How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance

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

00:00:02.320 | where we revisit past episodes

00:00:04.380 | for the most potent and actionable science-based tools

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

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

00:00:12.920 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:15.660 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:17.400 | Today, we're going to talk about

00:00:18.580 | how to change your nervous system for the better.

00:00:21.720 | As you recall, your nervous system includes your brain

00:00:24.320 | and your spinal cord,

00:00:26.000 | but also all the connections

00:00:27.720 | that your brain and spinal cord make

00:00:29.280 | with the organs of your body,

00:00:31.240 | and all the connections that the organs of your body

00:00:34.080 | make with your brain and spinal cord.

00:00:36.280 | Now, this thing that we call the nervous system

00:00:37.920 | is responsible for everything we know,

00:00:40.560 | all our behavior, all our emotions,

00:00:43.120 | everything we feel about ourselves and the outside world,

00:00:45.820 | everything we think and believe,

00:00:47.060 | it's really at the center of our entire experience

00:00:50.440 | of life and who we are.

00:00:52.180 | Fortunately, in humans, unlike in other species,

00:00:57.160 | we can change our nervous system

00:00:59.240 | by taking some very specific and deliberate actions.

00:01:02.840 | And today, we're really going to focus on the actions,

00:01:05.880 | the motor commands and the aspects of movement and balance

00:01:10.880 | that allow us to change our nervous system.

00:01:13.580 | It turns out that movement and balance

00:01:16.000 | actually provide windows or portals into our ability

00:01:19.880 | to change our nervous system the way we want,

00:01:22.360 | even if those changes are not about learning new movements

00:01:26.340 | or learning how to balance, and soon you'll understand why.

00:01:29.800 | So let's talk about the different kinds of plasticity

00:01:32.020 | that are available to us,

00:01:34.200 | because those will point directly

00:01:36.280 | towards the type of protocols that we should engage in

00:01:39.600 | to change ourselves for the better.

00:01:41.720 | There is something called representational plasticity.

00:01:44.120 | Representational plasticity is just your internal

00:01:47.160 | representation of the outside world.

00:01:48.680 | We know that, for instance, if I want to reach out

00:01:50.520 | and grab the pen in front of me,

00:01:51.640 | that I need to generate a certain amount of force,

00:01:53.920 | so I rarely overshoot, I rarely miss the pen, okay?

00:01:58.220 | So our maps of the motor world

00:02:00.940 | and our maps of the sensory world are merged.

00:02:03.900 | The way to create plasticity is to create mismatches

00:02:09.900 | or errors in how we perform things.

00:02:13.740 | And this, I think, is an amazing and important feature

00:02:16.700 | of neuroplasticity that is highly underappreciated.

00:02:19.700 | The way to create plasticity is to send signals

00:02:23.900 | to the brain that something is wrong,

00:02:27.060 | something is different, and something isn't being achieved.

00:02:30.500 | Errors, and making errors out of sync

00:02:34.100 | with what we would like to do is how our nervous system

00:02:37.540 | is cued through very distinct biological mechanisms

00:02:40.720 | that something isn't going right,

00:02:43.220 | and therefore certain neurochemicals are deployed

00:02:46.420 | that'll signal the neural circuits that they have to change.

00:02:50.320 | So let's talk about errors and making errors,

00:02:53.180 | and why and how that triggers the release of chemicals

00:02:56.340 | that then allow us to not just learn the thing

00:02:58.520 | that we're doing in the motor sense,

00:03:00.420 | play the piano, dance, et cetera,

00:03:02.540 | but it also creates an environment,

00:03:04.580 | a milieu within the brain that allows us to then go

00:03:08.500 | learn how to couple or uncouple a particular emotion

00:03:11.940 | to an experience, or better language learning,

00:03:14.420 | or better mathematical learning.

00:03:16.160 | Last episode, we discussed some of the basic principles

00:03:18.820 | of neuroplasticity.

00:03:20.640 | If you didn't hear that episode, no problem,

00:03:23.660 | I'll just review it quickly,

00:03:25.420 | which is that it's a falsehood that everything that we do

00:03:29.580 | and experience changes our brain.

00:03:31.500 | The brain changes when certain neurochemicals,

00:03:33.740 | namely acetylcholine, epinephrine, and dopamine

00:03:37.180 | are released in ways and in the specific times

00:03:40.980 | that allow for neural circuits to be marked for change,

00:03:44.060 | and then the change occurs later during sleep.

00:03:46.120 | Basically, you need a certain cocktail of chemicals

00:03:48.600 | released in the brain in order for a particular behavior

00:03:51.140 | to reshape the way that our brain works.

00:03:54.640 | So the question really is,

00:03:55.920 | what allows those neurochemicals to be released?

00:03:58.600 | And last episode, it talked all about focus.

00:04:00.980 | If you haven't seen or heard that episode,

00:04:03.520 | you might want to check it out

00:04:04.800 | about some specific tools and practices

00:04:07.080 | that can allow you to build up your capacity for focus

00:04:09.760 | and release certain chemicals in that cocktail.

00:04:12.340 | But today, we're going to talk about the other chemicals

00:04:14.200 | in the cocktail, in particular, dopamine.

00:04:17.600 | And we're really going to center our discussion

00:04:20.600 | around this issue of making errors

00:04:23.840 | and why making errors is actually the signal

00:04:26.780 | that tells the brain, okay, it's time to change,

00:04:29.040 | or more generally, it's time to pay attention to things

00:04:33.280 | so that you change.

