Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today. My guest is dr. Wendy Suzuki. Dr. Suzuki is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at New York University and one of the leading researchers in the area of learning and memory. Her laboratory is contributed, fundamental textbook understanding of how brain areas.
Is the hippocampus which you will learn about today. How the hippocampus and related brain circuits, allow us to take certain experiences and commit them to Memory so that we can use that information in the future. Dr. Suzuki is also an expert public educator in the realm of science a few years back. She had a TED Talk That essentially went viral, if you haven't seen it already. You should absolutely check it out in which she describes her experience using exercise as a way to enhance learning and memory.
And on the basis of that personal experience, she reshaped her laboratory to explore how things like meditation exercise. And other things that we can do with our physiology and our psychology can allow us to learn faster to commit things to memory longer and indeed to reshape our cognitive performance in a variety of settings as such. I am delighted to announce that dr. Suzuki is now not only running a laboratory at New York University, but she is the incoming dean of arts and science at New York.
City. And of course, she was selected for that role for her, many talents, but one of the important aspects of her program, she tells me is going to be to incorporate the incredible power of exercise meditation. And other behavioral practices for enhancing learning for improving Stress Management and other things to optimize student performance today, you are going to get access to much of that information, so that you can apply those tools in your daily life as well. Dr. Suzuki is also an author.
Of several important books. The most recent one is entitled good anxiety, harnessing, the power of the most misunderstood emotion, and a previous book entitled healthy brain, happy life, a personal program to activate your brain and do everything better. And while that is admittedly a very pop science type title. I will remind you that she is one of the preeminent memory researchers in the world and has been for quite a while. So, the information that you'll glean from those books is both rich in depth.
Breath and is highly applicable by the end of today's discussion. You will have learned from dr. Suzuki large amount of knowledge about how memories are formed, how they are lost and you will have a much larger kit of tools to apply for your efforts to learn better to remember better and to apply that information in the ways that best serve you before. We begin. I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information.
Out science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is athletic greens. Athletic greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral, probiotic drink. I've been taking athletic green since 2012. So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking athletic greens. And the reason I still take out lettuce greens once or twice a day. Is that it meets all my foundational, vitamin mineral and probiotic needs. In fact, whenever people asked me if I
The only take one supplement, which supplements should I take? I tell them athletic greens for the simple reason that it covers your base of vitamins, minerals and probiotics. It also has important adaptogens, digestive enzymes for gut health. All this is very important because we now know that gut health and the so-called gut-brain axis is very important for things, like mood and brain function, and also contributes to immune system function, with athletic greens. You're covering all those bases, and of course, you need to eat nutritious.
Ian and healthy diet, that's right for you, but by taking out lettuce, greens once or twice a day, you can be sure that there are going to be no gaps or deficiencies in your vitamin mineral or probiotic needs. I mix mine with water and a little bit of lemon juice or lime juice. I personally find it delicious. If you'd like to try out, let it greens. You can go to athletic greens.com huberman, to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs. Plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 K to both of which are also vital for immediate and long-term health. So once again, if you go to athletic,
Dot-com huberman, you can get a special offer of five free travel packs, to make it easy to mix up athletic greens while you're in the car or otherwise traveling. Plus they'll give you the year supply of vitamin D3 K to today's episode is also brought To Us by inside tracker inside tracker is a personalized nutrition platform. The analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your
Immediate and long-term Health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test and nowadays with the Advent of modern, DNA tests. You can also get insight into for instance, what your biological age is and compare that to your chronological age. And of course, your biological age is the number that really matters with inside tracker. There's a distinct advantage in the advantage. Is that while there are many blood tests and DNA tests out there inside trackers blood and DNA tests come also with a platform meaning a website platform that allows you to
Exactly what you could or should do in order to adjust the numbers on things like hormone levels, metabolic factors and lipids and so on. It's a little pop-up window at points to nutritional supplementation and behavioral regimens that you can take in order to put those numbers in the ranges that are optimal for you. If you'd like to try inside tracker, you can visit inside tracker dot, coms huberman, to get 20% off any of inside, trackers plans. That's inside tracker.com huberman to get 20% off. Today's episode is also brought To Us by
Just blink is an app that has thousands of nonfiction books. Each condensed down to just 15 minutes of key. Takeaways for those books. I love reading books from front to back. I like the actual physical book. I'm sort of old-fashioned that way and I do also listen to audio books. It's very rare that I don't finish a book that I've started on the last. I like to revisit some of my favorite books. I also like to write down key takeaways from those books, sometimes, even before I listen to the full length book, so I don't mind. Spoiling the takeaway is because when I read nonfiction,
In generally, I'm trying to extract the most valuable Knowledge from them. So often listen to a blankest 15 minute version, then the full-length book or sometimes the full-length book and then the blank is 15 minute version. Either way blink. This is a great way to get through any book and to extract the best from those books. I've used it for for instance. Matt Walker is why we sleep and excellent book on why we sleep as well as Tim Ferriss has the 4-Hour Body and I seem to labels the Black Swan and so on and so on with blankets you get
Unlimited access to read, or listen to a massive library of nonfiction books. It really is a treasure Trove of information right now. Blink is has a special offer just for huberman Lab podcast listeners. If you go to Blink, s.com huberman, you can get a free 7-Day trial and 25% off a blink as premium membership. Once again, go to Blink, s.com huberman to get a 7-Day free trial and 25% off. And now, for my discussion with dr. Wendy Suzuki Wendy, great to see you again. And to have
You hear it's been a little while.
It's been a while. So great to be here. Andrew. Thank you so much for
having me delighted. I'd like to start off by talking about memory generally and then I'd love to chat about your incredible work discovering how exercise in memory interface and what people can do to improve their memory and brain function. Generally. Yes, but for those that are not familiar, maybe you could just step us through the basic elements of memory a few brain structure.
As perhaps, you know, what happens when I for instance, it is mug of tea is pretty unremarkable. But the fact that now I've talked about it. I don't know that I'll ever forget about it. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. So what happens when I look at this mug and decide that it's something special for whatever reason.
Yeah. Well, I like to see there are four things that make things. Memorable. Number one is novelty, if it's something new the very first,
In the very first time we've seen something or experience, something our brains are drawn to that our attentional systems draw us to that. And when you are paying attention to something that's that's part of what makes things memorable, s is repetition. If you see that cup of tea every single day and every single time you do an interview, you talk about your cup of tea, you're going to remember it. That's just how our brains work repetition. Works. Third is Association.
So if you meet somebody new that knows lots of people that you know, so you and I share many, many, many, many people that we both know. It's easy to remember, it's easier to remember you, especially if you were somebody knew that I hadn't met before we have met before, so Association. And then the fourth one is emotional resonance. So we remember the happiest and the saddest moments of our lives and that also
Includes, you know, funny surprising things. That is the interaction between two key brain structures, the amygdala which is important for processing. Lots of emotional, particularly threatening kinds of situations, but those threatening surprising kinds of situations, the amygdala takes that information and makes another key structure called the hippocampus work, better to put new,
Long-term memories in your brain. So that in fact, is the key structure for long-term memory. This structure called the hippocampus,
fantastic. So novelty, repetition Association and emotional resonance. Yes, you tell us a bit more about the hippocampus. I think, at least for my generation. Well, I'm a neuroscientist. But for most people in my generation, I think they first heard about the hippocampus from the movie Memento. Oh, yeah, where the guy says hippocampus. Yeah, and if, for those of you who haven't seen that movie,
It bizarrely constructed movie. But an interesting one nonetheless about memory, but even as a neuroscientist, sometimes I'm perplexed at how the hippocampus Works. Maybe could, if you would, if you would step us through gown, what this structure is, what it looks like. Maybe a few of its sub regions because unlike Vision, the topping, I've worked most of my career on where we know. Okay, the eye does this part and the the
Alamos. Does this part in the cortex? Is that part? I've always been a little perplexed about the hippocampus frankly. So and I've read the textbooks and I've heard the lectures. But yeah, I'd love to get the update. You know, what are the general themes of the hippocampus as a structure and its function? Yeah. What do you think? Everyone including neuroscientist should know about the hippocampus?
Absolutely. So let's start with the basics. The word hippocampus means seahorse. It is shaped the structure of shaped like a kind of curlicue. She horse. That is
Accurate everybody including neuroscientist should know. It's a beautiful structure. It is visually anatomically. Beautiful with these kind of intertwining poorly sub regions within it and I think that's one of the reasons why early anatomists, who are the very first neuroscientist got attracted to it. Because it's this interesting kind of twirly structure, deep in the heart of the brain. So that's anatomically. Functionally.
What does it do? Well, it's easiest to understand what it does. When you look at what happens when you don't have a hippocampus anymore. What if you what if by some you know disease or you have your hippocampus removed by accident? What happens? Well, we know this from the most famous neurological Pacer patient of all time. His initials were hm. So all psychology neuroscience.
