Essentials: Understand & Improve Memory Using Science-Based Tools
4/16/202641 mincomplete
0:00Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and
0:05actionable science -based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:11I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of
0:16Medicine. Today, we are discussing memory, in particular, how to improve your memory.
0:21We are constantly being bombarded with physical stimuli, patterns of touch on our skin, light
0:26to our eyes, light to our skin for that matter, smells, tastes, and sound waves.
0:32Each one of, and all of those sensory stimuli are converted into electricity and chemical
0:37signals by your so -called nervous system, your brain, your spinal cord, and all their
0:41connections with the organs of the body, and all the connections of your organs of
0:44the body, back to your brain and spinal cord.
0:46For instance, if you can hear me speaking right now, you are perceiving my voice,
0:51but you are also most likely neglecting the feeling of the contact of your skin
0:55with whichever surface you happen to be sitting or standing on.
0:58It is only by perceiving a subset, a small fraction of the sensory events in
1:03our environment, that we can make sense of the world around us.
1:06Otherwise, we would just be overwhelmed with all the things that are happening in any
1:09one given moment. Now, memory is simply a bias in which perceptions will be replayed
1:17again in the future. Now, this might seem immensely simple, but it raises this really
1:22interesting question, which we talked about before, which is why do we remember certain things
1:27and not others? Because according to what I've just said, as you go through life,
1:32you're experiencing things all the time.
1:34You're constantly being bombarded with sensory stimuli.
1:37Some of those sensory stimuli you perceive, and only some of those perceptions get stamped
1:42down as memories. Today, I'm going to teach you how certain things get stamped down
1:47as memories. And I'm going to teach you how to leverage that process in order
1:51to remember the information that you want far better.
1:54Each individual thing that we remember or that we want to remember is linked to
1:58something by either a close, a medium, or a very distant association.
2:02This turns out to be immensely important.
2:05I know many of you will read or will encounter programs.
2:09that are designed to help you enhance your memory.
2:11You have these phenoms that can remember 50 names in a room full of people,
2:16or they can remember a bunch of names of novel objects or maybe even in
2:20different languages. And oftentimes that's done by association.
2:23So people will come up with little mental tricks to either link the sound of
2:29a word or the meaning of a word in some way that's meaningful for them
2:32and will enhance their memory.
2:34That can be done and is impressive when we see it.
2:36And for those of you who can do that, congratulations.
2:38Most of us can't do that, or at least it requires a lot of effort
2:42and training. However, there are things that we can do that leverage the natural biology
2:48of our nervous system to enhance learning and memory of particular perceptions and particular information.
2:53So let's talk about tools for enhancing memory.
2:56Now there's one tool that it's absolutely clear works, and that's repetition.
3:02The more often that you perform something or that you recite something, the more likely
3:07you are to remember it in the future.
3:10And while that might seem obvious, it's worth thinking about what's happening when you repeat
3:15something. But when I say what's happening, I mean at the neural level.
3:18What's happening is that you're encouraging the firing of particular chains of neurons that reside
3:24in a particular circuit, right?
3:25So a particular sequence of neurons playing neuron A, B, C, D, played in that
3:30particular sequence over and over and over again.
3:32And with more repetitions, you get more strengthening of those nerve connections.
3:37The problem for most people is that they either don't have the patience, they don't
3:41have the time, and sometimes they literally don't have the time because they've got a
3:44deadline on something that they're trying to remember and learn.
3:48Or they simply would like to be able to remember things better in general, remember
3:53them more quickly. This process of accelerating repetition -based learning so that your learning curve
3:59doesn't go from having to perform something 1 ,000 times, and then gradually over time,
4:04it's 1 ,750 times a day, 500 times a day, 300 times a day, and
4:08down to no repetitions, right?
4:10You can just perform that thing the first time and every time.
4:13Well, there is a way to shift that curve so that you can essentially establish
4:19stronger connections. between the neurons that are involved in generating that memory or behavior more
4:25quickly. How do you do that?
4:27Well, in order to answer that, we have to look at the beautiful work of
4:31James McGaw and Larry Cahill.