00:04:35.240 | And I really want to distinguish this point really clearly,

00:04:39.400 | which is that I'm going to talk today a lot

00:04:41.200 | about motor and vestibular, meaning balance programs,

00:04:44.900 | but not just for learning motor commands and balance,

00:04:48.820 | but also for setting a stage

00:04:50.700 | or a kind of condition in your brain

00:04:52.460 | where you can go learn other things as well.

00:04:54.860 | So let's talk about some classic experiments

00:04:57.620 | that really nail down what's most important

00:05:01.100 | in this discussion about plasticity.

00:05:03.460 | So I mentioned last episode,

00:05:04.660 | and I'll just tell you right now,

00:05:05.700 | again, the brain is incredibly plastic

00:05:08.920 | from about birth until about age 25.

00:05:11.940 | And then somewhere about 25,

00:05:14.160 | it's not like the day after your 26th birthday,

00:05:16.500 | plasticity closes.

00:05:17.900 | There's a kind of tapering off of plasticity

00:05:20.460 | and you need different mechanisms

00:05:22.260 | to engage plasticity as an adult.

00:05:24.660 | Knowing how to tap into these plasticity mechanisms

00:05:27.780 | is very powerful.

00:05:29.460 | The simplest example is if I hear something off to my right,

00:05:32.180 | I look to my right.

00:05:34.260 | If I hear it on the left, I look to my left.

00:05:36.780 | If I hear it right in front of me,

00:05:38.460 | I keep looking right in front of me.

00:05:39.800 | And that's because our maps of visual space

00:05:43.400 | and our maps of auditory space

00:05:45.960 | and our maps of motor space

00:05:48.540 | are aligned to one another in perfect register.

00:05:51.800 | It's an incredible feature of our nervous system.

00:05:53.840 | It takes place in a structure called the superior colliculus,

00:05:56.400 | although you don't need to know that name.

00:05:58.600 | Superior colliculus has layers,

00:06:00.540 | literally stacks of neurons, like in a sandwich,

00:06:04.320 | where the zero point right in front of me,

00:06:07.200 | or maybe 10 or 15 degrees off to my right,

00:06:09.700 | or 10 or 15 degrees off to my left,

00:06:11.900 | are aligned so that the auditory neurons,

00:06:15.240 | the ones that care about sounds at 15 degrees to my right,

00:06:19.040 | sit directly below the neurons

00:06:21.160 | that look at 15 degrees to my right in my visual system.

00:06:24.740 | And when I reach over to this direction,

00:06:27.780 | there's a signal that's sent down through those layers

00:06:30.660 | that says 15 degrees off to the right

00:06:32.420 | is the direction to look, it's the direction to listen,

00:06:35.860 | and it's the direction to move if I need to move.

00:06:38.900 | So there's an alignment, and this is really powerful,

00:06:41.620 | and this is what allows us to move through space

00:06:43.620 | and function in our lives in a really fluid way.

00:06:46.900 | It's set up during development,

00:06:48.920 | but there've been some important experiments

00:06:51.580 | that have revealed that these maps are plastic,

00:06:55.560 | meaning they can shift, they're subject to neuroplasticity,

00:06:58.820 | and there are specific rules that allow us to shift them.

00:07:02.980 | So here's the key experiment.

00:07:05.480 | The key experiment was done by a colleague of mine,

00:07:09.300 | who's now retired, but whose work is absolutely fundamental

00:07:12.140 | in the field of neuroplasticity, Eric Knudsen.

00:07:14.980 | The Knudsen Lab and many of the Knudsen Lab

00:07:17.540 | scientific offspring showed that if one

00:07:22.140 | is to wear prism glasses that shift the visual field,

00:07:26.000 | that eventually there'll be a shift

00:07:29.740 | in the representation of the auditory and motor maps too.

00:07:33.220 | Now, what they initially did is they looked

00:07:35.120 | at young subjects, and what they did is they moved

00:07:40.000 | the visual world by making them wear prism glasses

00:07:43.120 | so that, for instance, if my pen is out in front of me

00:07:46.480 | at five degrees off center,

00:07:48.300 | so just a little bit off center,

00:07:49.560 | if you're listening to this,

00:07:50.400 | this would be like just a little bit to my right,

00:07:52.980 | but in these prism glasses,

00:07:55.160 | I actually see that pen way over far on my right.

00:07:59.460 | So it's actually here, but I see it over there

00:08:02.580 | because I'm wearing prisms on my eyes.

00:08:04.600 | What happens is in the first day or so,

00:08:06.500 | you ask people or you ask animal subjects or whatever

00:08:09.800 | to reach for this object and they reach to the wrong place

00:08:14.120 | because they're seeing it where it isn't.

00:08:16.720 | But what you find is that in young individuals

00:08:19.960 | within a day or two, they start adjusting

00:08:23.080 | their motor behavior in exactly the right way

00:08:26.880 | so that they always reach to the correct location.

00:08:29.280 | So they hear a sound at one location,

00:08:30.920 | they see the object that ought to make that sound

00:08:33.640 | at a different location,

00:08:34.760 | and they somehow are able to adjust their motor behavior

00:08:38.320 | to reach to the correct location.

00:08:40.680 | It's incredible.

00:08:41.880 | And what it tells us is that these maps

00:08:44.400 | that are aligned to one another can move and shift

00:08:47.680 | and it happens best in young individuals.

00:08:51.240 | If you do this in older individuals,

00:08:53.840 | in most cases, it takes a very long time

00:08:56.800 | for the maps to shift and in some cases they never shift.