Northside students know him. He was operated in 1954 and the paper was published in 1957. They remove both this hippocampi because he had very terrible epilepsy and they knew that the hippocampus was the Genesis of epilepsy and this was experimental. His epilepsy was so bad that they decided not just to remove one hippocampus, but both and what happened was
Immediate loss of all ability to form, new memories, for facts and events. Think about that for a second, all facts or events, you're not able to remember. I can't remember this interaction between us. I can't remember any of the facts that we were just chatting about in our Neuroscience lives. None of that can move into our long-term memory. So this hippocampus does something,
With all of these perceptions that are coming at us every single day, every minute of the day and not for all of them. But for some of them that have these features that we just talked about, maybe they're novel. Maybe they have associations. Maybe they're, they're emotionally relevant. Maybe maybe they've been repeated some of those things in the realm of facts or events, get encoded in our long-term memory. And that's that's the textbook of why the
So important, I like to always add. And I mean this is why I studied it for so many years. The hippocampus. And what it does really defines our own personal histories. It means it defines who we are because if we can't remember what we've done, the information, we've learned and and the events of Our Lives. It changes us. That that's what really defines us. That's why I wanted to study the hippocampus and I think the exciting new
New ideas about the hippocampus was is that it's it's, you know, hippocampus is important for memory. So if you say that, you'll be impressed. All your people at your, at your cocktail party, but what people have started to realize that it's not just memory. It's not just putting together, associations for what, where, and when of events that happened in our past, but it's putting together information that is in our
Long-term memory banks in interesting new ways. I'm talking about imagination. So without the hippocampus. Yes, you can't remember things but actually you're not able to imagine events or situations that you've never experienced before. So what that says is the hippocampus is important, for memory is a to simple way to think about it. What the hippocampus is important for is what we've already talked about, associating things together.
Writ large, anytime you need to associate something together, either for your past, your present, or your future, you are using your hippocampus and it takes on this much more important role in our cognitive lives. When we think about it like that, that is kind of the new, the new hippocampus that that neuro scientists are studying these days.
That's fantastic. As it sounds like it really sets context, but it can do that with elements from the past, the present, or the future.
And I the top, well for neuro scientists that the phrases domain, we say, the time domain meaning, as opposed to just evaluating things in space. It sounds like the time domain of hippocampal function is incredibly interesting. It is, and even the fact that we can have short-term medium-term and long-term memories and we could go down any of these rabbit holes. I'll ask you a true or false most because I just really want to know the answer. Okay. A few years ago. The theme in various high-profile reviews, seemed to be that the hippocampus was involved.
And in encoding and creating memories, but not in storing memories and that the memory storage was in the neocortex, or the other overlying areas of the brain. Is that to General a statement?
That's a, that's a tricky statement because I think that ultimately yes that long-term memories are stored in the cortex. But those memories are stored in the hippocampus sometimes for a very, very long time. So, how long is too long where you say? Oh, it's not the hippocampus in more if it's four years. Is that does that mean that it's, you know, it's not stored in the hippocampus. I think that's a
That's a tricky question. And yes, it was coming up a lot because people were debating it and and some people did think that you shouldn't think about the hippocampus as a storage area. But I think it's a long, long, long term, kind of intermediate storage area. Maybe not the long-term storage area. That's why it's hard to answer that
question. Great as I recall. Hm, could remember facts from before his surgery. Yes. He couldn't form new memories. Correct. And given that he had no hippocampus.
It would at least partially support the idea that some of memories are retained outside the hippocampus.
However, he did have part of his posterior hippocampus intact. So that's the tricky thing. I think initially, in fact, Scoville the neurosurgeon overestimated the number of millimeters. He had want, he intended to remove of the hippocampus and then when they did this, the the very
Doric MRI of hm later in his life. They showed that. In fact, he did have that posterior hippocampus part of the posterior hippocampus intact. So now it makes makes it a little bit more complicated to interpret what's going on. Not that it was never uncomplicated any interpretation of a lesion in a patient, as you know, is complicated. But you know, hm had this mythical role in in neuroscience and neurology and now it was
Was it was complicated because he does have more of the hippocampus
intact. I did not know that there are some memories that can be formed very quickly. So called one trial learning. Yeah, and I'm just looking at this list again novelty repetition Association and emotional resonance. It seems like some experiences can bypass the need for multiple repetitions. Absolutely. So and unfortunately, it seems
Seems that our nervous system is skewed toward creating one trial memories for negative events, which has a survival adaptive mechanism. What is the neural connection that allows that to happen? Is it the amygdala to hippocampus connection? I mean, as you and I know the seems like every brain area ultimately is connected to everything else. It's just a question of through how many nodes just like every city is connected to. Another city is just a question of how many flights and robes. Do you have to Traverse before you get there?
What is it about one trial learning? I mean at a kind of top Contour level, how do we, how can we learn? Certain things so fast? Yeah, and other things are tricky and now every time I look at this white mug, it's queuing up. Something special that simply by virtue of saying it. So is that one child memory? But you know, what is it? What is it about very emotionally Salient events that allow memories to get stamped in.
Yeah. I mean, I think you, you've already alluded to it. That is
Is there is this protective function of our brains that has evolved over the last two point, five million years that you need to pay attention and remember certain things for your survival. So some things that get stamped in, you know, their memories, but they're Their Fear memories, you know, if I get mugged on the subway or, you know, they're terrible things that could happen on the subway as we as we just learned. But if something, terrible happens, is something very
Scary happens. You remember that? And that, that fear and that memory of all those things. I mean, I have one when I lived in Washington. D.c., I went to work at NIH on a Sunday afternoon. I came back. And when I rounded the corner to my door of my apartment, it was cruel boy. Barred in somebody had taken a crowbar, opened up my door and stole all of my, all of my, the nicest things in my apartment, which wasn't that nice.
Because I wasn't making that much money but ever since ever since then whenever I rounded that corner. I still have that memory. It was terrible because, you know, put me in a terrible State when I was just coming home and that's a survival mechanism. Do you want to be alert to possible danger? Absolutely. Yes, so part of those one trial memories, I think is often taking advantage of this evolutionarily developed.
Stump to camp in things that could be potentially dangerous to you into your memory. So you forever, we'll remember this particular corner or this this hallway because that is where something really bad happened to
you. It seems like location. We talked about conditioned place a version, which is just a geek speak for wanting to avoid the place where something bad happened or conditioned Place, preference wanting to go back to a place where something positive happen or even looking at a photograph of where?
Are you had a wonderful time with somebody in that can evoke all sorts of positive Sensations. It seems like at some level, the as complex as the brain is, the basic elements of feeling good or feeling, lousy are states within the brain and body. And linking those two places seems like it. It's a pretty straightforward formula, you know, link place to State links take to place its her as your description just provided. When we learn more complex information, you know.
A poem a concept or we have to ratchet through a set of ideas that also involves memory. Yeah. I'm sure that we'll talk more about this. But is there any way that you're aware of that state, bodily State can be leveraged to enhance the speed or the the quality of the memories and memory formation because, you know that? So
So to be clear about it, it seems there's something very important about this forth. You know this emotional resonance component. Yeah, right. Novelty. The Crowbar into the doors. Thank goodness. Is a sounds like it was novel. It wasn't repeatedly, right? Thank goodness. So repetition is out, and the association is very, very strong. But for people trying to learn information that they're not that excited about right or that repetition is hard or the novel.
Is simply that it's painful? Yeah, I've been there. Yeah. Yeah. As as have I is there something that we can do to to leverage knowledge of how the memory system works naturally to to make that a more straightforward
process?
So, I immediately turn to the things that I've studied that you talked about. So beautifully on your podcast, which are
Strategies generally, to make your brain work better. I was just reminding myself of your podcast about cold because I use that I would morning. Are you do called, do I just take
a moment and tell us what is your cold exposure protocol? Then? I'll take you back to everything.
So my cold exposure protocol is at the end of every morning, shower, that I that I take, you know, the shower is warm, but I give Miss.
A big blast of cold at the at the end of that and it makes me feel so good. And because I've been doing it for several years. It's so much less painful. Okay. I admit it was really painful at the beginning but it's much less painful. I could I could handle the cold water and my pipes are give nice really cold water and it just I could feel I could feel the the awaken asst kind of come come up in me.
After that, and so and I miss it if I forget to do it, sometimes I run back in and give myself that cold blast because it is it is upping, you know, I think you talked about this on your podcast what's happening in the
brain? Basically the cold stimulus that shocked that, you know catching your breath Etc is adrenaline from the adrenals, but also from what we understand now some new neuroimaging there's epinephrine and norepinephrine released from Locus coeruleus, don't you guys
The brain structure in the back of the brain, got sprinklers, the rest of the brain with with a kind of a wake-up chemical. And there's a long Arc dopamine release this paper back in 2000, showed that it's a steady increase up to about 2.5, x of circulating dopamine. So they weren't looking directly in the brain admittedly, but it goes on for four or five hours. Wow, so the improved mood and the feeling of alertness is a real thing. Yeah.
Yeah. So I use that. I mean, so basically, I use my morning routine.
Teen. What is my morning routine? I get up. I do a 45-minute T meditation. So meditating over the brewing and drinking of tea that I learned from a monk who has a Institute in Taiwan where he teaches. T. Meditation love it. I've learned all about tea different kinds of tea and then I do a 30 minute cardio, cardio, weights, work out then. I take my shower with the, with the hot cold.
Contrast and, Oh, and before that key thing, if I want to learn something and I want to be able to get over the difficulty of repeating things, or just just push myself to do stuff sleep. So good. Good sleep. I've learned that over the pandemic. I did sleep experiments on myself, and I learned that I was sleeping in our less than I really needed. So, I really need seven and a half to eight.
