcholine,

00:50:31.660 | and really make so that whatever it is that we experience

00:50:36.100 | in that bad episode is essentially cued up,

00:50:40.560 | and so we're on the lookout for it.

00:50:42.120 | And this has a number of negative effects,

00:50:43.800 | but in terms of psychological and emotional effects,

00:50:46.520 | but it is really a process designed to keep us safe.

00:50:50.360 | The other ways in which we can learn more quickly,

00:50:54.360 | besides just making errors,

00:50:56.120 | is when something really surprises us.

00:50:58.800 | And if we're positively surprised by something,

00:51:01.320 | or we are just flooded with this molecule dopamine,

00:51:04.340 | then there's a great opportunity for plasticity.

00:51:08.220 | Dopamine is a molecule

00:51:09.380 | that's almost always associated with pleasure

00:51:11.920 | and with the accomplishment of a particular goal,

00:51:14.200 | but it's really also a molecule of motivation.

00:51:17.640 | It's a molecule that is released inside of us

00:51:19.920 | when we think we're on the right path.

00:51:22.320 | And it does have a capacity to increase neuroplasticity,

00:51:25.900 | motivation, et cetera.

00:51:28.300 | It's released in response to a number of natural behaviors

00:51:31.000 | just that help with the progression of ours

00:51:33.600 | and other species, things like food, sex,

00:51:37.540 | in some sense, social connection,

00:51:41.180 | although that's more serotonin,

00:51:42.720 | and serotonin doesn't have the same effects on plasticity,

00:51:46.880 | quite the same, and we'll talk about a few later.

00:51:49.300 | But dopamine is when we think we're on the right path

00:51:52.940 | toward an external goal, a little bit is released,

00:51:56.400 | and it tends to give us more motivation toward that goal.

00:51:59.040 | I think everyone could stand to enhance the rate of learning

00:52:02.500 | by doing the following, learn to attach dopamine

00:52:06.340 | in a subjective way to this process of making errors,

00:52:10.140 | because that's really combining two modes of plasticity

00:52:13.480 | in ways that together can accelerate the plasticity.

00:52:16.840 | So earlier I talked about making errors

00:52:18.780 | and having a focus bout of learning

00:52:21.540 | that includes making a lot of errors

00:52:23.940 | inside of that learning bout.

00:52:25.380 | That is going to be frustrating,

00:52:26.860 | but the frustration itself is the cue,

00:52:30.500 | and epinephrine will be very high under those conditions.

00:52:33.940 | But if you can just subjectively associate that experience

00:52:38.380 | with something good and that you want to continue

00:52:40.800 | down that path as opposed to quitting

00:52:42.520 | when you hit the point of frustration,

00:52:43.900 | well, then you now start to create a synergy

00:52:46.860 | between the dopamine that's released

00:52:48.500 | when we subjectively think something is good

00:52:50.780 | or tell ourselves something is good

00:52:52.660 | and that situation of making failures.

00:52:55.220 | In other words, making failing repetitively,

00:52:59.580 | provided we're engaged in a very specific set of behaviors

00:53:01.980 | when we do it, as well as telling ourselves

00:53:04.300 | that those failures are good for learning and good for us,

00:53:07.660 | creates an outsized effect on the rate of plasticity.

00:53:11.100 | It accelerates plasticity.

00:53:13.380 | Now, some of you might be asking, and I get asked a lot,

00:53:16.180 | well, how do I get dopamine to be released?

00:53:18.580 | Can I just tell myself that something is good

00:53:20.340 | when it's bad?

00:53:21.180 | Well, actually, yes, believe it or not.

00:53:23.860 | The thing about dopamine is it's highly subjective.

00:53:26.180 | What's funny to one person

00:53:27.500 | is not necessarily funny to the next.

00:53:28.740 | So it has to have some sense of authenticity for you.

00:53:32.900 | But if you really want to be learning

00:53:34.700 | the thing that you're trying to learn,

00:53:36.460 | that should be reason enough to tell yourself,

00:53:38.900 | well, I'm frustrated,

00:53:40.700 | but the frustration is the source of accelerated learning.

00:53:44.540 | Dopamine is one of these incredible molecules

00:53:47.540 | that both can be released

00:53:49.220 | according to things that are hardwired in us

00:53:52.740 | to release dopamine.

00:53:53.640 | Again, things like food, sex, warmth when we're cold,

00:53:57.260 | cool environments when we're too warm.

00:53:59.220 | It's that kind of pleasure molecule overall.

00:54:03.020 | But it's also highly subjective

00:54:07.220 | what releases dopamine in one person versus the next.

00:54:09.860 | So everyone releases dopamine

00:54:11.300 | in response to those very basic kind of behaviors

00:54:14.120 | and activities.

00:54:15.380 | But dopamine is also released

00:54:18.340 | according to what we subjectively believe is good for us.

00:54:21.400 | And that's what's so powerful about it.

00:54:22.940 | In fact, a book that I highly recommend

00:54:24.500 | if you want to read more about dopamine,

00:54:26.220 | it's a book that frankly, I wish I had written.

00:54:27.820 | It's such a wonderful book.

00:54:28.780 | It's called "The Molecule of More."

00:54:30.620 | And it really talks about dopamine

00:54:32.460 | not just as a molecule associated with reward,

00:54:35.360 | but a molecule associated with motivation and pursuit

00:54:38.100 | and just how subjectively controlled dopamine can be.

00:54:41.580 | So make lots of errors.

00:54:44.020 | Tell yourself that those errors are important and good

00:54:47.420 | for your overall learning goals.

00:54:48.940 | So learn to attach dopamine,

00:54:50.580 | meaning release dopamine in your brain

00:54:53.860 | when you start to make errors.

00:54:55.380 | Keep the bouts of learning relatively short

00:54:58.460 | if you're an adult.

00:54:59.700 | Younger people can probably engage in more bouts of learning.

00:55:03.700 | And it's probably one of the reasons

00:55:05.220 | why they learn so much faster.

00:55:07.180 | They can just pack so much more information

00:55:09.220 | into the brains and nervous systems compared to adults.

00:55:11.580 | You know, it's a little bit like,

00:55:12.960 | I'll use the example of a performance enhancing drugs.

00:55:15.780 | You know, some of those drugs probably do enhance performance

00:55:18.580 | at the level of increasing red blood cell count, et cetera.

00:55:21.500 | But a lot of what those drugs do

00:55:23.460 | is they allow athletes to recover faster

00:55:26.180 | so they can just train more.