00:08:59.640 | So this is a very experimental scenario,

00:09:01.760 | but it's an important one to understand

00:09:03.520 | because it really tamps down the fact

00:09:06.900 | that we have the capacity to create dramatic shifts

00:09:11.120 | in our representation of the outside world.

00:09:13.280 | So how can we get plasticity as adults

00:09:19.560 | that mimics the plasticity that we get

00:09:21.900 | when we are juveniles?

00:09:23.220 | Well, the Knudsen Lab and other labs have looked at this

00:09:26.240 | and it's really interesting.

00:09:28.200 | The signal that generates the plasticity

00:09:32.000 | is the making of errors.

00:09:35.360 | It's the reaches and failures that signal

00:09:38.400 | to the nervous system that this is not working

00:09:43.320 | and therefore the shifts start to take place.

00:09:46.760 | And this is so fundamentally important

00:09:48.840 | because I think most people understandably get frustrated,

00:09:51.880 | like they're trying to learn a piece on the piano

00:09:53.640 | and they don't know, they can't do it,

00:09:55.080 | or they're trying to write a piece of code

00:09:56.480 | or they're trying to access some sort of motor behavior

00:09:58.800 | and they can't do it.

00:09:59.880 | And the frustration drives them crazy

00:10:01.760 | and like, I can't do it, I can't do it.

00:10:02.900 | When they don't realize that the errors themselves

00:10:06.520 | are signaling to the brain and nervous system,

00:10:08.560 | something's not working.

00:10:10.000 | And of course the brain doesn't understand

00:10:12.000 | the words something isn't working.

00:10:14.280 | The brain doesn't even understand frustration

00:10:16.060 | as an emotional state.

00:10:17.660 | The brain understands the neurochemicals that are released,

00:10:21.740 | namely epinephrine and acetylcholine,

00:10:25.700 | but also, and we'll get into this,

00:10:27.280 | the molecule dopamine when we start to approximate

00:10:30.160 | the correct behavior just a little bit

00:10:32.920 | and we start getting a little bit right.

00:10:35.280 | So what happens is when we make errors,

00:10:38.000 | the nervous system starts releasing neurotransmitters

00:10:40.720 | and neuromodulators that say,

00:10:42.520 | we better change something in the circuitry.

00:10:44.640 | And so errors are the basis for neuroplasticity

00:10:47.880 | and for learning.

00:10:48.920 | And I wish that this was more prominent out there.

00:10:52.040 | I guess this is why I'm saying it.

00:10:54.160 | And humans do not like this feeling of frustration

00:10:57.620 | and making errors.

00:10:58.860 | The few that do, do exceedingly well in whatever pursuits

00:11:03.040 | they happen to be involved in.

00:11:04.700 | The ones that don't generally don't do well.

00:11:07.660 | They generally don't learn much.

00:11:09.160 | And if you think about it,

00:11:10.000 | why would your nervous system ever change?

00:11:12.620 | Why would it ever change?

00:11:14.100 | Unless there was something to be afraid of,

00:11:16.400 | something that made us feel awful will signal

00:11:18.260 | that the nervous system needs to change,

00:11:19.980 | or there's an error in our performance.

00:11:22.420 | So it turns out that the feedback of these errors,

00:11:25.660 | the reaching to the wrong location,

00:11:28.200 | starts to release a number of things.

00:11:30.520 | And now you've heard about them many times,

00:11:32.220 | but this would be epinephrine.

00:11:33.560 | It increases alertness, acetylcholine focus,

00:11:37.420 | because if acetylcholine is released,

00:11:38.940 | it creates an opportunity to focus on the error margin,

00:11:43.100 | the distance between what it is that you're doing

00:11:45.540 | and what it is that you would like to do.

00:11:47.660 | And then the nervous system starts to make changes

00:11:51.620 | almost immediately in order to try

00:11:53.300 | and get the behavior right.

00:11:54.660 | And when you start getting it even a little bit right,

00:11:56.940 | that third molecule comes online or is released,

00:11:59.820 | which is dopamine,

00:12:01.100 | which allows for the plastic changes to occur very fast.

00:12:04.100 | Now this is what all happens very naturally in young brains,

00:12:07.180 | but in old brains, it tends to be pretty slow,

00:12:10.380 | except for in two conditions.

00:12:13.060 | So let me just pause and just say this.

00:12:14.780 | If you are uncomfortable making errors

00:12:17.340 | and you get frustrated easily,

00:12:21.340 | if you leverage that frustration

00:12:25.380 | toward drilling deeper into the endeavor,

00:12:27.980 | you are setting yourself up

00:12:29.380 | for a terrific set of plasticity mechanisms to engage.

00:12:33.900 | But if you take that frustration

00:12:35.240 | and you walk away from the endeavor,

00:12:37.220 | you are essentially setting up plasticity

00:12:40.140 | to rewire you according to what happens afterwards,

00:12:43.140 | which is generally feeling pretty miserable.

00:12:45.220 | So now you can kind of start to appreciate why it is

00:12:47.660 | that continuing to drill into a process

00:12:49.900 | to the point of frustration,

00:12:51.140 | but then staying with that process for a little bit longer,

00:12:54.380 | and I'll define exactly what I mean by a little bit,

00:12:56.780 | is the most important thing for adult learning,

00:13:01.780 | as well as childhood learning,

00:13:03.520 | but adult learning in particular.

00:13:05.060 | Now the Knudsen lab did two very important

00:13:07.300 | sets of experiments.

