Summaries this: 
welcome to the huberman Lab podcastwhere we discuss science andscience-based tools for everyday[Music]life I'm <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> and I'm aprofessor of neurobiology andOpthalmology at Stanford school ofmedicine today we are discussing how tostudy and learn that is what thescientific data say is the best way tostudy in order to remember informationand to be able to use that informationeffectively in different areas of yourlife so for those of you that are stillin school this could be any stage ofschool today's discussion will be veryuseful for you however even if you arenot formally enrolled in any kind ofschool at the moment today's discussionwill also be extremely effective for youto be able to study and learn betterinformation from say the internet orpodcasts or any area of your life whereyou are seeking to learn and use newknowledge now one of the most importantthings that you're going to learn todayis that learning that is the bestlearning practices are not intuitive sobefore we dive in keep in mind thatwhatever you believe about how best tolearn for you is probably Incorrect andI confess this was humbling for me aswell when I started to dive into thisliterature because as somebody who was astudent for many years and in some sensestill considers himself a student ofscience and health information becauseof this podcast and certainly somebodywho still teaches University coursesboth to medical students and graduatestudents and to undergraduate studentsat Stanford I thought I understood thewhole teaching and learning process butI too learned that it is anything butintuitive in fact most of what webelieve about the best ways to study areabsolutely false fortunately today youwill learn the best ways to study turnsout there's a rich literature on thisdating back well over a hundred yearsand the data are absolutely fascinatingand Incredibly actionable it'sincredibly interesting how the fields ofEducation the fields of psychology andthe fields of Neuroscience have now cometogether to define the optimalstrategies to study and learn before webegin I'd like to emphasize that thispodcast is separate from my teachingresearch roles at Stanford it is howeverpart of my desire and effort to bringzero cost to Consumer information aboutscience and science related tools to thegeneral public in keeping with thattheme I'd like to thank the sponsors oftoday's podcast our first sponsor iseight sleep eight sleep makes Smartmattress covers with cooling Heating andsleep tracking capacity I've spoken manytimes before on this podcast about thecritical need to get sleep both enoughsleep and enough quality sleep now oneof the key things to getting a greatnight's sleep is that your bodytemperature actually has to drop byabout 1 to 3° in order for you to falland stay deeply asleep and to wake upfeeling refreshed your body temperatureactually has to increase by about 1 to3° one of the best ways to ensure all ofthat happens is to control thetemperature of your sleeping environmentand with eight sleep it's very easy todo that you program the temperature thatyou want at the beginning middle and theend of the night and that's thetemperature that you're going to sleepat and it will track your sleep it tellsyou how much slow wave sleep you'regetting how much rapid eye movementsleep you're getting which is criticaland all of that also helps you dial inthe exact parameters you need in orderto get the best possible night sleep foryou I've been sleeping on an eightsSleep mattress cover for well over threeyears now and it has completelytransformed my sleep for the bettereight sleep recently launched theirnewest gener ation pod cover the Pod 4ultra the Pod 4 ultra cover has improvedcooling and heating capacity higherFidelity sleep tracking technology andthe Pod 4 cover has snoring detectionthat will automatically lift your head afew degrees to improve air flow and stopyour snoring if you'd like to try aneightsleep mattress cover you can go to8sleep.comhuberman to save $350 off their pod 4ultra eight sleep currently ships to theUSA Canada UK select countries in the EUand Australia again that's 8sleep.comhuberman today's episode is also broughtTo Us by betterhelp betterhelp offersProfessional Therapy with a licensedtherapist carried out entirely onlineI've been doing weekly therapy for wellover 30 years initially I didn't have achoice it was a condition of beingallowed to stay in school but prettysoon I realized that therapy is anextremely important component to overallhealth in fact I consider doing regulartherapy just as important as gettingregular exercise now there areessentially three things that greattherapy Prov provides first of all itprovides good rapport with somebody thatyou can trust and talk to about theissues that are most critical to yousecond of all it can provide support inthe form of emotional support ordirected guidance and third experttherapy should provide insights withbetter help they make it very easy foryou to find an expert therapist withwhom you have these critical componentsof therapy also because better helpallows for therapy to be done entirelyonline it's very time efficient and easyto fit into your busy schedule with nocommuting to a therapist office orlooking for parking or sitting in awaiting room if you'd like to trybetterhelp go to betterhelp.com hubermanto get 10% off your first month againthat's betterhelp.comhuberman today's episode is also broughtTo Us by waking up waking up is ameditation app that offers hundreds ofguided meditation programs mindfulnesstrainings yoga NRA sessions and more Istarted practicing meditation when I wasabout 15 years old and it made aprofound impact on my life and by nowthere are thousands of quality reviewedstudies that emphasize how usefulmindfulness meditation can be forimproving our Focus managing stress andanxiety improving our mood and much morein recent years I started using thewaking up app for my meditations becauseI find it to be a terrific resource forallowing me to really be consistent withmy meditation practice many people starta meditation practice and experiencesome benefits but many people also havechallenges keeping up with that practicewhat I and so many other people loveabout the waking up app is that it has alot of different meditations to choosefrom and those meditations are ofdifferent durations so it makes it veryeasy to keep up with your meditationpractice both from the perspective ofnovelty you never get tired of thosemeditations there's always something newto explore and to learn about yourselfand about the effectiveness ofmeditation and you can always fitmeditation into your schedule even ifyou only have two or three minutes perday in which to meditate I also reallylike doing Yoga Nidra or what issometimes called non-sleep deep rest forabout 10 or 20 minutes because it is agreat way to restore mental and physicalfigger without the tiredness that somepeople experience when they wake up froma conventional nap if you'd like to trythe waking up app please go to wakingup.com huberman where you can access afree 30-day trial again that's wakingup.com huberman to access a free 30-daytrial okay let's talk about how best tostudy and learn and of course peoplehave different learning styles Somepeople prefer to learn by reading somepeople prefer to study in a group Somepeople prefer to highlight some peoplecall themselves auditory Learners otherpeople consider themselves visuallearners but guess what when one looksat the research on preferred learningstyles pretty much all of that meltsaway it turns out that the best way tostudy and learn is defined not by themedium in which that material arriveswhether not it's auditory or visual orcombined whether or not you reviewslides or a textbook or you watch smallvideos it turns out that the best way tostudy and learn is to access componentsof your memory systems that offsetforgetting this is a theme I'm going toreturn to over and over again throughouttoday's episode rather than think aboutstudying to learn and retain informationI want you to think about studying tooffset the natural process of forgettingthat everybody experiences when they areexposed to new material of any kindcognitive or motor learning musicallearning math Etc okay so keep this inmind throughout today's episode the bestway to learn is to think aboutoffsetting the natural forgetting of newinformation you're trying to inoculateagainst forgetting that is the way toremember things that is the way to gainMastery over them and I'm going to teachyou how to best do that using the datagleaned from the peer- reviewedliterature now before I do that I wantto talk about what learning is I promiseto make this fairly brief because I'vecovered learning and so-called neuroplasticity before on this podcast forthose of you that have heard thosediscussions this will serve as arefresher for those of you that have notheard those discussions this will bethorough enough for you to be able todigest all the rest of today'sinformation neuroplasticity is thisincredible feature of your nervoussystem which of course includes yourbrain and your spinal cord which is theability for your nervous system tochange in response to experience so anyform of learning involvesneuroplasticity neuroplasticity wesometimes hear as neural plasticity twowords orneuroplasticity those are the same thingessentially the change that underliesneuroplasticity at the level of cellswhich we call neurons or nerve cellsgenerally involves three differentmechanisms one is the strengthening ofcertain connections what we callsynaptic connections synapses are thelocation between neurons where theycommunicate with one another it'sactually a gap between the neurons it istechnically called the synaptic leftit's a gap and within that Gap chemicalsare passed across that Gap that allowone neuron to activate other neurons ormany neurons to activate many otherneurons or to inhibit the activity ofother neurons okay so one form ofneuroplasticity is the strengthening ofconnections between neurons another formof neuroplasticity is the weakening ofconnections between neurons and yet athird form of plasticity which is oftendiscussed in the media but is very rareactually in the nervous systemespecially the adult nervous system ofhumans is neurogenesis or the additionof new neurons let's just get this outof the way up front because the additionof new neurons again grabs so muchattention in media articles but it'sresponsible for a near trivial amount ofthe sort of neuroplasticity that isimportant for today's discussion orfrankly for most all discussions it istrue you have a specialized set ofneurons in your old factory bulb thatare responsible for smell as well as aspecialized set of neurons in theso-called dentate gyrus of yourhippocampus an area of the brain that'simportant for memory in which newneurons appear to be added throughoutthe lifespan but this is not the majormechanism by which learning and memoryoccurs in humans rather the majormechanism by which learning and memoryoccurs in humans is the strengthening ofexisting connections and the weakeningof existing connections or the formationof new connections between already EXexisting neurons not new neurons okaynow the removal or weakening ofconnections between neurons being animportant component of neuroplasticityis very important for sake of today'sdiscussion I want to emphasize that whenwe hear about weakening of connectionswe often think well that meansforgetting or that means the brain isgetting less good however so much of theneuroplasticity that underlies forinstance the acquisition of a new motorskill is actually the reflection ofremoval of connections so we don't wantto project any kind of value onto adiscussion about adding new connectionsremoving new connections let's justleave it at this level mechanisticallywhen you hear about neuroplasticity justknow that it could be the consequence ofstrengthening of connections as well asweakening of connections and thatneither strengthening of Connections inthe nervous system nor weakening ofconnections can map directly to theformation or remove removal of saymemories or information just know thatthese are the important mechanisms infact if you look at a baby that is let'ssay I don't know N9 months old theirmotor skills are not terrific typicallycompared to the motor skills that thatchild