Hours of sleep. And I was getting six and a half. And so now, you know, I get get that seven have to eight hours every single night. And guess what, I come to different difficult task and I am more willing to give it a try to try longer to try harder and my brain works better. And so I think probably if you go back to all of your podcast, you'll learn exactly why. Each one of those things that I do, which I would bet that you probably do too. It's helping my
brain.
I guarantee they are and I'm impressed that you do all these things. Although not surprised. And I should say that the extra hour of sleep is really impressive and extremely beneficial. I'm curious. Do you get that in the early part of the Night by going to bed earlier? Yeah, terrific. And and I should just mention because you're too humble to do it, but I'll say it again that it's not only are you a full Professor running, a tenured full professor in running a laboratory, you teach undergraduates, you have
An important role in public, education, multiple books, and your now dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at NYU. So the extra hour of sleep is benefiting you and in and as a consequence, benefiting everybody else as well. Thanks for sharing with us your protocol. I took you off the trajectory of what one can do, but I think that people and and I appreciate knowing, you know, kind of what the Practical steps. Oh, yeah, is knowing the science is important mechanism. I do believe is important for embedding protocols, in people's minds and
They might want to do them but really hearing that the, the mechanics of it, right? As full. It sounds like everything. Together takes about an hour. It's not an excessive amount of time, but it probably gives you an outsized positive effect on your day.
Absolutely. I definitely notice it if I not able to do it and when I don't it, so, I do this seven days a week. It's also not just, you know, five days, seven days a week. And when I can't do it, it's usually early morning flights or things.
Like that. And and, and I get over it, but it's a critical critical for the working of my
brain. I love it. And I'll just highlight one thing that you said before, we move on, which is it? You said when sometimes, what if you get out of the shower, before the cold you'll get back in. That's to me a really beautiful example of conditioned Place preference, you know, there's some now, the called showers become something that you have to sort of look forward to. I should say that. Nobody is immune from the adrenaline increase of cold, no matter how cold it. This is what's interesting about,
Cold, it's one of the reasons why it's such an important part of the screening for Special Operations units or SEAL Teams, but other other branches of military to which is that there are very few stimuli that you can give anyone and consistently get an adrenaline, interesting, least from that without harming them. You know, what heat eventually you need to use so much heat that you didn't watch tissue. Yeah, or with exercise you have to use wench exercise. You can damaged joints it, you know, and it's very kind of
Brilliant, I don't know if it was intentional or not. It's sort of unintentional, genius, that they Special Operations has figured out the bay, sending people back into the cold over and over it. Never really gets easier. But over time people actually start to Crave it. Yeah, and it provides this reduction in inflammation. Etc. Anyway, beautiful practice. Thank you. I want to learn more about your team meditation later in the episode. But in any event returning to ways that we can improve memory formation.
Yeah, maybe if you would tell us your story around this, I know you've told it before but a lot of members of the audience and I would love to hear, you know, how you came to this because yeah, growing up in Neuroscience. I knew you as one of the, I would say, one of the three or four, and they're all alongside one, another. Not, this isn't a hierarchical statement at three or four top memory researchers in the world. Right? Textbook. Material is Suzuki in the my textbooks are filled with the word Suzuki your
Last name according to the information on memory and memory formation. So you were doing that and doing the things that academics do and then you're still doing that but still at a very high level but then things took a different direction. Yeah, maybe we could talk about your story and how you came to the place you are at now because I think it provides a number of tools that people could Implement
themselves. Yeah. Yeah, so this
Sorry happened as I was working to get tenure at NYU and and as you know, it's a stress field process. They give you six years to, you know, show your stuff and you are judged in front of all your colleagues. And either they say, okay, you can join the club or they say sorry you are, you know, humiliated in front of everybody. This was basically actually
tell people to leave. Yeah, if you don't get tenure, you're
going, you have to leave your institution. And so so, you know, you work.
Really, really hard. And so my strategy was, I'm just going to not do anything but work and I'm just going to work and I'm I'm going to just work as hard as I can for the six years. And what happens when you work and you don't have any sort of life outside of work and you live in New York, where there's all sorts of really good takeout. You gained 25 pounds, which is exactly what I did and you get really, really stressed and you start to ask yourself. How come I'm living in New York City and I love Broadway. And
I've never, I haven't gone to a Broadway show and two years. And so I thought I 25 pounds overweight. I I decided to go on vacation and I went by myself because I had no friends and I went to I did a adventure river rafting trip in Peru. And so I go by myself and you know meet other interesting people and I was
The weakest person on this whole trip, like I was I there were so much in better shape. It was embarrassing. And they won't say this, they won't admit this to me, but it was true and I kind of came back. And I said, okay, I cannot be the weakest person. I'm in my late 30s. I have to do something. So I went to the gym and I said, oh my God, I'm 45 pounds overweight. Let's let's try at least to lose this weight. And so I go to the gym, I notice how much better I feel.
When I go to just a single class, I remember the very first class. I went to was a hip-hop dance class was terrible, hip-hop dancer, but I still felt good after after that class.
And then fast forward a year and a half. I've lost 25 pounds. So proud of myself so much happier, and I'm sitting in my office doing what you and I do a lot which is writing and IH Grant which is our lifeblood right and writing writing writing and this thought goes through my mind that had never gone through my mind before. Which what during this six years of Grant, frantic grant writing when I was trying to get tenure and that thought was
Writing went well today. You know, that, that that felt good. I like, I've never had that thought before. What's going on here. This is really weird.
I don't know that anyone is that that thought
because now I'm sure we will have had that thought, but I thought maybe I'm just having a good day. But when I thought about it, I thought it's not just today, my grant writing seems to have been getting smoother. Like I'm able to focus longer it. The sessions feel.
You'll feel better to me and, you know, at that point, the only thing that I changed my life, it was a huge thing, but I had become a gym rat rather than a workaholic. And that's when my, you know, spidey sense for neuroscientists popped up. And I said, what do we know about the effects of exercise on your brain? Because if I think about it, what was better about? My writing is I could focus longer and deeper very important and I could remember those little
Tails that you try and pull together for your million-dollar NIH, Grant from, you know, 30 different articles that you have open on your screen all at the same time. That's the hippocampal memory. I was studying that I was writing the grants on hippocampal memory. And so that's when I got really interested in the effects of exercise, on both, prefrontal focus and attention function, and hippocampal function because of my own observation. And this kind of, I still remember where where I
Is sitting which office I was in when I had this Revelation, but the thing that really sealed it for me that made me think not just oh this is interesting, but I want to study this is right around that time. I got a phone call from my mom who said that my dad wasn't feeling well and that he had told her that he got lost driving back from the 7-Eleven which is literally seven blocks from our house that I grew up.
In. And I knew that was, that was hippocampal function. I suspected dementia. I suspected. Oh didn't want to admit Alzheimer's dementia, which he which he had and it was funny because I mean it wasn't funny. But my mom and dad are two sides of very different coin. My dad is the, the engineer not so active, all his life, but would loved and sit and read books all day.
Day, my mom was the athlete, she played tennis team, tennis into her 80s, and and it started to show at that point. And so, then I had then I had even a more pressing reason to think about what the effects of exercise were because I noticed that all the things that were improving in my brain suddenly went away. Am I my dad's brain really really smart guy engineer and you know Silicon Valley help.
Help that push in Silicon Valley in the 70s happen. He had no more memory. He couldn't focus his attention. His mood was Rock Bottom. He's a very happy guy. And everything was the opposite in me. And I started thinking this isn't just something to help, you know, somebody who wants to get tenure. This is something that could help millions and millions of people most importantly our aging population. What if you know, what's
Inning, and so the thing that makes me wake up in the morning is when I realized that every single time you move your body, you are releasing a whole bunch of neurochemicals. And some of them we've talked about the the good mood comes from dopamine and serotonin noradrenaline. But the thing that gets released also particularly with aerobic exercise is a growth factor called brain. Derived neurotrophic factor or B D and F.
And that is so important because what it does is it goes directly to your hippocampus and it helps brand new brain cells grow in your hippocampus. We all have that. Even if you're a couch potato you can get new brain cells in the hippocampus to grow but it's like giving your hippocampus a boost with this regular bdnf. If you are exercising, which means that we all have the capacity to grow a bigger fatter fluffier hippocampus. And so what I like to give
People is this image of every single time you move your body. It's like giving your brain that's wonderful, bubble back of neurochemicals. What's going on II? Need my bubble bath of noradrenaline and dopamine and serotonin and growth factors and with regular bubble baths. What am I doing? I'm growing a big fat fluffy hippocampus, and I'm not going to cure. My father's dementia. Alzheimer's, dementia, but you know, what, if I go into my 70s with a big fat fluffy
A, even if I have that in my jeans and it starts to kick in, it's going to take longer for that disease, to start, to affect my ability, to form and routine. You long-term memories for facts and events, which is my motivation for getting up and doing my 30 to 45 minutes of aerobic, exercise every
day. Fantastic.
Quick question about your protocol just because and then I will discuss a few mechanistic things related to what signals the body might be sending the brain and a little bit more detail on bdnf and some circuitry. So 30 to 45 minutes of it sounds like cardiovascular exercise might be special. Yes, but as I say that, I and I think about the literature that I'm aware of in mice and some in monkeys and certainly in
Looking at the effects of exercise on brain function and typically the outcome is Improvement. Almost always. I don't think I've ever seen a paper showing that when animals or humans exercise more that their brain gets worse. I just can't think of a single Paper doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm sure someone will put one in the comment section. They'll find that one and and thank you for if you can find that. But but it seems like it's always cardiovascular exercise and experimentally in the lab. It's a lot easier to get a mouse to run on a treadmill. Yeah. Then is to get them out.