00:13:09.020 | The first one, which showed that juveniles

00:13:12.860 | can make these massive shifts in their map representations.

00:13:15.940 | They get a lot of plasticity all at once.

00:13:19.300 | It happens very fast in the period of just a couple days.

00:13:23.100 | In adults, it tends to be very slow,

00:13:25.960 | and most individuals never actually accomplish

00:13:28.540 | the full map shift.

00:13:30.620 | They don't get the plasticity.

00:13:32.340 | Then what they did is they started making

00:13:34.520 | the increment of change smaller.

00:13:36.620 | So instead of shifting the world a huge amount

00:13:40.460 | by putting prisms that shifted the visual world,

00:13:43.380 | you know, all the way over to the right,

00:13:45.300 | they did this incrementally.

00:13:46.680 | So first they put on prisms that shifted it

00:13:48.740 | just a little bit, you know,

00:13:50.180 | and just like seven degrees, I believe was the exact number.

00:13:52.980 | And then it was 14 degrees, and then it was 28 degrees.

00:13:56.180 | And so what they found was that the adult nervous system

00:13:58.900 | can tolerate smaller and smaller errors over time,

00:14:03.140 | but that you can stack those errors

00:14:05.500 | so that you can get a lot of plasticity.

00:14:07.180 | Put simply, incremental learning as an adult

00:14:10.400 | is absolutely essential.

00:14:11.700 | You are not going to get massive shifts

00:14:13.860 | in your representations of the outside world.

00:14:16.040 | So how do you make small errors as opposed to big errors?

00:14:19.500 | Well, the key is smaller bouts of focused learning

00:14:24.500 | for smaller bits of information.

00:14:28.940 | It's a mistake to try and learn a lot of information

00:14:33.020 | in one learning bout as an adult.

00:14:35.460 | Now, there is one way to get a lot of plasticity

00:14:39.140 | all at once as an adult.

00:14:40.300 | There is that kind of holy grail thing of, you know,

00:14:43.860 | getting massive plasticity as you would

00:14:47.820 | when you were a young person, but as an adult.

00:14:51.540 | And the Knudsen lab revealed this

00:14:54.900 | by setting a very serious contingency on the learning.

00:14:59.900 | What they did was they had a situation

00:15:02.540 | where subjects had to find food

00:15:06.420 | that was displaced in their visual world,

00:15:08.220 | again, by putting prisms, and they had to find the food,

00:15:11.260 | and the food made a noise.

00:15:12.820 | There was a noise set kind of the location of the food

00:15:14.820 | through an array of speakers.

00:15:16.780 | Basically, in order to eat at all, they needed plasticity.

00:15:21.780 | And then what happened was remarkable.

00:15:24.580 | What they observed is that the plasticity as an adult

00:15:28.100 | can be as dramatic, as robust as it is in a young person

00:15:33.020 | or in a young animal subject,

00:15:35.460 | provided that there's a serious incentive

00:15:38.180 | for the plasticity to occur.

00:15:40.380 | And this is absolutely important to understand,

00:15:42.580 | which is that how badly we need or want the plasticity

00:15:47.300 | determines how fast that plasticity will arrive.

00:15:50.780 | This means that the importance of something,

00:15:52.780 | how important something is to us,

00:15:54.620 | actually gates the rate of plasticity

00:15:56.940 | and the magnitude of plasticity.

00:15:59.060 | And this is why just passively going through most things,

00:16:03.380 | going through the motions, as we say,

00:16:05.020 | or just getting our reps in, quote unquote,

00:16:07.860 | is not sufficient to get the nervous system to change.

00:16:12.180 | If we actually have to accomplish something

00:16:15.300 | in order to eat or in order to get our ration of income,

00:16:20.300 | we will reshape our nervous system very, very quickly.

00:16:23.960 | And so I think that the studies that Knudsen did

00:16:26.960 | showing that incremental learning

00:16:28.820 | can create a huge degree of plasticity as an adult,

00:16:32.300 | as well as when the contingency is very high,

00:16:36.220 | meaning we need to eat or we need to make an income,

00:16:39.180 | or we need to do something that's vitally important for us,

00:16:42.820 | that plasticity can happen in these enormous leaps,

00:16:47.060 | just like they can in adolescence and young adulthood.

00:16:50.940 | That points to the fact

00:16:51.980 | that it has to be a neurochemical system.

00:16:54.660 | There has to be an underlying mechanism.

00:16:56.900 | All the chemicals that we're about to talk about

00:16:59.780 | are released from drug stores, if you will,

00:17:03.060 | chemical stores that already reside in all of our brains.

00:17:06.500 | And the key is how to tap into those stores.

00:17:09.900 | And so we're going to next talk about

00:17:11.780 | what are the specific behaviors

00:17:13.980 | that liberate particular categories of chemicals

00:17:18.100 | that allow us to make the most of incremental learning

00:17:21.260 | and that set the stage for plasticity

00:17:24.420 | that is similar enough or mimics

00:17:27.700 | these high contingency states like the need to get food

00:17:30.540 | or really create a sense of internal urgency,

00:17:33.560 | chemical urgency, if you will.

00:17:35.620 | If you've heard previous episodes of this podcast,

00:17:38.820 | you may have heard me talk about ultradian rhythms,

00:17:40.780 | which are these 90-minute rhythms

00:17:43.420 | that break up our 24-hour day.

00:17:46.900 | They help break up our sleep into different cycles of sleep,

00:17:50.220 | like REM sleep and non-REM sleep.

