Podcast

Essentials- How to Focus to Change Your Brain

Huberman Lab

Last highlighted December 24, 2024 Source ↗ ← All highlights

Neuroplasticity’s Power
- Neuroplasticity is the nervous system’s ability to change in response to experience.
- It allows us to learn, adapt, and even forget painful memories. Transcript: Andrew Huberman My name is Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we’re talking about neural plasticity, which is this incredible feature of our nervous systems that allows it to change in response to experience. Neuroplasticity is arguably one of the most important aspects of our biology. It holds the promise for each and all of us to think differently, to learn new things, to forget painful experiences, and to essentially adapt to anything that life brings us by becoming Better. So let’s get started. Most people are familiar with the word neural plasticity, which is the brain and nervous system’s ability to change itself. All of us were born with a nervous system that isn’t just capable of change, but was designed to change. When we enter the world, our nervous system is primed for learning the brain and nervous system of a baby is wired very crudely the connections are not precise and we can see evidence Of that in the fact that babies are kind of flopping there like a kind of little potato bug with limbs they can’t really do much in terms of coordinated movement. They certainly can’t speak and they can’t really do anything with precision. So I want you to imagine in your mind that when you were brought into this world, you were essentially a widely connected web of connections that was really poor at doing any one thing. And that through your experience, what you were exposed to by your parents or other caretakers, through your social interactions, through your thoughts, through the languages that You learn, through the places you traveled or didn’t travel, your nervous system became customized to your unique experience. Now, that’s true for certain parts of your brain that are involved in what we call representations of the outside world. A lot of your brain is designed to represent the visual world or represent the auditory world, or represent the gallery of smells that are possible in the world. However, there are aspects of your nervous system that were designed not to be plastic. They were wired so that plasticity or changes in those circuits is very unlikely. Those circuits include things like the ones that control your heartbeat, the ones that control your breathing, the ones that control your digestion. And thank goodness that those circuits were set up that way because you want those circuits to be extremely reliable. So many nervous system features like digestion and breathing and heart rate are hard to change. Other aspects of our nervous system are actually quite easy to change. And one of the great gifts of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, is that we can learn through almost passive experience. We don’t have to focus that hard in order to learn new things. And then after age 25, if we want to change those connections, those super highways of connectivity, we have to engage in some very specific processes. And those processes, as we’ll soon learn are gated, meaning you can’t just decide to change your brain. You actually have to go through a series of steps to change your internal state in ways that will allow you to change your brain. (Time 0:00:11)
Hardwired vs. Adaptable Circuits
- Some brain circuits, like those controlling heartbeat and breathing, are designed to resist change for reliability.
- Others, involved in learning and adaptation, are more easily modified. Transcript: Andrew Huberman However, there are aspects of your nervous system that were designed not to be plastic. They were wired so that plasticity or changes in those circuits is very unlikely. Those circuits include things like the ones that control your heartbeat, the ones that control your breathing, the ones that control your digestion. And thank goodness that those circuits were set up that way because you want those circuits to be extremely reliable. So many nervous system features like digestion and breathing and heart rate are hard to change. Other aspects of our nervous system are actually quite easy to change. (Time 0:02:21)
Limited New Neurons
- The adult brain adds very few neurons after puberty.
- However, change is possible by creating the right chemical and environmental circumstances. Transcript: Andrew Huberman If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com/Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com/Huberman. Many of us have been captivated by the stories in the popular press about the addition of new neurons, this idea, oh, if you go running or you exercise, your brain actually makes new neurons. Well, I’m going to give you the bad news, which is that after puberty, the human brain and nervous system adds very few, if any, new neurons. So even though we can’t add new neurons throughout our lifespan, at least not in very great numbers, it’s clear that we can change our nervous system, that the nervous system is available For change, that if we create the right set of circumstances in our brain, chemical circumstances, and if we create the right environmental circumstances around us, our nervous system Will shift into a mode in which change isn’t just possible, but it’s probable. (Time 0:04:34)
Voice Stress and Change
- A woman was initially stressed by Andrew Huberman’s voice, reminding her of a negative experience.