Us to lift weights, although people have put little ankle weights on ice and done and the ways of getting my studio resistance work is actually a little bit barbaric because it's often times, they'll they'll incapacitate a limb to overload another limb. So it's an asymmetric thing. It's not the same same as sending them in to do squats right or deadlifts or something. Yeah, so but cardiovascular exercise might be special. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? And please first though? Tell us your routine you're retaining is 30 to 45 minutes of
You a Peloton. Cycler. Does it
matter? I think that the data suggests that, as long as your heart rate is getting up for these long-term effects on your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. You also get better at shifting and focusing your attention for that. You need cardiovascular. And what I use is a video workout that I started even before the pandemics called daily burn. And it's just thousands of different workouts, but I love
They are 30 minutes that I sometimes add on a 10 to 15 minute, stretch at the beginning, or at the end. But I love the variety. Sometimes I do it with weight. Sometimes I do it without weights. I love kickboxing. So they have a lot of kickboxing in there. It just fits my fits my fist, my routine, and it's always there, and I don't have to get all dressed up to go to the gym to, and don't want to work out. So that's, that's what I do.
And that's a daily thing. Seven days a week. Yeah, seven days a week found.
Stick. So in terms of the, the way that some of these changes are being conveyed from the body to the brain, that fascinates me as you. And I know and I'm sort of a repeating record on the podcast. Always saying, you know, you got a brain but you also have a spinal cord and then your nervous system. Connects everything. Every organ in your body is basically signaled to by the nervous system and back to the nervous system, it you're spoiling everything. But so let's imagine your morning routine you-you-you your
Haskell exercise. Okay. So you're pumping more blood, that's the definition of a higher, heart rate, stroke volume of the of the of the heart goes up. Over time. You're getting fitter. So blood flow to the brain is increasing. Do we know how that gets translated to a signal to release more bdnf? Yeah, you know and then it raises this other question, which is does it matter where your mind is when you exercise. Yeah, because ultimately the brain, of course, you can anchor your attention to the exercise or you can be listening to a podcast or something else. I've always wondered about this.
Yeah, it can we enhance the effects of exercise by combining the enhanced blood flow with cognitive work during exercise. Yeah, or is it simply a matter of just getting more blood flow up to the
hippocampus? Yeah. I wish I had the answer to that question to my instinct is. Yes. It matters partially because of the work of your colleague, Alia crumb on mindset and the power of that change, how physiologically our body is responding. So, how could it
Not work in her experiments and or work in her experiments and not work for my morning or our morning exercise routine. So but, but are there studies point to a study? I don't know of one. So exercise neuroscientist out there. I'd love to see, you know, that that study done. So, yes, it works before I go into the aerobic thing. I would like to start with the least amount of exercise to get something.
Really useful because I don't want people to say, oh God. I hate, you know, sweating. I don't want to listen anymore. So so I always like to start with Studies have shown that just 10 minutes of walking outside, can shift your mood? That is part of that neurochemical bubble bath that you're getting dopamine serotonin or adrenaline and 10-minute and anybody can walk for 10 minutes. And so that is for all of you thinking that out there. What
Is the minimum that I could get some of these brain effects? 10 minutes of walking? Anybody can do
it is outside important. I'm a big believer in getting photons. Yeah. Yeah, is
it I think that that study was done indoors on a treadmill. So, and and the comparison wasn't done but moving your way, which is great. I, you know, some in the middle of the pandemic, I walked around my apartment for 30 minutes. Sometimes just for some variety felt like a rat on a running wheel, but no buts.
Yes, so, so that that minimum amount of movement in your body can get you those mood effects. But what about the big fat fluffy but campus? What about the better performing? Prefrontal cortex? That's where you start to knead the the cardio cardio workout and from my reading of the literature there haven't been enough studies, you know, directly comparing contrasting kickboxing with running with
Whatever whatever other cardio that you need to do, but any cardio workout that is done, has these positive effects. So I'm going to say my interpretation of that is that whatever way you get your heart rate up, including a power, walk a power walk and get your heart rate up, that that is beneficial. And what is happening. There are two Pathways that have been studied about how you go from moving your body to more bdnf. That that neurotrophins. That's that's
In the growth of new hippocampal brain cells. The two, Pathways of the following one is a Maya kind, which is a protein released by the muscles. So and not your heart. These are striated muscles in your body. And so by running this, these were studies done in Rats, on running Wheels. They showed that the running rats had more of this Maya, kind release, the myo, kind past the blood-brain barrier. So got into the, the rarefied very
Acted bloodstream of inside the brain and that mild kind stimulated the release of bdnf in the brain. That's pathway. Number one. Pathway. Number two comes through the liver because exercise is a stress on. Generally. How do we know that? Well, cortisol is released whenever we exercise is, we need, we need that sugar in our blood and so that's how the physiological mechanisms work. And so,
There is a ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate that we've known for a very long time that gets released by the liver during exercise. And we also know that that particular Ketone passes that blood-brain barrier. And it's another stimulant for bdnf. So kind of the final. Common pathway seems to be bdnf stimulation in the hippocampus. Is it the only one? Probably not. But that's the one that has been studied most most
Clearly. So it's, you know, it comes from all of our physiological systems are muscles, working our liver responding to the stress of of exercise. And what is it doing? It is making our, you know, giving more bdnf precursors to get into our brain to cause the up Spike of bdnf, which is part of your bubble bath that you're getting every time you
move. I love that description of a factor for muscle and a factor from liver because anytime we're
Movement of the body and translating that to the brain as you. So clearly pointed out that needs to be true. It needs to Traverse the blood-brain barrier. Not everything that happens in the body is communicated to the brain. Yeah, and these seem like really important signals. Beta-hydroxybutyrate you mentioned is a ketone. I just want to underscore. That doesn't mean folks that you need to be on a ketogenic diet. I think people here Ketone and they think it you know, I know some people are most people are not I imagine.
And there are key tones that are released in your brain and body that can function even if you're ingesting carbohydrates and not ketogenic. Just for a point of clarification, this issue of new neurons is one that you hear a lot. Neurogenesis. You're going to grow new neurons, new neurons. And in my understanding is that the rodent literature is very clear. That animals that run on Wheels more often. It turns out rodents. Love to run on Wheels, you know, these Studies by Hopi Hoekstra, which are pretty funny.
They're very cool. By the way. Hoppy Howard Hughes investigator. I'm not I'm not making light of them. Yeah, they put running Wheels in a field and wrote wild rodents will run to the running wheel and run on that running wheel. So there's some they really enjoy. Yeah. Yeah, I find amusing. Yeah. Reasons. That probably only a neuroscientist and find amusing. In any case in rodents. It seems that running more on a wheel can trigger neurogenesis that literally that the birth of nue,
Neurons. And the addition of new neurons to the hippocampus in monkeys. This has been controversial. It seems it does happen in the hippocampus. And in the olfactory bulb, probably not in the neocortex thinking, back to the decades or more old controversy between Liz Gould and posco Rakesh. I hope they settled their differences. Their neuroscientist. Love to argue. It's what we do and in humans, I think it's been a bit controversial. Like some people say absolutely. Yes. Other people say aye.
We know there are new neurons added to the adult brain.
I haven't followed that literature down to the detail, but I do remember one study that I don't think is contested which is the work of Rusty gauge at the Salk Institute, where they actually injected, a sort of died type marker into the brains of terminally ill humans. Yeah, who very graciously offered to have their brains removed and dissected after death. Yeah, and in these very in some cases, very old terminally ill humans. They did see evidence.
For new neurons being born in the hippocampus. Can I trust that idea still is that generally
accepted? Well, so after that study, which was quite a while ago. There are more, recent studies, still controversial but showing and demonstrating using even new and better techniques than we're used in that. That original Rusty, Gage study, which was groundbreaking at the time, that that suggests. And I think show that there are new
Ron's born in adult human brains into the ninth decade of life. So they not only did this. I think those those patients were in their 60s then they died of cancer. But but these new studies looking across the timeline. Can we see? Because the other thing was yeah. Maybe you have some when you're 20, but by the time you're older and you might need these new neurons, you have no new neuron growth. And so these studies seem to suggest that
Yes. Yes, you did. Yes, you do. And we all do even into old age. So yeah,
great. And I'll just take a moment to say that I am personally not aware of any studies looking at other forms of exercise, besides cardiovascular exercise for sake of brain health. And this I think is an important Gap in the literature that ought to be filled whether or not for instance, high-intensity interval training or whether or not weight training which has other effects on the musculature. So you can imagine
Ajan, perhaps the Maya kind to bdnf pathway the pathway one that you mentioned might be signaled, but maybe not the liver pathway. Maybe. Yes, I'm speculating here. Those studies need to be done to my knowledge. They just haven't been done yet and but they should be done.
If you would, could you tell us about some of the more specific effects of exercise on memory, you know, when memory is a broad category of effects and phenomena. So things like what comes to mind is short term medium and long-term memory Reaction, Time, learning math. At least for me is quite a bit different than learning history. Although there's certainly overlap in the neural neural underpinnings, what has been demonstrated in the
Laboratory in animal models, but especially in humans. And if you want to share with us any results from your your lab published or unpublished. Yeah. Sure. That your audience would be delighted to learn about them.