00:17:51.860 | And in waking states, they help us,

00:17:54.580 | or I should say they break up our day in ways

00:17:57.660 | that allow us to learn best

00:17:59.260 | within 90-minute cycles, et cetera.

00:18:01.320 | Today, we're really talking about how to tap into plasticity

00:18:05.340 | through the completion of a task

00:18:08.580 | or working towards something repetitively and making errors.

00:18:12.780 | The ultradian cycle says that

00:18:14.100 | for the first five to 10 minutes of doing that,

00:18:17.380 | your mind is going to drift

00:18:18.740 | and your focus will probably kick in

00:18:20.840 | provided that you're visually,

00:18:22.620 | you're restricting your visual world

00:18:24.420 | to just the material in front of you,

00:18:26.260 | something we talked about last episode,

00:18:28.380 | somewhere around the 10 or 15-minute mark.

00:18:30.540 | And then at best, you're probably going to get

00:18:32.460 | about an hour of deliberate tunnel vision learning in there.

00:18:37.460 | Your mind will drift.

00:18:39.380 | And then toward the end of that,

00:18:41.700 | what is now an hour and 10 or hour and 20-minute cycle,

00:18:44.980 | your brain will start to flicker in and out.

00:18:47.940 | You're trying your best to accomplish something

00:18:49.660 | and you're failing.

00:18:50.900 | You want to keep making errors for this period of time

00:18:54.760 | that I'm saying will last anywhere

00:18:56.300 | for about seven to 30 minutes.

00:18:57.620 | It is exceedingly frustrating,

00:18:59.900 | but that frustration, it liberates the chemical cues

00:19:03.840 | that signal that plasticity needs to happen.

00:19:05.940 | And it is the case that when we come back

00:19:07.580 | a day or two later in a learning bout after a nap

00:19:09.980 | or a night or two of deep rest,

00:19:12.100 | then what we find is that we can remember certain things

00:19:15.220 | and the motor pathways work

00:19:16.540 | and we don't always get it perfectly,

00:19:18.000 | but we get a lot of it right,

00:19:19.780 | whereas we got it wrong before.

00:19:21.220 | So that seven to 30-minute intense learning bout

00:19:25.380 | specifically about making errors,

00:19:27.820 | I want to really underscore that.

00:19:29.940 | And it's not about, as I mentioned before,

00:19:32.540 | coming up with some little hack or trick

00:19:34.380 | or something of that sort.

00:19:37.140 | It's really about trying to cue the nervous system

00:19:40.080 | that something needs to change

00:19:41.380 | because otherwise it simply won't change.

00:19:43.640 | I think everyone could stand to enhance the rate of learning

00:19:47.100 | by doing the following.

00:19:49.100 | Learn to attach dopamine in a subjective way

00:19:52.500 | to this process of making errors

00:19:54.740 | because that's really combining two modes of plasticity

00:19:58.100 | in ways that together can accelerate the plasticity.

00:20:01.460 | In other words, making failures, failing repetitively,

00:20:05.820 | provided we're engaged in a very specific set of behaviors

00:20:08.220 | when we do it, as well as telling ourselves

00:20:10.540 | that those failures are good for learning and good for us,

00:20:13.900 | creates an outsized effect on the rate of plasticity.

00:20:17.340 | It accelerates plasticity.

00:20:19.620 | Now, some of you might be asking, and I get asked a lot,

00:20:22.420 | well, how do I get dopamine to be released?

00:20:24.700 | You know, can I just tell myself

00:20:25.780 | that something is good when it's bad?

00:20:27.320 | Well, actually, yes, believe it or not.

00:20:30.040 | Dopamine is one of these incredible molecules

00:20:33.020 | that both can be released according to things

00:20:36.420 | that are hardwired in us to release dopamine.

00:20:39.120 | Again, things like food, sex, warmth when we're cold,

00:20:42.740 | cool environments when we're too warm.

00:20:44.700 | It's that kind of pleasure molecule overall,

00:20:48.500 | but it's also highly subjective

00:20:52.700 | what releases dopamine in one person versus the next.

00:20:55.340 | So everyone releases dopamine in response

00:20:57.260 | to those very basic kind of behaviors and activities,

00:21:00.860 | but dopamine is also released

00:21:03.820 | according to what we subjectively believe is good for us,

00:21:06.880 | and that's what's so powerful about it.

00:21:08.420 | In fact, a book that I highly recommend

00:21:09.980 | if you want to read more about dopamine,

00:21:11.700 | it's a book that, frankly, I wish I had written.

00:21:13.300 | It's such a wonderful book.

00:21:14.260 | It's called "The Molecule of More,"

00:21:15.940 | and it really talks about dopamine

00:21:17.920 | not just as a molecule associated with reward,

00:21:20.820 | but a molecule associated with motivation and pursuit

00:21:23.580 | and just how subjectively controlled dopamine can be.

00:21:27.040 | So make lots of errors.

00:21:29.500 | Tell yourself that those errors are important

00:21:32.420 | and good for your overall learning goals.

00:21:34.420 | So learn to attach dopamine,

00:21:36.060 | meaning release dopamine in your brain

00:21:39.340 | when you start to make errors.

00:21:40.940 | Once you're attaching dopamine

00:21:43.020 | to this process of making errors,

00:21:45.580 | then I start getting lots of questions

00:21:47.380 | that really are the right questions,

00:21:49.060 | which are, you know, how often should I do this,

00:21:52.100 | and when should I be doing this, and at what time?