4:34James McGaw and Larry Cahill did a number of experiments over several decades, really, that
4:38really established what's required to get better at remembering things and to do so very
4:44quickly. They evaluated the capacity for stress and for particular neurochemicals associated with stress to
4:51improve our ability to learn information, not just information that is emotional, but information of
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6:17So I'm going to describe some experiments done in animal models just very briefly, and
6:21then experiments done on human subjects.
6:24If you take a rat or a mouse and put it in an arena where
6:28at one location, the animal receives an electric.
6:33and then you come back the next day, you remove the shock evoking device and
6:37you let the animal move around that arena.
6:39That animal will quite understandably avoid the location where it was shocked, so -called conditioned
6:45place aversion. That effect of avoiding that particular location occurs in one trial.
6:52That's a good example of one trial learning.
6:53So somehow the animal knows that it was shocked at that location.
6:57It remembers that it is a hippocampal dependent learning they remember it after the first
7:03time and every time, unless you are to block the release of certain chemicals in
7:10the brain and body. And the chemicals I'm referring to are epinephrine, adrenaline, and to
7:15some extent cortisol. Now we know that the effect of getting one trial learning somehow
7:20involves epinephrine, at least in this particular experimental scenario, because if researchers do the exact
7:27same experiment and they have done the exact same experiment, but they introduce a pharmacological
7:33blocker of epinephrine so that epinephrine is released in response to the shock, but it
7:39cannot actually bind to its receptors and have all of its biological effects, well, then
7:43the animal is perfectly happy to tread back into the area where it received the
7:48shock. It's almost as if it didn't know, or we have to assume that it
7:52didn't remember that it received the shock at that location.
7:55So it all seems pretty obvious when you hear it, something bad happens in a
7:58location, you don't go back to that location.
8:00But it turns out that the opposite is also true, meaning for something called conditioned
8:05place preference, you can take an animal, put it into an arena, feed it or
8:09reward it somehow at one location, take the animal out, come back the next day,
8:13no food is introduced, but it'll go back to the location where it received the
8:16food, or you can do any variant of this.
8:18You can make the arena a little bit chilly and provide warmth at that location,
8:22or you can take a male animal, it turns out male rats and mice will
8:27mate at any point, or a female animal that's at the particular so -called receptive
8:31phase of her mating cycle and give them an opportunity to mate at a given
8:34location, they'll go back to that location and wait and wait.
8:36This is perhaps why people go back to the same bar or the bar seat
8:39at the bar or the same restaurant and wait because of the one time they,
8:42you know. things worked out for them, whatever the context was.
8:45Conditioned place preference, as with conditioned place avoidance, depends on the release of adrenaline, right?
8:52It's not just about stress.
8:54It's about a heightened emotional state in the brain and body.
8:58Okay, this is really important.
9:00It's not just about stress.
9:01You can get one trial learning for positive events, conditioned place preference, and you can
9:06get one trial learning for negative events.
9:08This turns out all to be true for humans as well.
9:12We know that because McGaw and Cahill did experiments where they gave people a boring
9:18paragraph to read and only a boring paragraph to read, but one group of subjects
9:23was asked to read the paragraph and then to place their arm into very, very
9:29cold water. In fact, it was ice water.
9:31We know that placing one's arm into ice water, especially if it's up to the
9:35shoulder or near to it, evokes the release of adrenaline in the body.
9:39It's not an enormous release, but it's a significant increase.
9:43And yes, they measured adrenaline release.
9:45In some cases, they also measured for things like cortisol, et cetera.
9:48And what they found is that if one evokes the release of adrenaline through this
9:55arm into ice water approach, the information that they read previously, just a few minutes
10:01before, was remembered. It was retained as well as emotionally intense information.
10:07But keep in mind, the information that they read was not interesting at all, or
10:10at least it wasn't emotionally laden.
10:13This had to be the effect of adrenaline released into the brain and body because
10:18if they blocked the release or the function of adrenaline in the brain and or
10:25body, they could block this effect.
