where we discuss science and science-based tools

for everyday life.

My name is Andrew Huberman,

and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

This podcast is separate

from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and effort

to bring you zero cost to consumer information

about science and science-related tools.

In keeping with that theme,

I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

Our first sponsor is Headspace.

Headspace is a meditation app that makes meditation easy.

I've been meditating on and off now for about 30 years,

although I confess more off than on.

And that's because I think like, for a lot of people,

sticking to a meditation practice can be pretty challenging.

I started using Headspace a few years ago

and I found that it's really allowed me to

stick to a meditation practice on a regular basis.

I meditate anywhere from five to seven times a week.

The app includes meditations

that are all backed by scientific peer-reviewed studies.

And it makes it really easy to start

and complete the meditations.

I started using these meditations while I was flying

a few years back.

On JetBlue flights,

they started offering Headspace meditations.

That's where I initially started.

And then I moved over to the app,

and I really enjoy it and I derive great benefit from it.

If you'd like to try Headspace,

you can go to headspace.com/specialoffer.

And if you do that,

you'll get all the meditations that Headspace offers

for free for one month.

That's headspace.com/specialoffer.

You get all the meditations for free,

which is the best offer that

they has available right now.

So if you're interested in it, check it out.

The second sponsor of today's podcast is Athletic Greens.

Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral

probiotic drink.

I started using Athletic Greens in 2012,

and I've been using it continuously ever since.

I started using Athletic Greens because

I found it rather dizzying to know

which vitamins and minerals to take.

And Athletic Greens allows me to get

the full base of all the necessary vitamins and minerals

in one easy to consume drink.

It also turns out that the drink tastes quite good.

I mix mine with some lemon juice and some water,

I drink it once or twice a day.

The probiotics in Athletic Greens are also important to me

because there are a lot of data now supporting

the fact that the gut microbiome

is important for the gut-brain axis

for various aspects of cognitive function,

immune function, metabolic function.

There's just a huge number of things

that having a healthy gut microbiome

has been shown to be important for.

So by taking Athletic Greens,

I have that base covered as well.

If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman.

And if you do that,

they'll give you a year supply of liquid vitamin D3 K2.

There are also a lot of data now showing that vitamin D3

is very important for a number of different

biological functions.

In addition, they'll give you five free travel packs

with your order.

It can be difficult to mix up powders while on the road,

when in a car, or in a hotel, or on a plane, et cetera.

The travel packs make everything really clean and easy.

So you'll get the year supply of vitamin D3 K2

plus the five free travel packs

if you go to athleticgreens.com/huberman.

The third sponsor of today's podcast is Madefor.

Madefor is behavioral science company

that makes learning positive habits and growth mindset easy.

I've been involved with Madefor since the beginning

as the lead of their scientific advisory.

Other members of the scientific advisory include,

for instance, the head of the chronobiology unit

at the National Institutes of Mental Health,

as well as psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School

and elsewhere, all of whom are serious about science

and science-related tools

for developing positive habits and growth mindset.

The program is a 10 month-program,

during which each month you engage in a specific activity

designed to encourage and cultivate

positive habits and growth mindset.

As well, we hold a monthly Zoom call,

during which we discuss the program, people's progress,

and answer any questions they have directly.

If you'd like to try Madefor, you can go to getmadefor.com,

and if you put Huberman in at checkout,

you'll get 20% off the program.

That's getmadefor.com,

put Huberman in at checkout, and get 20% off the program.

Today, we're going to talk about

how to change your nervous system for the better.

As you recall, your nervous system includes your brain

and your spinal cord,

but also all the connections that your brain and spinal cord

make with the organs of your body

and all the connections that the organs of your body

make with your brain and spinal cord.

This thing that we call the nervous system is responsible

for everything we know,

all our behavior, all our emotions,

everything we feel about ourselves and the outside world,

everything we think and believe.

It's really at the center of our entire experience of life

and who we are.

Fortunately, in humans, unlike in other species,

we can change our nervous system

by taking some very specific and deliberate actions.