Absolutely. Let me start with kind of the immediate facts acute effects as they're called of exercise on the brain. So this is asking, what does a one-off exercise session? Do for your brain? And there, there are three major effects that have been.
Just I've seen it in my lab, many Labs have reproduced this. So what do you get with the one-off? This is usually an aerobic type type exercise, session, 30. 30 to 45 minutes what you get is that mood boost. Very, very consistent. You get you get improved, prefrontal function, typically tested with a Stroop test, which is a test that asks you to shift and focus your attention in specific ways. It's a challenging task and
really dependent on the prefrontal cortex, largely and significant improvements in reaction time. So your, your speed at responding often a motor kind of, but cognitive motor response is is improved over the pandemic. One of the unpublished studies that I did looking at the effects of 30 minutes of age-appropriate workout in subjects, ranging in age from their 20s all the way up to their
Is so what are the things that I saw Moore's? Consistently irrespective of your age? Everybody got a decreased anxiety and depression and hostility score, which is very important, you know, so it's not just decreasing your anxiety and depression but decreasing your hostility
levels making the world a better place, making the
world a better better place.
Energy, the feeling of energy went up and what we found is, in the older population, even more than in the younger population. We saw improved performance on both stroupe and Eriksen flanker task, which are, which is another task dependent on really focusing in on different letters and paying attention to what letter is being shown. So so these are consistent effects. How long do they last one of the studies that I did?
Pushing my lab showed that the immediate effects of exercise lasted up to two hours. Unfortunately. That was the longest that we laugh. They were still there at two hours. So that's, you know, that's that's a pretty big bang for your buck. That is one 30-minute.
Sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure I understand. So if when you say the effects lasted up to two hours, does that mean up to two hours? After you finished exercise or up to two hours of memory challenging?
Work. Yeah, justjust to be
clear. Yeah, that's a great question. So, my study looked at two hours after you finish your workout. We gave you these cognitive tests during that two hour period, you were free to do anything except exercise or eat. And so there was no no extra load on people, but two hours later. You did do significantly better on these focused attention tasks.
Compared to a group that watched videos for for the exercise period. This was an hour of cycling that they did, these were young subjects in their 20s.
Okay. So if I finish my exercise at 9 a.m. Even if I start this cognitive work, this mental work at 11, I'll still see
benefits. Yes. That's a spy 11 because I didn't go farther than two hours. So it could last even longer than that, but I have evidence that lasts.
Or two
hours and and perhaps if I had started the cognitive work and 45 minutes after my exercise ended, it would also be helpful. Yes. There's no reason to think that there's a, you have to wait before, starring Cog were no reason at all. I'm asking questions of the story that I get in the comments that we are going to get in the comment section. We always strive for clarity here. So what this tells me is that exercising early in the day.
May have a special effect, right? I realize that some people cannot exercise until later in the evening. But you mentioned something earlier that I want to queue people to is very, very important. I don't think I've ever mentioned this on a podcast, which is any kind of physical activity will increase cortisol to varying degrees. Yes. And so, sometimes it's a healthy increase. Sometimes, it's an unhealthy increase if you do 2 hours of really intense exercise and you're not prepared for it. Yeah. That's a big spike in cortisol. Probably not a good thing. Yeah. For most people.
But if you are going to do your cardiovascular or weight training later in the day that increase in cortisol can promote too much wakefulness for Sleep etcetera. Shifting, that cortisol Spike early in the day, is associated with a number of important things related to mood Etc. But more and more, what I'm thinking and hearing is that exercise early in the day is key, our former dean of the medical school. Feel Piezo. What was in his kind of famous still for jogging between the hours of like,
4:00 and 5:00 a.m. 5:00 and 6:00 and then running the medical school. So and you're up early doing your exercise and cold shower. And meditation will talk about meditation. But this is more and more of a push. I feel like or a stimulus for us to think about moving our exercise earlier in the day.
Yeah. I mean, I like to say that, you know, I know they're, there are moms and dads out there and they just say, look, I have a kid that the kids more important than my doing my exercise. So
You will get benefits if you if you do it whenever whenever you can. So that's great, more power to you. But what all the Neuroscience data suggest is, the best time to do your exercise is right before you need to use your brain. In the most important way that you need to use it every day. And so, that is why the morning for most of us is beneficial. That's why I do it in the morning. I'm lucky enough to be able to do that. But yeah, it makes
Sense with all everything we know about how, how this works, and how it benefits our brain.
I think about our colleague, Eric Kendall, not incidentally has a Nobel Prize and studies memory and, and rumor has it that he's been a swimmer for a lot of years that they put in. I think nowadays. He's in his 90s now he'll put in half a mile, but I used to swim a mile a day or something.
That's right. I heard that too. That he was a swimmer and he does it very, very religiously.
Okay, so there are a few other neuroscientist that do that. I'm getting a lot of neurosciences there. Probably should exercise more, and I don't say that to poke at them. I just would love to see them doing their incredible work for many more decades. Yes. And everything that we're talking about today indicates that, if one
doesn't. Yeah,
unless you have incredible genetics. Yeah, we all experience age related dementia, right? I'm the story of your father is, is a Salient one. And we should remember that as we go forward, but I also want to emphasize on love to get your thoughts on.
Just memory and memory loss in general. It seems, we all get worse and remembering and learning things. Even if we don't get Alzheimer's. Yeah, when does that typically start for for
humans? You know, I think there's so much variability, not only because we are individuals but because our stress levels are different and everybody's anxiety. Level has gone up in the last in the last couple of years.
But that also has an effect. We don't remember as much in highly stressful, highly anxious situation. So so, you know, as you know, it's hard to answer that question. People say, okay, just tell me how much exercise I have to do. Okay, just
30 to 40 months. It's a date but but I love the per day, you know, I've been doing this whole thing of telling people, all the data say 150 to 200 minutes or of Zone to cardio, which is kind of, you know, moderately hard, but not excessively hard, but I love this.
Read a theme. Because what, whenever I do that, the questions that come back are, would if I take a long hike on the weekends? And so people start negotiating. There's something that's very powerful, dog, non-negotiable every day. Yes, sun in your eyes every day, even through cloud cover exercise for 30 40, 45 minutes, cold shower, every day every day. Yeah, you know my understanding of the literature is that somewhere in our 50s or 60s, we start noticing little hiccups in memory. Yeah for some people younger for some people.
Later. Yeah, but I have to imagine that doing the exercise throughout one's entire life is going to help offset some of this simply because you're the bdnf and other Downstream
effects. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's that's what it suggests one of my favorite studies. And then I want to get back to you. Wanted you invited me to share some of my unpublished data, only if absolutely long-term exercise, but first, I want to share one of my favorite studies, which is a longitudinal study done.
In Swedish women and this is published in 2018. And what they did was back in the 1960s. They found Swedish women 300, Swedish women in their 40s and they characterize them as low fit mid fit, hyphae. Okay, and then 40 years later. They came back and found these women. They let them do live their lives and they asked what happened to these women as a function of whether they were low fit, mid fit High fit in their 40s there.
Now in their 80s and what they found was, that relative to the low fit or mid fit women. The women that were high fit gained nine, more years, of good cognition later in life. Now. This is not a randomized control, study. This is a correlational study, but does it agree with everything that we've been talking about today? Yes, does it agree with this idea that
You know, the women that were high fit were giving their brains this, this bubble bath, you know, maybe not every day, but very, very regularly for that entire 40 years and that built up their big fat. Beautiful hippocampi. Yes, it does. So some of my favorite
studies. Yeah. Another cause for getting the exercise in consistently. Yes. Yeah. There's no I am impressed by this 10 minute walk and the improvements in mood. I'm just a
Catwalk, but again, I think that daily repetition. Also, I have to imagine has effects on the very Pathways that allow plasticity. This is something we did in the realm of neuroplasticity. We don't often hear about or think about even as a neuroscientist, which is that the pathways for engaging plasticity. Probably can be probably I'm speculating here. Can be made better by engaging in the sorts of behavior that stimulate plasticity. In other words, if one has better calming themselves down.
Stress, there's circuits get better at doing that. There's a neural circuits gain proficiency. Yeah, and so because blood vessels can grow. Capillaries can grow in the brain. You can imagine that more pumping of blood to the brain delivery of these various muscle, and liver factors would also establish larger or more efficient, portals to getting that stuff there. So you could imagine it kind of an amplifying effective of exercise and again, I'm speculating here, but
I, I've seen this over and over again. In colleagues, the ones who exercise consistently. Yeah, seem to be really, really smart and doing amazing work well into their 80s and 90s and the ones who aren't some of whom actually Pride themselves on how little they exercise. Yeah, they get worse over time. You see them, each meeting Each decade and I'm not poking fun. At them at all. It's actually quite quite hard to see and they're kind of a fading light. They're starting to flicker. Yeah. So there is this incredible relationship between body.
Body and brain Vitality. Yeah, that is, of course, is not an excuse for spending all day in the gym. Right? Right. The gym rats. A lion, you know, I'll enjoy working out. So I could imagine doing that. But but that doesn't make us smarter. Unfortunately. You actually have to do the cognitive work also, right? It's not just exercise, right? So, I'd love to hear about some of these new unpublished data.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So when I jumped into the exercise work, everybody was studying people, 65 or older.