00:55:27.300 | They allow them to do more work.

00:55:28.980 | And so being a child is a little bit like

00:55:30.620 | being in a performance enhanced brain milieu.

00:55:33.620 | Their brains are kind of on natural,

00:55:36.340 | healthy neurochemicals that afford them a lot more learning

00:55:40.580 | should they pursue it.

00:55:41.660 | So this goes back to my advice for young people early on.

00:55:45.540 | If you're young, what should you do?

00:55:47.420 | Learn as much as you can about as many things

00:55:49.340 | as you possibly can.

00:55:50.340 | And I suggest specializing in something,

00:55:52.420 | I guess I'm not in a position to give anyone direct advice,

00:55:56.300 | but I would say, hopefully by about age 30,

00:56:00.740 | hopefully younger, you have some sense of what excites you

00:56:03.160 | and try and get really good at that thing

00:56:05.200 | provided it serves the world for better.

00:56:08.100 | But that's all I'll say in terms of parenting advice.

00:56:12.940 | It's not my place, but maybe sometime I'll have an episode

00:56:16.860 | completely devoted to sort of youth and learning in youth.

00:56:21.140 | But once you're attaching dopamine

00:56:23.940 | to this process of making errors,

00:56:26.540 | then I start getting lots of questions

00:56:28.320 | that really are the right questions, which are,

00:56:30.620 | you know, how often should I do this?

00:56:33.060 | And when should I be doing this?

00:56:34.540 | And at what time?

00:56:35.380 | Well, I've talked a little bit about this

00:56:36.460 | in previous episodes,

00:56:37.460 | but as long as we're now kind of into the nitty gritty

00:56:39.860 | of tools and application,

00:56:41.620 | each of us have some natural times throughout the day

00:56:44.220 | when we are going to be much better

00:56:47.660 | at tolerating these errors and much more focused

00:56:51.260 | on what it is that we're trying to do.

00:56:52.480 | Last episode was about focus,

00:56:54.440 | but chances are that you can't focus as well at 4 p.m.

00:56:57.920 | as you can at 10 a.m.

00:56:59.140 | It differs for everybody depending on when you're sleeping

00:57:01.980 | and your kind of natural chemistry and rhythms,

00:57:04.340 | but find the time or times of day

00:57:07.400 | when you naturally have the highest mental acuity.

00:57:10.980 | And that's really when you wanna engage

00:57:12.700 | in these learning bouts.

00:57:14.340 | And then get to the point where you're making errors

00:57:16.620 | and then keep making errors for seven to 30 minutes.

00:57:19.660 | Just keep making those errors and drill through it.

00:57:22.300 | And you're almost seeking frustration.

00:57:24.540 | And if you can find some pleasure in the frustration,

00:57:26.540 | yes, that is a state that exists.

00:57:28.280 | You have created the optimal neurochemical milieu

00:57:31.340 | for learning that thing.

00:57:33.580 | But then here's the beauty of it.

00:57:35.300 | You also created the optimal milieu

00:57:37.820 | for learning other things afterward.

00:57:40.720 | If you leave that bout of,

00:57:42.320 | I gave the example of free throws,

00:57:43.780 | or maybe it's playing tennis or maybe it's some other skill,

00:57:47.620 | and you sit down to read a book,

00:57:49.340 | your brain is in a heightened state

00:57:51.860 | to learn and retain the information.

00:57:54.460 | Because those chemicals don't get released

00:57:56.580 | and then shut down.

00:57:57.580 | You're creating a whole milieu,

00:57:58.980 | an environment of these chemicals.

00:58:01.420 | And the tale of how long these chemicals stay

00:58:05.140 | sloshing around in your brain

00:58:06.180 | has too many factors for me to put a hard number on it.

00:58:08.660 | It's gonna depend on transporters and enzymes

00:58:10.820 | and all sorts of things.

00:58:12.220 | But at least for an hour or so, I would say,

00:58:15.320 | you're going to be in a state of heightened learning

00:58:18.360 | and the ability to learn, not just the motor patterns,

00:58:21.540 | but cognitive information, language information.

00:58:24.020 | Maybe you go to therapy right after that

00:58:25.980 | and you work on something in a very deliberate way

00:58:28.180 | that you're trying to work on.

00:58:29.600 | Maybe you don't go to therapy,

00:58:31.040 | maybe you do something else that's important to you.

00:58:34.380 | Again, there are just a variety of examples I could give.

00:58:37.940 | There are a number of things

00:58:39.380 | that allow us to powerfully access these states of error

00:58:44.180 | that are kind of surprising, but also kind of fun.

00:58:47.860 | And these aren't, again, these aren't gimmicks.

00:58:49.780 | These tap into these basic mechanisms of plasticity.

00:58:52.980 | And the three that I'd like to talk about next

00:58:57.060 | are balance, meaning the vestibular system,

00:59:01.260 | as well as the two sides of what I call limbic friction

00:59:05.960 | or autonomic arousal.

00:59:07.420 | And if none of that makes sense,

00:59:08.660 | I'm going to put a fine point on each one of those

00:59:11.700 | and what it is and why it works

00:59:13.740 | for opening up neuroplasticity.

00:59:15.900 | Let's talk about limbic friction.

00:59:18.140 | Now, limbic friction is not a term

00:59:19.940 | you're going to find in the textbooks.

00:59:21.580 | So if any of my colleagues are listening,

00:59:23.540 | I want to repeat limbic friction.

00:59:25.840 | I realize it's not something you're going to find

00:59:27.980 | in any of the textbooks.

00:59:29.600 | But it is an important principle

00:59:32.300 | that captures a lot of information that is in textbooks,

00:59:36.260 | both neurobiology and psychology.

00:59:38.300 | And it has some really important implications.

00:59:41.240 | Limbic friction is my attempt to give a name to something

00:59:46.660 | that is more nuanced and mechanistic than stress.

00:59:50.420 | Because typically when we hear about stress,

00:59:52.900 | we think of heart rate, heartbeat, going too fast,

00:59:55.880 | breathing too fast, sweating,

00:59:57.420 | and not being in a state that we want.

00:59:59.060 | We're too alert and we want to be more calm.

01:00:01.620 | And indeed, that's one condition

01:00:03.980 | in which we have limbic friction,

01:00:06.700 | meaning our limbic system is taking control

01:00:10.420 | of a number of different aspects

01:00:11.700 | of our autonomic or automatic biology.

01:00:15.140 | And we are struggling to control that

01:00:18.740 | through what we call top-down mechanisms.

