Welcome to the huberman live 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 we are discussing mental training and
visualization
mental training. Visualization is a fascinating process that has been shown over and over again in now hundreds of studies to improve our ability to learn anything. When I say anything, I mean,
the ability to learn music, the ability to learn and
perform mathematics,
the ability to learn and perform motor skills in sport and dance across
essentially. All domains the
other incredible thing about mental training of visualization is that I did see, you'll soon. See when you go into the literature that
is the scientific studies on mental training in visualization, you
quickly realize that it does not take a lot of mental training visualization, in order to get better at anything. However, that mental training of visualization,
Has to be performed in a very specific way. And today we will discuss exactly how to do. Mental training visualization in the specific ways that allow it to complement the actual
performance of a motor or cognitive skill to allow you to learn more
quickly. And to consolidate that is to keep that information in mind and body, so that you can perform those
cognitive tasks music, task
motor, tasks, etc for long periods of time
without ever forgetting how to do them.
All of mental training and visualization relies on what I can.
Siddur really the Holy Grail of our brain and nervous system.
And that's a neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity is our nervous
system. Which of course includes the brain, the spinal cord
and all the connections between the brain and spinal cord, and the
organs and tissues of the body. And then, all the neural connections, back from the organs and tissues of the body to the brain and spinal cord. So the whole thing in both directions,
has the ability to change in response to experience
in ways that are adaptive. That is that allows us
to do things that we could not do before.
And by doing those
Things were by being able to perform those mental operations. We can do better in the world that we live in. We can
perform new tasks, we can think new thoughts. We can come up with novel solutions, to pre-existing problems that before really
vexed us and that we couldn't
overcome. All of that is
considered neuroplasticity. So
today, what I'm going to cover is a brief summary of what neuroplasticity is, that
is how it occurs in the brain and body. This is
extremely important to understand. If you're going to use Mental training and visualization.
I'm going to talk about what happens in our brain and
body. When we do mental visualization, in a dedicated way,
many people have heard perhaps that when you imagine something happening that your brain doesn't know the difference
between that
imagination of the thing happening. And the real thing
happening, turns out that is not true. It is simply not true. However, there
is somewhat of an equivalence between a real experience and an imagined experience and we'll talk about the difference between those and how that can be leveraged in order to get the
Most
out of mental training and visualization.
Then I will cover exactly, which types of mental training and visualization work. Best
across all domains meaning for Music Learning mathematics, solving, puzzles, motor learning Sports Performance, etc, etc. To
really allow you a template in which you can Plug-In or designate, what you're going to do each day for a brief period of time, in order to accelerate your learning in, whatever you choose. And then I'm going to go into a bit of what happens in the brains of different types.
It's of people, these different types of people that I'm referring to are people who have more or less of a natural ability to imagine things and
visualize them. Because it turns out that we vary tremendously from
one individual to the next, in terms of our ability to mentally visualize and imagine things, and our ability to get better at that over time. And the good news is anyone can get better at mental training and visualization in ways
that can serve them. Well,
also briefly touch on the fact that certain people in particular people on the autism spectrum.
As well as people with synesthesia, as which is the combining of different perceptual experiences. So you may be one of these people are, you may have heard of people that, for instance, when they think of a number. They also just naturally spontaneously think
of a color and vice
versa, talk about how that relates to mental imagery and visualization, and the creative process and
problem solving in general.
And then finally, what I'll do is I'll recap mental training and visualization from the standpoint of how best to apply mental training of visualization. According to specific
challenges, things like
Challenges with public speaking or challenges with sports performance or challenges with
test-taking Performance challenges, with essentially, anything that will allow you to build specific mental training, visualization practices that our brief that are supported by Neuroscience studies and that are highly effective 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 about
science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank
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training and visualization.
