back to indexDr. Wendy Suzuki: Boost Attention & Memory with Science-Based Tools | Huberman Lab Podcast #73
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
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and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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Today, my guest is Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
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Dr. Suzuki is a professor of neuroscience and psychology
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at New York University, and one of the leading researchers
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in the area of learning and memory.
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Her laboratory has contributed fundamental
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textbook understanding of how brain areas,
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such as the hippocampus, which you will learn about today,
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how the hippocampus and related brain circuits allow us
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to take certain experiences and commit them to memory
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so that we can use that information in the future.
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Dr. Suzuki is also an expert public educator
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in the realm of science.
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A few years back, she had a TED Talk
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that essentially went viral.
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If you haven't seen it already,
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you should absolutely check it out.
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In which she describes her experience using exercise
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as a way to enhance learning and memory.
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And on the basis of that personal experience,
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she reshaped her laboratory to explore how things
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like meditation, exercise, and other things that we can do
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with our physiology and our psychology can allow us
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to learn faster, to commit things to memory longer,
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and indeed to reshape our cognitive performance
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in a variety of settings.
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As such, I am delighted to announce
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that Dr. Suzuki is now not only running a laboratory
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at New York University, but she is the incoming Dean
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of Arts and Science at New York University.
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And of course, she was selected for that role
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for her many talents, but one of the important aspects
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of her program, she tells me, is going to be
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to incorporate the incredible power of exercise,
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meditation, and other behavioral practices
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for enhancing learning, for improving stress management,
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and other things to optimize student performance.
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Today, you are going to get access
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to much of that information so that you can apply
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those tools in your daily life as well.
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Dr. Suzuki is also an author of several important books.
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The most recent one is entitled Good Anxiety,
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Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion,
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and a previous book entitled Healthy Brain, Happy Life,
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A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain
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and Do Everything Better.
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And while that is admittedly a very pop science type title,
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I will remind you that she is one of the preeminent
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memory researchers in the world
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and has been for quite a while.
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So the information that you'll glean from those books
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is both rich in depth and breadth and is highly applicable.
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By the end of today's discussion,
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you will have learned from Dr. Suzuki
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a large amount of knowledge about how memories are formed,
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how they are lost, and you will have a much larger kit
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of tools to apply for your efforts to learn better,
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to remember better, and to apply that information
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in the ways that best serve you.
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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast
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is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
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and science-related tools to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
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I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012,
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so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
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The reason I started taking Athletic Greens
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and the reason I still take Athletic Greens
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I mix mine with water and a little bit of lemon juice
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And now for my discussion with Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
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Wendy, great to see you again and to have you here.
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It's been a little while.
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It's been a while.
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So great to be here, Andrew.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I'd like to start off by talking about memory generally.
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And then I'd love to chat about your incredible work,
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discovering how exercise and memory interface
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and what people can do to improve their memory
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and brain function generally.
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But for those that are not familiar,
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maybe you could just step us through
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the basic elements of memory.
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A few brain structures, perhaps.
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What happens when I, for instance,
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this mug of tea is pretty unremarkable,
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but the fact that now I've talked about it,
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I don't know that I'll ever forget about it.
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Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
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So what happens when I look at this mug
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and decide that it's something special for whatever reason?
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Yeah, well, I like to see there are four things
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that make things memorable.
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Number one is novelty.
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If it's something new, the very first thing,
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the very first time we've seen something
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or experienced something, our brains are drawn to that.
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Our attentional systems draw us to that.
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And when you are paying attention to something,
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that's part of what makes things memorable.
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Second is repetition.
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If you see that cup of tea every single day
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and every single time you do an interview,
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you talk about your cup of tea, you're gonna remember it.
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That's just how our brains work, repetition works.
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Third is association.
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So if you meet somebody new
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that knows lots of people that you know,
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so you and I share many, many, many, many people
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that we both know, it's easy to remember,
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it's easier to remember you,
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especially if you were somebody new
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that I hadn't met before, we have met before.
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And then the fourth one is emotional resonance.
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So we remember the happiest and the saddest moments
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of our lives, and that also includes funny,
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surprising things, that is the interaction
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between two key brain structures, the amygdala,
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which is important for processing lots of emotional,
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particularly threatening kinds of situations.
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But those threatening, surprising kinds of situations,
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the amygdala takes that information
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and makes another key structure called the hippocampus
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work better to put new long-term memories in your brain.
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So that, in fact, is the key structure for long-term memory,
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the structure called the hippocampus.
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Fantastic, so novelty, repetition, association,
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and emotional resonance.
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You can tell us a bit more about the hippocampus.
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I think, at least for my generation,
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well, I'm a neuroscientist,
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but for most people in my generation,
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I think they first heard about the hippocampus
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from the movie Memento.
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That guy says hippocampus.
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And for those of you that haven't seen that movie,
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it's a bizarrely constructed movie,
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but an interesting one, nonetheless, about memory.
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But even as a neuroscientist,
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sometimes I'm perplexed at how the hippocampus works.
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Maybe you could, if you would, step us through
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what this structure is, what it looks like,
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maybe a few of its sub-regions,
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because unlike vision, the topic that I've worked
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most of my career on, where we know,
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okay, the eye does this part,
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and the thalamus does this part,
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and the cortex does that part,
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I've always been a little perplexed
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about the hippocampus, frankly.
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And I've read the textbooks, and I've heard the lectures,
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but I'd love to get the update.
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What are the general themes of the hippocampus
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as a structure and its function?
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What do you think everyone, including neuroscientists,
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should know about the hippocampus?
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Absolutely, so let's start with the basics.
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The word hippocampus means seahorse.
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It is shaped, the structure is shaped
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like a kind of curly-Q seahorse, that is accurate.
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Everybody, including neuroscientists,
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should know it's a beautiful structure.
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It is visually anatomically beautiful
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with these kind of intertwining,
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twirly sub-regions within it.
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And I think that's one of the reasons why early anatomists,
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who were the very first neuroscientists,
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got attracted to it,
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because it's this interesting kind of twirly structure
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deep in the heart of the brain.
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So that's anatomically.
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Functionally, what does it do?
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Well, it's easiest to understand what it does
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when you look at what happens
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when you don't have a hippocampus anymore.
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What if you, what if by some disease
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or you have your hippocampus removed by accident,
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Well, we know this from the most famous
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neurological patient of all time.
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His initials were H.M.,
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so all psychology and neuroscience students know him.
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He was operated in 1954,
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and the paper was published in 1957.
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They removed both his hippocampi
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because he had very terrible epilepsy.
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And they knew that the hippocampus
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was the genesis of epilepsy,
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and this was experimental.
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His epilepsy was so bad that they decided
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not just to remove one hippocampus, but both.
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And what happened was immediate,
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immediate loss of all ability to form new memories
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for facts and events.
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Think about that for a second.
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All facts or events you're not able to remember.
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I can't remember this interaction between us.
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I can't remember any of the facts
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that we were just chatting about in our neuroscience lives.
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None of that can move into our long-term memory.
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So this hippocampus does something
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with all of these perceptions that are coming at us
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every single day, every minute of the day,
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and not for all of them,
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but for some of them that have these features
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that we just talked about.
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Maybe they're novel, maybe they have associations,
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maybe they're emotionally relevant,
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maybe they've been repeated.
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Some of those things in the realm of facts or events
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get encoded in our long-term memory.
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And that's the textbook of why the hippocampus
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I like to always add, and I mean,
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this is why I studied it for so many years,
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the hippocampus and what it does really defines
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our own personal histories.
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It means it defines who we are,
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because if we can't remember what we've done,
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the information we've learned,
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and the events of our lives, it changes us.
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That's what really defines us.
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That's why I wanted to study the hippocampus.
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And I think the exciting new ideas about the hippocampus
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is that hippocampus is important for memory.
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So if you say that, you'll be impressed,
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all your people at your cocktail party.
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But what people have started to realize
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that it's not just memory,
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it's not just putting together associations
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for what, where, and when of events
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that happened in our past,
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but it's putting together information
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that is in our long-term memory banks
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in interesting new ways.
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I'm talking about imagination.
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So without the hippocampus, yes, you can't remember things,
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but actually you're not able to imagine events
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or situations that you've never experienced before.
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So what that says is the hippocampus is important for memory
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is a too simple a way to think about it.
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What the hippocampus is important for
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is what we've already talked about,
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associating things together writ large.
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Anytime you need to associate something together,
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either for your past, your present, or your future,
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you are using your hippocampus.
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And it takes on this much more important role
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in our cognitive lives when we think about it like that.
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That is kind of the new, the new hippocampus
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that neuroscientists are studying these days.
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So it sounds like it really sets context,
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but it can do that with elements from the past,
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the present, or the future.
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Well, for neuroscientists, the phrase is domain.
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We say the time domain,
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meaning as opposed to just evaluating things in space.
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It sounds like the time domain of hippocampal functioning
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is incredibly interesting.
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And even the fact that we can have short-term,
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medium-term, and long-term memories,
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and we could go down any of these rabbit holes.
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I'll ask you a true or false,
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mostly because I just really want to know the answer.
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A few years ago, the theme in various high-profile reviews
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seemed to be that the hippocampus was involved in encoding,
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in creating memories, but not in storing memories,
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and that the memory storage was in the neocortex
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or the other overlying areas of the brain.
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Is that too general a statement?
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That's a tricky statement
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because I think that ultimately, yes,
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that long-term memories are stored in the cortex,
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but those memories are stored in the hippocampus
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sometimes for a very, very long time.
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So how long is too long,
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where you say, oh, it's not the hippocampus anymore?
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If it's four years, is that?
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Does that mean that it's not stored in the hippocampus?
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I think that's a tricky question.
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And yes, it was coming up a lot
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because people were debating it,
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and some people did think that you shouldn't think
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about the hippocampus as a storage area.
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But I think it's a long, long, long-term
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kind of intermediate storage area,
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maybe not the long-term storage area.
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That's why it's hard to answer that question.
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HM could remember facts from before his surgery.
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He couldn't form new memories.
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And given that he had no hippocampus,
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it would at least partially support the idea
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that some memories are retained outside the hippocampus.
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However, he did have part of his posterior hippocampus
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intact, so that's the tricky thing.
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I think initially, in fact, Scoville, the neurosurgeon,
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overestimated the number of millimeters
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he intended to remove of the hippocampus.
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And then when they did this,
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the very historic MRI of HM later in his life,
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they showed that, in fact,
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he did have that posterior hippocampus,
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part of the posterior hippocampus intact.
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So now it makes it a little bit more complicated
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to interpret what's going on.
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Not that it was never uncomplicated.
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Any interpretation of a lesion in a patient,
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as you know, is complicated.
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But, you know, HM had this mythical role
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in neuroscience and neurology,
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and now it was complicated
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because he does have more of the hippocampus intact.