01:00:20.220 | We're trying to calm down

01:00:21.760 | in order to reduce that level of arousal.

01:00:24.960 | We're all familiar with this.

01:00:25.980 | It's called the stress response.

01:00:27.580 | However, there's another aspect of stress

01:00:30.380 | that's just as important,

01:00:32.260 | which is when we're tired and we're fatigued

01:00:34.900 | and we need to engage, we need to be more alert than we are.

01:00:38.700 | And so what I call limbic friction

01:00:40.720 | is really designed to describe the fact

01:00:42.700 | that when our autonomic nervous system

01:00:44.160 | isn't where we want it,

01:00:45.280 | meaning we're trying to be more alert

01:00:47.340 | or we're trying to be less alert,

01:00:49.180 | both of those feel stressful to people.

01:00:51.100 | So the other way to put it is that the word stress

01:00:53.720 | is not a very good word to describe

01:00:55.440 | what most people experience as stressful

01:00:57.140 | because it can either be being too tired or being too alert.

01:01:01.220 | Now, why am I bringing this up

01:01:02.620 | in the discussion about neuroplasticity?

01:01:04.040 | This is not a discussion about stress.

01:01:05.560 | At some point, we will talk about stress and tools

01:01:07.940 | to deal with stress.

01:01:09.640 | But the reason I'm bringing this up

01:01:11.680 | is that in order to access neuroplasticity,

01:01:15.300 | you need these components of focus.

01:01:17.580 | You need the component of attaching subjective reward.

01:01:21.560 | You need to make errors, all this stuff.

01:01:23.380 | And a lot of people find it difficult

01:01:25.780 | to just get into the overall state to access those things.

01:01:30.180 | So now there's a series of gates

01:01:31.860 | that people are having a hard time accessing.

01:01:34.280 | They're too tired and they can't focus, for instance.

01:01:36.960 | Well, here's the beauty of it.

01:01:39.920 | If you are too alert, meaning you're too anxious,

01:01:44.420 | and you want to calm down in order to learn better,

01:01:47.380 | there are things that you can do.

01:01:49.020 | The two that I've spoken about previously

01:01:51.580 | on various podcasts, and I'll just review them really quickly

01:01:54.120 | are the double inhale exhale.

01:01:55.700 | So inhaling twice through the nose

01:01:57.060 | and exhaling once through the mouth.

01:01:58.580 | This is not some yogic trick or some hack.

01:02:02.180 | This is what's called a physiological sigh.

01:02:04.060 | It offloads carbon dioxide from the lungs.

01:02:06.300 | It has a number of different effects.

01:02:07.680 | These were described in textbooks

01:02:08.940 | and dating back to the '30s.

01:02:11.980 | And a number of laboratories have explored

01:02:14.740 | the neural circuitry underlying these

01:02:16.580 | so-called physiological sighs.

01:02:18.100 | That will calm you down faster than anything else

01:02:20.100 | that I'm aware of.

01:02:21.920 | The other thing is starting to remove your tunnel vision.

01:02:25.060 | When you use tunnel vision, you're very focused.

01:02:27.100 | That epinephrine is released by dilating your field of gaze,

01:02:30.020 | so-called panoramic vision.

01:02:32.100 | Great.

01:02:32.940 | So now you can start to sort of move up and down

01:02:36.540 | this level of autonomic arousal.

01:02:39.140 | The key is you want to be in a state of arousal

01:02:42.620 | that's ideally matched to the thing

01:02:44.080 | that you're trying to perform or learn.

01:02:45.460 | So if I'm really anxious

01:02:47.100 | and I can't even pick up the basketball

01:02:48.980 | or I feel like I'm shaking or my muscles are too tight,

01:02:51.260 | I don't have that kind of looseness.

01:02:52.720 | Now when I move like that,

01:02:53.860 | almost makes it look like I could throw a free throw,

01:02:56.520 | but I miss 95% of the time,

01:02:59.380 | unless the basket is very, very low

01:03:02.160 | and I place it indirectly,

01:03:03.500 | but I guess that's not a free throw, is it?

01:03:06.100 | In any case, the point being

01:03:07.920 | that you want to be in a state of alertness, but calm.

01:03:12.380 | And so you need to have ways to calm yourself down

01:03:14.380 | when you're too amped up.

01:03:16.380 | But the other side of limbic friction is important too.

01:03:19.540 | If you are too tired and you can't focus,

01:03:22.620 | well, then it's going to be impossible

01:03:23.960 | to even get to the starting line,

01:03:26.320 | so to speak, for engaging in neuroplasticity

01:03:28.700 | through incremental learning, et cetera.

01:03:30.500 | So in that case,

01:03:31.900 | there are other methods that you can do to wake yourself up.

01:03:34.180 | The best thing you should do is get a good night's sleep,

01:03:36.020 | but that's not always possible,

01:03:37.180 | or use a NSDR, non-sleep deep rest protocol.

01:03:39.860 | But if you've already done those things

01:03:42.340 | or you're simply exhausted for whatever other reason,

01:03:46.160 | then there are other things that I often get asked about,

01:03:49.540 | like sure, a cup of coffee or super oxygenation breathing,

01:03:52.500 | which means inhaling more than exhaling

01:03:54.500 | on average in a breathing bout.

01:03:56.460 | These are, now we're sort of getting toward the realm

01:03:58.980 | of like how you could trick your nervous system

01:04:00.460 | into waking up.

01:04:01.320 | And if you bring more oxygen in

01:04:02.920 | by making your inhales deeper and longer,

01:04:04.520 | you will become more alert.

01:04:06.180 | You'll start to actually deploy norepinephrine

01:04:08.240 | if you breathe very fast.

01:04:09.660 | So there are things that you can do to move up or down

01:04:12.520 | this so-called autonomic arousal arc.

01:04:15.580 | And what you want to ask before you undergo

01:04:17.980 | any learning bout is how much limbic friction

01:04:21.140 | am I experiencing?

01:04:22.080 | Am I too alert and I want to be calmer?

01:04:24.780 | Or am I too calm and too sleepy and I want to be more alert?

01:04:27.960 | You're going to need to engage in behaviors

01:04:30.940 | that bring you to the starting line in order to learn.

01:04:33.920 | There are other things that you can do

01:04:37.000 | in order to then learn better and faster

01:04:40.440 | besides incremental learning,

01:04:41.780 | and those center on the vestibular system.