10:27This is absolutely important in terms of thinking about tools to improve your memory.
10:32It is the presence of high adrenaline, high amounts of norepinephrine and epinephrine that allows
10:39a memory to be stamped down quickly and far and away different than the idea
10:45that we remember things because they're important to us or because they evoke emotion.
10:50That's true, but the real reason, the neurochemical reason, And the mechanism behind all that
10:55is neurochemicals have the ability to strengthen neural connections by making them active just once.
11:03There's something truly magic about that neurochemical cocktail that removes the need for repetition.
11:09Okay, so let's apply this knowledge.
11:10Let's establish a scientifically grounded set of tools, meaning tools that take into account the
11:17identity of the neurochemicals that are important for enhancing learning and the timing of the
11:23release of those chemicals in order to enhance learning.
11:25Caffeine in the form of coffee or yerba mate or any other form of caffeine
11:30does create a sense of alertness in our brain and body.
11:32So my typical way of approaching learning and memory would be to drink some caffeine
11:36and then focus really hard on whatever it is that I'm trying to learn, try
11:40and eliminate distractions, and then hope, hope, hope, or try, try, try to remember that
11:45information as best as I could.
11:47And frankly, I felt like it was working pretty well for me.
11:49And typically, if I leveraged other forms of pharmacology in order to enhance learning and
11:54memory, things like alpha -GPC or phosphatidylserine, I would do that by taking those things
12:02before I sat down to learn a particular set of information or before I went
12:06off to learn a particular physical skill.
12:08For those of you out there listening to this, you're probably thinking, well, okay, the
12:13results of McGaw and Cahill pointed to the fact that having adrenaline released after learning
12:20something enhanced learning of that thing.
12:22But a lot of these things like caffeine or alpha -GPC can increase epinephrine and
12:27adrenaline or dopamine or other molecules in the brain and body that can enhance memory
12:34for a long period of time.
12:35So it makes sense to take it first or even during learning, and then allow
12:39that increase to occur. And the increase will occur over a long period of time,
12:43and will enhance learning and memory.
12:44While that is partially true, it is not entirely true, and it turns out it's
12:49not optimal. And it turns out that the best time window to evoke the release
12:53of these chemicals, if the goal is to enhance learning and memory of the material,
12:58is either immediately after or just a few minutes, five, 10, maybe 15 minutes.
13:05After you're repeating that information, you're trying to learn that information.
13:09Again, this could be cognitive information or this could be a physical skill.
13:13Now, this really spits in the face of the way that most of us approach
13:17learning and memory. Most of us, if we use stimulants like caffeine or alpha GPC,
13:24we're taking those before or during an attempt to learn, not afterwards.
13:29If you're using those compounds in order to enhance learning and memory, well, then I
13:32encourage you to try and take them either late in the learning episode or immediately
13:37after the learning episode. Now, given everything I've told you up until now, why would
13:41I say late in the learning episode or immediately after?
13:43Well, when you ingest something by drinking it or you take it in capsule form,
13:47there's a period of time before that gets absorbed into the body and different substances,
13:51such as caffeine, alpha GPC, et cetera, are absorbed in from the gut and into
13:56the bloodstream and reach the brain and trigger these effects in the brain and body
13:59at different rates. So it's not instantaneous.
14:02Some have effects within minutes, others within tens of minutes and so on.
14:07It's really going to depend on the pharmacology of those things.
14:10And it's also going to depend on whether or not you have food in your
14:12gut, what else you happen to have circulating in your bloodstream, et cetera.
14:15But at a very basic level, we can confidently say that there are not one,
14:20not dozens, but as I mentioned before, hundreds of studies in animals and in humans
14:24that point to the fact that triggering the increase of adrenaline late in learning or
14:28immediately after learning is going to be most beneficial.
14:31If your goal is to retain that information for some period of time and to
14:34reduce the number of repetitions required in order to learn that information.