Because that's when cognitive decline begins. And if the idea is exercise can help you with your cognition, then make sense. However, I thought well, you know, that it's great. There's lots of work there. I wanted to know what happens in people in their 40s in the 50s, maybe even their 30s in their 20s. Why? Because that's when we as humans are able ready, will it willing and able to increase our exercise? And
Gets us set up to, you know, build our brains as we go into our 60s. And so the first study that I did looked at low fit participants from their 30s to mid 50s, and we wanted to ask this question. You know, how much exercise do you really need to start seeing benefits? Do you see benefits? Or maybe you have to wait until you start seeing cognitive decline to get benefits. That was one of the theories out there and
That's what I wanted to do. And so what we did was three months of two to three times a week cardio. It was a spin spin class. So you spin classes are great for cardio. And the, the comparison group was two to three times a week of competitive video Scrabble. So no heart rate change, but but they had to come into my lab and, and be in a group just like they were in a group for the, for the spin class. We test them cognitively cognitively at
The beginning of the end of the session. What we found was two to three times a week of cardio in these people, there are loaf it, which means specifically that they were exercising less than 30 minutes a week for the three months, previous to the experiment. So they went from that to two to three times a week of spin class. What we found was changes in Baseline rates of their positive. Mood States, went up relative to the video, Scrabble group.
Their body image got more positive because they were exercising, which is great and really important their motivation to exercise went up significantly compared to the video, Scrabble Group, which is, which is great. So the more you exercise, the more motivated, you are to exercise. What about cognition, what changed in the cognitive circuits of their brain. Number one? We got improved performance on the Stroop task, but we're headed towards my favorite.
Sure, which is the hippocampus. What we found was improved performance on both a recognition memory task, which was a memory encoding task. And that is, can you can you differentiate similar items that were asking you to remember and and spatial episodic memory tasks where we had them play? One of those, Doom, like games when they went into this space shuttle Maze, and they had to do things in a virtual City.
Their performance, their got better, which is very, very classically dependent on the hippocampus. So so this I it was so satisfying to act to do this study because I've been wanting to answer this question. What is a minimum amount or doable amount of exercise that will get you? These cognitive benefits. And now I can say in 30 to 50 year olds that are low fit two to three times a week is
That doable. Absolutely. Will it be hard if your loaf it? Yeah, it's going to be challenging but absolutely doable and so, you know that that is it makes sense with all of the all of the mechanisms that we are. I didn't study the mechanisms just to be clear. But with all the mechanisms, we are, imagining are playing a role here that absolutely makes sense and and it is doable. This is not like you have to become marathon runner to get any of these benefits.
This is you have to start moving your body on a regular basis, two to three times a week. And I so I love that for its realness.
How long are those sessions again? 45 minutes, 45 minutes,
45 minutes. It's a typical spin spin kind of class. There's a warm-up for five minutes and a cool down for 5 minutes. So it's really 30, 35 minutes. 35 minutes of, you know, there were really pushing you. Yeah, so
and so they're breathing reasonably hard.
Hard heart rate, heart rate is up.
Heart rate is recently up. Yeah. Yeah. I
find the, the all of those results are really interesting that the results showing Improvement in motivation to exercise is interesting because it gets back to this issue of kind of a self amplifying effect. Right? And the neuroscientist in me wants to think about kind of pre motor circuits and the fact that, you know, we have a motor system that can obviously do things like lift cups and walk and run if we want to or need to
But that it's possible to create a kind of anticipatory that activity in our nervous system where our body craves a certain stimulus, you mentioned the cold at how you guys gave the cold and whether or not that's the adrenaline and the dopamine Etc or whether or not somebody who exercises started going from 0 less than 30 minutes per week, two to three times a week for 45 minutes as your, you describe for this study. I've had that experience before of
Job that the cardio. That's I tend to battle the most and I right. I love lifting heavy objects, huh? And he's happy for me. I'm happy to go to the gym every other day and just lift heavy objects for an hour. It just makes me happy. I like the way it feels. Yeah, and I've been doing it since I was in my teens. So 30 years cardio is a little bit trickier. I like to run but if I stop running for a little while, I find it very hard to get back into. But if I start running three times a week for 30 to 45 minutes and I do this pretty consistently on the
The days I don't wait train. I find that I start to Crave it. It's almost as if my body needs that in order to I always say clear out the cobwebs, but it's like it my mind doesn't function as well. Clearly. Now. I understand why and why exercise helps. But also my physically I almost feel like my body needs to engage in that movement. Like the premotor circuits are are kind of revving revving. The engine or car while it's in park. Yeah. Yeah. So the motivation to exercise obviously could be multifaceted. It could be purely.
Psychological but you think there's any reason to speculate at least or believe that we can build an anticipatory resident. Reverb ettore activity and our nervous system.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, I agree with that because I also have those same kinds of thoughts and and I do have anticipatory exercise when I can't do it. So, I just got back from a week and week and a half in Paris, where I got to
To do a book launch of my last book. Good anxiety, and I really, I walked around a lot, but I did not do my exercise for that whole week and a half. And but there was a lot of stress because I had to do all these interviews in French. So I gave myself Reich speaking, French I speak French.
Yeah, they otherwise would be really, stressed
would be really stressful. Now then I'll be really
impressed that I would definitely start exercising. I would actually I would follow your morning routine to a team but okay, very impressive.
On the
last. It's so, but I got back and, and, you know, coming back this direction from from Paris. I'm live in New York is, is much easier. And so I was able to get get up at a normal time, the next day and that exercise session that first day. It's like okay. I'm back in my home. I'm back in my environment and it felt so good is like I wanted to come back and and I know it's because I worked up over years now I could chew.
Truthfully say seven days a week, but it was, you know, first it was four to five, then it was five to six and yeah seven. But that includes a yoga day or sometimes, I do it for 10 minutes instead of 30 because I have to leave. But but that habit of you do that, even for five minutes, you do either the, the weight 10-minute thing, or five-minute thing, or or stretch, that is a tiny habit. Is that somebody at Stanford?
That invented this idea of tiny habits.
I thought it was. Well, we've got a number of people there. There's, and I apologize in advance. All the people. I neglect in this statement, but I'm happy to put in the comments folks. BJ, Fogg is there has done. Yes, and that's who I am. He just done really great work. And then James Clear, wrote a book about habits. And I has a very popular newsletter about habits. We've done an episode about habits that cover, some of their work and some of the
More laboratory ish not ish laboratory science. Peer-reviewed work on it. Daily behaviors. Also Daily behaviors performed at roughly the same time and day. Yeah. I mean one thing we know for sure is that the Circadian system is part of our nervous systems way of anticipating when things will happen. Yeah. Just what what happened. I'm telling you things you obviously know already but for the audience performing your exercise at roughly the same time. Each day will make it easier. Yeah. As opposed to just saying I'm going to do it.
Newsweek sometime today, but of course, getting it done. Sometimes is better than not getting it
done. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, those are impressive effects and I love that you're starting to look in populations that are bit younger. Not because some of these older populations aren't important, but I think that building good habits in across one's entire life. It's really what it's about. Right? As I always say, with anything related to longevity, or offsetting an age-related decline.
We don't know. It's hard to know if things work because there's no within subject control. But we also know for sure, is that you don't want to be the control experiment. Right? Exactly. You absolutely don't want to be the control experiment, especially for something. That's purely behavioral. I mean, you're not talking about ingesting a particular supplement. You're not talking about changing your diet in any way, but I am curious. Do you know diet as a very barbed wire topic on the internet which diets whether or not they work etc.
But in general did in any of these studies do they evaluate whether or not people change their eating habits when they start to exercise more?
Yeah. I think I've seen one study that that controlled for that, but I feel for them because it's hard enough to get people to exercise at the level and at the time and you know, that you need for your study. If you also ask them. Okay? Fill out this survey to tell us exactly what you ate all day. They're going to
Forget forget you I'm not joining your study. So it's a critical question. And again, there's only been one that I've seen and and the evidence was that that diets got better when they you know, less processed foods when they did adhere to this exercise, but lot more information needs to be gathered in that in that realm, the second study that I wanted to share unpublished. We're writing it up right now is part two of that.
Study that I just described, which was the low fat people. Next. We move to Mid fit people. Like, what about us? You know, we're already exercising. How am I going to benefit from increasing my exercise? So here, again, we collaborated with a great spin studio. That had a whole bunch of mid fit people, that, that by our definition were exercising, two to three times a week on a regular basis. That's great. All you people out there that are doing that. You should know, you're already benefiting your brain.
Our question was, what if we invited them to exercise as much as they wanted at the spin studio, for three months from, you know, two to three times all the way up to seven times a week. And let's just see what happened. And the control group, we asked them not to change their exercise. And so what we ended up with was a nice big array of starting with mid fit, people that exercise between staying at two to three times a week.
All the way up to seven times a week and the bottom line from that, study is every drop of sweat counted. That is the more you change, and you increase your workout up to seven times a week, the better your mood was you had lower lower amounts of depression, anxiety, higher amounts of good, good effect, and the better, your hippocampal memory was with the more you worked out again.
Was for three months. So I love that too, because it gives power to, to those of us that are, you know, regularly exercising and wondering if I really need to. I mean, it's really going to help me and the answer is yes. I mean not all of us can exercise go to a spin class 7 times a week, but I love the message that our bodies responsive to that and and you can get better hippocampal function better overall Baseline mood affect.