Now, perhaps surprisingly mental training. Visualization has been
studied since the late 1800s. It's actually a paper published in
1880 by gulten called the statistics of mental imagery. So long ago, people were quantifying and trying to understand how is it that people come up with mental images and how they can apply that to learning things more
quickly and more stably
Over
time. Now, as I mentioned earlier, mental training and visualization
relies on a process that we call
neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity is a term that many people have heard
and encompasses many different things. So, broadly speaking, neuroplasticity includes developmental plasticity, which is the sort of plasticity that occurs between about birth and age
25, and that can be summarized very easily as
passive plasticity. In other words, the
sorts of changes that
Happen in one's nervous system simply by engaging in the world and
experiencing Life as a child, as a young adult, as an adolescent, and as a twenty-two, twenty-three twenty-four year old Etc. Now, of course, of course. Of course, it is not the case that on your 25th birthday. You close out passive developmental plasticity and start engaging in the other type of neuroplasticity, which is adult neuroplasticity. It's a gradual tapering off of Developmental plasticity that occurs between
teen age 0 and 25. And for some people might occur somewhere around twenty six for other people around
23. When we say 25, we're really
just talking about the average age in which passive plasticity, tapers off. However, starting fairly
early in adolescence and extending all the way out into
one's 80s, or 90s or hundreds should one live. That long is the other form of neuroplasticity, which is adult, neuroplasticity, adult, neuroplasticity is very different than developmental plasticity.
Because it is the sort of plasticity that one
can direct towards one's own specific desired,
learning. So if we wanted to get a little bit technical here
for sake of clarity, not forsake of
confusion, we would say adult plasticity is really
about self-directed adaptive, plasticity, and the reason we call it that as opposed to something else, we're simply adult plasticity, is that there are many different forms of neuroplasticity. There is for instance, maladaptive neuroplasticity, that occurs. If one gets a really hard head hit and concussion, there will be changes.
To the brain and nervous
system, but those changes the brain and nervous system. Do not allow it to perform better.
In fact, it often a the brain and nervous systems ability to function and therefore is a
maladaptive. So I don't want to get overly wordy with a number of different terms here, but I do think it's important to understand that we have developmental
plasticity again in which the brain and nervous system
changes simply in response
to experiencing specific things for better or worse. And there's adult self-directed adaptive plasticity in which one can
direct specific changes.
In terms of learning things, cognitively or learning things in terms of motor function. So
sport, Dance, Etc, or a combination of the two. Now,
just to really clarify
what I mean by developmental versus self-directed adaptive plasticity. I mentioned
that self-directed adaptive plasticity actually can start in
adolescents, right even though there's ongoing developmental, plasticity. I mean, let's be really direct. The brain of a fourteen-year-old is very different than the brain of that same individual. When that person is 21,
Because there's ongoing developmental plasticity. However, starting
at about
adolescents, we can all
start to decide what it is that we want to learn and engage in
self directed adaptive, plasticity.
Now, the way to engage self-directed adaptive plasticity
regardless of whether or not you're a thirteen-year-old fourteen-year-old, or you're a
ninety-year-old or anywhere in between, is that it requires two things. The first thing it requires is focused dedicated attention to the thing that you're trying
to learn. That's the first step. And that actually,
triggers a number of different chemical and electrical processes in the brain that are often associated with agitation and frustration, believe it or not, the agitation of frustration is a reflection of the
release of specific chemicals, in particular norepinephrine and epinephrine also called noradrenaline and adrenaline in the brain and
body that creates this discomfort and this heightened level of alertness and attention, that many of us don't like intend to back away from, but it is exactly that chemical or I should say neurochemical milieu, which signals to the
Neurons, the nerve
cells in the brain and elsewhere in the body that something needs to change. Because if you think about it, if you
can do something perfectly or if you try and do something and it doesn't cause any
neurochemical change in your brain and body.
Well, then there's no reason for your brain and it's connections with the body to change in any particular way, okay? So you need Focus dedicated attention to the thing that you're trying to learn.
It's often accompanied by agitation frustration
etcetera. So that's perfectly normal. In fact that's a signal that things are going right,
meaning they're headed towards learning.
There's a second component that's really required. For
self-directed, adaptive plasticity, and that's periods of depressed in particular. A good night, sleep in
particular, on the night that follows that focused attention to the thing. You're trying to learn. There are now hundreds of studies in both animal models. And in humans showing that it is really during sleep and other states of deep
relaxation, things
like meditation and non sleep
deep breaths. Which I've talked about before on this podcast, but really,
during our
A night of sleep that the rewiring of neural connections, that is the actual
neuroplasticity takes
place. So the verb neuroplasticity, the rearrangement of connections between neurons really occurs during sleep, in particular, on the first night, following an attempt to learn
something through this focused attention.