14:38Now, I want to acknowledge that on previous episodes of this podcast, I've talked a
14:42lot about things like non -sleep deep rest and naps and sleep as vital to
14:46the learning process. And I want to emphasize that none of that information has changed,
14:51right? I don't look at any of that information differently as the consequence of what
14:54I'm talking about today. It is still true that the strengthening of connections in the
14:58brain, the literal neuroplasticity, the changing of the circuits occurs during deep sleep and non
15:04-sleep deep rest. And it is also true, and I've mentioned these results earlier, that
15:08two papers were published in Cell Reports, Cell Press Journal, Excellent Journal, over the last
15:13few years, showing that brief - Naps of about 20 to up to 90 minutes
15:19in some period of time after an attempt to learn can enhance the rate of
15:24learning and memory. That still can be performed, but it can be performed some hours
15:30later, even an hour later.
15:32It can be performed two hours later, four hours later.
15:35Remember, it's in these naps and in deep sleep that the actual reconfiguration of the
15:39neural circuits occurs, the strengthening of those neural circuits occurs.
15:42It is not the case that you need to finish a bout of learning and
15:46drop immediately into a nap or sleep.
15:47Some people might do that, but if you're really trying to optimize and enhance and
15:51improve your memory, the data from McGaw and Cahill and many other laboratories that stemmed
15:57out from their initial work really point to the fact that the ideal protocol would
16:02be focus on the thing you're trying to learn very intensely, still try and get
16:06excellent sleep. Again, fundamentally important for mental health, physical health, and performance.
16:11And we can now extend from performance to saying, including learning and memory.
16:16Nap, if it doesn't interrupt your nighttime sleep, naps of anywhere from 10 to 90
16:21minutes or non -sleep deep rest protocols will enhance learning and memory, but we can
16:26now add to that, that spiking adrenaline, provided it can be done in a safe
16:30way, is going to reduce the number of repetitions required to learn.
16:34And that should be done at the very tail end or immediately after a learning
16:38bout, which is compatible with all the other protocols that I mentioned.
16:42And the reason I'm revisiting the stuff about sleep and non -sleep deep rest is
16:45I think that some people got the impression that they need to do that immediately
16:48after learning. And today I'm saying to the contrary, immediately after learning, you need to
16:52go into a heightened state of emotionality and alertness.
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18:22you do not need pharmacology you don't need caffeine you don't need alpha gpc you
18:28don't need any pharmacologic substance to spike adrenaline unless that's something that you already are
18:34doing or that you can do safely or that you know that you can do
18:37safely so if you're somebody who's not used to drinking caffeine and you suddenly drink
18:41four espresso after trying to learn something you are going to have a severe increase
18:47in alertness and probably even anxiety if you're panic attack prone please don't start taking
18:52stimulants in order to learn things better you could take a cold shower you could
18:56do an ice bath or get into a a cold circulating bath in order to
19:00evoke epinephrine and dopamine release you could go out for a hard run you could
19:05do any number of things that would increase adrenaline in your body which things you
19:10choose is up to you but the overall takeaway is that anything that increases adrenaline
19:15will increase learning and memory and will reduce the number of repetitions required to learn
19:20something and as a cautionary note don't think that you can push this entire system
19:25to the extreme over and over again or chronically as we say and get away
19:29with it in other words you're not going to be able to take a alpha
19:34gpc and a double espresso do your focused bout of work, cognitive or physical work,
19:40and then spike adrenaline again afterwards and remember that stuff even better, right?
19:45I'm not encouraging you. In fact, I'm discouraging you from chronically increasing adrenaline both during
19:53and after a given bout of work if the goal is to learn.
19:57Why do I say that?
19:59Well, work from McGaw and Cahill and others has shown that it's not the absolute
20:05amount of adrenaline that you release in your brain and body that matters for enhancing
20:10memory. It's the amount of adrenaline that you release relative to the amount of adrenaline
20:16that was in your system just prior, in particular in the hour or two prior.
20:21So again, it's the delta, as we say, it's the difference.
20:23So if you're going to chronically increase adrenaline, you're not going to learn as well.
20:27The real key is to have adrenaline modestly low, perhaps even just as much as
20:32you need in order to be able to focus on something, pay attention to it
20:35and then spike it afterwards.
