How to Improve Memory & Accelerate Learning | Dr. Andrew Huberman

Sarah's Question

00:00Hello, Dr. Huberman. My name is Sarah and I come from the south of England in the UK and I would love to know what your top health hacks um from a neuroscience perspective were for improving your memory. I was wondering if you could tell me what the best things to try would be.

00:23Great. Well, thank you Sarah from south of England. Just came back from London recently. used to get over there a lot more uh to the UK. It's a lovely place. I won't attempt my British accent, but I'm envious of the British accent. It's um delightful.

00:36Okay. Neuroscience

Neuroscience of Memory

00:40supported tools for improving memory. There is a vast neuroscience literature on memory in particular that memories are encoded, right? They're first made in the structure that we call the hippocampus. You actually have two of them, hippocampi, one on each side of your brain.

00:54And then memories once they're formed are kind of pushed out. They're not really pushed out, but they're sent to uh different circuits in the neoortex, which is the outer part of the brain, the bumpy part of the brain that appears wrinkly uh when the skull is removed.

01:10And what we know about that process is that memories change from when we first make them to when they're first stored to many years later depending on whether we rehearse or we have to recall in some instances what those memories were. meaning a memory that you formed in the fifth grade that might have been very relevant to your life then remembering the the um intersection where a good friend not your best friend but a good friend uh lived and how to navigate there important perhaps when you were friends with that person in the fifth grade not later right so the memory was made it

01:48was put into your neoortex and elsewhere presumably and eventually it just sort of dissipates but it's still there and the reason I'm giving you this brief neuroscience lesson And it's only a tiny tiny fraction of what we know about the formation and storage of memories is because when you're thinking about neuroscience supported ways to increase your memory, there's really two approaches to that.

02:08One is about recall of things that you very likely will lose if you don't continue to practice them. The other is about learning new things. Okay? And these operate differently in terms of how your brain is able to remember additional things going forward.

02:27In other words, you need to practice both forms of memory. That is recalling previous memories to keep them available to you as well as learning new things in order to keep the whole memory system vital and able to continue to both remember things like names, which people often are upset that they start forgetting as they get older.

02:47That they see that as a warning sign that they might be developing dementia or something of that sort, which it isn't necessarily, I should point out. and their ability to continue to learn new things. So, we can break this down into either a 4-hour podcast or a brief answer.

03:03And I'm going to try and provide a brief but sufficient for now answer for you and anyone else interested in this issue. If you are interested in forming new memories, the most important pieces of the formula are the following. And this is very well supported in the neuroscience literature.

03:19You must be focused at the time of encoding. at the time when you're trying to learn the thing. Okay, that means you also have to be alert. There's no focus without alertness. That also means getting good sleep. That also means exercise. And

Exercise and Brain Alertness

03:36this is a point about exercise and brain longevity that most people miss, which is that many, not all, but many of the benefits of exercise on brain health and memory are because of the pro-arousal effects of exercise. Meaning, if you do a 30-minute jog or brisk walk even, or you do a moderate to highintensity resistance training session, or you hop on a uh like an one of those uh aine bikes with a with a fan, which you'll quickly learn is not designed to cool you off, but rather to provide resistance, and you warm up for a minute, and then you sprint hard for a

04:09minute or half a minute and then, you know, pedal easy for a minute and then go 30 seconds again. That sort of thing will get your heart rate up, up. There is now a vast literature showing that all those forms of exercise and others as well, even things as mellow as Tai Chi, which turns out to be pretty difficult.

04:24I tried it recently. It's not that easy to do correctly. Tai Chi, a yoga class, all forms of exercise because they raise your levels of autonomic arousal and alertness. And they get these again the catakolamines is a repeating theme, the dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and circulating.

04:40Yes, they increase things like brain derived neutrophic factor etc. They set you up to learn better in part because of the chemicals and their ability to make your brain connections more plastic. But the biggest effect of exercise is the proarousal effect.

04:56Put differently, it increases alertness which allows you to focus better which is the first real step in triggering learning and neuroplasticity. So this is a very important point for people to understand because people want to hear ah you know um it's this form of exercise or that form of exercise.

05:14It's the form of exercise that gives you a boost in alertness. Sure BDNF and there are other things too. IGF-1. I mean, I could make a list of 50 chemicals that exercise increases that facilitate neuroplasticity. But the most potent effects are by virtue of the fact that exercise increases arousal, which then allows you to focus better in the following one to six hours.

05:35What do you do in those 1 to six hours is really the key to actually learning something that benefits your memory. Just being more alert but not focused on anything specific is not going to help your memory specifically. Okay? It might facilitate brain health.

05:53So the exercise thing is the first domino that needs to fall. But if you can be alert and really focused on any kind of learning without doing exercise first, yes, you should still exercise for other reasons. But there's nothing special about exercise in terms of neuroplasticity of learning other things except this arousal effect.

06:13Okay. Alertness allows you to be focused. When you're focused, the

The Power of Making Errors

06:17neuroscience tells us that you have to make errors. You have to make errors. Whether or not you're trying to learn dance, you're trying to learn uh do a cross word puzzle, you're trying to get better at chess, you're trying to learn um how to code, you're trying to learn um how to be different in certain social interactions, whatever it is you're trying to learn or a physical skill, you have to push yourself past the limits of your abilities.