will have when they are six orseven years old just look at a kidtrying to eat spaghetti or something ofthat sort or eat anything when they're asmall baby versus a toddler versus ayoung child versus an adolescent or TeYou know despite the um poor tablemanners of some adolescence and teensand some adults for that matter they arestill exhibiting far more precise motormovements than they did as an infant ofcourse and believe it or not theImprovement in motor coordination thatone observes in humans and other speciesfor that matter from birth until theadolescence and teen years and adultyears is largely the reflection of theremoval that's right the removal ofneural connections as opposed to theformof neural connections however the neuralconnections that remain become much morerobust they become much more reliableokay so that's the mechanistic backdropfor everything that we're going to talkabout today which is how to study andlearn and as I mentioned earlier in myintroduction most of learning andremembering new material is aboutoffsetting the forgetting process thatnaturally occurs anytime we hear newinformation so in keeping with what willultimately reveal itself to be thedominant theme of today's discussionright now and for reasons that willbecome clear later I want you to take abrief quiz now the moment people hearquiz or test typically it spikes theiradrenaline they start feeling stressedbut don't worry you're going to keepyour answers to yourself and you'redoing this for a very specific purposehere's my question this is a twoquestionquiz how many different waysmechanistically speaking does doesneuroplasticity occur is it onemechanism two mechanisms or threemechanisms or is it four orfive okay can you name in your head twoof the three major changes that thenervous system can undergo which arereflective ofneuroplasticity okay so the answer toquestion was is that there are threedifferent modes of neuroplasticity asyou recall or as you may not have beenable to recall and by the way if youwere not able to recall the threedifferent modes of neuroplasticity ormechanisms underlying neuroplasticitythat is fine as you'll soon realizerecognizing the errors in yourinformation retention is anothercritical and very useful way to retainmore information even if you got theanswer wrong or you didn't know in factespecially if you got the answer wrongor you didn't know so the three ways arethe strengthening of neural connectionsecond the weakening of neuralconnections and third throughneurogenesis the addition of new neuronswhy did I provide this quiz why did Itest you well as you'll soon learn ifyou look across the total body ofresearch on how best to study and learnit involves doing exactly what we justdid which is to periodically stop andtest yourself on the material that youlearned testing is not just a way ofevaluating what knowledge you'veAcquired and which knowledge you havenot managed to acquire it also turns outto be the best tool for offsettingforgetting of any kind and I'll go intothe data that supports that statement ina moment so yes today we're going to geta little bit meta in the sense thatwe're going to be learning about optimalstudying strategies and applying thoseas we go through this podcast and nothere will not be a test at the endalthough you're welcome to give yourselfa test at the end I'm going to provideyou with an excellent zeroc cost veryfast tool that you can use to evaluateyour knowledge and your ability to studyand learn better as a consequence ofhaving listened to this podcast versushad you not listened to this podcast soif ever there was an incentive to listento the end there it is okay let's talkabout some of the other practicalaspects of studying and learning I knowa lot of you out there who want to learnand want to come up with the beststudying strategies are trying to thinkabout how to structure your day or howmuch to study or when to study let's getthe most important things out of the wayfirst neuroplasticity and learning thatis convert converting your studyingefforts into retention of knowledge is atwo-step process youve probably heardabout active engagement that's just afancy set of words for focus for reallyattending to the information that you'retrying to learn and it is very importantanytime you're trying to learn newinformation so focus goes with alertnessyou can't be focused if you're not alertthis isprerequisite so you need to be alert andyou need to be focused in order to payattention to the information that you'retrying to learn in fact it is theprocess of being focused andattending that cues your nervous systemthat something is important thatsomething's different about whateversensory experience you happen to behaving when you're focused and attendingwhether or not it's the informationyou're hearing or that you're looking atorboth that cue at the level ofneurochemicals in your brain and bodysignals to the neurons hey you're goingto have to change you're going to haveto alter your connections either makethem stronger or weaker or a combinationof those things in order to make surethat your nervous system can retain anduse the information at a future time sothat's step one and of course as a partof step one most people when they hearabout optimal studying strategies theywant to know you know what should theydo what should they take in order tolearn better well here's what everyoneshould take in order to learn betterwhich is a great night's sleep the nightbefore limiting your external stressalthough some stresses good because itcues up your alertness it actuallyallows you to remember certain thingsbetter we'll talk about this a littlebit later no one can remove all stressfrom their life but we know one thingfor sure your ability to be alert andfocused is going to be greater if youslept well the night before okay sosleep is without question the best neutTropic right the word neut Tropic meanssmart drug I don't really like that termbecause learning involves all sorts ofthings it's not just about being smartit's about being able to attend it'sabout sometimes being creative flexiblewith ideas and information here's thepoint you're going to need to get yoursleep right in order to be able to studyand learn at your absolute best and I'vedone many episodes of The hubman Labpodcast about sleep we have a newsletterabout sleep that details in a short PDFformat the various things you can do toget your sleep optimized so to speak youcan find all that hubman lab.com byputting sleep into the search functionwe don't have time to discuss thatmaterial now but get your sleep right sothat you can be alert and focused whenit comes time to learn now the processof being alert and focused on particularmaterial that you want to learn can beenhanced by just having a silent scriptwithin your head silent meaning you'renot saying it out loud where when yousit down to learn you're looking at abook or you're listening to a lectureperhaps a podcast like this you'rethinking okay I need to learn this Ineed to learn this you can voluntarilyramp up your level of focus andalertness by telling yourself thatinformation is importantdon't be a passive participant inlearning this is the basis of activelearning by expecting the information tobe so interesting that it pulls yourlevel of attention and focus out of yourather learn to engage your attentionand focus voluntarilyvolitionally okay when we hear aboutADHD attention deficit hyperactivitydisorder we know that people with ADHDcan attend very rapidly they can reallypay close attention for long periods oftime if they like a given topic or agiven experience or activity they haveserious challenges however engagingtheir attention and alertness if theyare not excited about an activity orinformation and so it is the Hallmark ofall good Learners to be able tovoluntarily force yourself to attend andto focus and when I say force yourselfthat means a constant bringing back ofyour mind's attention to whatever it isyou're trying to learn it is meant tofeel difficult I say meant to feeldifficult because that strain that youfeel that encouraging or in some casesforcing yourself to attend sometimeseven putting on a hoodie and hat youknow literally putting blinders so thatyou can only attend to the materialright in front of you that strainingthat you feel reflects in part therelease of neuromodulators likeepinephrine adrenaline in the brain andbody which serve to cue the neuralcircuits that they need to change at alater time okay so the strength that youfeel in trying to learn the strain thatyou feel in forcing yourself to learnhow to focus that is good that's ac-tier nervous system that it's going toneed to change that neuroplasticityneeds to take place think about it ifyou didn't feel that strain and you wereable to perform whatever it is that youwere doing or remember whateverinformation it is that you're beingexposed to seamlessly well then yournervous system wouldn't have to changebecause it already has the capabilitieswithin the neural circuits so thatstrain that you feel that agitation isgreat that's a cue that you are learningor that you set the learning process inmotion now it's also the case that somepeople don't have great levels of focusand attention and there are of coursepharmacologic tools I would encourageanyone that has clinically diagnosedADHD to talk to their doctor aboutwhether or not they should useprescription meds and or other methodsgreat sleep is always going to be animportant substrate for attention andfocus for anybody but especially forpeople withADHD I highly encourage anyone that'sinterested in enhancing their levels offocus and attention to also consider thenon-pharmacologic approaches so this isirrespective of whether or not you needpharmacologic approaches yes being wellhydrated yes the appropriate amount ofcaffeine for you that allows you to bealert but not you know shaking andagitated can be veryuseful however the scientific data alsosupport the fact that doing a brief sayfive to 10 minute mindfulness meditationeach day these are the data from WendySuzuki's laboratory at New YorkUniversity showing that people who do a10-minute meditation per day where theysimply sit or lie down close their eyesfocus on their breathing their attentioninvariably drifts they bring theirattention back to their breathing peoplewho do that on a regular basis improvetheir level of focus they improve theirmemory and recall ability and of coursethere are a bunch of other positiveeffects of that simplezeroc cost tool of mindfulnessmeditation so if you're interested inimproving your levels of focus andattention for sake of learning I highlyencourage you to explore the Ohovaluable tool of mindfulness meditationjust five or 10 minutes per day done ona regular basis you miss a day no bigdeal just get right back to it the nextday does it matter if you do it morningafternoon or night no some people findthat doing it too late at night mightdisrupt their sleepbut if you think about meditation of thesort that I just described as aperceptual exercise maybe you don't evencall it meditation you're just teachingyourself to focus you could even do itwith Eyes Open by focusing on a visualTarget allowing yourself to Blink thereare good data on this sort of approachas well and then just making sure thatyour visual attention and cognitiveattention comes back to that visualTarget over and over again it's adeliberate process of bringing yourattention back to a particularlocation that is very valuable forimproving your levels of focus in factit is known to create significantimprovements in your ability to focuswhich is critical for your ability tostudy and learn so I know that manypeople are interested in what to takewhat to do at the level of kind of umesoteric practices or things to buythere is stuff out there again Imentioned hydration caffeine great sleepand so on but the simple practice ofmindfulness meditation or just what Idescribe as a focusing perceptualexercise of bringing your attention backto the same location over and over againdeliberately will train you to trainyour nervous system to bring yourattention back to whatever it is you'retrying to learn now I've done otherpodcasts about how to focus aboutattention specifically and ADHD againyou can find all of those at hubmanlab.com simply put ADHD or Focus ortools for focus into the search functionand it will take you to the exacttimestamps in