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I did not know that.
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There are some memories that can be formed very quickly,
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so-called one-trial learning.
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And I'm just looking at this list again,
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novelty, repetition, association,
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and emotional resonance.
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It seems like some experiences
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can bypass the need for multiple repetitions.
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So, and unfortunately,
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it seems that our nervous system is skewed
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toward creating one-trial memories for negative events,
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which has a survival-adaptive mechanism.
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What is the neural connection that allows that to happen?
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Is it the amygdala to hippocampus connection?
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I mean, as you and I know,
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it seems like every brain area ultimately
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is connected to everything else.
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It's just a question of through how many nodes,
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just like every city is connected to another city.
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It's just a question of how many flights and roads
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do you have to traverse before you get there?
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What is it about one-trial learning?
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I mean, at a kind of top contour level,
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how can we learn certain things so fast?
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And other things are tricky.
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And now every time I look at this white mug,
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it's queuing up something special
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that simply by virtue of saying it.
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So is that one-trial memory?
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But what is it about very emotionally salient events
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that allow memories to get stamped in?
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Yeah, I mean, I think you've already alluded to it.
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That is, there is this protective function of our brains
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that has evolved over the last 2.5 million years
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that you need to pay attention
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and remember certain things for your survival.
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So some things that get stamped in, you know,
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they're memories, but they're fear memories.
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You know, if I get mugged on the subway
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or, you know, there are terrible things
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that could happen on the subway, as we just learned.
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But if something terrible happens,
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if something very scary happens, you remember that.
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And that fear and that memory of all those things.
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I mean, I have one, when I lived in Washington, DC,
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I went to work at NIH on a Sunday afternoon
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and I came back and when I rounded the corner
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to my door of my apartment, it was crowbarred in.
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Somebody had taken a crowbar, opened up my door
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and stole all of my, the nicest things in my apartment,
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which wasn't that nice
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because I wasn't making that much money.
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But ever since then, whenever I rounded that corner,
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I still had that memory.
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It was terrible because it put me in a terrible state
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when I was just coming home.
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And that's a survival mechanism.
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Do you want to be alert to possible danger?
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So part of those one trial memories,
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I think is often taking advantage
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of this evolutionarily developed system
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to tamp in things that could be potentially dangerous to you
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So you forever will remember this particular corner
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or this hallway because that is where something
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really bad happened to you.
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It seems like a location.
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We talk about conditioned place aversion,
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which is just a geek speak for wanting to avoid the place
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where something bad happened
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or conditioned place preference,
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wanting to go back to a place
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where something positive happened.
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We've been looking at a photograph
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of where you had a wonderful time with somebody
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and that can evoke all sorts of positive sensations.
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It seems like at some level, as complex as the brain is,
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the basic elements of feeling good or feeling lousy
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are states within the brain and body.
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And linking those to places
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seems like it's a pretty straightforward formula.
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Link place to state, link state to place, et cetera,
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as your description just provided.
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When we learn more complex information,
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a poem, a concept, or we have to ratchet
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through a set of ideas, that also involves memory.
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I'm sure that we'll talk more about this,
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but is there any way that you're aware of
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that state, bodily state, can be leveraged
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to enhance the speed or the quality
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of memories and memory formation?
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Because, you know, so to be clear about it,
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it seems there's something very important
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about this fourth, you know,
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this emotional resonance component, right?
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Novelty, the crowbar into the door is,
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thank goodness, sounds like it was novel,
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it wasn't a repeated theme, thank goodness.
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So repetition is out and the association
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is very, very strong.
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But for people trying to learn information
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that they're not that excited about,
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or that repetition is hard,
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or the novelty is simply that it's painful.
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Yes, I've been there, absolutely.
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Is there something that we can do
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to leverage knowledge of how the memory system
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works naturally to make that a more
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straightforward process?
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So I immediately turned to the things
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that I've studied that you talk about
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so beautifully on your podcast,
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which are strategies, generally,
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to make your brain work better.
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I was just reminding myself of your podcast
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about cold, because I use that every morning.
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Oh, you do call it? I do.
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Just take a moment and just tell us
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what is your cold exposure protocol,
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then I'll take you back to what you're saying.
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So my cold exposure protocol is at the end
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of every morning shower that I take,
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you know, the shower is warm,
link |
but I give myself a big blast of cold
link |
at the end of that, and it makes me feel so good,
link |
and because I've been doing it for several years,
link |
it's so much less painful.
link |
Okay, I admit, it was really painful at the beginning,
link |
but it's much less painful.
link |
I could handle the cold water,
link |
and my pipes give nice, really cold water,
link |
and I could feel the awakeness
link |
kind of come up in me after that,
link |
and I miss it if I forget to do it.
link |
Sometimes I run back in and give myself that cold blast,
link |
because it is upping, you know,
link |
I think you talked about this on your podcast,
link |
what's happening in the brain?
link |
Basically, the cold stimulus, that shock,
link |
that, you know, catching your breath, et cetera,
link |
is adrenaline from the adrenals,
link |
but also, from what we understand now,
link |
some new neuroimaging.
link |
There's epinephrine and norepinephrine released
link |
from locus coeruleus, which again is a brain structure
link |
in the back of the brain,
link |
got sprinklers the rest of the brain
link |
with a kind of a wake-up chemical,
link |
and there's a long arc on dopamine release.
link |
This paper back in 2000 showed that it's a steady increase
link |
up to about 2.5 X of circulating dopamine,
link |
so they weren't looking directly in the brain, admittedly,
link |
but it goes on for four or five hours,
link |
so the improved mood and the feeling of alertness
link |
Yeah, yeah, so I use that, I mean, so basically I use
link |
my morning routine, what is my morning routine?
link |
I get up, I do a 45-minute tea meditation,
link |
so meditating over the brewing and drinking of tea
link |
that I learned from a monk who has an institute in Taiwan
link |
where he teaches tea meditation, love it.
link |
I've learned all about tea, different kinds of tea,
link |
and then I do a 30-minute cardio weights workout.
link |
Then I take my shower with a hot, cold contrast.
link |
And before that, key thing, if I wanna learn something
link |
and I want to be able to get over the difficulty
link |
of repeating things or just push myself to do stuff,
link |
sleep, so good, good sleep, I've learned that
link |
over the pandemic, I did sleep experiments on myself
link |
and I learned that I was sleeping an hour less
link |
than I really needed.
link |
So I really need seven and a half to eight hours of sleep
link |
and I was getting six and a half.
link |
And so now, I get that seven and a half to eight hours
link |
every single night and guess what?
link |
I come to different difficult tasks and I am more willing
link |
to give it a try, to try longer, to try harder,
link |
and my brain works better.
link |
And so I think probably if you go back
link |
to all of your podcasts, you'll learn exactly
link |
why each one of those things that I do,
link |
which I would bet that you probably do too,
link |
is helping my brain.
link |
I guarantee they are and I'm impressed
link |
that you do all these things, although not surprised.
link |
And I should say that the extra hour of sleep
link |
is really impressive and extremely beneficial.
link |
I'm curious, do you get that in the early part of the night
link |
by going to bed earlier?
link |
And I should just mention,
link |
because you're too humble to do it,
link |
but I'll say it again, that yes,
link |
not only are you a full professor running,
link |
a tenured full professor and running a laboratory,
link |
you teach undergraduates,
link |
you have an important role in public education,
link |
multiple books, and you're now Dean
link |
of the College of Arts and Sciences at NYU.
link |
So the extra hour of sleep is benefiting you
link |
and as a consequence, benefiting everybody else as well.
link |
Thanks for sharing with us your protocol.
link |
I took you off the trajectory of what one can do,
link |
but I think that people and I appreciate knowing,
link |
kind of what the practical steps are.
link |
Because knowing the science is important,
link |
mechanism I do believe is important
link |
for embedding protocols in people's minds
link |
and why they might want to do them,
link |
but really hearing that the mechanics of it is useful.
link |
It sounds like everything together takes about an hour.
link |
It's not an excessive amount of time,
link |
but it probably gives you an outsized positive effect
link |
Absolutely, I definitely notice it if I'm not able to do it.
link |
And when I don't, so I do this seven days a week.
link |
It's also not just, you know, five days, seven days a week.
link |
And when I can't do it,
link |
it's usually early morning flights or things like that.
link |
And I get over it, but it's critical,
link |
critical for the working of my brain.
link |
And I'll just highlight one thing that you said
link |
before we move on, which is that you said,
link |
when sometimes if you get out of the shower before the cold,
link |
you'll get back in.
link |
That's to me, a really beautiful example
link |
of condition place preference.
link |
Now the cold showers become something
link |
that you sort of look forward to.
link |
I should say that nobody is immune
link |
from the adrenaline increase of cold,
link |
no matter how cold, this is what's interesting about cold.
link |
It's one of the reasons why it's such an important part
link |
of the screening for special operations.
link |
You know, sort of SEAL teams,
link |
but other branches of military too,
link |
which is that there are very few stimuli
link |
that you can give anyone
link |
and consistently get an adrenaline release from that
link |
without harming them.
link |
You know, with heat,
link |
eventually you need to use so much heat
link |
that you damage tissue.
link |
Or with exercise, you have to use,
link |
once you exercise it, you can damage joints.
link |
And it's this very kind of brilliant,
link |
I don't know if it was intentional or not.
link |
It's sort of an unintentional genius
link |
that special operations has figured out
link |
that by sending people back into the cold over and over,
link |
it never really gets easier.
link |
But over time, people actually start to crave it.
link |
And it provides this reduction in inflammation, et cetera.
link |
So anyway, beautiful practice.
link |
I want to learn more about your tea meditation
link |
later in the episode.
link |
returning to ways that we can improve memory formation.
link |
Maybe, if you would, tell us your story around this.
link |
I know you've told it before,
link |
but I think a lot of members of the audience
link |
and I would love to hear how you came to this.
link |
Because growing up in neuroscience,
link |
I knew you as one of the,
link |
I would say one of the three or four,
link |
and they're all alongside one another.
link |
Not, this isn't a hierarchical statement,
link |
a three or four top memory researchers in the world, right?
link |
Textbook materials, Suzuki.
link |
My textbooks are filled with the word Suzuki,
link |
according to the information on memory and memory formation.
link |
So you were doing that
link |
and doing the things that academics do.
link |
And then you're still doing that,
link |
but still at a very high level,
link |
but then things took a different direction.
link |
And then maybe we could talk about your story
link |
and how you came to the place you are at now,
link |
because I think it provides a number of tools
link |
that people could implement themselves.
link |
So this story happened
link |
as I was working to get tenure at NYU.
link |
And as you know, it's a stress-filled process.
link |
They give you six years to show your stuff
link |
and you are judged in front of all your colleagues.