Now, developmental plasticity, which is passive also requires good sleep, it's slightly different or frankly, it's a lot different in terms of the underlying mechanisms than self-directed adaptive plasticity. But because
They were mainly talking about how to learn faster
through mental training and visualization
and that really Maps more closely on to self-directed Adaptive. Plasticity, just really want to emphasize.
This two-step process has to be
focused, dedicated attention, and then there needs
to be sleep. And in particular, sleep on the first night following that training. Now,
should you have the unfortunate experience of getting woken up in the middle of the
night, following trying to learn something or
should you
simply not be able to sleep for whatever reason on the night following?
A bout of learning where an attempt to learn. Do not despair because it turns out that there are what are called second and third night effects. Also, once you sleep,
you will learn those neuroplastic events. The reordering of connections that we call synapses and the changes that occur in neural circuits,
that reflects what we call Self direct adaptive, plasticity, that still
will occur. But ideally, you got a great night sleep on the first
night following trying to learn and the second night and the third, and so on. And so on.
Now,
A few other things that are critical to understand about self-directed
adaptive, plasticity, that will become
especially important when thinking about protocols for developing, the ideal mental training and
visualization process for you.
And that is that there are different forms of plasticity that occur between neurons. Although the two main forms are what are called long-term potentiation and long-term depression. I just want to queue up right now, that the word depression, is a very loaded word, because the moment people hear the word depression, they think, oh no,
No, that's bad. But in the case of neuroplasticity, long-term, depression, is simply a change in the connections between neurons. And the excitability between neurons, that in many ways, can be
excellent. For
learning things, in particular motor skills, and we'll get into this in more detail in a little bit. But it turns out that a lot of our ability to get better at some sort of motor skill. Involves this thing that we
call long-term depression, and that's because
much of what is happening. When we learn a new
motor skill, is that we are
depressing or
Suppressing specific actions in order to generate a very specific coordinated action. Some of the best examples of long-term depression can actually be borrowed from developmental
plasticity. So, for instance, if
you've ever sat across from an infant who is trying to eat their meal, so imagine a one and a
half year old or a two-year-old trying to
eat some noodles or some soup or any kind of baby suitable
food with a spoon and
then,
They're holding the spoon, or they're trying to hold the spoon. What you'll notice is that their motor movements are terribly uncoordinated, they often will take that spoon to their cheek, or to their eye, to their head. We've all seen these very amusing photos of babies with bowls of food on their head, or with food all over their face or just everywhere to peers that they're basically getting the food everywhere except
where it's supposed to go, which is in their mouth. And that's because
their motor movements are not very well coordinated at that age, and they're not very well coordinated. Not because they lack
sufficient
Purrs of neural connections, synapses between neurons,
but rather, because they have too many connections between too many different neurons, the neural circuits that control very dedicated coordinated movement are not there yet. Instead too many neurons are connected to too many other neurons and so they can't generate the
precise movements that are required in order to get that spoon to their mouth.
Now, over time they get better at moving the utensil to their mouth.
Such that hopefully by about age five or six, they are eating, you know, in
a relatively cleaner way and hopefully by time they're 10 or 11 or 12. They're getting the food into their mouth and not all over their
face. People learn this to varying degrees. All you have to do is go to a restaurant and watch how people eat and you will see a vast variation in people's coordinated
movements with utensils. But in general, there's a theme, the younger, the person, the more uncoordinated, their movement of
utensils, and as they get older, the more coordinated now.
Course in people that are very old, they have challenges moving objects and their limbs in very smooth
ways and that has to do with topic that we'll get into when we talk about age-related cognitive decline and motor related dementias, but
for sake of today's discussion, if you just want to think about what happens with long-term depression, and the development of a motor
skill, both as a
baby as an adolescent and as an adult. When you're trying to
learn a new motor skill,
is that you are eliminating.
Movements. And when you are eliminating incorrect movements to arrive at only the correct movements in a
very reflexive and repeated way. So thank your golf.
Swing your tennis serve, think serving a volleyball think a child learning to
crawl and then walk think a child learning to eat with utensils. And the example I gave
before what's happening in all of those cases is that, yes, certain Connections in the brain are being strengthened or what we call potentiated. They are undergoing long-term potentiation this.
So-called quote, unquote fire together wire together, Mantra, that was popularized by the great neurobiologist, dr. Carla Schatz. My colleague at Stanford.