20:37This is immensely important because while much of what we're talking about is actually a
20:43form of inducing a neurochemical acute stress, meaning a brief and rapid onset of stress,
20:51well, chronic stress, the chronic elevation of epinephrine and cortisol is actually detrimental to learning.
20:58And there's an entire category of literature, mainly from the work of the great and
21:03sadly, the late Bruce McEwen from the Rockefeller University and some of his scientific offspring,
21:08like the great Robert Sapolsky, showing that chronic stress, chronic elevation of epinephrine actually inhibits
21:15learning and memory and also can inhibit immune system function, whereas acute sharp increases in
21:20adrenaline and cortisol actually can enhance learning and indeed can enhance the immune system.
21:25So if you really want to leverage this information, you might consider getting your brain
21:31and body into a very calm and yet alert state.
21:34So a high attentional state that will allow you to focus on what it is
21:38that you're trying to learn.
21:39We know focus is vital for encoding information and for triggering neuroplasticity, but remaining calm
21:45throughout that time and then afterwards spiking adrenaline.
21:49and allowing adrenaline to have these incredible effects on reducing the number of repetitions required
21:54to learn. So if you're like me, you're learning about this information, this beautiful work
21:58of McGaw and Cahill and others, and thinking, wow, I should perhaps consider spiking my
22:04adrenaline in one form or another at the tail end or immediately following an attempt
22:09to learn something. And yet we are not the first to have this conversation, nor
22:14were McGaw and Cahill or any other researchers that I've discussed today the first to
22:19start using this technique. In fact, there is a beautiful review that was published in
22:24the journal Neuron, Cell Press Journal, excellent journal, called Mechanisms of Memory Under Stress.
22:29And I just want to read to you the first opening paragraph of this review.
22:34So here I'm reading, and I quote, in medieval times, communities threw young children in
22:39the river when they wanted them to remember important events.
22:41They believe that throwing a child in the water after witnessing historic proceedings would leave
22:46a lifelong memory for the events in the child.
22:49Believe it or not, this is true.
22:51This is a practice that somehow people arrived at.
22:57I don't know if they were aware of what adrenaline was, probably not, but somehow
23:01in medieval times, it was understood that spiking adrenaline or creating a robust emotional experience
23:09after an experience that one hoped a child would learn would encourage the child's nervous
23:15system, and they didn't even know what a nervous system was, but would encourage the
23:19brain and body of that child to remember those particular events.
23:24Very counterintuitive, if you ask me.
23:26I would have thought that the kid would remember only being thrown into the river.
23:29My guess is that they remember that, but the idea here anyway is that they
23:33also remember the things that preceded being thrown into the river.
23:35So both interesting and amusing and somewhat, I should say, thought -stimulating really that this
23:44is a practice that has been going on for many hundreds of years, and we
23:49are not the first to start thinking about using cold water as an adrenaline stimulus,
23:54nor are we the first to start thinking about using cold water -induced adrenaline as
23:58a way to enhance learning and memory.
23:59This is... been happening since medieval times.
24:02So now I'd like to talk about other tools that you can leverage that have
24:05been shown in quality peer -reviewed studies to enhance learning and memory.
24:09And perhaps one of the most potent of those tools is exercise.
24:14There are numerous studies on this in both animal models and fortunately now also in
24:19humans, thanks to the beautiful work of people like Wendy Suzuki from New York University.
24:24If you recall earlier, I mentioned that learning and memory almost always involves the strengthening
24:30of particular synapses and neural circuits in the brain.
24:33There is one exception, however, and we now have both animal data and some human
24:38data to support the fact that cardiovascular exercise seems to increase what we call dentate
24:44gyrus neurogenesis. Neurogenesis is the creation of new neurons.
24:48The dentate gyrus is a sub -region of the hippocampus that's involved in learning and
24:52memory of particular kinds. It's very clear that getting a minimum of 180 to 200
24:57minutes of so -called zone two cardiovascular exercise.
25:00So this is cardiovascular exercise that can be performed at a pretty steady state.