link |
And either they say,
link |
okay, you can join the club,
link |
or they say, sorry,
link |
you are humiliated in front of everybody.
link |
This was what was going on.
link |
They actually tell people to leave.
link |
If you don't get tenure, you're gone.
link |
You have to leave your institution.
link |
And so you work really, really hard.
link |
And so my strategy was,
link |
I'm just gonna not do anything but work
link |
and I'm just gonna work
link |
and I'm going to just work as hard as I can
link |
for the six years.
link |
And what happens when you work
link |
and you don't have any sort of life outside of work
link |
and you live in New York
link |
where there's all sorts of really good takeout,
link |
you gain 25 pounds, which is exactly what I did.
link |
And you get really, really stressed
link |
and you start to ask yourself,
link |
how come I'm living in New York City
link |
and I love Broadway
link |
and I haven't gone to a Broadway show in two years.
link |
25 pounds overweight,
link |
I decided to go on vacation
link |
and I went by myself
link |
because I had no friends.
link |
on a river rafting trip in Peru.
link |
And so I go by myself
link |
and meet other interesting people.
link |
And I was the weakest person on this whole trip.
link |
they were so much in better shape,
link |
it was embarrassing.
link |
And they won't say this,
link |
they won't admit this to me,
link |
And I kind of came back and I said,
link |
okay, I cannot be the weakest person.
link |
I'm in my late thirties,
link |
I have to do something.
link |
So I went to the gym
link |
oh my God, I'm 25 pounds overweight.
link |
Let's try at least to lose this weight.
link |
And so I go to the gym.
link |
I notice how much better I feel
link |
when I go to just a single class.
link |
I remember the very first class I went to
link |
was a hip hop dance class.
link |
I'm a terrible hip hop dancer,
link |
but I still felt good after that class.
link |
And then fast forward year and a half,
link |
I've lost the 25 pounds.
link |
So proud of myself,
link |
And I'm sitting in my office doing what
link |
you and I do a lot,
link |
which is writing an NIH grant,
link |
which is our lifeblood, right?
link |
And writing, writing, writing,
link |
and this thought goes through my mind
link |
that had never gone through my mind before,
link |
which was during this six years
link |
of frantic grant writing
link |
when I was trying to get tenure.
link |
And that thought was,
link |
grant writing went well today.
link |
You know, that felt good.
link |
I've never had that thought before.
link |
What's going on here?
link |
This is really weird.
link |
I don't know that anyone has had that thought before.
link |
No, I'm sure people have had that thought.
link |
But I thought maybe I'm just having a good day.
link |
But when I thought about it,
link |
I thought it's not just today.
link |
My grant writing seems to have been getting smoother.
link |
Like I'm able to focus longer.
link |
The sessions feel better to me.
link |
And you know, at that point,
link |
the only thing that I changed in my life,
link |
it was a huge thing,
link |
but I had become a gym rat
link |
rather than a workaholic.
link |
And that's when my spidey sense for neuroscientists
link |
what do we know about the effects of exercise on your brain?
link |
Because if I think about it,
link |
what was better about my writing is
link |
I could focus longer and deeper,
link |
And I could remember those little details
link |
that you try and pull together
link |
for your million dollar NIH grant
link |
from 30 different articles that you have open on your screen
link |
all at the same time.
link |
That's the hippocampal memory.
link |
I was studying that.
link |
I was writing the grants on hippocampal memory.
link |
And so that's when I got really interested
link |
in the effects of exercise
link |
on both prefrontal focus and attention function
link |
and hippocampal function
link |
because of my own observation and this kind of,
link |
I still remember where I was sitting,
link |
which office I was in when I had this revelation.
link |
But the thing that really sealed it for me
link |
that made me think,
link |
not just, oh, this is interesting,
link |
but I wanna study this,
link |
is right around that time,
link |
I got a phone call from my mom
link |
who said that my dad wasn't feeling well
link |
and that he had told her that he got lost
link |
driving back from the 7-Eleven,
link |
which is literally seven blocks from our house
link |
that I grew up in.
link |
And I knew that was hippocampal function.
link |
I suspected dementia.
link |
I suspected, though didn't wanna admit,
link |
Alzheimer's dementia, which he had.
link |
And it was funny because,
link |
I mean, it wasn't funny,
link |
but my mom and dad are two sides of a very different coin.
link |
My dad is the engineer,
link |
not so active all his life,
link |
but loved and sit and read books all day.
link |
My mom was the athlete.
link |
She played tennis, team tennis into her 80s.
link |
And it started to show at that point.
link |
And so then I had even a more pressing reason
link |
to think about what the effects of exercise were
link |
because I noticed that all the things
link |
that were improving in my brain
link |
suddenly went away in my dad's brain.
link |
Really, really smart guy, engineer in Silicon Valley
link |
helped that push in Silicon Valley in the 70s happen.
link |
He had no more memory.
link |
He couldn't focus his attention.
link |
His mood was rock bottom.
link |
He's a very happy guy.
link |
And everything was the opposite in me.
link |
And I started thinking,
link |
this isn't just something to help
link |
somebody who wants to get tenure.
link |
This is something that could help
link |
millions and millions of people.
link |
Most importantly, our aging population.
link |
And so the thing that makes me wake up in the morning
link |
is when I realized that every single time you move your body
link |
you are releasing a whole bunch of neurochemicals.
link |
And some of them we've talked about
link |
that the good mood comes from dopamine
link |
and serotonin and noradrenaline.
link |
But the thing that gets released also,
link |
particularly with aerobic exercise
link |
is a growth factor called brain-derived neurotrophic factor
link |
And that is so important because what it does
link |
is it goes directly to your hippocampus
link |
and it helps brand new brain cells grow in your hippocampus.
link |
Even if you're a couch potato
link |
you can get new brain cells in your hippocampus to grow.
link |
But it's like giving your hippocampus a boost
link |
with this regular BDNF if you are exercising.
link |
Which means that we all have the capacity
link |
to grow a bigger, fatter, fluffier hippocampus.
link |
And so what I like to give people
link |
is this image of every single time you move your body
link |
it's like giving your brain this wonderful bubble bath
link |
of neurochemicals.
link |
I need my bubble bath of noradrenaline
link |
and dopamine and serotonin and growth factors.
link |
And with regular bubble baths, what am I doing?
link |
I'm growing a big, fat, fluffy hippocampus.
link |
And I'm not gonna cure my father's dementia,
link |
Alzheimer's dementia.
link |
But you know what?
link |
If I go into my 70s with a big, fat, fluffy hippocampus,
link |
even if I had that in my genes and it starts to kick in,
link |
it's gonna take longer for that disease to start to affect
link |
my ability to form and retain new long-term memories
link |
for facts and events, which is my motivation
link |
for getting up and doing my 30 to 45 minutes
link |
of aerobic exercise every day.
link |
Quick question about your protocol,
link |
just because, and then we'll discuss a few mechanistic
link |
things related to what signals the body
link |
might be sending the brain,
link |
and a little bit more detail on BDNF and some circuitry.
link |
So 30 to 45 minutes, it sounds like cardiovascular exercise
link |
But as I say that, and I think about the literature
link |
that I'm aware of in mice and some in monkeys
link |
and certainly in humans, looking at the effects of exercise
link |
on brain function and typically the outcome
link |
is improvement almost always.
link |
I don't think I've ever seen a paper showing
link |
that when animals or humans exercise more
link |
that their brain gets worse.
link |
I just can't think of a single paper.
link |
It doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
link |
I'm sure someone will put one in the comment section.
link |
They'll find that one and thank you if you can find that.
link |
But it seems like it's always cardiovascular exercise
link |
and experimentally in a lab, it's a lot easier
link |
to get a mouse to run on a treadmill
link |
than it is to get a mouse to lift weights.
link |
Although people have put a little ankle weights
link |
And the ways of getting mice to do resistance work
link |
is actually a little bit barbaric
link |
because oftentimes they'll incapacitate a limb
link |
to overload another limb.
link |
So it's an asymmetric thing.
link |
It's not the same as sending them in to do squats
link |
or deadlifts or something.
link |
So, but cardiovascular exercise might be special.
link |
And what are your thoughts on that?
link |
And please first though, tell us your routine.
link |
Your routine is 30 to 45 minutes of,
link |
are you a Peloton cycler?
link |
I think that the data suggests
link |
that as long as your heart rate is getting up
link |
for these long-term effects on your hippocampus
link |
and prefrontal cortex, you also get better
link |
at shifting and focusing your attention.
link |
For that you need cardiovascular.
link |
And what I use is a video workout
link |
that I started even before the pandemic
link |
is called Daily Burn.
link |
And it's just thousands of different workouts.
link |
But I love, they are 30 minutes that I sometimes add on
link |
a 10 to 15 minute stretch at the beginning or at the end.
link |
But I love the variety.
link |
Sometimes I do it with weights.
link |
Sometimes I do it without weights.
link |
I love kickboxing.
link |
So they have a lot of kickboxing in there.
link |
It just fits my routine.
link |
And it's always there.
link |
And I don't have to get all dressed up to go to the gym
link |
So that's what I do.
link |
And that's a daily thing, seven days a week.
link |
Seven days a week, fantastic.
link |
So in terms of the way that some of these changes
link |
are being conveyed from the body to the brain,
link |
that fascinates me.
link |
I mean, as you and I know,
link |
and I'm sort of a repeating record on the podcast,
link |
always saying, you got a brain,
link |
but you also have a spinal cord
link |
and then your nervous system connects everything.
link |
Every organ in your body is basically signaled
link |
to by the nervous system and back to the nervous system,
link |
your spleen, everything.
link |
But so let's imagine your morning routine,
link |
you do your cardiovascular exercise.
link |
Okay, so you're pumping more blood.
link |
That's the definition of a higher heart rate.
link |
Stroke volume of the heart goes up over time.
link |
You're getting fitter.
link |
So blood flow to the brain is increasing.
link |
Do we know how that gets translated to a signal
link |
to release more BDNF?
link |
And then it raises this other question,
link |
which is, does it matter where your mind is
link |
when you exercise?
link |
Because ultimately the brain, of course,
link |
you can anchor your attention to the exercise
link |
or you can be listening to a podcast or something else.
link |
I've always wondered about this.
link |
Can we enhance the effects of exercise
link |
by combining the enhanced blood flow
link |
with cognitive work during exercise?
link |
Or is it simply a matter of just getting more blood flow
link |
up to the hippocampus?
link |
Yeah, I wish I had the answer to that question too.
link |
My instinct is, yes, it matters,
link |
partially because of the work of your colleague,
link |
Alia Crum, on mindset and the power of that to change
link |
how physiologically our body is responding.
link |
So how could it not work in her experiments
link |
and, or work in her experiments
link |
and not work for my morning or our morning exercise routine?
link |
But are there studies?
link |
Point to a study, I don't know of one.