With with a higher level. So it works for the mid fit people as
well and a state that the more I learn from you. The more I'm starting to conceptualize the brain as an organ. That is privileged in so many ways, you know, has this unique blood-brain barrier as this incredible quality of being able to predict things. And it's job, mainly is of course to predict things among among other functions, of course, but that our brain isn't necessarily going to stay stable.
Or get better over time that it needs a signal. Yeah. It did that. It isn't sufficient to just say that we can't take it for granted, that that our brain is actually an organ. That requires a signal in order to maintain its own function. Yeah, and it sounds like enhanced blood flow in these Pathways that you described earlier. These two pathways are, at least among the more critical signals. I'm tempted now to move my frequency of cardiovascular exercise from. I can
It's about three days, 35 minutes lately and it should be more to daily. There's something really again, really special about daily because it's not negotiable. You just do it, right? And it sounds like if one word to do higher intensity exercise, you know, in a spin class. I've never taken a spin class, but I've seen their times when they're standing up on the bike and pedaling very hard. So that is included in these kinds of work. Absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, that's what the instructor is doing. I cannot control.
We did monitor heart rate of all the subjects and it was clearly, you know, compared to the video Scrabble. It was highly secure, would hope so. Yes,
I guess it depends on how intense that game of Scrabble. Is, could we just briefly talk about mindset and affirmations? Yeah, you've talked a bit before about affirmations. And as you mentioned that the beautiful work of my colleague at Stanford Alia crumb and who we can summarize.
Her work pretty simply, although we won't do it complete Justice by. She's already been on the podcast that just to say that one's beliefs about a behavior. Also impact the outcomes of that behavior. If you learn a lot of true facts about stress being good for you. Then you will experience stress as better for you than if you only focus on or learn about the negative effects of stress, if you learn about the positive effects of exercise, you actually derive greater benefit from exercise, believe it or not. It's a
Incredible incredible effects, but they make sense when you understand, and what the brain is doing, which is a lot of this, predictive coding and mindsets don't seem as mysterious and woo anymore. Once you understand what the brain is really doing, but what is if any the value of affirmation of telling yourself something positive about yourself or of exercise on? Not the exercise itself, but on mood, self-image memory and brain
function. Yeah, so, you know,
I looked into this because I am also a certified exercise instructor in the form of exercise that I teach is called intensity that it's a form of exercise that was developed by this amazing. Physx instructor, Patricia Moreno, and she combined physical movements from kickbox and dance and yoga and martial arts with positive, spoken affirmation. So each move, if you're punching back and forth, as you would do in a kickbox class, you
don't just punch. You say something like I am strong now, which every punch is associated with the word and, you know, you can create your own series of affirmations with the moves that you put together. And the first time I did it. I just wandered into her class. I didn't know what it was and it felt idiotic. Like, what I came into the wrong class. I clear, I don't want to come into this class, but then I saw, they didn't care whether I thought they were
They look silly saying these effort not saying yelling these affirmations out loud while doing the choreography at the same time and then I tried it, you know, okay, I didn't yell out, I kind of whispered it at first and then but by the end I was really yelling it out. There's something about the Declaration, using your own voice of same things that you you know, don't often say yourself. Like I'm strong. I'm inspired. I believe I will succeed are all the kinds of
Affirmations you say and you walk out of that class or I walked out of that class thinking. I feel really good now. Well, I can't wait to come back to this class which is why ultimately, you know, took teacher training to be able to teach that class. And so I started to look into what was known about affirmations and they were never combined with with physical activity, but it was clear that there was a literature showing
That that positive affirmations saying them, or reading them could change mood in the same way as we're talking about, you know, Ali has crumbs work. If you, if you have this, this it's a belief. You, once you start saying these things, these are not, you know, difficult things to believe. But it's amazing how much you don't say these kinds of things to yourself, or with your own voice. You might say them about somebody else. Oh, you're strong. You're so smart.
Art, do you say that about yourself? And that's the thing about the, the self-affirmations. It really gets you into a habit of saying good things about yourself and then you start to remember, start to realize. Oh my God. I'm so mean to myself. I have lots of negative thoughts going on about about myself in my head and which was part of the other reason why I loved this, this particular form of exercise. So what you get in
Intensity is the mood Boost from the positive spoken affirmations together, with all the other brain and affect boost that we've been talking about for this whole podcast from the exercise because it's a sweaty workout as well. So,
interesting, there's a book. I confess. I haven't read it, but I have had the pleasure of having a discussion with a psychologist from I believe is that University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Ethan cross wrote a book called chatter, which
This is on the fact that so much of our inner dialogue. It is indeed - he certainly wasn't the first to point that out, but that explicit statements to counter that - chatter, I believe is one of the Hallmarks of readjusting One's Own, not just internal reference frame, but actually self-image, generally, and it's a fascinating and I think a very important area of Psychology and Neuroscience because, and I acknowledge this
Talking about this to laboratory neuroscientists who record from neurons and label neurons. And look at stuff down the microscope. We are now deep in the territory, in the deep water of what some of our colleagues and people who think about Neuroscience would consider like really out there on the kind of subjective edges. Yeah. And yet I think it's worth pointing out that you know, the brain does all these things. It's responsible for simple reflexes and motor behaviors, but also high level conceptual ideas about the
Universe and what it might look like in 10 years or 100 years or 1,000 years, but also high level conceptual understanding of what who we are and what we are about. Yeah, and so even though it might seem a little bit out on the fringes, dare. I say, I think that these are some of the more important untried Landscapes of Neuroscience. Yeah, and I just want to acknowledge my appreciation for the fact that I'm going to connect the dots here and say the UN from somebody who didn't exercise who went on this rafting trip. Yeah.
Discovered exercise and its benefits for your grant writing and then and then on and on and on, and then became a certified. Yeah, exercise. And strengthen structure. So, so you don't do anything halfway either. It's clear. I'd like to touch on something you mentioned earlier, but we haven't been to it all in any depth, which is meditation. Yeah.
You mentioned this T meditation. You had a publication recently on a 10 minute meditation. Yes. Right to maybe you could tell us about this 10 minute meditation because he's like such a tractable amount of time, right? And then if you would maybe tell us a little bit about the T meditation. But sounds like you've discovered a minimum, a close to minimum threshold and meditation that can really benefit us. Yeah, maybe tell us about that, that study.
So the study was as you as you
Um, very astutely pointed out very practical study, just 10 minutes, not 30 minutes, not an hour meditation, that's too hard. Ten minutes, guided meditation. They logged into a site, so we can tell that they logged in and they listen to a, it's a body scan, very basic, but easy-to-follow kind of meditation and we ask them to do it.
How often daily seven days a week, you know, just 10 minutes a day and the shock in the most, shocking thing about this study is that we got more adhesion adherence to the 10-minute daily meditation, then the 10 minute daily podcast, listening, which was our control. So the highest retention rate I've ever gotten in any, this kind of study that I've done Exercise or meditation. They wanted to do it 10 minutes a day. It was it was great.
I'm going to just start leading meditation.
Yeah, three hours is was doing three our podcast.
So, so we looked at cognitive effects before, and after this it was eight weeks of daily. It was actually 12 minute meditation, 12 minutes of body, scan meditation. And what we found was significant decreases in stress response. So we did this dryer, just stress. Test to see how how you responded to a unexpected stress.
Awful situation. The meditators did much better, their mood was better. And their, their cognitive performance was also better. And this was my first little foray into meditation. After I had started my, my personal team meditation that, that really shifted my relationship with meditation. And but, but it's consistent with many other studies showing
The Beneficial effects of meditation and but the unique thing was we tried to make it doable that many, many people out there could actually follow this, this typical regimen and and so we're continuing that. In fact, my, my research in my lab right now is all about those doable short things that NYU college students will do not just at the beginning of the semester.
But at the end of the semester, when the Stress and Anxiety levels are now at record-breaking high levels and they need something to bring that level down so that they could show their professors what their brains can actually do. And so it includes very short. Meditations sound sound, meditations visual meditations walking things that any college student, but we're obviously focused on NYU students will do to. And, you know,
I want to get at graduation rates. I want to get at class performance with these kinds of interventions, but it started with that study that I just described
meditation, if you would, and here's where we can highlight this again, as some educated spec, Highly Educated speculation is coming from you. What do you think is going on during meditation? Yeah. I mean, so a body scan involves a of it interoceptive awareness, like, you know,
Perception, of course, being an attention to, what's going on on the surface of and within the confines of our skin. As opposed to the X outside world, drawing our attention to anything inside us or outside US involves for brain function. Prefrontal cortex, presumably, and other things typically eyes are closed. Typically it's relaxing. So, there are a lot of variables that could be feeding into a number of different effects. But, but as a neuroscientist, what do you think is going on? That just
That this period of kind of a self-induced, somewhat unusual State. What do you think is going on in terms of network behavior and networks within the brain that it can have these long-term effects? Because we got to some of the ones relate Downstream of exercise. And I, I think there's so much evidence. I know there's so much evidence that meditation is beneficial. Yes. How do you think it's working or what it? What do you think it's
doing? Yeah, I think.
Think that one of the most important things that gets worked when we are doing a simple 10-minute or 12-minute body, scan meditation regularly this 10 minutes a day. 12 minutes a day is the Habit building and the practice of focusing on the present moment. I think that is very hard for us modern humans to do because I'm worrying about the thing. That's do.