those episodes that arerelevant right now however I want totalk about the second part ofneuroplasticwhich is that the actual changes in thenervous system the strengthening andweakening predominantly of connectionsbetween neurons that underly learning donot occur during the focusing andlearning or rather the exposure to thematerial but instead during deep sleepand sleep-like states and again I'vedone a lot of podcasts and talked a lotabout tools for getting better sleep butI just want to remind everybody that theactual reordering of the connections thestrengthening of connections betweenneurons that underly learning theweakening of those connections occursduring sleep in particular during rapideye movement sleep which tends topredominate in the latter half of thenight so make sure that you're gettingenough sleep for you for some peopleit's 6 hours for some people it's eighthours and yes there is something calledthe first night effect the first nighteffect is the experimentally observedphenomenon whereby information that youlearn on a given day is mostlyConsolidated during the night sleep thatyou have on that first night after thelearning occurs does this mean that ifyou get a poor night's sleep on thefirst night after learning somethingthat you are forever going to forgetthat information that it cannot beConsolidated into your neural circuitsno however it's very clear that thefirst night after learning you want toget the best sleep possible so if you'relearning BS you're studying is goinglate into the night and you're drinkinga lot of caffeine be mindful that thesleep that you get after drinking thatcaffeine late into the day the allnighters that you're pulling those arenot serving you're learning well so youneed to structure your life as a studentof any kind so that you can get focusand attention to what it is you want tolearn and you can get sleep to the bestof your ability and of course people whoare raising young kids or who havestress in their lives for whateverreason perhaps won't be able to optimizetheir sleep on that first night or evensubsequent nights but do your best toget your sleep right it's the singlebest thing you can do for your mentalhealth for your physical health and forLearning and performance of any kind andit's really worth the effortNow with an understanding of themechanisms the focus andalertness and the Sleep phase ofneuroplasticity what are some otherthings that you can do to enhancewhatever studying and learning you'veobtained I already talked about a tool abehavioral tool for enhancing Focus whatabout a behavioral tool for enhancingplasticity if your sleep is great orespecially if your sleep isn't great andthere I highly recommend you explorenon-sleep deep rest or nsdr there's ascript for this in the show notecaptions nsdr sometimes referred to asYoga Nidra although those things aresimilar but different is a 10 or 20minute practice that you can do torestore your mental and physical Vigorif you haven't slept enough so you coulddo it first thing in the morning whenyou wake up if you feel you haven'tslept enough you can do it in theafternoon you can do it in the middle ofthe night if you're not able to sleepand offset some of the Sleep loss thatyou otherwise would have experiencednsdr is a very powerful tool in order toenhanceneuroplasticity and I'll talk more aboutthis in a future episode there's a lotof exciting data coming out about nsdrand yoga Nitra but if you're sleepingwell and even if you aren't I highlyencourage you to incorporate a 10 or 20minute nsdr into your schedule someplaceagain where you place it in yourschedule isn't as important as the factthat you do it in order to enhanceneuroplasticity that is the reorderingof connections between neurons to servethe studying and learning that you'redoing now let's talk about how the beststudents structure their days turns outthere are great studies on this there'sa really nice paper in fact thatsurveyed close to 700 students thesewere medical students approximatelyequal number of male and female studentsand analyze the most useful learninghabits that is the learning habitsassociated with the most successfulstudents now anytime you do a study likethis where people take surveys there'salways the issue of causality in fact wecan pretty much set aside any possiblecausality for instance I'm about to tellyou that the very best performingstudents tend to study for about threeor four hours per day but you couldeasily say Well they're the beststudents because they study three orfour hours per day they don't studythree or four hours per day becausethey're the best students and you'd beexactly right okay we can get into allsorts of discussions about correlationversus causation about reverse causalityand on and on however none of that isthe point here the point here is toestablish what are the habits that themost successful students seem toincorporate over and over againregardless of what classes they'retaking regardless of where they are intheir Arc of their learning trajectoryand so what we know based on this studyand I'll provide a link to it in theshow note captions is that there are atleast 10 study habits that the highlyeffective students use I'm going tofocus on the top five or six just forsake of time because it turns out thatmost of the effect it appearsof being a better student can beattributed to these top five or sixhabits first of all they set aside timeto study they literally schedule time tostudy now this probably serves severalroles the first one is that they areable to clear out other distractions andin fact that's the second thing thatthey do they are very effective or theymake it a point of putting their phoneaway and off of isolating themselvesthat's right they're not studying withother people they study alone which isnot to say that people who study withothers cannot be effective in theirstudying but the best performingstudents seem to study alone they puttheir phone away they tell their friendsand families that they are not going tobe able to be reached during that timeand yes they study for three or fourhours per day but they break that upinto a couple of different sessionstypically two or three sessions sothey're not doing a three or four hoursstudying about all in oneshot so they're managing their timethey're eliminating distractions andthey're studying for a consistent amountof time at least 5 days per week okaypresumably they're taking some weekendsoff although that wasn't made clear fromthis paper the other thing that they doand this is very important is that theymake an effort to then teach their peersto teach other students in the class nowsome of you may be thinking and I'mthinking back to college here mostlythat if you spend all this time learningthe information and you are in acompetitive scenario with the otherstudents that teaching them theinformation is kind of kind of a freebiefor them and it's harder for you meaningyou're putting yourself at a competitivedisadvantage or you're giving them anunfair Advantage for not having done thework now while this paper didn't do ananalysis of whether or not thesestudents that served as the Learnersfrom the other students got an unfairAdvantage it's very clear that studentswho make it a point to learn material inisolation then bring that material toother students in the same course andteach them perform exceedingly well incomparison to the other students sodon't be afraid to be a teacher of yourpeers in order to test this is key totest and develop Mastery of the materialnow in my laboratory for years we usedto have a saying which I simply pickedup from the Laboratories I was trainedin I didn't come up with the sayingwhich was watch one do one teach one andthat was referring to doing surgeries orsuturing or doing an antibody reactionor a western blood or things that you doinLaboratories watch one do one teach onewatch one do one teach one of courseshould be reserved to anything where noone's going to be put in danger by thewatch one do one teach one procedureright some procedures especially inLaboratories can be dangerous given thematerials you use Etc and of coursetoday we're talking about learning andstudying generally so provided it's safewatch one do one teach one is anexcellent means to learn that is tostudy new material to developproficiency and even Mastery and overtime perhaps even virtuosity we'llreturn to that later those distinctionsso going back to this idea that the beststudents set aside time they designatetime to study alone without distractionsthat is sure to help them anchor theirfocus and attention they know thatthey're going to need to use their focusand attention during that time and weknow with absolute certainty that focusand attention are a limited butrenewable resource in the human brainthe longer you're awake the more is thebuildup of a molecule called adenosinein your brain and body it makes yousleep sley makes it harder to focus whenyou sleep adenosine levels are pusheddown again you're able to focus againyou feel more alert you can think ofadenosine as limiting your attentionalbudget which is not to say that somepeople don't study best in the afternoonor in the evening or even late at nightright I recall times during Universitywhen I'd study between the hours of 10p.m. and 2: a.m. I don't do that anylongerbut scheduling time where you knowyou're going to need to be focused andattending is perhaps one of the mostimportant things toward being able tofocus and attend to the material now ifyou're taking courses you probably aregoing to be a slave to the timing of thecourses you aren't going to be able totell the instructor okay listen I wantyou to do this course at you know 3 pp.m. because that's when you learn bestor at 8: a.m. because that's when youhappen to be able to attend best howeverto the extent that you have any controlover the time in which you're going tostudy keeping that at a regular time ortimes perhaps one block early in the dayone block later in the day perhaps twoblocks early in the day and so on isgoing to be beneficial it turns outthat's also supported by the researchliterature that the brain just like withits sleep wake cycles that entrain to aregular schedule that is your brain andbody get used to being active andinactive at particular times based onyour exposure to sunlight your exposureto activities your social rhythms Etc ifyou regularly meaning for the course ofabout three days make it a point tofocus and study at particular timesagain pulling your attention back it'snot an automatic process but pullingyour attention back to a specificlocation perhaps on a page or thatyou're listening to in a lecture yourbody and brain will start to entrain tothat Rhythm such that you will be ableto focus and attend better simply byvirtue of the regularity of the timingof the exposure to the material okay soyou probably need about two or threedays to break into a regular schedule offocusing and attending and studying at agiven time or times allow yourself thattransition period but then make it apoint to schedule those times to studyset aside your phone tell people you'regoing offline turn off the Wi-Fi if youneed to or have to you may need it foryour studying I don't know depends onwhat you're studying but limitdistractions at all costs and learn tojust focus on the material and this is askill this is the most important thingto understand it's a skill to be able tofocus and study and it's a skill thatyou can learn very quickly especially ifyou schedule it for regular times andyou give yourself two or three days inwhich to adapt to those schedules andtimes and then try and stick to them asregularly as possible perhaps even onthe weekends if you're approaching youknow the end of the quarter orsemester perhaps even on the weekendeven if you're not in the quarter orsemester keeping those regular timeswill entrain your nervous system tostudy and learn at its best at thoseparticular times I'd like to take aquick break and acknowledge 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can go to drink a1.com huberman toclaim their special offer right nowthey're giving away five free travelpacks plus a year supply of vitamin 3 K2again that's drink a1.com huberman toclaim that special offer before I moveinto specific ways to study in order tomaximally offset forgetting notice Ididn't say in order to learn but ratherto maximally offset forgetting