link |
So exercise neuroscientists out there,
link |
I'd love to see that study done.
link |
Before I go into the aerobic thing,
link |
I always like to start with the least amount of exercise
link |
to get something really useful
link |
because I don't want people to say,
link |
oh God, I hate sweating and I don't wanna listen anymore.
link |
So I always like to start with studies have shown
link |
that just 10 minutes of walking outside can shift your mood.
link |
That is part of that neurochemical bubble bath
link |
that you're getting, dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline.
link |
And 10 minutes, and anybody can walk for 10 minutes.
link |
And so that is, for all of you thinking that out there,
link |
what is the minimum that I could get
link |
some of these brain effects?
link |
10 minutes of walking, anybody can do it.
link |
Is outside important?
link |
I'm a big believer in getting photons into the eyes.
link |
It, I think that that study was done indoors on a treadmill.
link |
So, and the comparison wasn't done,
link |
but moving your, which is great.
link |
I, you know, some in the middle of the pandemic,
link |
I walked around my apartment for 30 minutes sometimes
link |
just for some variety.
link |
Felt like a rat on a running wheel, but yes.
link |
So that minimum amount of movement in your body
link |
can get you those mood effects.
link |
But what about the big, fat, fluffy hippocampus?
link |
What about the better performing prefrontal cortex?
link |
That's where you start to need the cardio workout.
link |
And from my reading of the literature,
link |
there haven't been enough studies, you know,
link |
directly comparing, contrasting, kickboxing with running
link |
with whatever other cardio that you need to do.
link |
But any cardio workout that is done
link |
has these positive effects.
link |
So I'm gonna say, my interpretation of that
link |
is that whatever way you get your heart rate up,
link |
including a power walk,
link |
a power walk can get your heart rate up,
link |
that is beneficial.
link |
And what is happening, there are two pathways
link |
that have been studied about how you go
link |
from moving your body to more BDNF,
link |
that neurotrophin that's increasing the growth
link |
of new hippocampal brain cells.
link |
The two pathways are the following.
link |
One is a myokine, which is a protein released
link |
by the muscles, and not your heart.
link |
These are striated muscles in your body.
link |
And so by running, these were studies done in rats
link |
on running wheels, they showed that the running rats
link |
had more of this myokine released,
link |
the myokine passed the blood-brain barrier,
link |
so got into the rarefied, very protected bloodstream
link |
of inside the brain.
link |
And that myokine stimulated the release
link |
of BDNF in the brain.
link |
That's pathway number one.
link |
Pathway number two comes through the liver,
link |
because exercise is a stress generally.
link |
How do we know that?
link |
Well, cortisol is released whenever we exercise.
link |
We need that sugar in our blood,
link |
and so that's how the physiological mechanisms work.
link |
And so there is a ketone, beta-hydroxybutyrate,
link |
that we've known for a very long time
link |
that gets released by the liver during exercise.
link |
And we also know that that particular ketone
link |
passes that blood-brain barrier,
link |
and it's another stimulant for BDNF.
link |
So kind of the final common pathway seems to be
link |
BDNF stimulation in the hippocampus.
link |
Is it the only one?
link |
Probably not, but that's the one
link |
that has been studied most clearly.
link |
So it comes from all of our physiological systems,
link |
our muscles working, our liver responding
link |
to the stress of exercise, and what is it doing?
link |
It is making our, giving more BDNF precursors
link |
to get into our brain to cause the up-spike of BDNF,
link |
which is part of your bubble bath
link |
that you're getting every time you move.
link |
I love that description of a factor from muscle
link |
and a factor from liver,
link |
because anytime we're thinking about movement of the body
link |
and translating that to the brain,
link |
as you so clearly pointed out,
link |
that needs to be, it needs to traverse
link |
the blood-brain barrier.
link |
Not everything that happens in the body
link |
is communicated to the brain,
link |
and these seem like really important signals.
link |
Beta-hydroxybutyrate, you mentioned, is a ketone.
link |
I just want to underscore, that doesn't mean, folks,
link |
that you need to be on a ketogenic diet.
link |
I think people hear ketone and they think,
link |
I know some people are, most people are not, I imagine.
link |
There are ketones that are released in your brain and body
link |
that can function, even if you're ingesting carbohydrates
link |
and not ketogenic, just for a point of clarification.
link |
This issue of new neurons is one that you hear a lot.
link |
Neurogenesis, you're going to grow new neurons, new neurons.
link |
And my understanding is that the rodent literature
link |
is very clear, that animals that run on wheels more often,
link |
it turns out rodents love to run on wheels.
link |
Do you know these studies by Hoppe Hofster,
link |
which are pretty funny?
link |
They're very cool, by the way, Hoppe,
link |
how a huge investigator, I'm not making light of them.
link |
They put running wheels in a field
link |
and wild rodents will run to the running wheel
link |
and run on that running wheel.
link |
So they really enjoy it, which I find amusing
link |
for reasons that probably only a neuroscientist
link |
would find amusing.
link |
In any case, in rodents, it seems that running more
link |
on a wheel can trigger neurogenesis,
link |
literally the birth of new neurons
link |
and the addition of new neurons to the hippocampus.
link |
In monkeys, this has been controversial.
link |
It seems it does happen in the hippocampus
link |
and in the olfactory bulb, probably not in the neocortex.
link |
Thinking back to the decades or more controversy
link |
between Liz Gould and Pashko Rakesh,
link |
I hope they settled their differences there.
link |
Neuroscientists love to argue, it's what we do.
link |
And in humans, I think it's been a bit controversial.
link |
Some people say absolutely yes,
link |
other people say absolutely no,
link |
there are new neurons added to the adult brain.
link |
I haven't followed that literature down to the detail,
link |
but I do remember one study that I don't think is contested,
link |
which is the work of Rusty Gage at the Salk Institute,
link |
where they actually injected a sort of dye type marker
link |
into the brains of terminally ill humans
link |
who very graciously offered to have their brains removed
link |
and dissected after death.
link |
And in these, in some cases, very old,
link |
terminally ill humans, they did see evidence
link |
for new neurons being born in the hippocampus.
link |
Can I trust that idea still?
link |
Is that generally accepted?
link |
Well, so after that study, which was quite a while ago,
link |
there are more recent studies, still controversial,
link |
but showing and demonstrating using even new
link |
and better techniques than were used
link |
in that original Rusty Gage study,
link |
which was groundbreaking at the time,
link |
that suggest and I think show that there are new neurons
link |
born in adult human brains into the ninth decade of life.
link |
So they not only did this,
link |
I think those patients were in their 60s,
link |
then they died of cancer,
link |
but these new studies looking across the timeline,
link |
can we see, because the other thing was,
link |
yeah, maybe you have some when you're 20,
link |
but by the time you're older
link |
and you might need these new neurons,
link |
you have no new neuron growth.
link |
And so these studies seem to suggest that yes, yes, you did.
link |
Yes, you do, and we all do, even into old age.
link |
Great, and I'll just take a moment to say that
link |
I am personally not aware of any studies looking at
link |
other forms of exercise besides cardiovascular exercise
link |
for sake of brain health.
link |
And this I think is an important gap in the literature
link |
that ought to be filled, whether or not, for instance,
link |
high intensity interval training,
link |
or whether or not weight training,
link |
which has other effects on the musculature.
link |
So you can imagine perhaps the myokine to BDNF pathway,
link |
the pathway one that you mentioned might be signaled,
link |
but maybe not the liver pathway.
link |
Maybe, yes, I'm speculating here.
link |
Those studies need to be done.
link |
To my knowledge, they just haven't been done yet,
link |
but they should be done.
link |
If you would, could you tell us about some of the more
link |
specific effects of exercise on memory?
link |
Memory is a broad category of effects and phenomena.
link |
So things like, what comes to mind is short-term,
link |
medium and long-term memory, reaction time,
link |
learning math, at least for me,
link |
is quite a bit different than learning history,
link |
although there's certainly overlap
link |
in the neural underpinnings.
link |
What has been demonstrated in the laboratory
link |
in animal models, but especially in humans?
link |
And if you want to share with us any results
link |
from your lab, published or unpublished,
link |
I'm sure that the audience would be delighted
link |
to learn about them.
link |
Absolutely, let me start with kind of the immediate effects,
link |
acute effects as they're called,
link |
of exercise on the brain.
link |
So this is asking, what does a one-off exercise session
link |
do for your brain?
link |
And there are three major effects that have been reproduced.
link |
I've seen it in my lab, many labs have reproduced this.
link |
So what do you get with a one-off?
link |
This is usually an aerobic type exercise session,
link |
What you get is that mood boost, very, very consistent.
link |
You get improved prefrontal function,
link |
typically tested with a Stroop test,
link |
which is a test that asks you to shift
link |
and focus your attention in specific ways.
link |
It's a challenging task and clearly dependent
link |
on the prefrontal cortex, largely.
link |
And significant improvements in reaction time.
link |
So your speed at responding, often a motor kind of,
link |
but cognitive motor response is improved.
link |
Over the pandemic, one of the unpublished studies
link |
that I did, looking at the effects of 30 minutes
link |
of age-appropriate workout in subjects ranging in age
link |
from their 20s all the way up to their 90s.
link |
So what are the things that I saw most consistently?
link |
Irrespective of your age, everybody got a decrease
link |
anxiety and depression and a hostility score,
link |
which is very important, you know?
link |
So it's not just decreasing your anxiety and depression,
link |
but decreasing your hostility levels.
link |
Making the world a better place.
link |
Making the world a better place.
link |
Energy, the feeling of energy went up.
link |
And what we found is in the older population,
link |
even more than in the younger population,
link |
we saw improved performance on both Stroop
link |
and Erikson-Flanker task, which is another task
link |
dependent on really focusing in on different letters
link |
and paying attention to what letter is being shown.
link |
So these are consistent effects.
link |
How long do they last?
link |
One of the studies that I did publish in my lab
link |
showed that the immediate effects of exercise
link |
lasted up to two hours.
link |
Unfortunately, that was the longest that we lasted.
link |
We're still there at two hours.
link |
So that's, you know, that's a pretty big bang
link |
Sorry to interrupt.
link |
I just want to make sure I understand.
link |
So if, when you say the effects lasted up to two hours,
link |
does that mean up to two hours after you finished exercise
link |
or up to two hours of memory challenging work?
link |
Yeah, just to be clear.
link |
Yeah, that's a great question.
link |
So my study looked at,
link |
two hours after you finish your workout,
link |
we gave you these cognitive tests.
link |
During that two hour period,
link |
you were free to do anything except exercise or eat.
link |
And so there was no extra load on people.
link |
But two hours later, you did do significantly better
link |
on these focused attention tasks
link |
compared to a group that watched videos
link |
for the exercise period.
link |
This was an hour and a half.