01:04:43.820 | And this may come as a surprise to some people,

01:04:45.840 | but probably not as a surprise to some of you

01:04:49.380 | whose professions or whose recreation

01:04:52.000 | involves a lot of motor activity

01:04:54.380 | and sort of what we call high dimensional skill activity,

01:04:56.760 | not just running or cycling or very linear activities

01:04:59.620 | like weightlifting, but things that involve inversions

01:05:01.960 | and a lot of lateral movement, actual sports,

01:05:05.300 | jumping, diving, rolling, these kinds of things,

01:05:07.540 | gymnastics type stuff.

01:05:09.660 | Why the vestibular system to access neuroplasticity?

01:05:13.340 | Well, we have a hardwired system for balance

01:05:16.820 | and here's how it works in as simple terms

01:05:19.420 | as I can possibly come up with.

01:05:21.460 | As we move through space, or even if we're stationary,

01:05:26.460 | there are really three main planes of movement.

01:05:29.920 | Now I realize some people are just listening to this,

01:05:31.560 | so I'm going to do this for both of the folks

01:05:33.160 | that are just listening

01:05:34.080 | and for those of you that are watching on video.

01:05:36.200 | So there are three main modes of movement

01:05:39.100 | and it turns out that your brain doesn't really know

01:05:41.380 | where your body is except through

01:05:43.260 | that proprioceptive feedback.

01:05:45.100 | The main way it knows is through three planes of movement

01:05:49.160 | that we call pitch, which is like nodding.

01:05:51.840 | So if I nod like this, that's pitch.

01:05:54.740 | Then there's yaw, which is side to side,

01:05:57.400 | which is like shaking my head, no.

01:05:59.600 | And then there's roll from side to side,

01:06:01.660 | like when a puppy looks at you like that kind of thing.

01:06:05.640 | So pitch, yaw, and roll.

01:06:08.480 | And the pilots out there will know exactly

01:06:10.260 | what I'm talking about.

01:06:11.420 | The brain knows the orientation and position of your body

01:06:16.440 | relative to gravity, depending on whether or not

01:06:19.180 | your brain and your head actually is engaging more in pitch,

01:06:24.120 | yaw, or roll, or some combination.

01:06:26.120 | Because if I lean down like so,

01:06:28.000 | or like so, it's a combination of pitch, yaw, and roll.

01:06:31.160 | Now you might say like, what is going on here?

01:06:32.980 | Well, we have these little things in our inner ear

01:06:35.920 | called the semicircular canals.

01:06:37.580 | Just like our eyes have two main functions,

01:06:39.640 | one is to see objects in space

01:06:41.440 | and the other is to set our circadian clocks

01:06:43.800 | through subconscious mechanisms.

01:06:45.080 | Our ears have two main roles.

01:06:48.000 | One is to hear, right?

01:06:49.720 | To perceive sound waves

01:06:51.120 | or take in sound waves for perception, so-called hearing.

01:06:54.160 | And the other is balance or vestibular function.

01:06:56.580 | So sitting in our ears are these semicircular canals.

01:06:59.160 | And they're these little tubes where these little stones,

01:07:02.160 | they're actually little bits of calcium,

01:07:03.520 | roll back and forth like little marbles.

01:07:05.440 | When we roll this way, they roll this way.

01:07:07.520 | When we pitch, when we go from side to side,

01:07:09.520 | there's some that sit flat like this and they go like marbles

01:07:13.020 | inside of a hula hoop, and then we have roll.

01:07:15.120 | There's some that are kind of at 45 degrees to those

01:07:17.240 | and it's kind of pitch, yaw, and roll.

01:07:19.400 | So you go, okay, great.

01:07:20.700 | That sends signals to the rest of our brain and body

01:07:23.260 | that tell us how to compensate

01:07:25.040 | for shifts relative to gravity.

01:07:27.720 | And I say, okay, I thought we were talking about plasticity,

01:07:29.700 | but this is where it gets really, really cool.

01:07:33.160 | Errors in vestibular motor sensory experience,

01:07:38.160 | meaning when we are off balance

01:07:40.840 | and we have to compensate by looking at, thinking about,

01:07:44.800 | or responding to the world differently,

01:07:47.460 | cause an area of our brain called the cerebellum.

01:07:50.100 | It actually means mini brain.

01:07:51.420 | It looks like a little mini brain stuck,

01:07:52.980 | like tucked below our cortex in the back.

01:07:56.360 | Caused the cerebellum to signal

01:07:58.340 | some of these deeper brain centers

01:08:00.420 | that release dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine.

01:08:03.740 | And that's because these circuits in the inner ear,

01:08:08.880 | et cetera, and the cerebellum,

01:08:12.100 | they were designed to recalibrate our motor movements

01:08:16.880 | when our relationship to gravity changes,

01:08:19.580 | something fundamental to survival.

01:08:21.000 | We can't afford to be falling down all the time

01:08:22.900 | or missing things that we grab for,

01:08:25.160 | or running in the wrong direction

01:08:28.420 | when something is pursuing us.

01:08:29.940 | These are hardwired circuits

01:08:31.480 | that tap right into these chemical pathways.

01:08:34.620 | And those chemical pathways are the gates to plasticity.

01:08:38.620 | So I really want to spell this out clearly

01:08:40.800 | cause I've given a lot of information today.

01:08:43.280 | The first thing is how are you arriving

01:08:45.160 | to the learning bout?

01:08:47.040 | You need to make sure your level

01:08:48.380 | of autonomic arousal is correct.

01:08:51.060 | The ideal state is going to be clear, calm, and focused,

01:08:54.100 | maybe a little bit more on the arousal level,

01:08:56.620 | like heightened arousal.

01:08:58.300 | So understand limbic friction,

01:09:00.080 | understand that you can be too tired,

01:09:01.420 | in which case you're going to need

01:09:02.340 | to get yourself a little more alert,

01:09:03.900 | or you can be too alert

01:09:06.460 | and you're going to need to get yourself calmer.

01:09:09.220 | That gets you to the starting line.

01:09:11.220 | When you're at the starting line,

01:09:12.460 | then you're going to go into a learning bout

01:09:13.920 | and that's when you want to start making these errors, okay?

01:09:16.820 | But what I'm saying is there's a layer in between

01:09:20.140 | where if you are interested in using motor patterns

01:09:24.800 | as a way to open up plasticity for all kinds of learning,

01:09:27.420 | not just motor learning,

01:09:28.660 | disrupting your vestibular motor relationship,

01:09:35.540 | meaning, and I'll tell you how to do that in a moment,

01:09:37.860 | can deploy or release neurochemicals in the brain

01:09:41.280 | that place you into a state

01:09:43.460 | that makes you much better at learning

01:09:46.980 | and making errors much more pleasureful.