25:05We believe that it is indirectly, I should say indirectly through enhancements in cardiovascular fitness,
25:11that there are improvements in hippocampal dentate gyrus neurogenesis.
25:15What does that mean? The improvements in cardiovascular function are indirectly impacting the ability of
25:21the dentate gyrus to create these new neurons.
25:23To my knowledge, there's no direct relationship between exercise and stimulating the production of new
25:30neurons in the brain. It seems that it's the improvements in blood flow that also
25:36relate to improvements in things like glymphatic flow, the circulation of lymph fluid within the
25:40brain that are enhancing neurogenesis, and that neurogenesis, it appears, is important.
25:46Now, in fairness to the landscape of neuroscience and my colleagues at Stanford and elsewhere,
25:52there is a lot of debate as to whether or not there is much, if
25:56any, neurogenesis in the adult human brain.
26:00But regardless, I think the data are quite clear that the 180 to 200 minutes
26:05minimum of cardiovascular exercise is going to be important for other health metrics.
26:11Now, it is... It's clear that exercise can impact learning and memory through other non
26:15-neurogenesis, non -new neuron type mechanisms.
26:18And one of the more exciting ones that has been studied over the years is
26:23this notion of hormones from bone traveling in the bloodstream to the brain and enhancing
26:30the function of the hippocampus.
26:31Yes, indeed, your bones make hormones.
26:34We call these endocrine effects, so they're effectively acting as hormones.
26:38And one such chemical is something called osteocalcin.
26:41Now, these findings arrived to us through various labs, but one of the more important
26:45labs for sake of this discussion today is the laboratory of Eric Kandel at Columbia
26:49Medical School. His laboratory has studied the effects of exercise on hippocampal function and memory,
26:56and other laboratories have done that as well.
26:58And what they found is that cardiovascular exercise and perhaps other forms of exercise too,
27:03but mainly cardiovascular exercise, creates the release of osteocalcin from the bones that travels to
27:10the brain and to subregions of the hippocampus and encourages the electrical activity and the
27:16formation and maintenance of connections within the hippocampus and keeps the hippocampus functioning well in
27:23order to lay down new memories.
27:24So much of our brain real estate is devoted to movement that it's been hypothesized
27:29for more than a half century, but especially in recent years, as we've learned more
27:34about the function of the brain at a really detailed circuit level, that the relationship
27:39between the brain and body and the maintenance and perhaps even the improvement of neural
27:43circuitry in the brain depends on our body movements and the signal from the body
27:48that our brain is still moving.
27:50The fact that osteocalcin is released from bone and in particular can be released in
27:56response to load -bearing exercise.
27:58So this would be running.
27:59Again, weightlifting hasn't been tested directly, but one would imagine anything that involves jumping and
28:04landing or weightlifting or body weight movements and things of that sort.
28:10That's a signal to release osteocalcin, and we know that signal occurs, that is directly
28:17reflective of the fact that the body was moving and moving in particular.
28:22In fact, you could imagine that big bones, like your femur, are going to release
28:26more osteocalcin or be in a position to release more osteocalcin than five movements, like
28:31the movements of the digits.
28:32And this idea that the body is constantly signaling to the brain about the status
28:37of the body and the varying needs of the brain to update its brain circuitry
28:42is a really attractive idea that fits entirely with the biology of exercise, osteocalcin, and
28:49hippocampal function. Now, I certainly don't want to give the message that just moving, just
28:54exercise is sufficient to keep the neural architecture of your brain healthy, young, and able
28:58to learn. While that might be true, it's also important to actually engage in attempts
29:04to learn new material, either physical material, so new types of movements and skills, and
29:10or new types of cognitive information, languages, mathematics, history, current events, all sorts of things
29:17that involve your brain. Nonetheless, it's clear that physical movement and cognitive ability and the
29:24potential to enhance cognitive ability and the ability to learn new physical skills are intimately
29:29connected. And osteocalcin appears to be at least one way in which that brain -body
29:34relationship is established and maintained.