link |
For the exercise period, this was an hour of cycling
link |
These were young subjects in their 20s.
link |
Okay, so if I finish my exercise at 9 a.m.,
link |
even if I start this cognitive work,
link |
this mental work at 11, I'll still see benefits.
link |
Yes, at least by 11,
link |
because I didn't go farther than two hours.
link |
So it could last even longer than that.
link |
But I have evidence that it lasts for two hours.
link |
And perhaps if I had started the cognitive work
link |
and 45 minutes after my exercise ended,
link |
it would also be helpful.
link |
So there's no reason I think that you have to wait
link |
before starting cognitive work.
link |
Yeah, no reason at all.
link |
I'm asking questions of the sort that I get in the comments
link |
that we are going to get in the comments section.
link |
We always strive for clarity here.
link |
So what this tells me is that exercising early in the day
link |
may have a special effect.
link |
I realize that some people cannot exercise
link |
until later in the evening,
link |
but you mentioned something earlier
link |
that I want to cue people to.
link |
It's very, very important.
link |
I don't think I've ever mentioned this on the podcast,
link |
which is any kind of physical activity
link |
will increase cortisol to varying degrees.
link |
And so sometimes it's a healthy increase.
link |
Sometimes it's an unhealthy increase.
link |
If you do two hours of really intense exercise
link |
and you're not prepared for it,
link |
that's a big spike in cortisol,
link |
probably not a good thing for most people.
link |
But if you are going to do your cardiovascular
link |
or weight training later in the day,
link |
that increase in cortisol
link |
can promote too much wakefulness for sleep, et cetera.
link |
Shifting that cortisol spike early in the day
link |
is associated with a number of important things
link |
related to mood, et cetera.
link |
But more and more what I'm thinking and hearing
link |
is that exercise early in the day is key.
link |
Our former dean of the medical school, Phil Pizzo,
link |
was and is kind of famous still
link |
for jogging between the hours of like four and 5 a.m.
link |
or five and six and then running the medical school.
link |
So, and you're up early doing your exercise
link |
and cold shower and meditation.
link |
We'll talk about meditation.
link |
But this is more and more of a push, I feel like,
link |
or a stimulus for us to think about
link |
moving our exercise earlier in the day.
link |
Yeah, I mean, I like to say that,
link |
I know there are moms and dads out there
link |
and they just say, look, I have a kid.
link |
The kid's more important than my doing my exercise.
link |
So you will get benefits
link |
if you do it whenever you can.
link |
So that's great, more power to you.
link |
But what all the neuroscience data suggests
link |
is the best time to do your exercise
link |
is right before you need to use your brain
link |
in the most important way that you need to use it every day.
link |
And so that is why the morning, for most of us,
link |
That's why I do it in the morning.
link |
I'm lucky enough to be able to do that.
link |
But yeah, it makes sense with everything we know about.
link |
How this works and how it benefits our brain.
link |
I think about our colleague, Eric Kandel,
link |
who not incidentally has a Nobel Prize in studies memory.
link |
And rumor has it that he's been a swimmer
link |
for a lot of years that he put in,
link |
I think nowadays he's in his 90s.
link |
Now he'll put in half a mile,
link |
but he used to swim a mile a day or something of that sort.
link |
I heard that too, that he was a swimmer
link |
and he does it very, very religiously.
link |
Okay, so there are a few other neuroscientists
link |
I can think of a lot of neuroscientists
link |
that probably should exercise more.
link |
And I don't say that to poke at them.
link |
I just would love to see them doing their incredible work
link |
for many more decades.
link |
And everything that we're talking about today
link |
indicates that if one doesn't,
link |
unless you have incredible genetics,
link |
we all experience age-related dementia, right?
link |
I mean, the story of your father is a salient one.
link |
And we should remember that as we go forward.
link |
But I also want to emphasize,
link |
I'd love to get your thoughts on just memory
link |
and memory loss in general.
link |
It seems we all get worse at remembering and learning things
link |
even if we don't get Alzheimer's.
link |
When does that typically start for humans?
link |
You know, I think there's so much variability,
link |
not only because we are individuals,
link |
but because our stress levels are different
link |
and everybody's anxiety level has gone up
link |
in the last couple of years.
link |
But that also has an effect.
link |
We don't remember as much in a highly stressful,
link |
highly anxious situation.
link |
So, you know, as you know, it's hard to answer that question.
link |
People say, okay, just tell me
link |
how much exercise I have to do.
link |
30 to 40 miles, it's a day.
link |
But I love that per day.
link |
You know, I've been doing this whole thing
link |
of telling people, oh, the data say 150 to 200 minutes
link |
or zone two cardio, which is kind of, you know,
link |
moderately hard, but not excessively hard.
link |
But I love this every day theme because whenever I do that,
link |
the questions that come back are,
link |
well, what if I take a long hike on the weekends?
link |
And so people start negotiating.
link |
There's something that's very powerful
link |
about non-negotiable every day.
link |
Sun in your eyes every day, even through cloud cover.
link |
Exercise for 30, 45 minutes.
link |
Cold shower every day.
link |
You know, my understanding of the literature
link |
is that somewhere in our 50s or 60s,
link |
we start noticing little hiccups in memory.
link |
For some people younger, for some people later.
link |
But I have to imagine that doing the exercise
link |
throughout one's entire life
link |
is going to help offset some of this,
link |
simply because of the BDNF and other downstream effects.
link |
I mean, that's what it suggests.
link |
One of my favorite studies,
link |
and then I want to get back to you wanted,
link |
you invited me to share some of my unpublished data
link |
on the effects of long-term exercise.
link |
But first I want to share one of my favorite studies,
link |
which is a longitudinal study done in Swedish women.
link |
And this was published in 2018.
link |
And what they did was, back in the 1960s,
link |
they found Swedish women, 300 Swedish women in their 40s.
link |
And they characterized them as low fit, mid fit, high fit.
link |
And then 40 years later,
link |
they came back and found these women.
link |
They let them live their lives.
link |
And they asked what happened to these women
link |
as a function of whether they were low fit, mid fit,
link |
high fit in their 40s.
link |
They're now in their 80s.
link |
And what they found was that relative to the low fit
link |
or mid fit women, the women that were high fit
link |
gained nine more years of good cognition later in life.
link |
Now, this is not a randomized control study.
link |
This is a correlational study.
link |
But does it agree with everything
link |
that we've been talking about today?
link |
Does it agree with this idea that, you know,
link |
the women that were high fit
link |
were giving their brains this bubble bath,
link |
you know, maybe not every day,
link |
but very, very regularly for that entire 40 years.
link |
And that built up their big, fat, beautiful hippocampi.
link |
So that's one of my favorite studies.
link |
Another cause for getting the exercise in consistently.
link |
You know, I am impressed by this 10 minute walk
link |
and the improvements in mood from just a 10 minute walk.
link |
But again, I think that daily repetition.
link |
Also, I have to imagine has effects on the very pathways
link |
that allow plasticity.
link |
This is something we, in the realm of neuroplasticity,
link |
we don't often hear about or think about,
link |
even as neuroscientists,
link |
which is that the pathways for engaging plasticity
link |
probably can be, probably, I'm speculating here,
link |
can be made better
link |
by engaging in the sorts of behavior
link |
that stimulate plasticity.
link |
In other words, if one gets better
link |
at calming themselves down under stress,
link |
those circuits get better at doing that, right?
link |
There's a neural circuits gain proficiency.
link |
And so, because blood vessels can grow,
link |
capillaries can grow in the brain,
link |
you can imagine that more pumping of blood to the brain,
link |
delivery of these various muscle and liver factors
link |
would also establish larger or more efficient portals
link |
to getting that stuff there.
link |
So you could imagine a kind of an amplifying effect
link |
And again, I'm speculating here,
link |
but I've seen this over and over again in colleagues,
link |
the ones who exercise consistently
link |
seem to be really, really smart and doing amazing work
link |
well into their eighties and nineties.
link |
And the ones who aren't,
link |
some of whom actually pride themselves
link |
on how little they exercise, they get worse over time.
link |
You see them each meeting each decade
link |
and I'm not poking fun at them at all.
link |
It's actually quite hard to see.
link |
And they're kind of a fading light.
link |
They're starting to flicker.
link |
So there is this incredible relationship
link |
between body vitality and brain vitality.
link |
That is, of course, is not an excuse
link |
for spending all day in the gym, right?
link |
The gym rats, I enjoy working out,
link |
so I could imagine doing that.
link |
But that doesn't make us smarter, unfortunately.
link |
You actually have to do the cognitive work also, right?
link |
It's not just exercise.
link |
So I'd love to hear about
link |
some of these new unpublished data.
link |
Okay, so when I jumped into the exercise work,
link |
everybody was studying people 65 or older
link |
because that's when cognitive decline begins.
link |
And if the idea is exercise can help you
link |
with your cognition, then it makes sense.
link |
However, I thought, well, you know, it's great.
link |
There's lots of work there.
link |
I wanted to know what happens in people
link |
in their 40s and their 50s,
link |
maybe even their 30s and their 20s.
link |
Because that's when we as humans are able,
link |
ready, willing, and able to increase our exercise
link |
and gets us set up to build our brains
link |
as we go into our 60s.
link |
And so the first study that I did
link |
looked at low-fit participants
link |
from their 30s to mid-50s.
link |
And we wanted to ask this question, you know,
link |
how much exercise do you really need
link |
to start seeing benefits?
link |
Do you see benefits?
link |
Or maybe you have to wait
link |
until you start seeing cognitive decline to get benefits.
link |
That was one of the theories out there.
link |
And so that's what I wanted to do.
link |
And so what we did was three months
link |
of two to three times a week cardio.
link |
It was a spin class.
link |
So spin classes are great for cardio.
link |
And the comparison group was two to three times a week
link |
of competitive video scrabble.
link |
So no heart rate change,
link |
but they had to come into my lab and be in a group
link |
just like they were in a group for the spin class.
link |
We tested them cognitively
link |
at the beginning of the end of the session.
link |
What we found was two to three times a week of cardio.
link |
In these people, they were low-fit,
link |
which means specifically
link |
that they were exercising less than 30 minutes a week
link |
for the three months previous to the experiment.
link |
So they went from that
link |
to two to three times a week of spin class.
link |
And what we found was changes in baseline rates
link |
of their positive mood states went up
link |
relative to the video scrabble group.
link |
Their body image got more positive
link |
because they were exercising, which is great.
link |
And really important,
link |
their motivation to exercise went up significantly
link |
compared to the video scrabble group, which is great.
link |
So the more you exercise,
link |
the more motivated you are to exercise.
link |
What about cognition?
link |
What changed in the cognitive circuits of their brain?
link |
Number one, we got improved performance on the Stroop task,
link |
but we're headed towards my favorite structure,
link |
which is the hippocampus.