00:21:54.220 | Well, I've talked a little bit about this

00:21:55.500 | in previous episodes, but as long as we're now

00:21:57.860 | kind of into the nitty-gritty of tools and application,

00:22:00.680 | each of us have some natural times throughout the day

00:22:03.260 | when we are going to be much better

00:22:06.700 | at tolerating these errors and much more focused

00:22:10.340 | on what it is that we're trying to do.

00:22:11.540 | Last episode was about focus,

00:22:13.500 | but chances are that you can't focus as well

00:22:16.140 | at 4 p.m. as you can at 10 a.m.

00:22:18.200 | It differs for everybody, depending on when you're sleeping

00:22:21.020 | and your kind of natural chemistry and rhythms,

00:22:23.380 | but find the time or times of day

00:22:26.460 | when you naturally have the highest mental acuity,

00:22:30.020 | and that's really when you want to engage

00:22:31.780 | in these learning bouts.

00:22:33.420 | And then get to the point where you're making errors,

00:22:35.660 | and then keep making errors for seven to 30 minutes.

00:22:38.740 | Just keep making those errors and drill through it,

00:22:41.380 | and you're almost seeking frustration,

00:22:43.580 | and if you can find some pleasure in the frustration,

00:22:45.600 | yes, that is a state that exists,

00:22:47.340 | you have created the optimal neurochemical milieu

00:22:50.380 | for learning that thing,

00:22:52.620 | but then here's the beauty of it.

00:22:54.340 | You also have created the optimal milieu

00:22:56.860 | for learning other things afterward.

00:22:59.940 | At least for an hour or so, I would say,

00:23:02.260 | you're going to be in a state of heightened learning.

00:23:04.900 | Again, these aren't gimmicks.

00:23:05.980 | These tap into these basic mechanisms of plasticity,

00:23:09.160 | and the three that I'd like to talk about next

00:23:13.220 | are balance, meaning the vestibular system,

00:23:17.460 | as well as the two sides of what I call limbic friction

00:23:22.140 | or autonomic arousal.

00:23:23.620 | And if none of that makes sense,

00:23:24.860 | I'm going to put a fine point on each one of those

00:23:27.900 | and what it is and why it works

00:23:29.940 | for opening up neuroplasticity.

00:23:32.060 | Let's talk about limbic friction.

00:23:34.140 | Limbic friction, I realize,

00:23:35.980 | is not something you're going to find

00:23:37.420 | in any of the textbooks,

00:23:39.020 | but it is an important principle

00:23:41.720 | that captures a lot of information that is in textbooks,

00:23:45.660 | both neurobiology and psychology,

00:23:47.720 | and it has some really important implications.

00:23:50.660 | Limbic friction is my attempt to give a name to something

00:23:56.100 | that is more nuanced and mechanistic than stress,

00:23:59.860 | because typically when we hear about stress,

00:24:02.340 | we think of heartbeat going too fast,

00:24:05.300 | breathing too fast, sweating,

00:24:06.940 | and not being in a state that we want.

00:24:08.500 | We're too alert and we want to be more calm.

00:24:11.060 | And indeed, that's one condition

00:24:13.400 | in which we have limbic friction,

00:24:16.140 | meaning our limbic system is taking control

00:24:19.860 | of a number of different aspects of our autonomic

00:24:22.020 | or automatic biology,

00:24:24.580 | and we are struggling to control that

00:24:28.160 | through what we call top-down mechanisms.

00:24:29.640 | We're trying to calm down

00:24:31.180 | in order to reduce that level of arousal.

00:24:34.380 | We're all familiar with this.

00:24:35.420 | It's called the stress response.

00:24:37.020 | However, there's another aspect of stress

00:24:39.820 | that's just as important,

00:24:41.680 | which is when we're tired and we're fatigued

00:24:44.340 | and we need to engage,

00:24:46.020 | we need to be more alert than we are.

00:24:48.140 | And so what I call limbic friction

00:24:50.140 | is really designed to describe the fact

00:24:52.140 | that when our autonomic nervous system

00:24:53.580 | isn't where we want it,

00:24:54.700 | meaning we're trying to be more alert

00:24:56.760 | or we're trying to be less alert,

00:24:58.600 | both of those feel stressful to people.

00:25:00.480 | But the reason I'm bringing this up

00:25:02.520 | is that in order to access neuroplasticity,

00:25:06.140 | you need these components of focus.

00:25:08.420 | You need the component of attaching subjective reward.

00:25:12.400 | You need to make errors, all this stuff.

00:25:14.220 | And a lot of people find it difficult

00:25:16.620 | to just get into the overall state to access those things.

00:25:21.020 | Here's the beauty of it.

00:25:23.140 | If you are too alert, meaning you're too anxious

00:25:27.620 | and you want to calm down in order to learn better,

00:25:30.580 | there are things that you can do.

00:25:32.220 | The two that I've spoken about previously

00:25:34.780 | on various podcasts,

00:25:35.860 | and I'll just review them really quickly,

00:25:37.300 | are the double inhale, exhale.

00:25:38.900 | So inhaling twice through the nose

00:25:40.260 | and exhaling once through the mouth.

00:25:41.540 | This is what's called a physiological sigh.

00:25:43.380 | It offloads carbon dioxide from the lungs.

00:25:46.080 | The other thing is starting to remove your tunnel vision.

00:25:49.200 | When you use tunnel vision, you're very focused.

00:25:51.260 | That epinephrine is released by dilating your field of gaze,

00:25:54.180 | so-called panoramic vision.