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31:08pack. Next, I'm going to tell you about a study which points out the immense
31:13value of visual images for laying down memories, and you can leverage this information, and
31:20this involves both the taking of photographs, something that's actually quite easily done these days
31:24with your phone, as well as your ability to take mental photographs by literally snapping
31:29your eyelids shut. So I just briefly want to describe this paper because it provides
31:32a tool that you can leverage in your attempt to learn and remember things better.
31:36The title of this paper is Photographic Memory, The Effects of Our Volitional Photo -Taking
31:42on Memory for Visual and Auditory Aspects of an Experience.
31:45It refers to photographic memory, not in the context of photographic memory that we normally
31:51hear about, where people are truly photographic, look at a page and somehow absorb all
31:55that information and commit it to memory, but rather the use of camera photographs or
32:00the use of mental camera photographs, literally looking at something and deciding blink and snapping
32:06a, so to speak, snapping a snapshot of whatever it is that you were looking
32:11at and remembering the content.
32:12Two years ago, I was in an Uber and I looked out the window and
32:17it was a street scene.
32:17I was actually in New York at the time, and I decided for reasons that
32:21are still unclear to me to take a mental snapshot of this city street image,
32:25even though nothing interesting in particular was happening.
32:28And I do recall that there was a guy wearing a yellow shirt, walking, there
32:32was some construction, et cetera.
32:33I can still see that image in my mind's eye because I took this mental
32:36snapshot. This paper addresses whether or not this mental snapshotting thing is real and raised
32:41the hypothesis that if people are allowed out.
32:44to choose what they take photos of, that taking photos, again, this is with a
32:49camera, not mental snapshotting, that taking those photos would actually enhance their memory for those
32:54objects, those places, those people, and in fact, details of those object, places, and people.
32:59And indeed, that's what they found.
33:01What does this mean? It means that if you really want to remember something or
33:04somebody, take a photo of that thing or person, pay attention while you take the
33:09photo, but it doesn't really matter if you look at the photo again.
33:12That framing up of the photograph stamps down a visual image in your mind that
33:16is more robust at serving a memory than had you just looked at that thing
33:20with your own eyes. Very interesting, and it raises all sorts of questions for me
33:24about whether or not it's because you're framing up a small aperture, a small portion
33:28of the visual scene, but that's one logical interpretation, although they didn't test that.
33:32The reason I find this so interesting is that a lot of what we try
33:35and learn is visual. And for a lot of people, the ability to learn visual
33:40information feels challenging. And we'll look at something, and we'll try and create some detailed
33:46understanding of it. We'll try and understand the relationships between things in that scene.
33:50It does appear, based on the study, that the mere decision to take a mental
33:54snapshot, like, okay, I'm going to blink my eyelids, and I'm going to take a
33:57snapshot of whatever it is I see, can actually stamp down a visual memory, much
34:01in the same way that a camera can stamp down a visual memory, of course,
34:05through vastly distinct mechanisms. No discussion of memory would be complete without a discussion of
34:11the ever intriguing phenomenon known as deja vu.
34:15The way this works has been defined largely by the wonderful work of Susumu Tonagawa
34:20at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT.
34:24I should also mention the beautiful work of Mark Mayford at the Scripps Institute in
34:27UC San Diego. Here's what they discovered.
34:30They evaluated the patterns of neural firing in the hippocampus as subjects learn new things.
34:37Neuron A fires, then neuron B fires, then neuron C fires in a particular sequence.
34:42Again, the firing of neurons in a particular sequence, like the playing of keys on
34:46a piano in a particular sequence, leads to a particular song on the piano and
34:49leads to a particular memory of an experience within the brain.
34:53They then used... They then used...
34:55So... some molecular tools and tricks to label and capture those neurons such that they
35:01could go back later and activate those neurons in either the same sequence or in
35:07a different sequence to the one that occurred during the formation of the memory.
35:12And to make a long story short and to summarize multiple papers published in incredibly
35:18high tier journals, journals like Nature and Science, which are extremely stringent, found that whether
35:25or not those particular neurons were played in the precise sequence that happened when they
35:30encoded the memory or whether or not those neurons were played in a different sequence
35:35or even if those neurons were played, activated that is all at once with no
35:42temporal sequence, all firing in concert all at once, evoked the same behavior and in
35:51some sense, the same memory.