- Over time, through awareness and repeated exposure, her reaction changed, and they became friends. Transcript: Andrew Huberman But the beauty of the situation is that the real estate up in the skull, that neocortex, the essence of it is to be a customized map of experience. A few years ago, I was at a course and a woman came up to me and she said you know i i wasn’t teaching the course i was in the course and she said i just have to tell you that every time you speak It really stresses me out and i said well i’ve heard that before but um do you want to be more specific and she said yeah your tone of voice reminds me of somebody that i i had a really terrible Experience with i said well okay well, I can’t change my voice, but I really appreciate that you acknowledge that. And it also will help explain why you seem to cringe every time I speak, which I hadn’t noticed until then. But after that, I did notice she had a very immediate and kind of visceral response to my speech. But in any event, over the period of this two-week course, she would come back every once in a while and say, you know what? I think just by telling you that your voice was really difficult for me to listen to, it’s actually becoming more tolerable to me. And by the end, we actually became pretty good friends and we’re still in touch. And so what this says is that the recognition of something, whether or not that’s an emotional thing or a desire to learn something else is actually the first step in neuroplasticity. (Time 0:07:31)
Awareness is Key
- Recognizing what you want to change is the first step in neuroplasticity.
- Awareness signals to the nervous system that reflexive actions can be modified. Transcript: Andrew Huberman If I get up out of this chair and walk out of the door, I don’t think about each step that I’m taking. And that’s because I learned how to walk during development. But when we decide that we’re going to shift some sort of behavior or some reaction or some new piece of information that we want to learn is something that we want to bring into our consciousness. That awareness is a remarkable thing because it cues the brain and the rest of the nervous system that when we engage in those reflexive actions going forward, that those reflexive Actions are no longer fated to be reflexive. Now, if this sounds a little bit abstract, we’re going to talk about protocols for how to do this. But the first step in neuroplasticity is recognizing that you want to change something. We have to know what it is exactly that we want to change. Or if we don’t know exactly what it is that we want to change, we at least have to know that we want to change something about some specific experience. Now there are specific protocols that science tells us we have to follow if we want those changes to occur. (Time 0:08:45)
Focused Attention
- The idea that every experience changes your brain is false.
- Real change requires focused attention and specific neurochemical releases. Transcript: Andrew Huberman Again, that’s drinkag1.com/Huberman to claim that special offer. One of the biggest lies in the universe that seems quite prominent right now is that every experience you have changes your brain. People love to say this. They love to say your brain is going to be different after this lecture, that your brain is going to be different after today’s class than it was two days ago. And that’s absolutely not true. The nervous system doesn’t just change because you experienced something, unless you’re a very young child. The nervous system changes when certain neurochemicals are released and allow whatever neurons are active in the period in which those chemicals are swimming around to strengthen Or weaken the connections of those neurons. So when people tell you, oh, at the end of today’s lecture, or at the end of something, your brain is going to be completely different, that’s simply not true. If you’re older than 25, your brain will not change unless there’s a selective shift in your attention or a selective shift in your experience that tells the brain it’s time to change. And those changes occur through strengthening and weakening of particular connections. But the important thing to understand is that if we want something to change, we really need to bring an immense amount of attention to whatever it is that we want to change. (Time 0:11:01)
Boosting Alertness
- Master your sleep and identify peak alertness times for learning.
- To boost alertness, find multiple motivations, both positive and negative, for your goals. Transcript: Andrew Huberman So I’m not going to tell you what to do or what to take. I’m going to describe what the literature tells us and suggests about ways to access plasticity. We know we need epinephrine, that means alertness. Most people accomplish this through a cup of coffee and a good night’s sleep. So I will say you should master your sleep schedule and you should figure out how much sleep you need in order to achieve alertness when you sit down to learn. But once that’s in place, the question then is how do I access this alertness? Well, there are a number of ways. Some people use some pretty elaborate psychological gymnastics. They will tell people that they’re going to do something and create some accountability. That could be really good. Or they’ll post a picture of themselves online and they’ll commit to losing a certain amount of weight or something like this. So they can use either shame-based practices to potentially embarrass themselves if they don’t follow through, they’ll write checks to organizations that they hate and insist that They’ll cash them if they don’t actually follow through, or they’ll do it out of love. You know, they’ll decide that they’re going to run a marathon or learn a language or something because of somebody they love or they want to devote it to somebody. The truth is that from the standpoint of epinephrine and getting alert and activated, it doesn’t really matter. Epinephrine is a chemical and your brain does not distinguish between doing things out of love or hate, anger or fear. It really doesn’t. All of those promote autonomic arousal and the release of epinephrine. So I think for most people, if you’re feeling not motivated to make these changes, the key thing is to identify not just one, but probably a kit of reasons, several reasons as to why you Would want to make this particular change. And being drawn toward a particular goal that you’re excited about can be one. Also being motivated to not be completely afraid, ashamed, or humiliated for not falling through on a goal is another. Come up with two or three things, fear-based perhaps, love-based perhaps, or perhaps several of those, in order to ensure alertness, energy, and attention for the task. (Time 0:18:32)
Visual Focus
- Improve mental focus by practicing visual focus.