link |
What we found was improved performance
link |
on both a recognition memory task,
link |
which was a memory encoding task.
link |
And that is, can you differentiate similar items
link |
that we're asking you to remember?
link |
And an spatial episodic memory task
link |
where we had them play one of those Doom-like games
link |
when they went into this spatial maze
link |
and they had to do things in a virtual city.
link |
Their performance there got better,
link |
which is very, very classically dependent
link |
on the hippocampus.
link |
So this, it was so satisfying to do this study
link |
because I've been wanting to answer this question.
link |
What is a minimum amount or doable amount of exercise
link |
that will get you these cognitive benefits?
link |
And now I can say in 30 to 50 year olds
link |
that are low fit two to three times a week,
link |
Will it be hard if you're low fit?
link |
Yeah, it's gonna be challenging, but absolutely doable.
link |
And so that is, it makes sense with all of the mechanisms
link |
that we are, I didn't study the mechanisms just to be clear,
link |
but with all the mechanisms we are imagining
link |
are playing a role here, that absolutely makes sense
link |
This is not like you have to become marathon runner
link |
to get any of these benefits.
link |
You have to start moving your body on a regular basis
link |
two to three times a week.
link |
And so I love that for its realness.
link |
How long are those sessions again?
link |
It's a typical spin kind of class.
link |
There's a warmup for five minutes
link |
and a cool down for five minutes.
link |
So it's really 35 minutes,
link |
35 minutes of, you know, they're really pushing you.
link |
And so they're breathing reasonably hard,
link |
Heart rate is definitely up, yeah.
link |
I find that all of those results are really interesting
link |
that the result showing improvement in motivation
link |
to exercise is interesting because it gets back
link |
to this issue of kind of a self-amplifying effect.
link |
And the neuroscientist in me wants to think about
link |
kind of pre-motor circuits and the fact that, you know,
link |
we have a motor system that can obviously do things
link |
like lift cups and walk and run if we want to or need to,
link |
but that it's possible to create a kind of anticipatory
link |
activity in our nervous system
link |
where our body craves a certain stimulus.
link |
You mentioned the cold and how you crave the cold.
link |
Now, whether or not that's the adrenaline
link |
and the dopamine, et cetera,
link |
or whether or not somebody who exercises
link |
started going from zero, less than 30 minutes per week
link |
to two to three times a week,
link |
45 minutes as you described for this study,
link |
I've had that experience before of if I'm,
link |
the cardio that I tend to battle the most,
link |
and I love lifting heavy objects, at least heavy for me.
link |
I'm happy to go to the gym every other day
link |
and just lift heavy objects for an hour.
link |
It just makes me happy.
link |
I like the way it feels.
link |
And I've been doing it since I was in my teens,
link |
Cardio is a little bit trickier.
link |
I like to run, but if I stop running for a little while,
link |
I find it very hard to get back into.
link |
But if I start running three times a week
link |
for 30 to 45 minutes,
link |
and I do this pretty consistently
link |
on the days I don't weight train,
link |
I find that I start to crave it.
link |
It's almost as if my body needs that in order to,
link |
I always say clear out the cobwebs,
link |
but it's like, my mind doesn't function as well, clearly.
link |
Now I understand why and why exercise helps.
link |
But also physically,
link |
I almost feel like my body needs to engage in that movement.
link |
Like the pre-motor circuits are kind of revving,
link |
kind of like revving the engine or car while it's in park.
link |
So the motivation to exercise obviously
link |
could be multifaceted.
link |
It could be purely psychological,
link |
but do you think there's any reason to speculate at least
link |
or believe that we can build an anticipatory,
link |
reverberatory activity in our nervous system?
link |
You know, I agree with that
link |
because I also have those same kinds of thoughts
link |
and I do have anticipatory exercise when I can't do it.
link |
So I just got back from a week and a half in Paris
link |
where I got to do a book launch of my last book,
link |
And I walked around a lot,
link |
but I did not do my exercise for that whole week and a half.
link |
But there was a lot of stress
link |
because I had to do all these interviews in French.
link |
So I gave myself a break.
link |
I speak French, yes.
link |
I was gonna say otherwise it would be really stressful.
link |
Yeah, that would be really stressful.
link |
Now then I'd be really impressed.
link |
Then I would definitely start exercising.
link |
Actually, I would follow your morning routine to a T,
link |
but okay, very impressive nonetheless.
link |
But I got back and coming back this direction from Paris,
link |
I live in New York, is much easier.
link |
And so I was able to get up at a normal time the next day.
link |
And that exercise session that first day,
link |
it's like, okay, I'm back in my home,
link |
I'm back in my environment.
link |
And it felt so good.
link |
It's like I wanted to come back.
link |
And I know it's because I worked up over years.
link |
Now I could truthfully say seven days a week,
link |
but it was, you know, first it was four to five,
link |
then it was five to six and yeah, seven,
link |
but that includes a yoga day
link |
or sometimes I have to do it for 10 minutes instead of 30
link |
because I have to leave.
link |
But that habit of you do that even for five minutes,
link |
you do either the wait 10 minute thing
link |
or a five minute thing or a stretch.
link |
That is a tiny habit.
link |
Is that somebody at Stanford
link |
that invented this idea of tiny habits?
link |
Well, we've got a number of people there.
link |
There's, and I apologize in advance
link |
to all the people I neglect in this statement,
link |
but I'm happy to put in the comments, folks.
link |
BJ Fogg is there, has done-
link |
Yes, that's who I-
link |
Yeah, BJ's done really great work.
link |
And then James Clear wrote a book about habits
link |
and has a very popular newsletter about habits.
link |
We've done an episode about habits
link |
that covers some of their work
link |
and some of the more laboratory-ish,
link |
not ish, laboratory science, peer-reviewed work on it.
link |
Daily behaviors, also daily behaviors
link |
performed at roughly the same time of day.
link |
I mean, one thing we know for sure
link |
is that the circadian system
link |
is part of our nervous system's way of anticipating
link |
when things will happen, not just what will happen.
link |
I'm telling you things you obviously know already,
link |
but for the audience, performing your exercise
link |
at roughly the same time each day will make it easier.
link |
As opposed to just saying,
link |
I'm going to do it seven days a week sometime today.
link |
But of course getting it done sometime
link |
is better than not getting it done.
link |
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
link |
Well, those are impressive effects.
link |
And I love that you're starting to look in populations
link |
that are a bit younger,
link |
not because some of these older populations
link |
aren't important, but I think that building good habits
link |
across one's entire life is really what it's about.
link |
As I always say, with anything related to longevity
link |
or offsetting an age-related decline,
link |
we don't know, it's hard to know if things work
link |
because there's no within-subject control.
link |
But what we also know for sure
link |
is that you don't want to be the control experiment.
link |
You absolutely don't want to be the control experiment,
link |
especially for something that's purely behavioral.
link |
I mean, you're not talking about ingesting
link |
a particular supplement.
link |
You're not talking about changing your diet in any way.
link |
But I am curious, diet is a very barbed wire topic
link |
on the internet, which diets,
link |
whether or not they work, et cetera.
link |
But in general, in any of these studies,
link |
do they evaluate whether or not
link |
people change their eating habits
link |
when they start to exercise more?
link |
I think I've seen one study that controlled for that,
link |
but I feel for them because it's hard enough
link |
to get people to exercise at the level
link |
and at the time that you need for your study.
link |
If you also ask them, okay, fill out this survey
link |
to tell us exactly what you ate all day,
link |
they're going to say, forget you.
link |
I'm not joining your study.
link |
So it's a critical question.
link |
And again, there's only been one that I've seen.
link |
And the evidence was that diets got better
link |
when they, less processed foods,
link |
when they did adhere to this exercise.
link |
But a lot more information needs to be gathered
link |
The second study that I wanted to share,
link |
unpublished, we're writing it up right now,
link |
is part two of that study that I just described,
link |
which was the low-fit people.
link |
Next we moved to mid-fit people.
link |
Like, what about us?
link |
We're already exercising.
link |
How am I going to benefit from increasing my exercise?
link |
So here again, we collaborated with a great spin studio
link |
that had a whole bunch of mid-fit people
link |
that by our definition were exercising
link |
two to three times a week on a regular basis.
link |
All you people out there that are doing that,
link |
you should know you're already benefiting your brain.
link |
But our question was, what if we invited them
link |
to exercise as much as they wanted at the spin studio
link |
for three months from two to three times
link |
all the way up to seven times a week?
link |
And let's just see what happened.
link |
And the control group,
link |
we asked them not to change their exercise.
link |
And so what we ended up with was a nice big array
link |
of starting with mid-fit people
link |
that exercise between staying at two to three times a week
link |
all the way up to seven times a week.
link |
And the bottom line from that study is
link |
every drop of sweat counted.
link |
That is, the more you change and you increase your workout
link |
up to seven times a week, the better your mood was.
link |
You had lower amounts of depression and anxiety,
link |
higher amounts of good affect,
link |
and the better your hippocampal memory was
link |
with the more you worked out.
link |
Again, this was for three months.
link |
So I love that too, because it gives power
link |
to those of us that are regularly exercising and wondering,
link |
do I really need to, I mean, is it really gonna help me?
link |
And the answer is yes.
link |
I mean, not all of us can exercise,
link |
go to a spin class seven times a week.
link |
But I love the message that our body's responsive to that.
link |
And you can get better hippocampal function,
link |
better overall baseline mood affect with a higher level.
link |
So it works for the mid-fit people as well.
link |
The more I learned from you,
link |
the more I've been starting to conceptualize the brain
link |
as an organ that is privileged in so many ways,
link |
has this unique blood-brain barrier,
link |
has this incredible quality of being able to predict things.
link |
And its job mainly is, of course,
link |
to predict things among other functions, of course.
link |
But that our brain isn't necessarily going to stay stable
link |
or get better over time.
link |
That it needs a signal.
link |
That it isn't sufficient to just say
link |
that we can't take it for granted.
link |
That our brain is actually an organ that requires a signal
link |
in order to maintain its own function.
link |
And it sounds like enhanced blood flow
link |
and these pathways that you described earlier,
link |
these two pathways,
link |
are at least among the more critical signals.
link |
I'm tempted now to move my frequency
link |
of cardiovascular exercise from, I confess,
link |
it's about three days, 35 minutes lately,
link |
and it should be more, to daily.
link |
There's something, again, really special about daily
link |
because it's non-negotiable.
link |
And it sounds like if one were to do
link |
higher intensity exercise,
link |
in a spin class, I've never taken a spin class,
link |
but I've seen there are times when they're standing up
link |
on the bike and pedaling very hard.
link |
So that is included in these kinds of workouts, right?
link |
I mean, that's what the instructor is doing.
link |
We did not monitor heart rate of all the subjects.