01:09:50.400 | You're much more willing to do that.

01:09:52.220 | Now, some of you are probably saying flow state, flow state.

01:09:54.500 | Okay, I have friends that work on flow states

01:09:57.100 | and who are involved in flow states

01:09:58.920 | and trying to figure out what they are.

01:10:00.300 | I have great respect for those people.

01:10:01.820 | So I want to tip my hat to them, very important work,

01:10:06.820 | but again, flow is an expression

01:10:08.980 | of what you already know how to do.

01:10:11.260 | It's not how you learn,

01:10:12.940 | it's how you express what you've already learned.

01:10:15.580 | So I want to be really clear about that.

01:10:17.160 | It's been kind of presented as this super state

01:10:19.980 | or highly desirable state,

01:10:21.660 | but it's that we can all reach for.

01:10:24.340 | That's the wrong rung to reach for

01:10:26.200 | until you already know how to do the things

01:10:27.820 | that I'm describing in my opinion.

01:10:30.920 | So the vestibular system,

01:10:33.040 | if you can engage the vestibular system

01:10:35.040 | and create some errors within the vestibular motor operations

01:10:38.700 | that you're carrying out,

01:10:39.840 | you create a neurochemical state

01:10:41.400 | that then makes you very, very good

01:10:43.880 | at learning very quickly, regardless of age.

01:10:46.840 | So what would this look like?

01:10:48.080 | Does this mean just doing inversions?

01:10:49.840 | Well, does this mean doing yoga?

01:10:51.960 | Maybe.

01:10:52.800 | Does this mean taking corners faster on your road bike?

01:10:56.620 | Does this mean, let's say you always swim freestyle

01:11:00.160 | or breaststroke?

01:11:01.000 | Does this mean swimming backstroke or butterfly?

01:11:05.980 | It depends.

01:11:07.280 | It depends, however, on a very, very easy

01:11:10.580 | to understand parameter,

01:11:11.720 | which is how regularly you perform

01:11:14.020 | a particular motor behavior and how novel a behavior is.

01:11:18.780 | So the more novel that a behavior is

01:11:21.340 | in terms of your relationship to gravity,

01:11:23.880 | the more it will open up the opportunity for plasticity.

01:11:27.540 | Have you ever seen somebody

01:11:28.560 | who just jumped out of the plane for the first time

01:11:31.520 | with a parachute?

01:11:33.020 | I don't even want to think about what,

01:11:35.020 | if you've just seen somebody who jumped out of a plane

01:11:36.760 | for the first time without a parachute,

01:11:38.020 | I would just hope the plane was on the ground.

01:11:40.200 | But if you've seen somebody after that,

01:11:42.100 | they are in this incredible state

01:11:43.740 | because their body and brain are flooded

01:11:46.080 | with all these neurochemicals

01:11:47.400 | because it's very novel to them.

01:11:49.040 | However, I've got friends from communities

01:11:51.180 | that have done thousands upon thousands,

01:11:53.840 | maybe tens of thousands of jumps,

01:11:55.400 | and they're always alert and aware,

01:11:57.280 | but it becomes pretty regular for them.

01:11:59.320 | That's the point.

01:12:00.200 | And they're not in this kind of buzzed out,

01:12:02.140 | excited state afterwards because it's routine for them.

01:12:05.500 | So the key is to bring novelty

01:12:08.000 | to the vestibular motor experience,

01:12:11.440 | the vestibular motor commands that you're performing.

01:12:15.440 | And how do you do that?

01:12:16.900 | Well, it's all about your orientation relative to gravity.

01:12:20.640 | Now, I wouldn't want anyone to place themselves at risk.

01:12:22.720 | So if you can't do handstands,

01:12:24.920 | don't try and do them,

01:12:26.440 | freestanding and whatever.

01:12:27.800 | If you're good at handstands,

01:12:29.000 | guess how much plasticity doing a handstands

01:12:31.160 | for half an hour is going to create for you?

01:12:33.820 | Zero, zero.

01:12:35.820 | Your body is fully comfortable walking on your hands.

01:12:38.600 | I see these people walking on your hands,

01:12:40.560 | being upside down, being inverted.

01:12:42.120 | You know, your Cirque du Soleil performers,

01:12:43.640 | they're very comfortable there.

01:12:44.780 | And there's zero learning, zero plasticity

01:12:47.320 | because the failures and errors

01:12:48.960 | and the relationship to gravity

01:12:51.380 | are very typical for that individual.

01:12:54.840 | Now, what this means is

01:12:56.560 | that if we're going to use motor practices

01:12:58.640 | to open up plasticity for learning,

01:13:00.520 | not just those practices,

01:13:01.700 | but maybe some cognitive skills

01:13:04.160 | or other things in the period that follows,

01:13:06.600 | we need to create a sense of novelty relative to gravity.

01:13:09.680 | And that means being either in a new position

01:13:13.400 | or slightly unstable.

01:13:15.320 | Believe it or not, I don't want anyone injuring themselves,

01:13:18.280 | but the sensation of falling or close to falling

01:13:21.960 | signals the cerebellum to signal the deep brain centers

01:13:24.940 | that release these neurochemicals,

01:13:26.780 | that something is very different

01:13:28.120 | and we need to correct this error very, very fast.

01:13:31.080 | Earlier, I was talking about high contingencies for learning

01:13:34.600 | and you know, you definitely don't want to make it

01:13:37.020 | a kind of like either survive this

01:13:38.480 | or die kind of experience.

01:13:40.880 | I confess I occasionally look at these parkour videos

01:13:44.300 | on YouTube and believe it or not,

01:13:46.360 | a lot of those people have died.

01:13:48.280 | The ones that do these ridiculous things

01:13:50.720 | of hanging off of buildings and things,

01:13:52.200 | I am not suggesting you do that, please don't do that.

01:13:54.880 | What I'm talking about is finding safe ways

01:13:56.840 | to explore the sensory motor vestibular space as we call it,

01:14:01.560 | the relationship between those things.

01:14:03.040 | So that could be through yoga.

01:14:04.480 | If you're terrible at yoga,

01:14:05.600 | there's more opportunity for you to learn

01:14:07.020 | than somebody who's very skilled at yoga, for instance,

01:14:09.440 | or gymnastics or handstands or on your road bike.