AKAlearning stably learning materialthere's one other point that I wanted topass along from this uh really nicestudy on the study habits of highlyeffective medical students that I'vebeen referring to and that is when oneexamined or these people were askedabout their motivation for studying thebest performing students had aninteresting answer they had a verylong-term understanding of how or beliefrather about how their success inmedical school would impact their familyhow it would impact their life Arc howit would change them and they weren'tparticular about the ways in which itwould change them or their family infact it was a rather broad abstractaspirational way of thinking about theirstudy efforts so what I like so muchabout this paper is that you know inaddition to having a fairly large samplesize close to 700 students that wereevaluated and yes it's purely uh youknow self-report and this kind of thingnonetheless it Bridges the two extremesof studying and learning you know itgets right down into the nitty-gritty ofhow long they study when they study thethings they do to limit distraction thatwe just discussed but it also gets totheir underlying psychologicalmotivations and the thing that they usein order to pull them forward throughtheir study efforts perhaps especiallywhen their desire is waning or their uhlevel of fatigue is increasing I don'tknow that I'm speculating here but thisis this aspirational component of goingto medical school which it turns out inthe country in which the study was doneum only very very select few of the verybest students are able to achieve thatthey have to learn the in a differentlanguage altogether which isincredible I always Marvel at that youknow I have friends that did their PHDthesis in Italy they're Italian by birththey now happen to run a laboratory inItaly and they had to do their PHDtraining and write papers and give theirthesis dissertation and defense inEnglish even though English was theirsecond language so talk about achallenge and um that's just one examplethat I can think of there are manyexamples ofthat these students students that I'mreferring to in this study are notnecessarily constantly thinking abouthow their efforts will transformthemselves and their families but theycertainly were able to report what itwas specifically that they are seekingwhat they're aspiring to besides justtrying to do as well as they can gettinginto and through medical school so thehigh level aspirational stuff within youwhatever that is for you it's going tobe highlyindividual is certainly important and itoffers a bookend to the nuts and boltskind of stuff that you're going to do Iwould hope in order to best study andlearn the specific material so thespecific actions that you're going totake each day to learn specific bits ofinformation that will pull you towardthose important aspirations and nowagain if you love the material you'relearning this aspirational component isprobably not as important right I canrecall during University and graduateschool and so on thinking oh my goodnessthis is like the coolest thing I've everheard probably say that about a milliondifferent topics like oh my goodnesscircadian rhythms seasonal rhythmsmelatonin neural circuits dopamine I wasjust a wash with excitement about what Iwas learning but of course sometimes Iwould take a course where the materialwas I don't know if it was morechallenging or not but I had a hardertime getting engaged by the materialeither by virtue of how it was beingtaught to me or the material itself sothe ability to attach to someaspirational goal to pull youthrough can be very valuable you're notgoing to love every topic you have tolearn however I will say that at leastin my experience some of the coursesthat I look back on most fondly are thecourses that I struggled with the mostand in fact that's the basis of the nextand easily one of the most importantstudying tools so a key theme in all ofthe excellent literature that is thepeer- reviewed research on how best tostudy is that studying that feelschallenging is the most effective I knownobody wants to hear this everyone wantsto hear about flow everybody wants tohear about information just sinking intotheir brain by osmosis I think it was aGarfield cartoon where he talked aboutlearning by osmosis there's this verycute real world video of a kid in aclassroom uh I believe uh it's in Chinawhere he's taking the book and he putsit on his head maybe I can find thisclip and he's just kind of like tryingto wash it into his brain it's supercute clip but guess what that doesn'twork I mean it works to put the book onyour head it doesn't work to it's notgoing to get the information into yourbrain uh perhaps someday there will beways to rapidly download informationinto neural circuits right now we knowwe've known for hundreds of notthousands of years that effort is theCornerstone of learning so I know thereprobably some gron about that I knowsome of you perhaps were hoping thattoday I was going to tell you how tostudy so that studying wasn'tpainful I think I can accomplish that bythe end of today's episode but in orderto do that let's take another quiz okayso here's the quiz again you can answerthese questions in your head you don'thave to tell anyone but you could writethem down or say them out loud if youwant the first questionis when during either your states ofalertness or sleep does the remodelingof neural connections occur I like tothink this is a pretty easy one okay theanswer is during sleep the secondquestion is what is one behavioral toolthat you can use to improvefocus the answer is simple mindfulnessmeditation which I'd prefer you think ofSimply as a perceptual exercise so againjust sit or lie down close your eyesfocus on your breath when your attentiondrifts bring your attention back to yourbreath and so on or if you prefer youcan do this Eyes Open by focusing on avisual Target either a foot or two feetor 3 ft away whatever distance iscomfortable for you allowing yourself toBlink as needed but forcing yourselfto focus on that visual Target for say 1to 3 minutes maybe even 3 to 5 minutesmaybe even 10 minutes again please blinkyou don't want your eyes to dry boththose tools will improve your ability toattend to focus to other material whenthe time comes okay the circuits forfocus and attention themselves aresubject toneuroplasticity and then the thirdquestion is can you name or List off inyour mind three tools that the mosteffective students have been shown touseI can thinkof limiting distraction by virtue ofputting away phones and telling othersyou won't be in contact with them twoand I'm getting these out of order Irealize is to isolate to study alone andthe third that I can recall is to teachothers in the same course okay you canprobably think of a few others now whyare we taking these silly little quizzesWell turns out they're not so silly whenone considers that hopefully you'llremember the information from today sothat you don't have to listen to it overand over again but that if ever therewas a strongly research supported toolin the literature in the peer-reviewedliterature about how students can learninformation better it's testing and Iknow I know I know we think of tests asa way to evaluate our knowledge but itturns out that testing is one of thebest ways to build our knowledge toretain our knowledge and again to offsetforgetting now the study of testing as alearning tool not just as a way toevaluate how much information we'velearned goes back over a hundred yearsthere's a classic study that was done in1917 where grade school age childrenread biographies so they readbiographies and then the kids weredivided into different groups one groupread and reread and reread thosebiographies over and over another groupread the biographies once and then weretested on those biographies but get thisthey tested themselves on thosebiographies simply by having to thinkabout the information that they had readand trying to remember the informationlike what was the biography who was theperson who are they married to what didthey do when did they go to school whatdid they do in school what did they doin the world what role did they play inlife so they essentially tested theirown knowledge simply by going into theirown head and asking themselves what theycould remember about those biographiesnow keep in mind here that even thoughit's fairly apparent that reading abiography to three four times might seemmore passive than testing oneself on abiography that they had read justonce right you could imagine thatthinking about the biography involvesmore effort and indeed it does but keepin mind also that the kids in the secondgroup were only exposed to the biographyonce and yet when you look at thepercent of accurate recall ofinformation from thosebiographies the children that read thebiography once and then made adeliberate point to think about thatbiography in their own mind toeffectively test themselves on thatmaterial just within their heads overand over but an equal number of times asthe kids that read the biographiesdirectly on a page over and over vastlyoutperformed the kids that read thebiographies over and over putdifferently reading and rereadingmaterial and re re rereading material isfar less effective than reading materialand then thinking about that materialtesting yourself on that materialforcing yourself to bring that materialto mind in your own mind and this is notjust for sake of remembering more volumeof material but also accuracy of recallof that material and that at least to mewas pretty surprising at first until onestarts to explore subsequent studies ofthe role of testing as a learning tooland then you start to realize thattesting yourself is Far and Away thebest tool for studying and learning notjust for evaluating your knowledge butfor actually studying and incorporatingthat knowledge into your neural circuitsokay so I realize that anytime I orsomebody else talks about a study thatwas done in 19 17 we think of people inthese you know like wooden shoes and umin these School houses that look sodifferent and uh kids dress so differentlet's get a little more modern here umkeep in mind however that the nervoussystem hasn't really changed much intens of thousands of years umnonetheless I think it's nice to thinkabout a more recent study of how best tostudy and this study which by the waywe'll provide a link to in the show notecaptions as well as a couple of reviewsthat include results from similarstudies again I'm pointing to a body ofresearch not just one studyhere lookedat whether or not studying material fourtimes so study study studystudy was better in terms of lockingthat information into people's mindsallowing them to use that informationflexibly which is an element ofcreativity essentially giving theMastery of the material then a differentGroup which studied once studied thematerial twice studied the materialthree times then was tested on thematerial or a third group that studiedmaterial once then took one two yesthree tests on the material now so whatI just described was three groups all ofwhom read a passage this was a passageabout animals about biology some othertopics too in different experimentsagain three groups one group studiesfour times they study the material 1 2 3fourtimes then later they take a test thesecond group studies one two three timestakes a test on that material and thenlater takes a test the third groupstudies the material once then takesthree tests on the material and thenlater takes a test so what's analyzedand compared between these differentgroups is their performance on thatfinal test okay what I put in as thefifth bin there right because it wasthink about it as ssss so study studystudy study and then later test or SSS Tstudy study study test and then latertest or sttt study test test test andthen later test so what's compared andcontrasted is performance on the testsome period of time later now someexperiments made that final test of thematerial a couple days later otherexperiments made it a couple weeks laterother experiments made it much latermonth or even a year laterokay the point here is twofold first ofall based on everything I've told youthus far you can probably guess whoperformed best on the test that occurredsome period of time later okay right theperformance on that final test wasessentially proportional to the numberofest one had already taken