link |
And it was clearly, compared to the video Scrabble,
link |
it was highly significant.
link |
I guess it depends on how intense that game of Scrabble is.
link |
Could we just briefly talk about mindset and affirmations?
link |
You've talked a bit before about affirmations.
link |
And as you mentioned that the beautiful work
link |
of my colleague at Stanford, Alia Crum,
link |
and we can summarize her work pretty simply,
link |
although we won't do it complete justice,
link |
she's already been on the podcast,
link |
that just to say that one's beliefs about a behavior
link |
also impact the outcomes of that behavior.
link |
If you learn a lot of true facts
link |
about stress being good for you,
link |
then you will experience stress as better for you
link |
than if you only focus on or learn
link |
about the negative effects of stress.
link |
If you learn about the positive effects of exercise,
link |
you actually derive greater benefit from exercise,
link |
believe it or not.
link |
It's incredible effects, but they make sense
link |
when you understand what the brain is doing,
link |
which is a lot of this predictive coding
link |
and mindsets don't seem as mysterious and woo anymore
link |
once you understand what the brain is really doing.
link |
But what is, if any, the value of affirmation,
link |
of telling yourself something positive about yourself
link |
or of exercise on, not the exercise itself,
link |
but on mood, self-image, memory, and brain function.
link |
Yeah, so I looked into this
link |
because I am also a certified exercise instructor
link |
and the form of exercise that I teach is called Intensati.
link |
That it's a form of exercise that was developed
link |
by this amazing instructor, Patricia Moreno,
link |
and she combined physical movements
link |
from kickbox and dance and yoga and martial arts
link |
with positive spoken affirmations.
link |
So each move, if you're punching back and forth,
link |
as you would do in a kickbox class, you don't just punch,
link |
you say something like, I am strong now,
link |
which every punch is associated with a word.
link |
And you can create your own series of affirmations
link |
with the moves that you put together.
link |
And the first time I did it,
link |
I just wandered into her class, I didn't know what it was,
link |
and I felt idiotic.
link |
It's like, I came into the wrong class.
link |
I clearly, I don't want to come into this class.
link |
But then I saw, they didn't care
link |
whether I thought they were, they looked silly,
link |
saying these, not saying, yelling these affirmations
link |
out loud while doing the choreography at the same time.
link |
And then I tried it, you know, okay, I didn't yell out.
link |
I kind of whispered it at first.
link |
And then, but by the end, I was really yelling it out.
link |
There's something about the declaration,
link |
using your own voice, of saying things that you, you know,
link |
don't often say to yourself, like, I'm strong, I'm inspired,
link |
I believe I will succeed,
link |
are all the kinds of affirmations you say.
link |
And you walk out of that class,
link |
or I walked out of that class,
link |
thinking, oh, I feel really good now, man.
link |
I can't wait to come back to this class,
link |
which is why I ultimately took teacher training
link |
to be able to teach that class.
link |
And so I started to look into
link |
what was known about affirmations.
link |
And they were never combined with physical activity.
link |
But it was clear that there was a literature showing
link |
that positive affirmations, saying them or reading them,
link |
could change mood in the same way as we're talking about,
link |
you know, Aliyah Crum's work.
link |
If you have this, it's a belief.
link |
Once you start saying these things,
link |
these are not, you know, difficult things to believe,
link |
but it's amazing how much you don't say
link |
these kinds of things to yourself or with your own voice.
link |
You might say them about somebody else.
link |
Oh, you're strong, you're so smart.
link |
Do you say that about yourself?
link |
And that's the thing about the self affirmations.
link |
It really gets you into a habit
link |
of saying good things about yourself.
link |
And then you start to realize, oh my God,
link |
I'm so mean to myself.
link |
I have lots of negative thoughts going on
link |
about myself in my head.
link |
And which was part of the other reason
link |
why I loved this particular form of exercise.
link |
So what you get in Tenzati is the mood boost
link |
from the positive spoken affirmations
link |
together with all the other brain and affect boosts
link |
that we've been talking about for this whole podcast
link |
from the exercise, because it's a sweaty workout as well.
link |
There's a book, I confess I haven't read it,
link |
but I have had the pleasure of having a discussion
link |
with a psychologist from, I believe he's at
link |
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Ethan Cross,
link |
wrote a book called Chatter, which focuses on the fact
link |
that so much of our inner dialogue is indeed negative.
link |
He certainly wasn't the first to point that out,
link |
but that explicit statements to counter
link |
that negative chatter, I believe is one of the hallmarks
link |
of readjusting one's own, not just internal reference frame,
link |
but actually self-image generally.
link |
And it's a fascinating, and I think a very important area
link |
of psychology and neuroscience, and I acknowledge this,
link |
we're talking about this too, laboratory neuroscientists
link |
who record from neurons and label neurons
link |
and look at stuff down the microscope.
link |
We are now deep in the territory,
link |
in the deep water of what some of our colleagues
link |
and people who think about neuroscience would consider
link |
like really out there on the kind of subjective edges.
link |
And yet I think it's worth pointing out that
link |
the brain does all these things.
link |
It's responsible for simple reflexes and motor behaviors,
link |
but also high-level conceptual ideas about the universe
link |
and what it might look like in 10 years or 100 years
link |
or 1,000 years, but also high-level conceptual understanding
link |
of who we are and what we are about.
link |
And so even though it might seem a little bit out
link |
on the fringes, dare I say, I think that these are some
link |
of the more important untried landscapes of neuroscience.
link |
And I just want to acknowledge my appreciation
link |
for the fact that I'm going to connect the dots here
link |
and say, you went from somebody who didn't exercise,
link |
who went on this rafting trip that discovered exercise
link |
and its benefits for your grant writing
link |
and then on and on and on,
link |
and then became a certified-
link |
Yeah, exercise instructor.
link |
So you don't do anything halfway either, as it's clear.
link |
I'd like to touch on something you mentioned earlier,
link |
but we haven't dove into it all in any depth,
link |
which is meditation.
link |
You mentioned this tea meditation.
link |
You had a publication recently on a 10-minute meditation.
link |
Maybe you could tell us about this 10-minute meditation
link |
because it seems like such a tractable amount of time.
link |
And then if you would maybe tell us a little bit
link |
about the tea meditation,
link |
but it sounds like you've discovered
link |
a close to minimum threshold of meditation
link |
that can really benefit us.
link |
So maybe you could tell us about that study.
link |
So the study was, as you very astutely pointed out,
link |
very practical study, just 10 minutes, not 30 minutes,
link |
not an hour of meditation, that's too hard.
link |
10 minutes guided meditation.
link |
They logged into a site so we can tell that they logged in
link |
and they listened to a, it's a body scan,
link |
very basic but easy to follow kind of meditation.
link |
And we asked them to do it how often?
link |
Daily, seven days a week, just 10 minutes a day.
link |
And the most shocking thing about this study
link |
is that we got more adherence
link |
to the 10-minute daily meditation
link |
than the 10-minute daily podcast listening,
link |
which was our control.
link |
So the highest retention rate I've ever gotten
link |
in any, this kind of study that I've done,
link |
exercise or meditation, they wanted to do it.
link |
10 minutes a day, it was great.
link |
I'm gonna just start leading meditations
link |
for three hours as I was doing three-hour podcasts.
link |
So we looked at cognitive effects
link |
before and after this.
link |
It was eight weeks of daily, it was actually
link |
12-minute meditation, 12 minutes of body scan meditation.
link |
And what we found was significant decreases
link |
in stress response.
link |
So we did the stress test to see how you responded
link |
to an unexpected stressful situation.
link |
The meditators did much better.
link |
Their mood was better and their cognitive performance
link |
And this was my first little foray into meditation
link |
after I had started my personal team meditation
link |
that really shifted my relationship with meditation.
link |
But it's consistent with many other studies
link |
showing the beneficial effects of meditation.
link |
But the unique thing was we tried to make it doable
link |
that many, many people out there could actually follow
link |
this typical regimen.
link |
And so we're continuing that.
link |
In fact, my research in my lab right now
link |
is all about those doable, short things
link |
that NYU college students will do,
link |
not just at the beginning of the semester
link |
but at the end of the semester
link |
when the stress and anxiety levels
link |
are now at record-breaking high levels.
link |
And they need something to bring that level down
link |
so that they could show their professors
link |
what their brains can actually do.
link |
And so it includes very short meditations,
link |
sound meditations, visual meditations, walking,
link |
things that any college student,
link |
but we're obviously focused on NYU students, will do too.
link |
And I wanna get at graduation rates.
link |
I wanna get at class performance
link |
with these kinds of interventions.
link |
But it started with that study
link |
that I just described, meditation.
link |
If you would, and here's where we can highlight this again
link |
as some highly educated speculation, it's coming from you.
link |
What do you think is going on during meditation?
link |
So a body scan involves a kind of an interoceptive awareness
link |
like interoception, of course,
link |
being an attention to what's going on on the surface of
link |
and within the confines of our skin
link |
as opposed to the outside world.
link |
Drawing our attention to anything inside us or outside us
link |
involves forebrain function, prefrontal cortex,
link |
presumably and other things.
link |
Typically eyes are closed, typically it's relaxing.
link |
So there are a lot of variables
link |
that could be feeding into a number of different effects.
link |
But as a neuroscientist, what do you think is going on
link |
that this period of kind of a self-induced,
link |
somewhat unusual state,
link |
what do you think is going on in terms of network behavior
link |
and networks within the brain
link |
that it can have these long-term effects?
link |
Because we got to some of the ones
link |
who relate downstream of exercise.
link |
And I think there's so much evidence.
link |
I know there's so much evidence
link |
that meditation is beneficial.
link |
How do you think it's working?
link |
Or what do you think it's doing?
link |
Yeah, I think that one of the most important things
link |
that gets worked when we're doing a simple 10 minute
link |
or 12 minute body scan meditation regularly,
link |
this 10 minutes a day, 12 minutes a day,
link |
is the habit building and the practice
link |
of focusing on the present moment.
link |
I think that is very hard for us modern humans to do
link |
because I'm worrying about the thing that's due
link |
at the end of the week that I need to do
link |
and how many hours am I gonna have to be able to do that.
link |
Or I'm worried about whatever the email
link |
that wasn't as polite as it should be that I sent
link |
and what were the repercussions for that.
link |
Instead of focusing on this moment, which is fun,
link |
I get to talk to you.
link |
It's a beautiful day outside.
link |
I'm feeling good right at this moment.
link |
And I think that all of the meditative practices
link |
that I've done, and this one also,
link |
whether you know it or not,
link |
is getting you to focus on this moment.
link |
And I think it's even more important in this day and age
link |
where anxiety levels and the next variant might come out
link |
and what are the repercussions there.
link |
And I have a mother who's older
link |
and she's more susceptible to it,
link |
and there's a war and what's gonna happen there.