00:25:55.900 | But the other side of limbic friction is important too.

00:25:58.060 | If you are too tired and you can't focus,

00:26:01.140 | well, then it's going to be impossible

00:26:02.500 | to even get to the starting line, so to speak,

00:26:05.380 | for engaging in neuroplasticity

00:26:07.240 | through incremental learning, et cetera.

00:26:09.020 | So in that case, there are other methods

00:26:11.560 | that you can do to wake yourself up.

00:26:12.700 | The best thing you should do is get a good night's sleep,

00:26:14.540 | but that's not always possible,

00:26:15.700 | or use an NSDR, non-sleep deep rest protocol.

00:26:18.380 | But if you've already done those things,

00:26:20.880 | or you're simply exhausted for whatever other reason,

00:26:24.700 | then there are other things that I often get asked about,

00:26:28.060 | like sure, a cup of coffee or super oxygenation breathing,

00:26:31.020 | which means inhaling more than exhaling on average

00:26:33.660 | in a breathing bout.

00:26:34.900 | Now we're sort of getting toward the realm

00:26:36.320 | of like how you could trick your nervous system

00:26:37.780 | into waking up.

00:26:38.660 | And if you bring more oxygen in

00:26:40.260 | by making your inhales deeper and longer,

00:26:41.860 | you will become more alert.

00:26:43.500 | You'll start to actually deploy norepinephrine

00:26:45.580 | if you breathe very fast.

00:26:46.980 | So there are things that you can do

00:26:48.420 | to move up or down this so-called autonomic arousal arc.

00:26:52.900 | And what you want to ask

00:26:54.560 | before you undergo any learning bout

00:26:56.260 | is how much limbic friction am I experiencing?

00:26:59.420 | Am I too alert and I want to be calmer,

00:27:02.100 | or am I too calm and too sleepy

00:27:04.240 | and I want to be more alert?

00:27:05.300 | You're going to need to engage in behaviors

00:27:08.280 | that bring you to the starting line in order to learn.

00:27:11.240 | There are other things that you can do

00:27:14.340 | in order to then learn better and faster

00:27:17.780 | besides incremental learning,

00:27:19.120 | and those center on the vestibular system.

00:27:21.300 | Why the vestibular system to access neuroplasticity?

00:27:24.980 | Well, we have a hardwired system for balance,

00:27:28.460 | and here's how it works in as simple terms

00:27:31.060 | as I can possibly come up with.

00:27:33.940 | As we move through space, or even if we're stationary,

00:27:38.940 | your brain doesn't really know where your body is

00:27:41.660 | except through that proprioceptive feedback.

00:27:44.460 | The main way it knows is through three planes of movement

00:27:48.500 | that we call pitch, which is like nodding.

00:27:51.220 | So if I nod like this, that's pitch.

00:27:54.100 | Then there's yaw, which is like shaking my head no.

00:27:57.220 | And then there's roll from side to side,

00:27:59.420 | like when a puppy looks at you like that kind of thing.

00:28:02.940 | Okay, so pitch, yaw, and roll.

00:28:05.660 | Our ears have two main roles.

00:28:08.620 | One is to hear, right, to perceive sound waves

00:28:11.740 | or take in sound waves for perception, so-called hearing.

00:28:14.740 | And the other is balance or vestibular function.

00:28:17.200 | So sitting in our ears are these semicircular canals,

00:28:19.780 | and they're these little tubes where these little stones,

00:28:22.780 | they're actually little bits of calcium,

00:28:24.140 | roll back and forth like little marbles.

00:28:26.060 | When we roll this way, they roll this way.

00:28:28.140 | When we pitch, when we go from side to side,

00:28:30.140 | there's some that sit flat like this, and they go.

00:28:32.860 | Like marbles inside of a hula hoop.

00:28:34.740 | And then we have roll.

00:28:35.740 | There's some that are kind of at 45 degrees to those,

00:28:37.860 | and it's kind of pitch, yaw, and roll.

00:28:40.020 | So you go, okay, great.

00:28:41.320 | That sends signals to the rest of our brain and body

00:28:43.900 | that tell us how to compensate

00:28:45.660 | for shifts relative to gravity.

00:28:48.340 | I say, okay, I thought we were talking about plasticity,

00:28:50.340 | but this is where it gets really, really cool.

00:28:53.800 | Errors in vestibular motor sensory experience,

00:28:59.300 | meaning when we are off balance and we have to compensate

00:29:03.180 | by looking at, thinking about,

00:29:05.420 | or responding to the world differently,

00:29:08.060 | cause an area of our brain called the cerebellum.

00:29:10.700 | It actually means mini brain.

00:29:12.060 | It looks like a little mini brain

00:29:13.620 | like tucked below our cortex in the back.

00:29:16.980 | Cause the cerebellum to signal

00:29:18.960 | some of these deeper brain centers

00:29:21.040 | that release dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine.

00:29:24.340 | And that's because these circuits in the inner ear,

00:29:29.340 | et cetera, and the cerebellum,

00:29:32.740 | they were designed to recalibrate our motor movements

00:29:37.500 | when our relationship to gravity changes,

00:29:40.200 | something fundamental to survival.

00:29:41.640 | We can't afford to be falling down all the time

00:29:43.500 | or missing things that we grab for,

00:29:45.780 | or running in the wrong direction

00:29:47.980 | when something is pursuing us.

00:29:49.500 | These are hardwired circuits

00:29:51.040 | that tap right into these chemical pathways.

00:29:54.180 | And those chemical pathways are the gates to plasticity.