35:53So at a neural circuit level, this is deja vu.
35:57Whether or not this same sort of phenomenon occurs when you're walking down the street
36:01and suddenly you feel as if, wow, I feel like I've been here before.
36:04You meet someone and you feel like, gosh, I feel like I know you.
36:07I feel like there's some familiarity here that I can't quite put my finger on.
36:10We don't know for sure that that's what's happening, but this is the most mechanistic
36:15and logical explanation for what has for many decades, if not hundreds of years, has
36:20been described as deja vu.
36:22I'd like to cover one additional tool that you can use to improve learning and
36:26memory. This is based on a paper from none other than Wendy Suzuki at New
36:30York University. The title of this paper will tell you a lot about where we're
36:34going. The title is, Brief Daily Meditation Enhances Attention, Memory, Mood, and Emotional Regulation in
36:41Non -Experienced Meditators. This is a study that involves subjects aged 18 to 45, none
36:47of whom were experienced meditators prior to this study.
36:51There were two general groups in this study.
36:55One group did a 13 -minute -long meditation, and this meditation was a fairly conventional
37:02meditation. They would sit or lie down.
37:04They would do somewhat of a body scan.
37:07evaluating, for instance, how tense or relaxed they felt throughout their body, and they would
37:11focus on their breathing, trying to bring their attention back to their breathing and to
37:15the state of their body as the meditation progressed.
37:18The other group, which we can call the control group, listened to, of all things,
37:22a podcast for an equivalent amount of time, but they were not instructed to do
37:27any kind of body scan or pay attention to their breathing.
37:29Every subject in the study either meditated daily or listened to an equivalent duration podcast
37:35daily for a period of eight weeks.
37:37So the takeaways from the study are several fold.
37:39First of all, that daily meditation of 13 minutes can enhance your ability to pay
37:45attention and to learn. It can truly enhance memory.
37:49However, you need to do that for at least eight weeks in order to start
37:53to see the effects to occur, and we have to presume that you have to
37:57continue those meditation training sessions.
38:00In fact, they found that if people only did four weeks of meditation, these effects
38:04didn't show up. Now, eight weeks might seem like a long time, but I think
38:07that 13 minutes a day is not actually that big of a time commitment.
38:12And the results of this study certainly incentivized me to start adopting a, I'm going
38:17for 15 minutes a day now.
38:18I've been an on and off meditator for a number of years.
38:21I've been pretty good about it lately, but I confess I've been doing far shorter
38:25meditations of anywhere from three to five or maybe 10 minutes.
38:28I'm going to ramp that up to 15 minutes a day.
38:31And I'm doing that specifically to try and access these improvements in cognitive ability and
38:36our abilities to learn. Today, we covered a lot of aspects of memory and how
38:40to improve your memory. However, for sake of what was discussed today, please understand that
38:45any number of different neurochemicals can evoke or can increase the amount of adrenaline that's
38:51circulating in your brain and body.
38:52It really doesn't matter how you evoke the adrenaline release, because remember, adrenaline is the
38:57final common pathway by which particular experiences, particular perceptions are stamped into memory, which answers
39:05our very first question raised at the beginning of the episode, which is why do
39:09we remember anything at all?
39:10All right, that was the question that we raised.
39:13Why is it that from morning till night and throughout your entire life, you have
39:16tons of sensory experience, tons of sensory experience, of perceptions, why is it that some
39:19are remembered and others are not?
39:21While I would never want to distill an important question such as that down to
39:26a one -molecule type of answer, I think we can confidently say, based on the
39:31vast amount of animal and human research data, that epinephrine, adrenaline, and some of the
39:38other chemicals that it acts with in concert is in fact the way that we
39:43remember particular events and not all events.
39:46Once again, thank you for joining me today to discuss the neurobiology of learning and
39:51memory and how to improve your memory using science -based tools.
39:55And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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