- Train your visual system to concentrate on specific points for better cognitive focus. Transcript: Andrew Huberman So what are some ways that you can increase acetylcholine? How do you increase focus? The best way to get better at focusing is to use the mechanisms of focus that you were born with. And the key principle here is that mental focus follows visual focus. We are all familiar with the fact that our visual system can be unfocused, blurry, or jumping around, or we can be very laser focused on one location in space. What’s interesting and vitally important to understanding how to access neuroplasticity is that you can use your visual focus and you can increase your visual focus as a way of increasing Your mental focus abilities more broadly. So I’m going to explain how to do that. I’d like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don’t. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It’s also important that you’re not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you’re getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. To make sure that I’m getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing In the morning. I’ll also drink a packet of Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I’m doing, especially on hot days when I’m sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you’d like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com/Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that’s drinkelement, spelled L-M So it’s drinkelement.com/Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Plasticity starts with alertness. That alertness can come from a sense of love, a sense of joy, a sense of fear, doesn’t matter. There are pharmacologic ways to access alertness too. The most common one is of course, caffeine. Many people are now also using Adderall. Adderall will not increase focus, it increases alertness. It does not touch the acetylcholine system. The acetylcholine system and the focus that it brings is available, as I mentioned, through pharmacology, but also through these behavioral practices. And the behavioral practices that are anchored in visual focus are going to be the ones that are going to allow you to develop great depth and duration of focus. (Time 0:22:22)
Enhancing Visual Focus
- To improve focus, practice looking at a small area with high resolution.
- Moving eyes slightly inward activates neurons, triggering neurochemical release for plasticity. Transcript: Andrew Huberman So let’s think about visual focus for a second. When we focus on something visually, we have two options. We can either look at a very small region of space with a lot of detail and a lot of precision, or we can dilate our gaze and we can see big pieces of visual space with very little detail. It’s a trade-off. We can’t look at everything at high resolution. This is why we have these, the pupil more or less relates to the fovea of the eye, which is the area in which we have the most receptors, the highest density of receptors that perceive light. And so our acuity is much better in the center of our visual field than in our periphery. When we focus our eyes, we do a couple things. First of all, we tend to do that in the center of our visual field and our two eyes tend to align in what’s called a vergence eye movement towards a common point. The other thing that happens is the lens of our eye moves so that our brain now no longer sees the entire visual world, but is seeing a small cone of visual imagery. That small cone of visual imagery or soda straw view of the world has much higher acuity, higher resolution than if I were to look at everything. Now you say, of course, this makes perfect sense, but that’s about visual attention, not mental attention. Well, it turns out that focus in the brain is anchored to our visual system. I’ll talk about blind people in a moment, but assuming that somebody is sighted, the key is to learn how to focus better visually. If you want to bring about higher levels of cognitive or mental focus, when we move our eyes slightly inward, maybe you can tell that I’m doing it like so, basically shortening or making The interpupillary distance, as it’s called, smaller, two things happen. Not only do we develop a smaller visual window into the world, but we activate a set of neurons in our brainstem that trigger the release of both norepinephrine, epinephrine, and acetylcholine. Norepinephrine is kind of similar to epinephrine. So in other words, when our eyes are relaxed in our head, when we’re just kind of looking at our entire visual environment, moving our head around, moving through space, we’re in optic Flow, things moving past us, or we’re sitting still, we’re looking broadly at our space, we’re relaxed. When our eyes move slightly inward toward a particular visual target, our visual world shrinks, our level of visual focus goes up, and we know that this relates to the release of acetylcholine And epinephrine at the relevant sites in the brain for plasticity. Now, what this means is that