01:14:12.280 | This is unfortunately what I don't want to name brands,

01:14:15.040 | but stationary bikes where they give you

01:14:16.560 | the visual experience of moving through space,

01:14:18.600 | but you're not actually moving through physical space.

01:14:20.740 | There's no vestibular feedback, it's all visual, right?

01:14:25.540 | You're stationary on the bike, right?

01:14:27.620 | So unless you're hanging off the bike in your living room,

01:14:29.760 | like almost to the point you're tipping the bike,

01:14:32.020 | you're not getting the actual vestibular motor

01:14:35.160 | sensory mismatch, that mismatch is the signal

01:14:38.080 | that deploys dopamine epinephrine and these other things.

01:14:40.440 | I don't care how excited or how much fun the ride was

01:14:42.880 | or how much music you're playing that you love,

01:14:45.160 | it's not the same situation as being

01:14:48.740 | out of your normal relationship to the gravitational pull.

01:14:53.740 | So the first gate is to arrive at learning

01:14:57.320 | at the appropriate level of autonomic arousal.

01:15:00.620 | Clear and focused is best,

01:15:02.280 | but don't obsess over being right there.

01:15:04.460 | It's okay to be a little anxious or a little bit tired.

01:15:07.680 | Then you want to make errors, we talked about that,

01:15:10.700 | and this vestibular motor sensory relationship

01:15:13.600 | is absolutely key if you want to get heightened

01:15:17.040 | or accelerated plasticity.

01:15:18.840 | And we talked about another feature,

01:15:21.380 | which is setting a contingency.

01:15:23.400 | If there's a reason, an important reason for you

01:15:26.160 | to actually learn, even if you're making failures,

01:15:28.860 | the learning will be accelerated.

01:15:30.680 | So there's really four things that you really need to do

01:15:33.040 | for plasticity as an adult.

01:15:36.020 | And I would say that these also apply to young people.

01:15:39.680 | And there's an interesting kind of thought experiment there

01:15:43.680 | as well, which is if you look at children,

01:15:46.820 | they are moving a lot in different dimensions.

01:15:49.840 | They are sometimes hanging from trees,

01:15:52.400 | or I was a kind of a, my sports were always things

01:15:56.280 | where I tended to get hurt a lot, fall a lot,

01:15:58.240 | so it was skateboarding for me when I was younger,

01:16:00.120 | so a lot of falling and rolling

01:16:01.760 | and various things of that sort.

01:16:05.040 | But whatever sport the kids are playing,

01:16:06.760 | or even if they don't play a sport,

01:16:08.760 | they tend to move in a lot of different relationships

01:16:11.880 | to gravity, more dimensionality to their movements,

01:16:15.040 | I should say, than adults.

01:16:16.480 | And one of the questions that's always kind of been

01:16:18.480 | in the back of my mind is, you know, as we age,

01:16:21.460 | we get less good at engaging in neuroplasticity.

01:16:23.880 | Part of that is because as the brain ages,

01:16:26.540 | there are certain changes to the way

01:16:28.780 | that neurons are structured,

01:16:29.920 | the molecular components, et cetera,

01:16:31.920 | but it's kind of a self-amplifying,

01:16:35.440 | or I should say a self-degenerating cycle,

01:16:40.440 | where as we get older, we tend to get more linear

01:16:46.720 | and more regular about specific kinds of movements.

01:16:49.220 | So we get on the treadmill, or we take the walk,

01:16:51.400 | or we just always go up the same stairs, et cetera,

01:16:53.560 | and there's less opportunity typically

01:16:56.500 | for engaging these relationships to the gravitational pull

01:17:00.300 | through the vestibular motor sensory convergence

01:17:03.160 | that we talked about a moment ago.

01:17:05.040 | And so you sort of have to wonder

01:17:06.760 | whether or not the lack of plasticity

01:17:08.560 | or the reduced plasticity in older individuals,

01:17:11.960 | which includes me, would reflect the fact

01:17:16.320 | that those chemicals aren't being deployed

01:17:18.280 | because we're not engaging in certain behaviors,

01:17:21.740 | as opposed to we can't engage in the behaviors

01:17:24.200 | because the chemicals aren't being deployed.

01:17:26.040 | Now, I have a feeling it's both.

01:17:27.260 | These have a reciprocal relationship.

01:17:29.240 | And I certainly, again, I don't think it would be wise

01:17:32.840 | for anyone who doesn't have the muscle stabilizing skills

01:17:36.200 | or the bone density, et cetera,

01:17:38.600 | to start doing inversions and things of that sort.

01:17:41.160 | That's not what I'm talking about here.

01:17:43.160 | But it's interesting to think about the sorts of exercise

01:17:45.960 | that we engage in.

01:17:46.800 | We all know that getting the heart rate elevated

01:17:48.400 | three to five times a week is really good for us,

01:17:50.940 | for cardiovascular health.

01:17:52.160 | I think there's a ton of data to support that now.

01:17:54.780 | Some load-bearing exercise is important

01:17:57.260 | for increasing bone density

01:17:58.520 | and maintaining muscular strength

01:17:59.840 | and proprioceptive feedback,

01:18:02.000 | because I'm sure many of you know this,

01:18:04.280 | but resistance exercise

01:18:06.280 | actually trains the nerve to muscle connections

01:18:09.140 | as much as it does the muscles themselves,

01:18:11.640 | something I talked about at the beginning of the episode.

01:18:14.160 | But I think most of us could stand to increase the degree

01:18:19.160 | to which we engage this vestibular system in novel ways.

01:18:22.880 | And that can be done quite safely

01:18:24.320 | through a number of different mechanisms.

01:18:27.200 | I'm not a surfer, but people who do that sort of thing

01:18:29.920 | are very familiar with orienting their body differently

01:18:32.400 | according to the gravitational pull,

01:18:34.480 | where they're lying down, then they're standing up,

01:18:36.040 | then they're turning, they're leaning their head.

01:18:37.840 | So again, it's this pitchy all roll thing.

01:18:40.400 | And again, if you're very skilled at surfing,

01:18:42.640 | you're actually not going to open up plasticity

01:18:44.820 | just by surfing.

01:18:45.660 | It's in the learning of these new relationships to gravity

01:18:49.700 | that the windows for plasticity are enhanced.

01:18:52.780 | So I want to make sure that I underscore the fact

01:18:56.480 | that this vestibular thing that I've been describing

01:18:59.040 | is a way to really accentuate plasticity.