At the end of the week that that I need I need to do and how many hours are my going to have to be able to do that, or I'm worried about, you know, whatever the email that wasn't as polite, as it should be that I sent. And what are the reproductive repercussions for that instead of focusing on this moment, which is fun. I get to talk to you. It's a beautiful day outside. It's a, I'm feeling good right at this moment. And I think that those all of
The meditative product practices that I've that I've done and this one also whether you know it or not is getting you to focus on on this moment. And I think it's even more important in this day and age where anxiety levels and the next variant might come out and what are the repercussions there? And I have a mother who's older and she's more susceptible to it and there's a war and, and what's going to happen there.
Those are all future possibilities and and we should be worried about that. That is a possibility. You need to plan for that. But you also need to focus on this moment. Right now. I'm I'm healthy. I could breathe, I get to have this interesting conversation right in this moment. If I start thinking about other things than it, takes away from this moment. Do I know what circuits are being are involved?
Not exactly. That is not my area. I think there are some studies that have focused on that, that moment, present moment, kind of activity. But that is what I think is most important about about the practice of meditation or one of the important things that calms us down, because if you know how to do that, that gives you this powerful tool for the rest of your day, you're not locked into that fearful future thinking that so many of us have or
At that just reliving of the terrible past but you could enjoy enjoy the present moment.
Yeah, I that really resonates. I think that going back to the earlier part of our conversation. In this the hippocampus has this incredible storage capacity and ability to set context about past present and future. And that's a beautiful thing. Because as much as I like to think he had some semblance of a healthy life, none of us want to be. Hm, none of us.
To be in the position of not being able to form new memories and have no context to the past or the present. So, we're grateful that we should all be grateful that our hippocampus can draw from past present and future in various combinations, and we should support it through the daily exercise and other habits. Let's call them habit so that people make them habits that you've highlighted. But if we are not deliberately anchoring within past present, and future, according to what we need. And we're just
Shuffling between past present and future. That is not a good way to live. No, it's not effective. No, it sounds like meditation can really help us go to the right Stacks that I guess people don't go to libraries and anymore but in the but in the old days, you would go, you know, you go to the right location in the library actually can't get distracted by the books that you're interested. If you need to go just reflexively, we need to go study a particular topic. So that's kind of how I think about it. Yeah, it makes us more linear perhaps in our yeah, our way of being
I think so. And actually,
The counteracts, you know, not that I'm against technology but having our phones and being connected to every good and bad thing going along going on in the world today is incredibly distracting and and takes you away from the present moment, virtually 24 hours a day. And so, we have to work extra hard right now compared to in the 40s when we didn't have all this technology, or at the same level. So yeah, it becomes
Even more important practice, I think for everyday,
life, or even 10, 15 years ago. It felt like smartphones weren't as intrusive. Yeah, one final question and and maybe a request. Okay, as the new incoming dean of college of letters and Sciences and I must say, I'm delighted thrilled actually to hear that a lot of the practices that we've been discussing today and that you pioneered are going to be incorporated into undergraduate education. I I predict
I'd be willing to wager that that will become a template for how universities and known University Systems should function. Because if indeed, and it is true that there's this incredible relationship between physical movement and mental, deliberate, practices and performance. Any Corporation School household would be crazy. Yeah, would be self, you know, self-limiting and even self-destructive to not incorporate those. I'm so happy that you're going to do this and collect data.
ETA. Yeah, could please. We'll have to touch back with you and hear what comes to that, but one of the main things that I hear so much about today, are issues with attention. Hmm. We haven't talked about attention. We've mainly been talking about memory and cognition. Yes, but you know a lot about attention and and here I'm not being disparaging. I think people have done what I'm about to say. As a as a consequence of need and lack of other resources. There's an immense amount of Adderall use Ritalin used modafinil.
Use n caffeine abuse and I happen to like, caffeine. I don't use the other compounds I described, but it's just incredible to me how the date on this. Our colleague of mine at Stanford claims that something like two-thirds or more of college students. Use these without prescription for
ADHD. Yeah.
What can we expect in terms of the effects of regular exercise on attention and are there any other things besides exercise in meditation that you would like to see people do in terms of trying to increase their powers of attention? Because I think the ability to add to focus and attend. Yeah. Is really the distinguishing feature between those that will succeed in any Endeavor and those that won't. And that's a scary thing for a lot of people to hear because a lot of people think they have ADHD. They made. They might not but I bet
Number of students at both Stanford and NYU feel challenged with holding their attention of the thing that they need to hold their attention.
Yeah. Yeah. So I would say the top three tools that everybody right this minute today can use to up their capacity to attend where they want to include exercise. For the reasons. We've talked about has a direct effect on function of the prefrontal cortex meditation also clear?
Clinical studies showing improved ability to focus and, and particularly focus on the present moment, and the third has to be sleep. So, sleep is you, you can't, it's out of the three. It is the most physiological. I mean, I could I could live my whole life without meditating. One minute. Could, I could I survive without sleep? No, none of us could. So, it's more basic physiological, but it is so important.
Portent for all core cognitive functions, including attention, including creativity, including just, you know, just good. Good basic brain brain function. That is why it's, you know, it's so critical to get that information that basic Neuroscience information into the heads of these students that are trying their best, to show us how their
Rain work, but but being hampered because they're not moving enough. They're not meditating and there's all these distracting things that they include in their lives. Some of which, a little bit is good. But, you know, 24 hours a day on your phone and Linkedin, not LinkedIn, but, but linked to your phone is damaging to your attention. So, exercise meditation sleep.
And help you learn retain and perform better than if you do not have these three things in your life,
wonderful music to my ears. And also either very low cost or a zero cost, considering that the exercise doesn't require a class, right? One could do use the freely of are available resource of gravity, right? To to do jumping jacks or burpees or push-ups or whatever or sit-ups are all of those things.
Don't forget
YouTube, the freely accessible millions of YouTube videos. If you don't want to do, you're jumping jacks by yourself. I always say this, you know, I talk about breath meditation in for my book, good anxiety. And you know, if you don't like the one that I suggest, there's only about a million more on YouTube with with ratings from one star to five stars. So use that
resource is a wonderful resource and you're an amazing resource that when do you think you so much?
For coming here today to have this discussion and share your knowledge about not just existing data, but new data coming in coming out soon and for your leadership in the University system for your leadership in public education, for the Decades of important work on memory and neural circuitry, which got to learn about today, as well. Thank you ever so much.
Thank you. Andrew fun conversation.
Thank you for joining me today. For my discussion about learning and memory.
And how to get better at learning and remembering with dr. Wen, Yu Suzuki, if you'd like to learn more about dr. Suzuki's work. You can go to Wendy Suzuki.com, there. You will also find titles and links to her popular books as well as her social media handles. We've also placed those in the show. No captions. If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to us on YouTube. That's a terrific, zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and or apple and on both Spotify and apple you can leave.
Up to a five star review, if you have suggestions about guests, or topics that you'd like, us to cover on the huberman Lab podcast, or you'd like to give us feedback of any kind. Please leave that in the comment section on YouTube. That's the best place to give us feedback, please. Also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning of today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. We also have a patreon. It's patreon.com slash Andrew huberman and there you can support the podcast at any level that you like on many episodes of The huberman Lab podcast. We discuss supplements.
So while supplements are certainly, not necessary for everybody, many people drive tremendous benefit from them for things like accelerating the transition into sleep and getting better deeper sleep as well as enhancing focus and learning and other aspects of human performance and health. We're excited to announce that we've partnered with Momentis supplements. The reason we partnered with Momentis is several fold. First of all, we wanted to have one location where huberman Lab podcast listeners could go in order to find all the supplements that we talked about.
And to find those in a form where they could systematically, try one or the other. This is a real issue in the supplement industry. A lot of supplement Brands out there combine different ingredients. In ways that don't really allow you to pinpoint exactly what you need, and what you don't need. So, getting supplements that have low doses or just the minimum effective, dose of particular, ingredients, and being able to mix and match those ingredients yourself and really establish, what's best for? You is really key. In addition. We came to realize that a lot of our listeners want
but they reside outside of the United States. So we're pleased to tell you that momentous ships both within the US and internationally. And of course, momentous supplements are of the very highest quality ingredients and the Precision of the amounts of those ingredients is tightly regulated. If you're interested in momentous supplements, the catalog of supplements related to The huberman Lab podcast, we're growing all the time. A good number of them are already there. You can go to live momentous.com huberman in order to find them and there will be additional supplements.
It to that site. As we go forward, if you're not already following huberman lab on Twitter and Instagram, I post neuroscience and other science related information and tools on a regular basis. Some of that information overlaps with the content of the huberman Lab podcast, but a lot of it is distinct from the information contained on the huberman Lab podcast. So again, that's huberman lab on Instagram and huberman lab on Twitter. We also have a neural network newsletter. What that is is a monthly newsletter in which, I just still critical.
Points from different podcast episodes, provide links to useful resources. If you want to sign up for that newsletter. I should mention. It is zero cost and we do not share your email with anybody and we have a very clear privacy policy. Post it at huberman, lab.com., Just go to human, lab.com. Click on the menu. You'll see the neural network newsletter. You can also look at examples of newsletters without having to sign up to make sure that you actually do want to sign up. But if you are interested, the signup is. They're very easy, and you can receive our monthly newsletter. So once again, thank you for joining.
Joining me today for our Voyage into the Neuroscience of learning and memory and tools to get better at learning and memory. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