But in addition to that long-term depression, the quieting or the silencing of specific synapses that is connections, between
neurons is absolutely
critical for motor
skill learning. So we have ltp,
long-term potentiation and LTD long-term. Depression is every bit as important as ltp long-term
potentiation,
We're getting better at some sort of motor
skill and indeed it getting better at some sort of cognitive skill.
Now, as we hear this, this should be intuitive
to all of us. If you
look at somebody's attempt to learn a particular dance step or at somebody's attempt to do a tennis serve. The first time,
it's all over the
place now, it's not perhaps all over the place in that they're doing a jumping jack while trying to serve the tennis ball but they're generally arcing the racket to widely on one trial and then there are keying
it.
Too close to their body on the next trial. So,
if we were to draw a line over each one of those trials, we would
see that there were lines everywhere over time. Whereas once they quote unquote perfect, the tennis serve
it's going to be line
drawn directly over line drawing directly
over line. Meaning the Arc of that tennis serve is going to be very restricted. And that without question,
has reflected the
removal or the quieting of
particular synapses connections between neurons in the brain and body to allow that
very narrow.
And directed movement.
The same is true for learning anything in the cognitive domain. Meaning, if
you are to learn a language, it is not. Of course, the case that, you know, every word in that language and then you simply remove certain words and arrive at the correct sentence structure that you're trying to achieve.
But rather you have to suppress your
native language or if you're a young child, you have to suppress the generation of just kind of random babbling. Sounds turns out babbling isn't random at all but the point is that you have to suppress
the Annunciation a
Euler sounds and direct the pronunciation
of other sounds in order to generate that new language or your ability to speak at all.
Okay. So we can really think about neuroplasticity as both a building up process in which you increase connection. So called long-term potentiation and a sculpting down or a removal
of connections process that we're going to call long-term depression. Now
I have to acknowledge that of
course there are other forms of neuroplasticity to
I know they're probably some afficionados listening to this.
Who will be, perhaps shouting back at whatever device. My voice is coming
out of. Wait, what about Spike timing-dependent plasticity or what? About paired pulse facilitation? Yes, yes. And yes, there are multiple forms
of communication between neurons that can strengthen those connections or weaken those connections. But for
today's discussion, we just broadly want to think about long-term potentiation and long-term depression, because it captures the two most important themes related to mental training and visualization, which is that when we
form a given cognitive or physical tasks in the real world. So we actually try the dance step or the tennis serve or when we actually try a math problem, where we try and learn some specific knowledge and write it down and remember it that is engaging particular neurons, right? They're firing the releasing chemicals. But it is also actively suppressing the activity
of other neurons. And we are
always completely unaware of the ways in which our brain is suppressing certain activity. Okay? So today we have to keep in mind that where there is
Anything of connections. There is also a weakening of connections and when it comes to mental training and visualization, and here's the really key point with mental training and visualization. You are capturing both processes. Both the potentiation that is the building up and strengthening of connections and the weakening of the connections that are
inappropriate for the thing you're trying to learn
and there are different aspects of mental training of visualization. Protocols that really harness the potentiation versus the depression aspect. And today we will
We'll cover mental training and visualization
protocols, that
capture both the potentiation and the depression aspect of neuroplasticity. And in that way, serve as an augment that is a compliment to the actual real-world, cognitive and physical training that you're doing. Because I'll just give this away right now, turns out that mental training and visualization is not a replacement for real-world
cognitive, or motor Behavior.
Again mental training, visualization. Cannot replace.
Real world execution
of cognitive tasks, or of motor tasks. If you want to
learn, however, mental training of visualization can and has been shown to be effective for greatly enhancing the speed at which you learn and the stability of that learning
over time.
Okay? So let's take a second and really think about
what's happening in the brain and body.
When we do mental training or
visualization, in fact, we can do a little experiment right now, that is not unlike many of the classic experiments looking at what's happening in the brain.
Embody treat mental training visualization in which I just
ask you to close your eyes and imagine a yellow
Cube.
And next to that yellow cube is a red rose.
And
perhaps I also asked you to float or fly up above the cube and the rose, and look at them from the
top, top down.