01:19:02.400 | It's tapping into an inborn biological mechanism

01:19:06.240 | where the cerebellum has outputs

01:19:07.660 | to these deep brain nuclei associated with dopamine,

01:19:10.840 | acetylcholine, and norepinephrine.

01:19:12.560 | You don't want to endanger yourself

01:19:15.020 | in the course of pursuing these activities,

01:19:16.940 | but it is a powerful mechanism.

01:19:18.820 | That's kind of an amplifier on plasticity,

01:19:23.080 | as is high contingency.

01:19:24.440 | If you really need to learn conversational French

01:19:26.540 | to save your relationship,

01:19:28.520 | chances are you're going to learn it.

01:19:29.840 | There are limits, of course,

01:19:30.900 | to the extent to which one can accentuate

01:19:33.640 | or accelerate plasticity.

01:19:35.680 | You know, the ceiling on this is not infinite.

01:19:37.840 | Although we don't know how high it goes,

01:19:40.020 | I think it's reasonable to say that

01:19:41.300 | if someone put a gun to my head and said,

01:19:42.820 | learn conversational French in the next 120 seconds,

01:19:45.960 | that conversational French would be limited

01:19:47.840 | probably to just one word,

01:19:49.280 | probably the word we or something like that,

01:19:51.640 | because I can't stuff in all the knowledge all at once.

01:19:55.400 | I mean, I think that's the dream of brain machine interface

01:19:57.800 | that one will be able to download a chip

01:19:59.580 | into their hippocampus or cortex

01:20:01.760 | or some other brain structure

01:20:02.860 | that would allow them to download conversational French.

01:20:06.040 | And someday we may get to that

01:20:08.940 | as that capability may come about.

01:20:11.040 | Right now, it does not exist,

01:20:13.080 | nor is there a specific pill or chemical

01:20:15.760 | that will allow you to download

01:20:18.040 | more information more quickly.

01:20:20.480 | This is the issue around nootropics I've talked about before.

01:20:24.760 | There are things that can increase focus,

01:20:26.720 | mainly things that increase acetylcholine

01:20:28.660 | and transmission through the nicotine system,

01:20:31.120 | things that can increase dopamine,

01:20:32.560 | things like L-tyrosine.

01:20:34.360 | Again, I'm not recommending these,

01:20:35.560 | you need to heed the warnings on those bottles,

01:20:37.340 | but they will increase these neurochemicals.

01:20:39.920 | And there are of course things

01:20:41.280 | that will increase epinephrine,

01:20:42.200 | things like caffeine,

01:20:43.200 | or some people because of prescription take Adderall.

01:20:47.200 | I'm again not suggesting people take any of these things.

01:20:49.800 | In fact, today I focused almost exclusively

01:20:53.340 | on behavioral tools and ways of structuring learning bouts

01:20:57.980 | that will allow you to access more plasticity

01:21:00.320 | regardless of age.

01:21:01.640 | And they center around things that I'm sure

01:21:04.360 | if you look around you, you'll see evidence for,

01:21:07.680 | oh, incremental learning is powerful,

01:21:09.400 | or, oh, the vestibular system

01:21:11.980 | can open up opportunities for plasticity.

01:21:13.960 | I'm sure that the yogis out there are all saying,

01:21:15.880 | wait, this sounds exactly like yoga.

01:21:18.420 | We're supposed to push to an edge and do these inversions

01:21:21.840 | and do all those sorts of things.

01:21:23.060 | Well, I want to be clear.

01:21:23.940 | I never said anyone should do inversions.

01:21:25.560 | I said that the vestibular system is a valuable portal

01:21:29.160 | into some of these neurochemical states

01:21:30.640 | that favor plasticity.

01:21:32.120 | But not so seldom I hear from the yoga community

01:21:36.120 | and they will say things like,

01:21:37.560 | much of what you're saying about how the brain works

01:21:39.660 | or neuroplasticity has already been described

01:21:42.480 | or is embedded in yoga practices.

01:21:44.280 | And I just want to be very clear.

01:21:45.420 | I have tremendous respect for the yoga community

01:21:48.600 | and the practices.

01:21:49.680 | I've done yoga from time to time.

01:21:51.040 | I find it challenging and valuable.

01:21:52.900 | I'm not a regular practitioner.

01:21:54.900 | But the problem with yoga

01:21:57.980 | is exactly the same problem with science,

01:22:00.840 | which is that yoga has a lot of practices

01:22:05.740 | for which there are very specific names,

01:22:08.300 | but no description or lending of understanding

01:22:11.680 | about mechanism.

01:22:13.140 | And science has a lot of mechanisms

01:22:16.240 | and a lot of publications and papers

01:22:17.760 | for which there's very little,

01:22:19.200 | if not no description of tools and practices.

01:22:22.240 | So my goal in not just today,

01:22:26.220 | but in many ways throughout the course of the podcast

01:22:28.640 | is to bridge the gaps between these various disciplines

01:22:32.080 | in ways that are grounded mainly

01:22:34.320 | to the fields of neuroscience and some related fields.

01:22:37.760 | So yes, it's true that I look at things

01:22:40.320 | mainly through the lens of science,

01:22:41.900 | but that's not to say

01:22:43.260 | that it exhaustively explains everything about anything,

01:22:47.120 | nor is it to say that it's the only lens

01:22:49.180 | through which one could look at

01:22:50.480 | something like neuroplasticity.

01:22:52.180 | So I just want to acknowledge that I have great respect

01:22:54.680 | for all these different practices and communities.

01:22:56.760 | And I think that indeed,

01:22:58.880 | there are many cases in which different communities

01:23:01.640 | and practices have been aimed at

01:23:03.920 | targeting the same goals or outcomes.

01:23:07.320 | Science and neuroscience

01:23:09.040 | through an understanding of mechanism

01:23:11.240 | can allow all of us

01:23:13.160 | to gain a kind of common understanding

01:23:15.440 | about what those practices are

01:23:16.800 | and how to access things like neuroplasticity,

01:23:19.000 | sleep, et cetera.

01:23:20.860 | And I do believe, as I've said previously on this podcast,

01:23:24.500 | that understanding mechanism affords us

01:23:26.680 | a certain flexibility,

01:23:28.080 | and I don't mean physical flexibility.

01:23:30.040 | I mean a flexibility when we can't engage

01:23:33.280 | in a particular behavior.

01:23:34.340 | Maybe we're injured,

01:23:35.260 | or maybe we're not in the right situation

01:23:37.040 | to do a particular practice.