00:29:58.180 | So I really want to spell this out clearly

00:30:00.340 | cause I've given a lot of information today.

00:30:02.820 | The first thing is,

00:30:03.660 | how are you arriving to the learning bout?

00:30:06.580 | You need to make sure your level

00:30:07.940 | of autonomic arousal is correct.

00:30:10.620 | The ideal state is going to be clear, calm, and focused,

00:30:13.660 | maybe a little bit more on the arousal level,

00:30:16.180 | like heightened arousal.

00:30:17.860 | So understand limbic friction,

00:30:19.640 | understand that you can be too tired,

00:30:20.980 | in which case you're going to need

00:30:21.900 | to get yourself a little more alert,

00:30:23.460 | or you can be too alert

00:30:26.020 | and you're going to need to get yourself calmer.

00:30:28.420 | So the first gate is to arrive at learning

00:30:30.580 | at the appropriate level of autonomic arousal.

00:30:33.860 | Clear and focused is best,

00:30:35.520 | but don't obsess over being right there.

00:30:37.700 | It's okay to be a little anxious or a little bit tired.

00:30:40.920 | Then you want to make errors.

00:30:42.840 | We talked about that.

00:30:43.940 | And this vestibular motor sensory relationship

00:30:46.840 | is absolutely key

00:30:48.740 | if you want to get heightened or accelerated plasticity.

00:30:52.080 | And we talked about another feature,

00:30:54.620 | which is setting a contingency.

00:30:56.620 | If there's a reason,

00:30:57.780 | an important reason for you to actually learn,

00:31:00.420 | even if you're making failures,

00:31:02.100 | the learning will be accelerated.

00:31:03.900 | So there's really four things

00:31:05.460 | that you really need to do for plasticity as an adult.

00:31:09.260 | And I would say that these also apply to young people.

00:31:12.940 | And there's an interesting kind of a thought experiment

00:31:16.680 | there as well,

00:31:17.520 | which is if you look at children,

00:31:20.060 | they are moving a lot in different dimensions.

00:31:22.580 | Whatever sport the kids are playing,

00:31:24.000 | or even if they don't play a sport,

00:31:26.000 | they tend to move in a lot of different relationships

00:31:29.140 | to gravity, more dimensionality to their movements,

00:31:32.300 | I should say, than adult.

00:31:33.700 | As we age, we get less good at engaging in neuroplasticity.

00:31:36.780 | Part of that is because as we get older,

00:31:39.540 | we tend to get more linear and more regular

00:31:42.820 | about specific kinds of movements.

00:31:44.240 | So you sort of have to wonder

00:31:45.740 | whether or not the lack of plasticity

00:31:47.540 | or the reduced plasticity in older individuals,

00:31:50.940 | which includes me,

00:31:53.040 | would reflect the fact

00:31:54.820 | that those chemicals aren't being deployed

00:31:56.740 | because we're not engaging in certain behaviors

00:32:00.220 | as opposed to we can't engage in the behaviors

00:32:02.700 | because the chemicals aren't being deployed.

00:32:04.520 | So I want to make sure that I underscore the fact

00:32:08.220 | that this vestibular thing that I've been describing

00:32:10.760 | is a way to really accentuate plasticity.

00:32:14.140 | It's tapping into an inborn biological mechanism

00:32:17.960 | where the cerebellum has outputs

00:32:19.380 | to these deep brain nuclei associated with dopamine,

00:32:22.580 | acetylcholine, and norepinephrine.

00:32:24.660 | That's kind of an amplifier on plasticity,

00:32:27.740 | as is high contingency.

00:32:29.100 | If you really need to learn conversational French

00:32:31.200 | to save your relationship,

00:32:33.180 | chances are you're going to learn it.

00:32:34.380 | Now, there are limits to this, of course, too.

00:32:36.320 | If someone puts a gun to my head and says,

00:32:37.660 | "Learn conversational French in the next 120 seconds,"

00:32:41.380 | I think we would probably be my only response

00:32:44.880 | because I can't stuff in all the knowledge all at once.

00:32:48.620 | I mean, I think that's the dream of brain machine interface

00:32:51.040 | that one will be able to download a chip

00:32:52.820 | into their hippocampus or cortex

00:32:54.980 | or some other brain structure

00:32:56.100 | that would allow them to download conversational French.

00:32:59.300 | And someday we may get to that.

00:33:01.820 | And so my overall goal here in this episode

00:33:04.980 | and with this podcast is to give you some understanding

00:33:08.380 | of the mechanisms and the insights

00:33:10.620 | into the underlying biology that allow you to tailor

00:33:13.880 | what these kind of foundational mechanisms are

00:33:18.000 | to suit your particular learning needs.

00:33:20.500 | So I very much thank you for your time and attention.

00:33:23.340 | I know it's a lot of information

00:33:25.220 | and it takes a bit of focus and attention

00:33:27.660 | and certainly will trigger plasticity

00:33:30.380 | to learn all this information.

00:33:32.340 | I want to encourage you and just remind you

00:33:34.700 | that you don't have to grasp it all at once,

00:33:37.160 | that it is here archived,

00:33:38.820 | and that if you want to return to the information,

00:33:40.660 | it will still be here.

00:33:42.120 | And that I, most of all,

00:33:44.460 | really appreciate your interest in science.

00:33:46.540 | Thank you so much.

00:33:47.420 | [upbeat music]

00:33:50.000 | (upbeat music)

How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement & Balance | Huberman Lab Essentials

Chapters