And then I tell you to fly back around and land behind those and look at them from the perspective
of behind that yellow Cube. And
That red
rose. Okay, now what the data tell us is that most people will be able to do that. Most of you will be able to do that
to some degree or another regardless of your attention span whether or not you have ADHD or not. Most of you will be able to do that to some degree or another. We also know
from neuroimaging studies in
which people are placed into a functional magnetic, resonance imaging
scanner that during the sort of visualization you just did or that described that your visual cortex and Associate areas
Quote, light up, they become very active in similar but not identical ways to how they would
light up and be activated, were you to actually look at a yellow cube and a red rose
on a screen and perhaps Fly Above them,
virtually of course, and land behind them virtually. Of course, or if you were to actually
look at a yellow Cube and red rose in the real world, right in front of you, on a table, then you know, get up on your tippy toes and look down on them from the top and then walk around
the table and look at them from the other side.
So, there is some degree of what we
Call perceptual, equivalence between real-world experiences, digital experiences and imagined meeting with
our eyes closed, just in Our Minds Eye
experiences. This is true, not just of vision, and what we call the visual
domain, but also the auditory domain. Okay? So, for instance, I could play for you, a short motif of a song. Let's just pick something that I think most people know goodness, I'm a terrible musician and even worse
singer but let's just take the opening to
AC/DC's Back in Black, right? I think I can do that when it's
like, duh duh.
Okay, got it. That's the actual sound, although admittedly a dreadful version of the great AC/DC song Back in
Black. But now I ask you to close your eyes
or we could keep them open and just
imagine that don't done. Okay. Or for instance, I place you in a quiet room so you close your eyes and ask you to imagine the opening to AC/DC's black and black, but ask you to pause it halfway through what you would find.
It again, is that most people somewhere between 90 and 95 percent of people would be able to do all the sorts of things that described right Cuban, Rose a CD Back in Black, even a somatosensory task. I imagine you to imagine what it's like to
touch felt or to touch chinchilla hair or something like that. A chinchillas hair ideally alive, chinchilla sitting, still those little critters move really, really fast, but they have very very soft hair Hai hair density, So
Soft. Okay, most people can do that.
About 5 to 15 percent of people are less able to do that. And there's a small percentage of people in that 5 to 15% that simply cannot do it at all but just cannot visualize. Well, we'll talk later about these people. They have what's called a Fantasia and inability to mentally visualize, but most people are actually pretty good at visualizing things when they are told what to visualize
and and this is a really key
point. And if what they're told to visualize is,
Very simple and the whole visualization
is quite brief lasting on the order of about 15 seconds to generate the visualization in the auditory, or in the visual aspect of one's mind, eye or ear, if you will, and if it's repeated over and over
what's far harder for everybody to do. And in fact, what most people simply cannot do is Imagine long extended scenes and stories in their mind that go on for minutes and minutes and involve a lot of different.
Stimuli this is a really key point. In fact, as we start to home in on ideal mental training and visualization
protocols, I'd like to establish this as the first principle of mental training of visualization
which is that, if you are going to use Mental training and visualization to its best effect
in order to engage neuroplasticity and learning,
you need to keep those visualizations. Quite brief really on the order of about 15 to 20 seconds or so and pretty darn sparse.
Meaning not including a lot of elaborate
visualization not including a lot of sequences of motor steps.
What I mean our motor sequences,
if you're trying to learn something in terms of physical
movement or visual sequences, or auditory sequences, if you're trying to learn things terms of music or Dance Etc that can be completed and repeated in 15
seconds or less.
Now later I'll give you a couple of specific examples but if you want to use
Will training and visualization understand. This is the
key first principle. They have to be
very short visualizations that you can repeat over and over and over
again with a high degree of accuracy.
So you don't want to embark on a mental training of visualization Paradigm in which it
involves a lot of elaborate stimuli. And you have to think really hard and work really hard. Even if you're in that category
of people who can do mental visualization,
pretty naturally, and easily. Now if
you're somebody who can't do mental visualization, in fact, if you're somebody who has full-blown
A Fantasia or the inability to mentally visualize. Well, then it's, especially important that you make those mental trainings and
visualizations, really brief, and very, very simple. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors. Athletic greens, athletic greens.
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Now in order to develop the best mental training in
visualization protocols for
you. Let's go a little bit deeper into what the research says.