on thematerial okay that should be pretty muchobvious given the way we've been goingtoday in this description of tests as away to offset forgetting okay so themore tests that youtake as a way to expose you yourself tothe material the better you're going toperform on that material at some laterpoint now of course at some point youhave to be exposed to the material forthe first time right that's why it'sstudying and learning but after oneexposure to new material taking moretests on that material even if you don'tperform that well on those tests as longas you're able to see the accurateanswers to those tests and compare youranswers to those answers will lead tobetter performance on the ultimate testand retention of that material at somelater time put differently it's notabout how many times you study thematerial or how many times you'reexposed to the material it's about beingexposed to the material doing your bestto focus and attend to that material andthen self- testing yourself on thatmaterial or as the case may be if an aninstructor is the one giving you thetest but nonetheless taking tests onthat material not just once but ideallytwo or three times that's what reallylocks the material into your neuralcircuits that's what's going to lead tothe most pervasive change the mostdurable change we should say in yourneural circuits that carry that materialthat hold that material in your mindwhat we call Neural encoding okay so thethe more times you test yourself or thatyou are tested on material the betteryour retention of that material now somepeople will immediately say wellgoodness what if I learned it and thenI'm tested and I'm somehow consolidatingthe wrong or inaccurate material but itdoesn't appear to be the case as long asyou learn what the correct answers tothe tests are even if you're getting youknow 40 or 50% or less accurate on thosetests that you take immediately afterthe studyingperiod that's still going to be a betterstrategy than rereading the materialwhich ought to be somewhat surprising itcertainly was surprising to me but youknow what's even more surprising and alittle scary and that we all should knowand I wish I had learned when I was likein the second grade is that if you askstudents how confident are you in thematerial that you just learned how welldo you think you would perform on a testwhat you see consistently in thesestudies I'm chuckling because it's kindof mindblowing is that the students whostudy the the material that is who wereexposed to the material four times thinkthat they are going to perform best onthe ultimate exam however the studentsthat study the material once and thenare tested three times on thatmaterial they think that ultimatelythey're going to perform least well forinstance they ask them their confidencehow well do you think he would performon a test of this material in two weeksor in a year or in six months or eventomorrow they report that is thestudents in the study test test testgroupreport much lower confidence in thematerial much lower sense of Mastery ofthe material compared to the studentsthat were exposed to the material fourtimes who are saying yeah I think Iwould do pretty well or very well andguess what the exact opposite is trueput differently when you're exposed tomaterial over and over and over againyou think you've learned the material infact your confidence that you've learnedthe material increases with eachsubsequent exposure to the material butactually you haven't learned it at allcompared to the people that are exposedto the material and then take tests onthe material often times straining toget the answers right on those tests infact sometimes getting those answersdead wrong and then realizing they getthose answers dead wrong or sometimesthey just sense it but guess whattesting yourself once twice maybe threetimes prior to the ultimate test of yourknowledge of that material is Far andAway the best way to lock that materialinto those neural circuits now I say Iwish I had learned this when I was astudent because to some extent I used aself- testing approach the one mostSalan example of that is I took a coursewhen I was in college I still rememberit was bioscience's 169 L neuroanatomylaboratory taught by Ben ree he's stillthere I believe and he was known thenand I'm sure still now if he's stillteaching as extremely challengingProfessor extremely challenging not as aperson not as personality but a ton ofdetail and rigor and high high highexpectation for this laboratory coursein neuroanatomy which involved lecturesit involved a neuroanatomy textbookwhere you'd look at you know essentiallypanels of different brain sections fromdifferent species different types ofstains of different brain tissue mindyou this is an undergraduate course andthen there was a laboratory componenthence the L in 169 L where you'd have togo from microscope station to microscopestation identifying structures basedsimply on what you could see down themicroscope and therefore you had to knowwhat the stain was you know what wasessentially visible to you on the slidebecause certain stains reveal certainthings like the what we call the cellbody of neurons versus the um the sortof wires what we call the axons betweenneurons etc etc I remember thinking thisis a really hard course it was a verydifficult course and my mode of studyingfor the course involved of course goingto class doing the dissection wedissected a sheep brain at that time umso we're literally dissecting an actualbrain we're doing microscope work we'relearning about it from the textbook andfrom lecture and there was a ton of newGomen clature about rostral codal dorsalvent all the stuff of neuron anatomy andthen at some point I made the decisionperhaps on the basis of sheer overwhelmto study for neuron Anatomy by layingdown on my bed in my studio apartment Ilived alone and closing my eyes andflying through the nervous system fromdifferent entry points through the earreview my coar anatomy through the eyereview my retinal Anatomy through thedorsal surface of the brain think aboutthe susai and gyri and then the Corpuscolossum and then I got and and I canstill see it in my mind's eye so myprocess of studying for neuroanatomy yesinvolved exposure to the material but itinvolved hours upon hours of thinkingabout the material within my own brainso it's a little bit meta unto itselfthere as a consequence I like to thinkin fact I believe um with someconfidence that I have uh very highMastery of neuroanatomy in differentspecies as well now that's my particulararea of expertise I don't think I'm anykind of savant with respect to neuroAnatomy I just spent hours upon hourslearning the material and then reviewingthematerial within my mind so in otherwords testing myself here's what I woulddo if I were moving down a trajectory ofa of a neural tract for instance betweensay the the hippocampus and aneighboring structure and I didn't knowwhat was next I would then go look it upin the textbook and then I'd go back tothis you know mental exercisevisualization type studying it reallywasn't studying is the point the pointis that I was testing myself I wastrying to find the points in which I nolonger had the knowledge to move furtherthrough in this case my mental image ofthe brain but through the material andthis is the key aspect of testing it'snot about just knowing how many thingsyou get right how many things you getwrong it's about recognizing exactlywhat you know and don't know and animportant component of testing isrunning up against those things whereyou say h i can't remember I don't knowwhat comes next or I'm certain that thatstructure is the fimbria and then you goand you look and you go it's not thefima but guess what I'll never forgetfor instance the location of thehabenula or what it looks like astructure which by the way since thesenames are kind of uh esoteric at thattime we didn't know what it does itturns out it's involved indisappointment it's key to thedepression circuits or the circuits thatunderly depression in some individualsit is um suppressed by viewing ofmorning sunlight we know that too and bygetting too much artificial lightexposure in the middle of the night youenhance activity of the habenulabeautiful work not done by my laboratorybut other Laboratories demonstrates thatso what I just did for you there washopefully teach you a little somethingabout neuron anatomy and depression butmore importantly to just illustrate thathow you test yourself can be highlyindividual to the ways in which youlearn best now that contradicts what Isaid earlier which is that this notionthat people have different learningstyles and you know some people areverbal Learners and some people areauditory Learners and Etc doesn't reallyhold up so well anymore but which by theway is not to say there isn't anyresearch to support it it's just thatit's heavily contradicted by otherresearch that contradicts that idea butyour approach your mode of best testingyourself on material for sake ofoffsetting the forgetting process andfor identifying where you have gaps inyour knowledge or where you thought youknew something but you don't or you knewsomething but it's wrong that can beaccomplished through the approach that'sbest for you which in my case turned outto be lying down and thinking about thematerial in my head head and still tothis day when I read a paper I try Idon't always do this but what I try todo is then take a walk in my yard oroutside and I try and think about thekey components of that paper and thinkabout some of the graphs that areespecially important which is what I'mgoing to do now I'd like to take a briefbreak to thank one of our sponsorselement element is an electrolyte drinkthat has everything you need and nothingyou don't that means the electrolytessodium magnesium and pottassium in thecorrect ratios but no sugar now I andothers on the podcast have talked a alot about the critical importance ofhydration for proper brain and bodilyfunction research shows that even aslight degree of dehydration can reallydiminish cognitive and physicalperformance it's also important that youget adequate electrolytes in order foryour body and brain to function at theirbest the electrolytes sodium magnesiumand pottassium are critical for thefunctioning of all the cells in yourbody especially your neurons or nervecells to make sure that I'm gettingproper amounts of hydration andelectrolytes I dissolve one packet ofelement in about 16 to 32 ounces ofwater when I wake up in the morning andI drink that basically first thing inthe morning I also drink elementdissolved in water during any kind ofphysical exercise I'm doing especiallyon hot days if I'm sweating a lot andlosing water and electrolytes if you'dlike to try element you can go to drinkelement.com huberman spelled drinklm.com huberman to claim a free elementsample pack with the purchase of anyelement drink mix again that's drinkelement.com huberman to claim a freesample pack okay so I like to think thatwe're establishing that testing yourselfor testing your students or being testedby your teacher is the best way tooffsetforgetting let's look at the literaturethat actually supports that statementdirectly because in the previousexperiment I described it was eitherstudy study study study or study studystudy test or study test test test andthen later everybody takes a test at thesame time a variant on that was donewhere they had one group ofstudents study material so this is newmaterial and when I say study I meanthey were exposed to the material forthe firsttime and I realize this is a little bitof a problem because we're using theword study when in fact I'm trying tomake the point that testing yourself isstudying okay so uh forgive me but thisis the way it's mapped out in theseexperiments in these papers should youlook them up in our show notecaptions one group is exposed to thematerial what we're call studying andthen takes a test immediately after theyare told what they got right what theygot wrong on that test and what thecorrect answers are and then sometimelater after a delay they take a test ofthe same material another group studiesthat is they're exposed to the materialthen there's a delay okay that delaycould be days it could be weeks thisexperiment has been done every which wayit seems by now then they're tested andthen there's another delay and then theytake a test at the same time that groupone did