And, today, we're really going to focus on the actions,

the motor commands and the aspects of movement and balance

that allow us to change our nervous system.

It turns out that movement and balance

actually provide windows or portals

into our ability to change our nervous system

the way we want,

even if those changes are not about

learning new movements or learning how to balance.

And soon you'll understand why.

So, today, we're going to talk a lot about

the basic science of neuroplasticity.

I promise to not use excessive nomenclature.

There'll be a little bit,

but I'll try and make it as clear as possible.

And we're also going to talk a lot about protocols and tools

that the scientific literature points to

and support for changing our nervous system,

again, not just for sake of learning new motor movements

or how to balance better,

but for how to feel differently

about particular experiences,

both past, present, and future,

and as well as how to learn faster.

We're not going to discuss hacks, a word I loath,

we're not going to discuss gimmicks,

we're going to discuss mechanism and scientific data

and the tools that those mechanisms

and scientific data point to

so that you can tailor your practices around learning

to your specific needs and goals.

So let's begin by just examining

the big picture question which is,

does the brain control behavior?

And my hope is that everyone is immediately thinking yes.

The brain and nervous system, we really should say,

'cause the brain is just one component

of the nervous system,

controls our behavior.

How does it do that?

Well, there are a couple different levels that it does that.

First of all, if we're talking about movement,

behavior generally means movement,

if we're talking about movement,

we have two categories of neurons

that are very important to think about

in the context of neuroplasticity.

First of all, we have what are called lower motor neurons.

These are motor neurons that live in our spinal cord.

For the aficionados out there,

for those of you that might be headed to medical school

or just want to learn more about the anatomy,

they live in the ventral horn of the spinal cord.

But that doesn't matter if you don't want to know that,

just know that you have these things called

lower motor neurons.

These are neurons that are in the spinal cord

but they extend a wire that we call an axon

out into the peripheral nervous system, into the body.

And those neurons connect with muscle.

They send electrical potentials out there

that allow our muscles to twitch into contract.

As a little point of fact, actually,

we don't have muscle memory.

There's no such thing as muscle memory.

Muscles are dumb.

They don't know anything,

they don't have a history, they don't have a memory,

they don't know anything.

It is the neurons that control those muscles

and their firing patterns in which all the information

for motor patterns are stored.

So your ability to walk is not muscle memory,

it's neural memory.

Now, the lower motor neurons,

while smarter than the muscle so to speak,

are not the most brilliant of the motor neurons.

They are generally involved in doing what they are told,

and they are told what to do from two sources.

We have circuits in our brainstem,

so this would be kind of around your neck deep in the brain,

that are called central pattern generators.

These are sometimes called CPGs.

Central pattern generators are what allow us to generate

repetitive patterns of movement.

So inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling

subconsciously is controlled by a central pattern generator.

That just means a collection of neurons.

If you really want to know,

they're called the pre-Botzinger neurons

discovered by Jack Feldman and colleagues at UCLA.

These neurons in the brainstem

send information down the phrenic nerve

and control the diaphragm.

And it goes inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

And you don't have to think about that.

You could think about it

and you could change the durations of inhales and exhales

and change that up,

but the motor neurons that control that

are just responding to what the brain is telling it to do.

The other central pattern generators include

things like walking.

The right limb-left limb, right limb-left limb pattern that

we normally associate with walking

was learned during childhood,

and these central pattern generators, sometimes called CPGs,

tell our lower motor neurons, "Fire.

Now you fire, now you fire."

So they are literally saying, "Right, left, right left."

They are the marching orders from the brainstem

to the lower motor neurons.

So these lower motor neurons do what they are told.

They are obedient little soldiers

and they do what they are told,

and their job is to make the muscles contract

at specific times.

Okay.

That's all simple.

But then there are the upper motor neurons.

The upper motor neurons actually reside in our motor cortex,

way up on top of the brain.

And they are involved in sending signals

for deliberate action.

So they send signals to the lower motor neurons

which are the effectors,