link |
Those are all future possibilities.
link |
And we should be worried about that.
link |
That is a possibility you need to plan for that.
link |
But you also need to focus on this moment right now.
link |
I'm healthy, I can breathe.
link |
I get to have this interesting conversation
link |
right in this moment.
link |
If I start thinking about other things,
link |
then it takes away from this moment.
link |
Do I know what circuits are involved?
link |
Not exactly, that is not my area.
link |
I think there are some studies that have focused
link |
on that present moment kind of activity.
link |
But that is what I think is most important
link |
about the practice of meditation,
link |
or one of the important things that calms us down.
link |
Because if you know how to do that,
link |
that gives you this powerful tool for the rest of your day.
link |
You're not locked into that fearful future thinking
link |
that so many of us have,
link |
or that just reliving of the terrible past,
link |
but you could enjoy the present moment.
link |
Yeah, that really resonates.
link |
I think that going back to the earlier part
link |
of our conversation,
link |
the hippocampus has this incredible storage capacity
link |
and ability to set context about past, present, and future.
link |
And that's a beautiful thing,
link |
because as much as I like to think
link |
he had some semblance of a healthy life,
link |
none of us want to be HM.
link |
None of us want to be in the position
link |
of not being able to form new memories
link |
and have no context to the past or the present.
link |
So we're grateful that we should all be grateful
link |
that our hippocampus can draw from past, present, and future
link |
in various combinations,
link |
and we should support it through the daily exercise
link |
and other habits, let's call them habits
link |
so that people make them habits that you've highlighted.
link |
But if we are not deliberately anchoring
link |
within past, present, and future according to what we need,
link |
and we're just shuffling between past, present, and future,
link |
that is not a good way to live.
link |
It's not effective.
link |
It sounds like meditation can really help us
link |
go to the right stacks.
link |
I guess people don't go to libraries anymore,
link |
but in the old days,
link |
you would go to the right location library.
link |
You actually can't get distracted
link |
by the books that you're interested in
link |
if you need to go just reflexively,
link |
if you need to go study a particular topic.
link |
So that's kind of how I think about it.
link |
It makes us more linear perhaps in our way of being.
link |
And it actually counteracts,
link |
not that I'm against technology,
link |
but having our phones and being connected
link |
to every good and bad thing going on in the world today
link |
is incredibly distracting
link |
and takes you away from the present moment
link |
virtually 24 hours a day.
link |
And so we have to work extra hard right now
link |
compared to in the 40s
link |
when we didn't have all this technology
link |
or at the same level.
link |
So yeah, it becomes even more important practice,
link |
I think, for everyday life.
link |
Yeah, or even 10, 15 years ago,
link |
it felt like smartphones weren't as intrusive.
link |
One final question,
link |
and maybe a request as the new incoming dean
link |
of College of Letters and Sciences.
link |
And I must say, I'm delighted, thrilled actually to hear
link |
that a lot of the practices that we've been discussing today
link |
and that you've pioneered are going to be incorporated
link |
into undergraduate education.
link |
I predict, and I'd be willing to wager
link |
that that will become a template
link |
for how universities and non-university systems
link |
Because if indeed, and it is true
link |
that there's this incredible relationship
link |
between physical movement
link |
and mental deliberate practices and performance,
link |
any corporation, school, household would be crazy,
link |
would be self-limiting and even self-destructive
link |
to not incorporate those.
link |
So I'm so happy that you're gonna do this and collect data.
link |
Please, we'll have to touch back with you
link |
and hear what comes of that.
link |
But one of the main things that I hear so much about today
link |
are issues with attention.
link |
And we haven't talked about attention.
link |
We've mainly been talking about memory and cognition,
link |
but you know a lot about attention.
link |
And here, I'm not being disparaging.
link |
I think people have done what I'm about to say
link |
as a consequence of need and lack of other resources.
link |
There's an immense amount of Adderall use, Ritalin use,
link |
and modafinil use, and caffeine abuse.
link |
Now, I happen to like caffeine.
link |
I don't use the other compounds I described,
link |
but it's just incredible to me how the data on this,
link |
a colleague of mine at Stanford claims that
link |
something like two-thirds or more of college students
link |
use these without prescription for ADHD.
link |
What can we expect in terms of the effects
link |
of regular exercise on attention?
link |
And are there any other things besides exercise
link |
and meditation that you would like to see people do
link |
in terms of trying to increase their powers of attention?
link |
Because I think the ability to focus and attend
link |
is really the distinguishing feature
link |
between those that will succeed in any endeavor
link |
and those that won't.
link |
And that's a scary thing for a lot of people to hear
link |
because a lot of people think they have ADHD.
link |
They may, they may not.
link |
But I bet that a number of students at both Stanford
link |
and NYU feel challenged with holding their attention
link |
to the thing that they need to hold their attention to.
link |
So I would say the top three tools that everybody
link |
right this minute today can use to up their capacity
link |
to attend where they want to include exercise
link |
for the reasons we've talked about.
link |
It has a direct effect on
link |
functioning of the prefrontal cortex, meditation also,
link |
clear clinical studies showing improved ability to focus
link |
and particularly focus on the present moment.
link |
And the third has to be sleep.
link |
So sleep is, you can't, it's out of the three,
link |
it is the most physiological.
link |
I mean, I could live my whole life
link |
without meditating one minute.
link |
Could I survive without sleep?
link |
No, none of us could.
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So it's more basic physiological.
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But it is so important for all core cognitive functions,
link |
including attention, including creativity,
link |
including just good basic brain function.
link |
That is why it's so critical to get that information,
link |
that basic neuroscience information
link |
into the heads of these students
link |
that are trying their best to show us how their brain work,
link |
but being hampered because they're not moving enough,
link |
they're not meditating.
link |
And there's all these distracting things
link |
that they include in their lives,
link |
some of which a little bit is good,
link |
but 24 hours a day on your phone and LinkedIn,
link |
not LinkedIn, but linked to your phone,
link |
is damaging to your attention.
link |
So exercise, meditation, sleep can help you learn,
link |
retain and perform better
link |
than if you do not have these three things in your life.
link |
Wonderful, music to my ears,
link |
and also either very low cost or zero cost,
link |
considering that the exercise doesn't require a class.
link |
One could use the freely available resource of gravity
link |
to do jumping jacks or burpees or push-ups or whatever,
link |
or sit-ups or all of those in combination.
link |
And don't forget YouTube,
link |
the freely accessible millions of YouTube videos.
link |
If you don't want to do your jumping jacks by yourself,
link |
I always say this.
link |
I talk about breath meditation for my book, Good Anxiety.
link |
And if you don't like the one that I suggest,
link |
there's only about a million more on YouTube
link |
with ratings from one star to five stars.
link |
So use that resource.
link |
It is a wonderful resource.
link |
And you are an amazing resource.
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Wendy, thank you so much for coming here today
link |
to have this discussion and share your knowledge
link |
about not just existing data, but new data coming out soon.
link |
And for your leadership in the university system,
link |
for your leadership in public education,
link |
for the decades of important work on memory
link |
and neural circuitry,
link |
which we got to learn about today as well.
link |
Thank you ever so much.
link |
Thank you, Andrew.
link |
Thank you for joining me today
link |
for my discussion about learning and memory
link |
and how to get better at learning and remembering
link |
with Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
link |
If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Suzuki's work,
link |
you can go to wendysizuki.com.
link |
There you will also find titles and links
link |
to her popular books, as well as her social media handles.
link |
We've also placed those in the show note captions.
link |
If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,
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please subscribe to us on YouTube.
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That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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In addition, please subscribe to the podcast
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on Spotify and or Apple.
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And on both Spotify and Apple,
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you can leave us up to a five star review.
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If you have suggestions about guests or topics
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that you'd like us to cover on the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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or you'd like to give us feedback of any kind,
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please leave that in the comment section on YouTube.
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That's the best place to give us feedback.
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Please also check out the sponsors mentioned
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at the beginning of today's episode.
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That's the best way to support this podcast.
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We also have a Patreon, it's patreon.com slash
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Andrew Huberman, and there you can support the podcast
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at any level that you like.
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On many episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
link |
we discuss supplements.
link |
While supplements are certainly not necessary
link |
for everybody, many people derive tremendous benefit
link |
from them for things like accelerating the transition
link |
into sleep and getting better, deeper sleep,
link |
as well as enhancing focus and learning
link |
and other aspects of human performance and health.
link |
We're excited to announce that we've partnered
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with Momentous Supplements.
link |
The reason we partnered with Momentous is several fold.
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First of all, we wanted to have one location
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where Huberman Lab Podcast listeners could go
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in order to find all the supplements that we talk about
link |
and to find those in a form where they could
link |
systematically try one or the other.
link |
This is a real issue in the supplement industry.
link |
A lot of supplement brands out there combine
link |
different ingredients in ways that don't really allow you
link |
to pinpoint exactly what you need and what you don't need.
link |
So getting supplements that have low doses
link |
or just the minimal effective dose of particular ingredients
link |
and being able to mix and match those ingredients yourself
link |
and really establish what's best for you is really key.
link |
In addition, we came to realize that a lot of our listeners
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want supplements, but they reside outside
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of the United States.
link |
So we're pleased to tell you that Momentous ships
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both within the US and internationally.
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And of course, Momentous Supplements are of the very highest
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quality ingredients and the precision of the amounts
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of those ingredients is tightly regulated.
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If you're interested in Momentous Supplements,
link |
the catalog of supplements related
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to the Huberman Lab Podcast are growing all the time.
link |
A good number of them are already there.
link |
You can go to livemomentous.com slash Huberman
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in order to find them.
link |
And there will be additional supplements added
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to that site as we go forward.
link |
If you're not already following Huberman Lab
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on Twitter and Instagram, I post neuroscience
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and other science related information
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and tools on a regular basis.
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Some of that information overlaps with the content
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of the Huberman Lab Podcast, but a lot of it is distinct
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from the information contained on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
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So again, that's Huberman Lab on Instagram
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and Huberman Lab on Twitter.
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We also have a neural network newsletter.
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What that is is a monthly newsletter in which I distill
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critical points from different podcast episodes,
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provide links to useful resources.
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If you want to sign up for that newsletter,
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I should mention it is zero cost
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and we do not share your email with anybody.
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And we have a very clear privacy policy posted
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at HubermanLab.com.
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Just go to HubermanLab.com, click on the menu,
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you'll see the neural network newsletter.
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You can also look at examples of newsletters
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without having to sign up to make sure
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that you actually do want to sign up.
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But if you are interested, the signup is there.
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It's very easy and you can receive our monthly newsletter.
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So once again, thank you for joining me today
link |
for our voyage into the neuroscience of learning and memory
link |
and tools to get better at learning and memory.
link |
And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
link |
And as always, thank you for your interest in technology.