okay so again it's study testlong delay test for group one or studydelay test delay test for group tworemember the final test is taken at thesame time by everybody or group threestudy that is they're exposed to thematerial then a long long long long longdelay then a test and then the ultimatetest okay the test that everybody takesat the same time can you guess whichgroup performed best and the essence ofthis experiment if you're listening tothis and it's not clear in your mind isyou're either expose to the material andtest it very soon after and then take atest after a delay say a week or twoweeks later or you're exposed thematerial there's a delay of a few daysthen you take a test and then anotherfew days and then you take a test soit's more evenly spaced or if you wereassigned to the third group you'd studyyou're not going to see the material orbe tested on it until a day or twobefore the big test then you're testedon it you get your answers back and thenyou're tested on it again you couldimagine that the last group mightperform best because they're reexposedto the material they're told what thecorrect answers are so they know whatthey got wrong they know what they gotright and then the next day they'retaking the test again I would havethought that group would perform bestbut it turns out the opposite is trueit's pretty wild the best performancecomes from being exposed to materialwhat in this experiment they're calledstudying okay so they read a passage orthey learn some math material orlanguage material or music material ormotorlearning then they take a test very soonafter even same day or next day and thenthere's a long delay and then they takethe test that group performs best putdifferently test yourself very soon ifnot the same day certainly the next dayor so very soon after being exposed tomaterial for the first time as opposedto the last group which performs worstthey perform worse being exposed tomaterial then there's a long period oftime then you're tested on that materialyou are told what you got right what yougot wrong and then the next day you takea test again even with overlappingquestions to the test you took just theday before and that group performs worstand the group that studied had a gaptest that had a gap test they performedsomewhere in the middle what does thistell us what it tells us is so importantVisa neuroplasticity Vis of V bestlearning strategies this is somethingthat goodness I wish I had learned whenI was in graduate school when I was anundergraduate when I was in high schooland Elementary School goodness even whenI was in kindergarten I wish IID learnedthis test yourself on the material thatyou were just exposed to very soon afteryour first exposure to itbecause that offsets the naturalforgetting of new material that thebrain is exposed to this is absolutelythe Hallmark of all the impressive dataabout testing as a tool for learningtesting oneself or your students orbeing tested if you're the student byyour teacheras a tool not just for evaluatingperformance for knowing what you knowand don't know but for consolidatingthat information in your neural circuitsand when I say consolidating thatinformation in your neural circuits Irealize it's amouthful what we know is that thisbusiness of putting the testing soonafter exposure to new material is aboutoffsetting the forgetting of thatmaterial so you might say wait if that'strue how come studying the material andthen waiting and then then taking twotests right back to back where you'relearning the material again during thetest that should be the best performinggroup ah well there seems to besomething fundamentally different aboutfirst exposure to material versustesting yourself on that material and wedon't know exactly what that is there'ssome interesting neural Imaging data inhumans that this has to do somethingwith this notion of familiarity withmaterial this is very simple so this iseasy to understand even though itinvolves a little bit of memoryNeuroscience nomenclaturefamiliarity with something recognizingit is not the same thing as havingagility with that thing of havingMastery of that thing is not the samething as having Mastery of the materialof having committed it to memory okay sowhen you read something over and overand over you see it over and over youhear it over and over you think about itover and over of course you're readingit or you're hearing about it and youthink that you're learning the materialthat your neural circuits are changingbut it's a pretty passive process oreven if it's a difficult chapter to reador a difficult passage ofMusic the difference is when you'retested on material something happens inyour performance of or recalling of ifit's just you know cognitive or you'rewriting it down or you're told to playthe the music or do the the motormovement something happens in the errorthe getting wrong of certain things thatcues your nervous system to lock in theinformation that you have right and toremember what you have wrong so that youthen correct it which is Far and Awaydifferent than exposure and reexposureand reexposure okay so it's aprerequisite to learning that you needto see the material for the first timeyou can't just start testing yourself onmaterial you've never been exposed to Isuppose you could but you're going toget it I would imagine mostly wrong orall wrong but this business of usingtesting very soon after first exposureto material as a tool to studyin order to offset forgetting is clearlytapping into this difference betweenfamiliarity with something for which weknow certain brain areas are activatedversus recollection being able to takethat material and bring it to memorybring it to your focused attention anduse that material I realize this is abit abstract and some of this is stillbeing parsed if you're interested in theNeuroscience of familiarity withsomething versus your ability toactually recall something and haveMastery of that materialthere's a really nice review that Iprovide a link to in the show notecaption it's published in the journalhippoc campus I always chuckle at thefact that there's a journal that namedafter a brain structure after all as faras I know there isn't a journal calledretina or amydala um and I have a briefanecdote from graduate school whereby Ilearned that there was this journalhippocampus and I was at a graduate itwas my first graduate student gatheringin graduate school and the guy whohosted it um turns out is AUM umary inthe field of learning and memory and Iwas saying you know this is ridiculouslike there's a journal calledhippocampus here I am first yeargraduate student he goes yeah there isand I said yeah that's so silly like whoare the who are the like who are theidiots that name a journal after a brainstructure turns out there's also ajournal called cerebral cortex andthere's probably one about spinal cordso it turns out I I was the idiot sayingthis and the guy I was talking to who ofcourse was the host of the party saidyeah actually uh that's my journal Ifounded the journal hippoc campus so youcan look them up so at this Point you'regoing to take a test and it's a supereasy test okay I realize we're a bitinto the material and we're all probablyfatiguing a little bit marveling I hopeat what an incredible tool testing andin particular self- testing soon afterbeing exposed to new material is and thequestion is this and by the way this isan open-ended question you're notsupposed to know the answer because Ihaven't told you the answer yet but Iwant you to think aboutthis if one looks at the majority ofdata in this whole field of testing as astudyingtool how much improvement do you thinkyou get from testing yourself once onnew material do you think it's a youknow 10% Improvement a 20% Improvementso here I'm just comparing to testingyourself once on material that you werejust exposed to For the First Timeversus not testing yourself at all okayhow how much do you think you improvethe answer is about 50% 5 zero and I cansay that on the basis of the factthat in studies of musical learning ofmathematical learning of languagelearning of motor learning when subjectsare exposed to new material and thentested at some period of timelater the percentage of information theyget right or that they are able toperform something correctly diminishesover time especially because they're notdoing any practice and no testing in theintervening time this was built intothese experimentsand then you simply ask how much of thematerial wasforgotten if they just were exposed tothe material so in the case of say musiclearning this would be you know yourteacher sits down next to you and showsyou the scales on the piano but thenyou're not practicing them in betweenversus um or perhaps another examplewould be somebody gives you a lectureabout a particular phase in history andthen you're not being exposed to thematerial again and you're not self-testing versus if you just take one testeven a self-directed test of thematerial immediately after irrespectiveof how well you perform you have theamount of forgetting okay I want you tothink about self testing in this waybecause we're thinking about optimalstudying strategies you have the amountof forgetting that would normally occurthis is oh so important in fact I don'teven know that most neuroscientiststhink about learning and neuroplasticitythis way most everybody includingneuroscientists are taught we taughtcontinue to be taught that you'reexposed to new material you focus okaythen during sleep there's remodeling ofthe connections all that's true but wereally need to think about how mostinformation that comes into our nervoussystem each day is forgotten most of itis completely discarded there are somerare clinical deficits where peopleremember everything and I'll tell youthese people really struggle in lifethey do not do well in work inrelationships they remember every littledetail of everything and it isincredibly disruptive to their qualityof life it's nothing you want you wantto have a great memory for the rightthings so when you self test materialyou have the amount of forgetting thatoccurs compared to if you're justexposed to the material I want you tokeep that fact in mind because that factis the one that really hit me upside thehead and made me realize goodnessgracious how I wish that I'd self-tested myself on material that I wantedto remember over time rather thanreading it over and over I had thiselaborate process for studying that Iused all through college and graduateschool and it worked pretty well for mewhere I'd read and highlight then I'dwrite out my notes then I would writelittle paragraphs about that stuff nowsome of that probably mimicked self-testing indeed it had to have and thenof course I would take the quizzes and Iwould go to office hours you know once Igot serious about school I got reallyserious about school and of course Istill forget things I've made errors onthis podcast before apart from going toofast or making a joke that people didn'tperceive as a joke a whole story therebut in any case of course I make errorsof course I've forgotten certain thingsand sometimes I misspeak I always striveto get things accurately we correctthings in the show note captions ifthey're called out to us we're now usingAI to review the podcast and adjustanywhere using insertion so actuallyreplacing those words if we need to andso on and so forth but yes we all forgetthings we all make errors but if I hadjust known that testing myself onmaterial while walking out of class orsoon after getting home or later thatevening or the next day would allow meto perform so much better on an exam amidterm or a final exam and of course Istill would have studied because I wascommitted and you should still study asmuch as you feel is necessary to getMastery of the material foryou however if I had known that testingoneself or being tested soon afterexposure to material would have theamount of forgetting even out to a yearlater I definitely would have savedmyself a lot of time let's talk aboutsome specifics of ways that you can selftest or if you're a teacher or if youhave good dialogue with your teacher andthey are open-minded perhaps they areopen to hearing about what are the bestforms of testing oneself as a tool forlearning the best tests are open-endedshortanswer very minimal prompt tests notunlike the type that we've taken todayduring this podcast as compared