06:37Why? Well, put simply, if your nervous system can carry out something that you're trying to do, there is absolutely no reason for it to change. Period. End of story. You have to make errors through deliberate effort to do things correctly, right?

06:54You can't just do throwaway errors. Like, you can't go just, this is obvious, but just for sake of uh example, you can't go out to the tennis court and intentionally miss a bunch of of serves and get better at serving. That's obvious, right?

07:05What you have to do is serve to the best of your ability. serve to the best of your ability. And when you fail, when you screw up, that sends a signal through a very interesting set of circuits that's relayed through your mini brain, as they call your cerebellum in the back, that then carries the error signal forward, and then the rest of your brain has to reshape itself.

07:22And here's a critical point. The reshaping occurs during deep rest, in particular, sleep. Both slowwave deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, which we talked about earlier in this episode. Both are crucial. Some people need six hours of sleep a night, some seven, some eight, some nine.

07:36Okay, do your best to get what you need consistently. So you need that sleep in the ne ideally the night after you try and learn something or every night. Please see previous question about the problems with overoptimization. I don't want anyone to take these things as rule of law.

07:49If you don't sleep well for a night or two, it's not like your learning is completely nuked, but you don't want to do that consistently. The deep rest piece is critical. But then there's another one. There's a really impressive literature that shows and this is backed by neuroscience.

08:04Okay, so brain imaging, it's backed by performance, which is perhaps the most important thing, people's ability to learn new information. And remember the other important aspect of memory to call back memories of things from the past and it's self- testing.

08:19This is the most

Self-Testing Protocol for Plasticity

08:22overlooked powerful protocol for neuroplasticity. In fact, I covered a bunch of studies on this in the how to study and learn episode of the podcast. I'm guessing a bunch of students watch that podcast. Very popular episode. Um, and I'm guessing a lot of non- studentents probably didn't because the word study probably sounded like if you're not in school, this wouldn't be relevant.

08:38But it's highly re relevant. And here are the the key takeaways. People were given a passage of information to read and they could either do it once, twice, three times, or four times. This has been done with multiple uh iterations in different studies.

08:50Some studies included taking notes. Some studies included highlighting. You know, all the different ways that people study information to try and learn. By far the most impactful thing for forming stable memories over time or calling back old memories to keep this memory system thriving was self- testing.

09:07That self- testing can take the form of just, hm, can I do a mental walk back to my friend's house from the fifth grade? Now, you have to ask yourself, is this relevant information for your life now? Well, perhaps not, but maybe you're just testing your memory system, right?

09:22And here's the key. Errors should be expected and embraced. Whether you're trying to learn some new information from two days ago, whether you're trying to remember information from uh three years ago or 30 years ago, when you can't remember, that's your nervous system's cue that it's going to need to draw it out of those circuits which are now in your neoortex.

09:43It's deep within your memory. Although it's a bit of a misnomer because your hippocampus sits deeper to your cortex, but anyway, that's a nerdy side point. It's distributed out there and you need to call it back. And the only way to really call back those memories in a way that they're going to stay with you going forward to keep your memory and keep these circuits going that allow you to continue to form new memories keep this whole system robust is to make errors where you go I can't remember what came after three in well question one of the hubman lab

10:16podcast Q&A like right now what was that third thing? So you have to test yourself. Now, if you go right back and you just get the information, that's not going to help you much. That's just like reading it again or hearing it again or highlighting it, it's not going to help you that much.

10:27You have to remember what you can remember. And then you have to hit the point of I can't remember that. Darn it. That friction point, that tip of the tongue phenomenon or like I can't remember that person's name. Great. Those memories are now resurfacing.

10:39If you wait some period of time, typically they come back. If you have to go look them up later, great. You won't forget them as readily as if, of course, you didn't go look them up. The point here is that all of learning is anti-forgetting.

10:51It almost sounds like a giant duh when you hear it, but all of learning and memory is anti-forgetting. And we need to push both the learning, right? Alertness, focus, trigger that plasticity. Deep rest and sleep allow the plasticity to actually occur.

11:05The physical reshaping of circuitry that's going to carry those memories. But then we have to consolidate that over time. We have to recall it. Okay? and self- testing with errors, pushing ourselves to the point where we can't remember something and then looking it up and reconsolidating it.

11:21That's the key.

Using ChatGPT for Memory Testing

11:23That's what the neuroscience literature says. That's what the psychological literature says. And there's just so much data to support this. So Sarah, my suggestion would be test yourself on things that you're interested in learning regardless of whether the learning occurred recently or it's from the the past.

11:41Both forms of of testing yourself. And again, this can just be done mentally on a walk. You could write down questions for yourself. Most people won't do that. These days, I'll use chat GPT to test myself on material either from a podcast or even some material that I learned long ago and I'll sort of say design a basic test at the level of kind of second year graduate school at I don't know for me it was you know graduate school neuroscience and you know in synaptic transmission.

12:05I of course remember that stuff but they're little details that over time if you don't practice can Wayne and of course I'm learning new things all the time. And in order to put those to memory to really consolidate those, I'll use chat GBT to generate a test for myself.

12:17And it is really good because I can say, you know what, that was too easy. Make it harder. Okay, so there's a lot more to say about that. Um, I suggest listening to the how to study and learn episode if you'd like to go deeper into that. We've done a number of episodes on memory, including working memory elsewhere, but the general themes here are consistent across all forms of memory, all ages, and all forms of learning.

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