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Neural Plasticity - Andrew Huberman

These are notes from a podcast: Neural Plasticity - Finding Center with Nick Hardwick - Episode 3 - Andrew Huberman, PhD

After 25, you cannot learn passively anymore, but your brain is still plastic.

TL;DR Process for learning:

  1. Setup health baselines
  2. Short bouts of learning with focus and urgency.
  3. Reward yourself
  4. Sleep and Repeat the next day

Strain is good for learning. If it is complex, grind in the failure, narrow the focus. Keeps these bouts of learning to 2 minutes to 10 minutes a day. Do this repeatedly over time.

You need focus, urgency and reward to learn. Using behaviors not drugs, bathe your brain in Acetylcholine, Adrenaline and Dopamine:

  • Focus, Lean into the strain and frustration releases Acetylcholine.
  • Urgency, "Now is the time", releases Adrenaline.
  • Reward, Tell yourself you are heading in the right direction, releases Dopamine.

Focus: Acetylcholine

Acetylcholine is released by focused attention and amplifies the conversation in your brain, with this the idea is more likely to be reinforced and be remembered.

The point where you want to give up and you feel that strain, frustration and confusion is your brain trying out new combinations, that is the good stuff, don’t back away. It was designed to be uncomfortable.

Reward: Dopamine

You can learn to reward yourself for anything. The reward is: Just tell yourself that you are heading in the right direction. This self administers dopamine and boosts the immune system. The ability to self reward is one of the most powerful things we have as humans.

Health Baseline

Baseline to improve Brain Health:

  1. Quality Sleep
  2. Social Connection: Not enough face to face social interaction, leads to inflammation and neural degradation
  3. Nutrition
  4. Hydration
  5. Exercise (3 to 4 days a week of 45 minutes, cardiovascular exercise, running, swimming) Early in day is better for brain health, but better to do it, than not do it.

Baseline: Sleep

Sleep is fundamental for brain health:

  • Plasticity
  • Resilience
  • Patience
  • Immunity
  • Sense of well being and
  • Cellular repair.

Sleep is when plasticity actually occurs. Consolidation of learnings during the day, connection of neurons, happens during slow wave (deep) sleep.

Sleep with feet elevated a bit (15 degrees) perfuses the brain more with neuro chemicals to clear out the brain. This is why sleeping on a plane sucks.

Sleep Cocktail

30 minutes after this cocktail you will be out and the depth of the sleep will be better:

  • 200-600mg Magnesium Threonate for sleep and neuro-protection
  • 100-200mg Theanine makes dream more intense. Promotes GABA formation in the brain. Theanine is a pre cursor to GABA. If you take GABA directly this will shutdown GABA production in the brain. So rather take the precursor, and this applies to all neuro-transmitters.
  • 50mg Apigenin: for Men only, very little in Camomile tea, so find pills.

Magnesium Citrate is for sleep, but also a laxative. Depends what you are after.

Melatonin is good for getting you to sleep, but not keeping you asleep. It is a hormone and affects many other things. Melatonin might result in less deep sleep.

Yoga Nidra (Yoga Sleep)

Yoga Nidra is useful for deep relaxation and when waking up too early to at least relax or maybe fall back to sleep. Deep Relaxation is powerful for brain change.

Lie down and listen and follow a script with long exhale breathing for 10 to 20 minutes. Drops you into a deep state of relaxation or straight into sleep. You can catch up with sleep and this is a good way to do that.

Other interesting tid bits

  • We generally you don’t get new neurons
  • All diets work, if you stick to them. Adherence to the protocol is key.
  • Intermittent Fasting => Allows cellular repair => Improves some health markers
  • The act of drinking water is making you more alert. Drink water in the morning, and less as the day goes on.
  • If you are looking forward to the next day, you can get away with less sleep.
  • Avoid blue light exposure (like phones), between 12am and 4am repeatedly. In other words, if you can't sleep, don't read on your phone, it leads to depressive like symptoms.
  • Stress enhances the function of the immune system over the short term.
  • L-tyrosine (present in red meat) promotes alertness and Dopamine.
  • L-tryptophan (present in turkey) promotes Serotonin.
  • Nicotine promotes Acetylcholine (enhances focus, but wears of in the long run).
  • Acetylcholine also changes the optics of the eye.
  • Lowering stress quickly: When you get nervous your eyes start darting around. Keep your head and eyes stationary and see the entire space all at once once and see yourself in the space, panoramic vision, dial out your gaze, soft gaze, this lowers your stress quickly. Like when you are driving a car. Panoramic vision lowers stress faster than any technique we are aware of.