tomultiple choice tests multiple choicequestions allow for familiarity of namesof facts you know it's going to be a b cd and sometimes e is you know A and Cand so on and so forth and within eachof those a b CDE e answers and you'relooking for the right answer you'relooking for the familiarity therecognition of something yes this notthat okay that's the best answer youCircle C okay this kind of thing asopposed to an open-ended question whereyou have to write out your answer youhave to recall the information right itrequires a much greater degree ofMastery of the information than doesfamiliarity or recognition of thematerial so the best tests as studytools are going to be open-ended shortanswer questions or even long answerquestions now there's one exception tothis which are multiple choice teststhat include tricks okay if you've evertaken the GRE the graduate schoolentrance exam or the elsat or the MCATthere are some questions in there thatare very straightforward but in thosestandardized tests they tend to includesome quote unquote trick questions inwhich those questions don't allow you tojust recognize the correct answer anddistinguish it from the other incorrectanswers but rather they have answers inthere that on first blush look like theright answer and people have a tendencyto Circle those and move on or to selectthose and move on but if you think aboutthe material a little more deeply turnsout those quote unquote obvious answersare actually the incorrect answers sothere are versions of multiple choicetests where it requires a greater degreeof Mastery of the material where simplefamiliarity won't serve you and youactually have to be able to recall thedifferent components of informationleading into that but those are a bitmore rare certainly in the context ofother kinds of learning like musicallearning although I suppose for musictheory that could be relevant but when Isay Music Learning I'm just kind offating to the idea of the mechanics ofmusical learning but of course there'smusic theory Etc so what I'm effectivelysaying is the ultimate exam the finalexam the midterm exam the exam that'sadministered to you rarely do you havecontrol over the format of that examsometimes it's mixed format but thedifferent ways in which you self- testas a form of studying are really key andideally you would make these open-endedin other words you would not simply relyon multiple choice you would rely on aform of self- testing or that you giveyour students or that your teacher givesyou that requires you to think about thematerial with some degree of depth withsome degree of effort and of courseyou're going to get certain things wrongnow I would hope that if testing isbeing used as a learning tool as opposedto just for evaluation but here we'retalking about using testing as alearning tool that it wouldn't impact atleast not at that moment your finalperformance in the course or whatever itis rather it is testing for sake oflearning learning now we know from theliterature that students don't like popquizzes I gave you a few today andforgive me they don't like pop quizzesand we know this in the form of thereduction in teaching evaluation scoresokay uh having received teachingevaluation scores of different uh let'ssay values over the years and I alwaystake the feedbackseriously one Salient comment that justleapt into my mind was the fact that Iend up mentioning my Bulldog Costellotoo often in class so here I'mmentioning him again just to get back atthat one student that said I mention toomuch I'll mention him as much as I wantthe point here is that when studentsevaluate their teachers they tend topunish their teachers for pop quizzesdoes that mean pop quizzes aren'teffective no but you know what's moreeffective telling students at the outsetof class or telling yourself at theoutset of any kind of learningExpedition because this isn't just aboutthe classroom that you're going to takea bunch of exams that you're going touse testing or quizzes whatever you wantto call them as a form of teaching andlearning and that you can expect fivetests or five quizzes during the courseof being presented the material or thatyou are going to test yourself every dayafter the material now sometimes youhave to go from one class to the nextclass there isn't an opportunity to testyourself but guess what's not going tobe helpful walking out of class andgetting immediately on to your phone weknow that that probably inhibits yourability to remember the material becauseit's going to enhance forgetting becauseyou do have this keyopportunity right after being exposed tonew material to help offset theforgetting by testing yourself on thatmaterial as soon as possible after beingexposed to it so again even though I didnot attend school in an era where we hadsmartphones and texting I recall walkingout of class and just walking out ofclass and going to my bicycle but ofcourse there were people to talk tothere were other things to attend to ifyou're really serious about learningmaterial take a few seconds maybe even afew minutes after being exposed to thatmaterial and think about that materialtest yourself on it and if you find thatyou don't know the material you'reconfused by it or overwhelmed by itgreat you just accomplished the firststep in queuing your nervous system tothe fact that it needs to learn thatmaterial and you've created anopportunity for enhanced neuroplasticitywhich is really what all of the stuffabout testing as a form of studying isabout you're going to test yourself sothat you figure out what you don't knowso that you then look up that materialtest yourself on it again so thatultimately youforget very little of it if any nowthere are other components to learningand neuroplasticity that I've talkedabout on previous podcast that are justtoo interesting not to mention but I'mjust going to mention them in briefthings like Gap effects Gap effects areoh so cool and they've been demonstratedfor lots of different forms of learningGap effectsare what I just did which is to takeperiodic pauses in the learning ofmaterial as short as 5 to 10 seconds buteven as long as 30 seconds during whichguess what your hippocampus the neuronsin your hippocampus repeat informationthat you've been exposed to for thefirst time at a rate 20 to 30 timesfaster thantypical just as it does during rapid eymovement sleep so if you are a teacherand or if you are alearner periodically throughout anepisode a class or whatever of trying tolearn new motor skills or music skillsor whatever kind oflearning pause and let your hippocampusgenerate more repetitions of thatmaterial than it would otherwise if youjust tried to Barrel through so Irealize as we've gone through today'sdiscussion that words like test and quizevaluation offsetting forgetting all ofthat stuff can you know Spike people'scortisol it can uh give us flashbacks touncomfortable classroom experiencesrelated to being called on cold calleduh for the answer um a vicious trickthat instructors play keep in mind thattesting as a form of studying whether ornot self-directed or given to you by ateacher is not for sake of evaluation atthe level of okay you know you get anexam at the end of a lecture and thenyou do your best to answer thosequestions and then you turn it in and itimpacts your grade no this isabout being told or revealing toyourself how much you know and don'tknow and then of course being told thecorrect answers so that you can compareyour answers to the correct answers anddoing this frequently and ideally verysoon after being exposed to the materialthat's one of the key things that I keepcoming back to again and again here umbecause it's something that frankly wasnot done well I was in school um forwhatever reason and I think that'slargely because when people hear theword testing they think of evaluationand if anything at least in the UnitedStates over the last 30 years but inparticular over the last 15 yearsthere's been this tendency to shift awayfrom formal evaluation you know Ipersonally believe that one can learn inmany different styles and many differentcontexts I of course as a universityProfessor um believe that for certaintopics in particular science andmedicine and health but other topics aswell of course that formal rigorouscoursework is by far the best way tolearn information forme but that regardless of whether or notyou're learning just from YouTube oryou're learning from podcasts or you'relearning from books you're learning fromthe school of life as it were fromexperience that testing as a form ofstudying is absolutely key and goshthere's such a beautiful body ofresearch in fact I'll link to severalstudies including a review entitledtesting enhances learning a review ofthe literature as well as a beautifularticle test enhanced learning uh whichgets into this and there's a wonderfulbook about this that I'll also provide alink to in the show note captions um allof course authored by researchers whohave worked squarely in this field andcompare the data on testing as astudying tool to other forms of studyingand learning so it's a really impressiveliterature that I do believe we allshould have known about and that's whyI'm passing it on to you now now beforewe wrap up I want to make sure that Iemphasize some of the other keycomponents to studying and learning thathave nothing to do with testing as astudyingtool and those are the role of emotionthe role of story and the role of what'scalled interleaving now in terms ofemotion I think we all inherentlyunderstand that more emotionally Ladenexperiences are remembered more durablywe tend not to forget them in fact thisis the basis of things like PTSDpost-traumatic stress disorder it is thereality that one trial learning that isexposure to something and neverforgetting it occurs very readily whenthe thing that we're exposed to isnegative or has a very heavy negativeemotional Salient so it could besomething we read or something we seesometimes it's something that happens tous you know I I don't like the idea ofthat but this is true your nervoussystem is wired such neuroplasticity issuch that stressful experiences becausethey deploy such massive amounts ofadrenaline epinephrine as well as otherneuromodulators allow very quickly forthe milu the environment of the neuralcircuits that led up to that experienceto strengthen their connections with onetrial so-call one trial learning this iswhy sadly although at the same time froman Adaptive perspective we sayfortunately if you were to step outsidetoday and God forbid see somebody gethit by acar you would remember that chances areyou would remember that forever now thatdoes not mean that the emotionalcomponents of that memory arenecessarily going to stay within youthere are tools for the treatment ofPTSD such as the different ones thatcome to mind are you know systematicexposure therapy where you're reexposedto that idea or memory sometimes evencircumstance with of course the supportof a trained professional typically apsychiatrist orpsychologist and the emotional load ofthat experience is gradually uncoupledfrom your M Mor of the experiencethere's things like EMDR there arepharmacologic approaches some of theseare combined with the sorts of thingsI've described I've done entire episodesabout stress and PTSD again you can findthose at hubman lab.com by puttingstress PTSD into the searchfunction however we know that it is thesame neuromodulators mainly epinephrineand norepinephrine deployed at massiveamounts in those moments where somethingvery stressful happens that allows theneural circuits that led up to thecircumstance as well as the neuralcircuits that encode that visual sceneand scenes like it or sounds like it tobe locked in and linked to the stressresponse now what this is really allsaying is that negative stuff isremembered typically the first time andevery time and very durably over time ascompared to positive experiences whichas far as Peak experiences go rightbirth of your first child a wedding awonderful um professional or personexperience those two can be one triallearning and memory but most things thatwe are exposed to are not at thoseextremes either negative orpositive however we know that any kindof story any kind of emotional emphasison material either in the delivery ofthat material but certainly in the waythat that material is perceived by youlike getting really excited aboutsomething you want to learn or