01:23:38.720 | But by thinking about mechanism,

01:23:40.600 | we can adapt our circumstances.

01:23:43.040 | I've talked about this with sleep.

01:23:44.920 | If you're rigidly attached to one protocol

01:23:47.320 | of always looking at sunlight

01:23:48.480 | at one particular time in the morning and in the evening,

01:23:50.960 | that is not as valuable as understanding the mechanisms

01:23:53.960 | of why you might look at sunlight

01:23:55.920 | at one particular time versus another,

01:23:57.800 | because that affords you a flexibility,

01:23:59.640 | allows you to adapt.

01:24:00.640 | And life is very dynamic,

01:24:02.400 | and we don't have control

01:24:03.780 | over all the external conditions all the time.

01:24:06.560 | And so understanding mechanism

01:24:08.360 | through the lens of neuroscience,

01:24:09.520 | I do believe can be very powerful

01:24:11.480 | because of course there are multiple ways

01:24:13.120 | to access dopamine.

01:24:14.640 | There are multiple ways to adjust limbic friction.

01:24:17.080 | It's not just through respiration.

01:24:19.240 | Of course, there are many ways to do that.

01:24:21.880 | And so my overall goal here in this episode

01:24:25.080 | and with this podcast is to give you

01:24:27.720 | some understanding of the mechanisms

01:24:29.680 | and the insights into the underlying biology

01:24:32.100 | that allow you to tailor

01:24:33.960 | what these kind of foundational mechanisms are

01:24:38.080 | to suit your particular learning needs.

01:24:40.760 | So I really thank you for your time and attention today.

01:24:44.000 | I've covered a lot of material.

01:24:45.480 | I very much encourage questions in the comment section

01:24:49.000 | if you're looking at this on YouTube.

01:24:50.840 | And if you're not and you're listening to it

01:24:52.720 | on Apple or Spotify,

01:24:54.080 | please feel free to visit us over on the YouTube channel

01:24:57.780 | and put your questions in the comment section.

01:24:59.700 | I do read them.

01:25:00.600 | This entire month is all about neuroplasticity.

01:25:02.800 | There's a lot to cover,

01:25:04.160 | but I'm very excited to delve deeper into this topic

01:25:06.600 | as it relates to your particular interests.

01:25:09.080 | Many of you have graciously asked

01:25:10.560 | how you can help support the podcast.

01:25:12.700 | The best way you can do that is to subscribe

01:25:15.040 | to the YouTube channel if you haven't done that already,

01:25:17.700 | as well as to place questions in the comment section below

01:25:20.680 | or comments if you'd like to give us feedback.

01:25:23.160 | Also to subscribe on Apple and/or Spotify.

01:25:27.000 | And Apple allows you to leave a five-star review

01:25:29.760 | if you believe we deserve a five-star review

01:25:32.120 | as well as leave comments about the podcast.

01:25:35.020 | In addition, if you can suggest the podcast

01:25:37.960 | to your friends, to your family members,

01:25:39.880 | or anyone that you think might be able to use

01:25:42.300 | and appreciate the information,

01:25:43.660 | that's a terrific way to support us.

01:25:45.480 | And of course, check out our sponsors

01:25:47.360 | that we mentioned at the beginning.

01:25:48.580 | That's a terrific way to support us as well.

01:25:51.160 | Several times throughout today's episode,

01:25:53.080 | as well as on previous episodes of the podcast,

01:25:55.780 | I've talked about various supplements

01:25:57.680 | that can be useful for enhancing sleep,

01:26:00.640 | enhancing neuroplasticity, et cetera.

01:26:03.160 | And again, I want to emphasize

01:26:04.680 | that I always think that behavioral practices

01:26:07.160 | are the place to start.

01:26:08.720 | I don't think supplements should ever be

01:26:10.360 | the first line of entry for people looking

01:26:12.580 | to enhance these aspects of their nervous system in life.

01:26:15.340 | But for those of you that are interested in supplements

01:26:17.680 | and the supplements that I take,

01:26:19.260 | I'm pleased to announce that we partnered with Thorne,

01:26:21.600 | T-H-O-R-N-E.

01:26:23.900 | And Thorne makes supplements that are, in my opinion,

01:26:27.160 | of the very highest stringency

01:26:28.720 | in terms of what's listed on the bottle

01:26:31.260 | is actually what you'll find in the bottle.

01:26:32.940 | This is a serious issue for the supplement industry,

01:26:35.360 | as well as just the overall quality

01:26:37.420 | of the materials they put into their supplements.

01:26:39.960 | If you'd like to take a look at the supplements that I take,

01:26:42.680 | as well as explore any of them for yourself,

01:26:45.360 | you can go to Thorne.com/u/huberman.

01:26:50.360 | And if you look there,

01:26:51.480 | you'll see a number of the different supplements that I take.

01:26:53.920 | And if you decide to purchase any of them,

01:26:55.920 | you'll get 20% off your order.

01:26:57.600 | So that's Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E/u/huberman

01:27:02.560 | to see the supplements that I take

01:27:03.940 | and to explore if any of them are right for you.

01:27:07.540 | In the next episode of this podcast,

01:27:09.160 | we're going to continue to explore neuroplasticity.

01:27:12.340 | This, as you may recall,

01:27:13.440 | is the way that we go about things

01:27:15.040 | here at the Huberman Lab Podcast,

01:27:16.420 | which is to really drill deeply into a topic

01:27:19.280 | for three or four or even five episodes

01:27:21.940 | so that by the end of those episodes,

01:27:24.120 | all of you have a very firm understanding

01:27:26.220 | of how to apply the principles of neurobiology

01:27:28.940 | to the specific practices and endeavors

01:27:31.540 | that are most important to you.

01:27:33.280 | So I very much thank you for your time and attention.

01:27:36.120 | I know it's a lot of information

01:27:38.000 | and it takes a bit of focus and attention

01:27:40.440 | and certainly will trigger plasticity

01:27:43.160 | to learn all this information.

01:27:44.960 | I want to encourage you and just remind you

01:27:47.480 | that you don't have to grasp it all at once,

01:27:49.940 | that it is here archived,

01:27:51.580 | and that if you want to return to the information,

01:27:53.440 | it will still be here.

01:27:54.880 | And that I most of all really appreciate

01:27:58.040 | your interest in science.

01:27:59.360 | Thank you so much.

01:28:00.200 | [upbeat music]

01:28:02.780 | (upbeat music)

Using Failures, Movement & Balance to Learn Faster

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