About mental visualization. Now the classic work on mental visualization, really hinges on a number of different researchers and their work. But in particular, Roger Shepard, who did this work at Stanford, and Steven kosslyn who's now
at Harvard, of course,
others in the field. But it's really the work of Shepherd and kosslyn, the lay the foundation for our
understanding of what happens in the brain when we mentally visualize something.
Shepherd do these incredible experiments in which he had students? Mentally visualize simple
objects like a square like a triangle
and he measured how long it
took them to do that. Now, of course
at the time when he did these experiments,
there were no sophisticated brain Imaging devices. And machines like fmri,
however everything I'm about to describe has been later confirmed using
things like fmri.
What Shepherd did? And what he found is that if
People were told to visualize, very simple objects, they did it pretty quickly.
However, if they were told to visualize more complex objects
or importantly to rotate those objects in their minds, I will then it took
longer for them to perform those mental
visualizations. Now, many of you might
think, duh, if I have to just imagine a triangle or a cube that's going to be very easy and very fast, whereas if I have to rotate that triangular cube, in my mind's eye, that's going to take more time and indeed that is somewhat of a duh.
Except and this is so very important except that what Shepherd and his
colleagues found? Is
that how long it takes somebody to generate and rotate a given visual image scales directly with the complexity of
that image. In fact,
causal and did some experiments I think illustrate this even better and here's the
experiment. I love this experiment. I think you'll love it too because
it illustrates something. So,
fundamentally important about how our brains work not just for sake of mental training in visualization.
Which is our brains work at all.
He showed people a picture of a
map, so a map drawn on a piece of paper. This was a map of an island, it included things like a loading dock for some boats. It had a location for getting
food on the island, had some trees, add some other small landmarks drawn out. And people looked at
this and memorized it
or in other experiments. They just had people
imagine this island and the location of these different landmarks on the island. So it didn't really matter which
but then he had people
And moving, or walking from one location on
the island to another. So they say, okay, you're at the loading dock
now, move to
the restaurant, okay, you're at the
restaurant. Now move to the palm tree here, on the North Shore of the island. Now, go around the side of the island clockwise to arrive
at the bay on the southwest corner, this sort of thing,
but Colin found was absolutely
incredible. What he
found was that the amount of time that it takes people to
move from one location on the map to another scaled linearly directly with the actual physical location between those objects on the map. So for those of you that can understand or into the importance of
what Shepherd and causal and showed great.
I'm guessing however that for most people out there, you're still grasping it like, okay, interesting. You know how things happen in the real world, dictates how they happen in Our Minds Eye. But I want to make sure that I really nailed.
Go home the importance of this for everybody. The importance
of this is that when we look at something in the
real world, so if I look at the pain in front of me, I'm holding up my pen. For those of you that are listening, just holding up my pen in front of me, I move it to the right and back and
forth. What's happening is I'm activating, or I'm triggering the electrical activity of neurons, which we can think of kind of as pixels
in my eye. Okay. So it's leftward or rightward motion for me and back and
forth and those are getting activated in there. Sending signals up to my
visual cortex.
And that information is processed at a given speed.
What the visualization experiments that
Shepherd and causal and others did
show is that the processing speed of imagined
experiences is exactly the same as the processing speed of real experiences
and the spatial relationship between imagined. And real experiences
is exactly the same as well.
Put simply when we imagine
something in our minds eye or mind's ear,
we are Imagining the real thing happening. And when I say the real,
A thing, it's not the
obvious real thing. Of course, if you're imagining something, that's the thing, you're
imagining. What I mean is that your brain at the level of
neurons is behaving exactly the same way
and this needn't have been the case okay there could have been a result. For instance, that if people were asked to visualize a cube and rotate it from, you know, flip it from top to bottom, okay, so put the top that's upward on the table, now down on the table and so forth or to migrate around the eye.
And you know counterclockwise going from you know the northern coast
all the way down to the southern coast clockwise and then back up to the northern coast
that they could have just done it really quickly like all in one second. But that's not what happens. They always match the speed at which they do things in
their minds eye
to the same speed that they do them in the real world. So, in telling you this, what I'm saying, is that mental visualization at the neural level is identical to real-world events.
So when you've heard that, when we imagine something, it's identical in
terms of our brains experience of it and our bodies experience of it as when we actually experience something. That is true at the neural level.