if you have a hard time focusing your mind sake of reading or for listening, you need to practice and you can practice focusing your visual system. Now, this works best if you practice focusing your visual system at the precise distance from the work that you intend to do for sake of plasticity. So how would this look in the real world? Let’s say I am trying to concentrate on something related to, I don’t know, science. I’m reading a science paper and I’m having a hard time. It’s not absorbing. Spending just 60 to 120 seconds, focusing my visual attention on a small window of my screen, meaning just on my screen with nothing on it, but bringing my eyes to that particular location Increases, not just my visual acuity for that location, but it brings about an increase in activity in a bunch of other brain areas that are associated with gathering information from This location. So put simply, if you want to improve your ability to focus, practice visual focus. Now, you may ask, well, what about the experiment where people were feeling this rotating drum or listening to the auditory cue? That doesn’t involve vision at all. Ah, if you look at people who are learning things with their auditory system, they will often close their eyes, and that’s not a coincidence. If somebody is listening very hard, please don’t ask them to look you directly in the eye while also asking that they listen to you. That’s actually one of the worst ways to get somebody to listen to you. If you say, now listen to me and look me in the eye, the visual system will take over and they’ll see your mouth move, but they’re going to hear their thoughts more. They’re going to hear what you’re saying. Closing the eyes is one of the best ways to create a cone of auditory attention. And this is what low vision or no vision folks do. They have tremendous capacity to focus their attention in particular locations. And for most people, vision is the primary way to train up this focus ability in these cones of attention. So you absolutely have to focus on the thing that you’re trying to learn. And you will feel some agitation because of the epine in your system. (Time 0:25:11)
Sleep and Plasticity
- Neuroplasticity primarily happens during sleep, consolidating focused learning efforts.
- Non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) or short naps can also accelerate learning by aiding this process. Transcript: Andrew Huberman That’s the trigger for plasticity. But the real secret is that neuroplasticity doesn’t occur during wakefulness. It occurs during sleep. We now know that if you focus very hard on something for about 90 minutes or so, maybe you even do several bouts of that per day, if you can do that. Some people can, some people can only do one focused bout of learning. That night and the following nights while you sleep, the neural circuits that were highlighted, if you will, with acetylcholine transmission will strengthen and other ones will Be lost, which is wonderful because that’s the essence of plasticity. And what it means is that when you eventually wake up a couple of days or a week later, you will have acquired the knowledge forever, unless you go through some process to actively unlearn It. So mastering sleep is key in order to reinforce the learning that occurs. But let’s say you get a really poor night of sleep after a bout of learning. Chances are, if you sleep the next night or the following night, that learning will occur. There’s a stamp in the brain where this acetylcholine was released. It actually marks those synapses neurochemically and metabolically so that those synapses are more biased to change. Now, if you don’t ever get that deep sleep, then you probably won’t get those changes. There’s also a way in which you can bypass the need for deep sleep, at least partially, by engaging in what I call non-sleep deep rest, these NSDR protocols. But I just want to discuss the science of this. There was a paper that was published in Cell Reports last year that shows that if people did, it was a spatial memory task, actually quite difficult one, where they had to remember the Sequence of lights lighting up, and if there are just two or three lights in a particular sequence, it’s easy, but as you get up to 15 or 16 lights and numbers in the sequence, it actually Gets quite challenging. If immediately after, and it was immediately after the learning, the actual performance of this task, people took a 20-minute non-sleep deep rest protocol, or took a shallow nap, So lying down, feet slightly elevated, perhaps, just closing their eyes, no sensory input. The rates of learning were significantly higher for that information than were to just had a good night’s sleep the following night. So you can actually accelerate learning with these NSDR protocols or with brief naps, 90 minutes or less. For many people, letting the mind drift where it’s not organized in thought after a period of very deliberate focused effort is the best way to accelerate learning and depth of learning. (Time 0:30:57)