thinkingsomething's really awful is likely to bemore readily and stably committed toyour memory and that's because of theseneuromodulators like epinephrine andnorepinephrine but other neuromodulatorsas well that wire those experiences intoyour neural circuits again theseneuromodulators epinephrinenorepinephrine we also hear aboutacetycholine dopamine Etc they canoperate at low levels and sort ofbackground levels they can create subtlefluctuations and mood focus andattention or they can create massiveshifts in mood focus and attentiondepending on their levels their time andmuch much more Point here is that ifyou're a teacher Andor if you are alearner paying attention to yourinternal State as you're trying to learnis very key we've all had that teacherthat lecture that just kind of dronesthings out in monotone if you need tolearn the material coming out of asource like that person or otherwiseyou're going to have to ramp up yourlevel of internal attention consciouslyin order to bring about some emotionalsalience some intensity to the way it'sperceived and you can do that justthrough your own thinking as opposed tothe situation whether you have a superDynamic teacher who's telling you thingswith wide eyes and perhaps even crackingjokes by the way the teachers that crackjokes get lower teacher evaluations thanthose that don't crack jokes or sweardid you know that the teachers thatcrack jokes and swear they're perceivedas more likable but they get loweroverall evaluations typically they'reseen as less professional and thereforeless good teachers by their studentsthat's why I try not to make too manyjokes or swear in mylectures the point being that we allhave those really wonderful Dynamicteachers yes it's much easier to learnand remember that material you stillneed to test yourself on it but it'smuch easier to learn that material forthe very reasons I say it before it's alesser example of more deployment of theneuromodulators in you the learner thatis exposed to that material okay soemotion matters so much so that in abeautiful review about learning a memoryfrom the Great James maau one of TheLuminaries in modern neuroscience andpsychology of memory he talked about amedieval practice this is pretty- wildwhereby people and kids kids are peopleof course but adults and kids weretaught information and then thrownliterally thrown into cold water why todeploy adrenaline and consolidate memoryof the material they were exposed to nowI know we've covered deliberate coldexposure on this podcast before no I'mnot saying you need to do a cold plungeafter being exposed to new material butguess what they were doing that manyhundreds of years ago and it makes senselogically based on all our understandingof the neurobiology underlying thingslike PTSD underlying emotion Ladenmemory formation and consolidation andour ability to remember things that wereemotionally Laden much better thanthings that were less emotionally Ladenso if you want to take a cold showerafter learning some material or evenbetter testing yourself mentally on thatmaterial while in a cold shower or coldplunge you certainly can just don't stayin there too long use best practices ifyou want to know what those bestpractices are for deliberate coldexposure you can check out ourdeliberate cold exposure newsletter athuberman lab.com it's completely zerocost you don't even need to sign up yousimply go to newsletter in the menu taband you can find that PDF and nowbecause you are becoming proficient inan understanding of neuroplasticity andlearning and testing and neuromodulatorslike epinephrine yes drinking caffeinewill increase your levels of EP nephrinenot strikingly so but enough that itprobably helps you learn things a littlebit better should you drink the coffeeafter listen that's getting a little bittoo down in the details the mostimportant components to learning arethat you be alert so that you can attendso you can pay attention to the materialyou're trying to learn and then testingyourself later and of course the othercomponent which is getting sufficientamounts of great sleep each night and Ihighly recommend doing nsdr I mentionedGap effects before those are very verycool I just used another one now and thefinal tool for studying that I believeis not discuss enough and is a bitcounterintuitive so it's a fun one tojust mention and that perhaps you canexplore in your own studying andlearning Adventures is interleaving ofinformation this one's kind of wildactually turns out that if yourinstructor or you takes informationabout something that they're trying toteach you or you're trying to learnmaybe it's piano know maybe it'sNeuroscience maybe it's how to learnbetter and every once in a while throwsin a little anecdote about somethinglet's just say or mention somethingabout the Olympics or incorporatesomething that seems pseudo randombecause it's not actually related to thematerial you're trying to learn turnsout that that acts not as a gap in thesame sense that Gap effects which aretimes in which you do nothing in orderto get more repetitions of the materialyou just heard in your hippocampus butrather those breaks of interleavinginformation not just getting a steadybarrage like drinking from a fire hoseof new information from start to finishturn out to enhance overall learningability probably we think at amechanistic level because the neuralcircuits are able to generate morerepetition similar to Gap effects butactually in a very interesting way alsobecause by injecting other informationthat seems totally unrelated random orpseudo random it allows the brain areasthat are responsible for encodinginformation to take whatever newinformation you're learning and toincorporate it with existing knowledgeor even distantly related knowledge sodoes this mean that you should learnmath and history in the same lecturewell I think that might be a bitoverwhelming kind of like drinking fromTwo Fire hoses here we're talking aboutinterleaving challenging informationthat's new to you with little anecdoteslittle bits of information that perhapsare new to you but don't require a lotof challenge which is of course whyevery once in a while I throw in alittle anecdote about my Bulldog orlearning neuroanatomy or something ofthat sort it's not just to provide abreak it's to provide examples that arerelated but not Central to the materialthat we've been talking about todaywhich is all about how to study andlearn optimally okay so I realize thatmany of you are not students any longeralthough some of you are but in manyways we are all students we are allconstantly being exposed to all sorts ofinformation out in the world andgoodness knows um thank goodness wedon't remember it all but there is ofcourse information that we would like toremember that we would really like toconsolidate in our memory and be able tohave some Mastery over earlier I said Iwould distinguish between unskilledskilled Mastery and virtuosity and I'lldo that now unskilled of course meansthat we have limited understanding letalone um ability to use informationskilled typically means we know and canrecognize and use information in basicways or even Advanced ways Masterytypically means that we have you knowclose to the full depth of knowledge ina given area and that we can use itpretty flexibly and virtuosity at leastmy definition of virtuosity is where weactually have such Mastery of materialthat we can use it in ways that we stilldon't even know how we can use meaningthat we can inject elements or we eveninvite elements of uncertainty and kindof spontaneity into the use of thatmaterial here I'm thinking of greatmusicians I'm thinking of great athleteswhere they know all the plays they knowall the moves it's all scripted intotheir nervous system and they can deploythose at any time so they have realMastery but in order to display theirincredible abilities their virtuositythey actively invite in The X Factor theuncertainty such that sometimes theyfind themselves playing their instrumentor singing or performing athletically ormathematically or what have you in waythat even surprise them and that ofcourse is a lot to expect of ourselves Ithink most of us would be uh content tohave skill and Mastery of the thingsthat we care about and you know shouldwe achieve virtuosity then wonderful butone of the main points of today'sdiscussion was to arm you with anunderstanding of neuroplasticity in thecontext of studying and learning toreally understand that so much oflearning stably and consolidatinginformation over time is to offset theforgetting processand that testing is not just a tool forevaluating our knowledge but rather atool for evaluating and reinforcing andbuilding our knowledge put differentlythat testing is an excellent tool if notthe best tool for studying and I thinkthat's an important reframe that othershave brought about and that I reallywant to highlight underline and boldface during today's discussion it's onethat I certainly wish I had applied morein my educational trajectory and it'sone that I plan to deploy further in myseeking out of new knowledge in terms ofthe podcast and Neuroscience but inother areas of my life as well becausefrom the existing literature andhopefully from the way it was presentedto you today you probably realize thatit is near infinite if notinfinite that we can apply testing as atool for studying self- testing testingof others using testing as a way toreally probe what we know and don't knowand to really offset that forgettingprocess and in that sense it is isreally nicely aligned with what we knowaboutneuroplasticity and it's also somethingthat we can use freely and that you canuse covertly that you can apply in yourown seeking out of knowledge and newskills of all kinds classroom orotherwise if you're learning from and orenjoying this podcast please subscribeto our YouTube channel that's a terrificzeroc cost way to support us anotherterrific zeroc cost way to support us isto follow the podcast on both Spotifyand apple and on both Spotify and appleyou can leave us up to a five-starreview please check out the sponsorsmentioned at the beginning andthroughout today's episode that's thebest way to support this podcast if youhave questions for me or comments aboutthe podcast or guests or topics thatyou'd like me to consider for the hubmanLab podcast please put those in thecomments section on YouTube I do readall the comments for those of you thathaven't heard I have a new book comingout it's my very first book it'sentitled protocols an operating manualfor the human body this is a book thatI've been working on for more than 5years and that's based on more than 30years of research and experience and itcovers protocols for everything fromsleep to exercise to Stress Controlprotocols related to focus andmotivation and of course I provide thescientific substantiation for theprotocols that are included the book isnow available by pre-sale at protocolsbook.com there you can find links tovarious vendors you can pick the onethat you like best again the book iscalled protocols an operating manual forthe human body if you're not alreadyfollowing me on on social media I'mhubman lab on all social media platformsso that's Instagram X formerly known asTwitter threads Facebook and Linkedinand on all those platforms I coverscience and science related tools someof which overlaps with the content ofthe hubman Lab podcast but much of whichis distinct from the content on thehuberman Lab podcast again that's hubmanlab on all social media channels if youhaven't already subscribed to our neuralnetwork newsletter our neural networknewsletter is a zeroc cost monthlynewsletter that has protocols which areone to three page PDFs that describethings like optimizing your sleep how tooptimize your dopamine deliberate coldexposure we have a foundational Fitnessprotocol that describes resistancetraining sets and Reps and all of thatas well as cardiovascular trainingthat's supported by the scientificresearch and we have protocols relatedto neuroplasticity and learning againyou can find all that at completely zerocost by going to huberman lab.com go tothe menu tab in the right corner scrolldown to newsletter you put in your emailand we do not share your email withanybody body thank you once again forjoining me for today's discussion allabout how to study and learn and lastbut certainly not least thank you foryour interest in science[Music]