However, when it comes to learning and improving performance in the cognitive or physical domain, they are not equivalent. So, this is the second principle of mental
training and visualization. As you recall, the first
principle of mental training and visualization was that in order to make it effective, it needs to be very brief and
very simple.
And repeated over and over again.
The second principle of mental training and visualization is that while yes, mental training and visualization recaptures, the same patterns of neural firing in the exact same ways as real-world behavior and thinking, it is not as effective as real-world behavior. And thinking, in other words, if you want to learn something, the ideal situation is to combine real training
in the physical world, with mental training.
Me
and I'll talk about exactly how to do that and
in what ratios a little bit
later. Now there's a really incredible set of experiments that illustrate why it is that mental training and visualization can be extremely effective. But that it's always going to be most effective when combined with
real-world training and experiences.
The experiments that I'm talking about involved, the use of what are called bi-stable images
or impossible figures.
Some of you are probably familiar with impossible figures. These are figures or objects that when you look at them.
These odd features like you're not sure where they
stop and where they start, and where they
end one. Good example, would be the
so called moebius strip. The
Mobius strip is literally a strip or a line that is contiguous. It goes up, and it loops around and then it curves around and then it goes back and it just continues and continues. And when you look at it, you can never really tell where it starts and where it stops because it doesn't have any of the features that allow you to see what's the front and
what's the back in any kind of stable way.
Another example of an
impossible figure would be, you know, a little set of Cubes that look like they're coming out toward you maybe with a little Bend in them, going up at a right angle perhaps, but then, if you look at it a little bit longer, that little piece that's facing up, looks like it's in front and you can't really tell what's in front and
what's in back. And
so it's called an impossible figure because you don't really know how to frame it in your
mind to tell what's closer to you and what's further
apart by stable, images are somewhat similar, although different
In the sense that they
typically are simple Silhouettes. So, for instance, the faces vases bi-stable image is perhaps the most famous of these. Where you look at this image. It's very simple, and it looks like two vases. But then you look at it a little bit longer. And you realize that, you're looking at the side angle, or the profile of two faces, looking at one another. And when you see those two faces looking at one another, you can't see the vases at the same time, but then if you decide to see the vases again, you can see the vase is again, but the faces disappear. So it's bi-stable me.
Being that you
can't see the faces and bases at the same time
and impossible figures and bi-stable images, are capturing the fact that your visual cortex and some of the associated areas that
compute visual scenes in your world
are essentially trying to recreate whatever it
is that's out in front of them and that's effectively what your visual system does. It's very good at recreating visual images in your brain in your mind's eye. As if you think about it. Even with your eyes open, your brain is just creating an abstract representation of
What it thinks is out there.
But that when it comes to assigning, an
identity to something like, oh, that's a face, or oh, that's a
vase. That is constrained by different, neural circuits by different areas of the brain and somehow those circuits can't be coactive. We cannot see the faces and the vases at
exactly the same time. We can switch back and forth really quickly
just as we can switch back and forth really quickly. When we're looking at the impossible figure and think, okay, that's the front of it. That's the back. No wait. That's the back.
That's the front.
Intense going back and forth but we can't see them both at the same time. No one can see them both at the same time, okay, we know this from brain Imaging. Studies
now impossible figures in bi-stable images. Can be seen, right? You could look them up right now
on your phone or computer or I could show you pictures of them on paper, right in front of you,
and you can do these sorts of perceptual experiments of
telling people. Look at the face, look at the vase. Look at the front of the cube, now make it at the back of the
cube, and they can do this somewhat deliberately.
However, and this is, I think so very interesting to understanding how mental training
and visualization does, and does not support real-world
learning. If you try to
imagine a bi-stable image,
you can't do it. In fact, no one can do it until they do something else, okay? So for those of you are saying, wait, I can do it, I can do faces, vases in my mind's eye. I promise you that the neuroimaging disputes your
belief, okay? And
Ports. The idea that we can see real world by stable images, we can see real
world impossible figures,
but when we try and imagine those in Our
Minds Eye, we simply can't do it. We
can't do the perceptual
shift in Our Minds Eye, we can't switch back and forth, between phases and vases. However,
and I just have to chuckle because I think these experiments are so clever. If I have you trace or Draw
With a pen on a piece of paper and impossible figure or the faces, vases bi-stable image. And then I ask you
to imagine that bi-stable image or impossible figure and to switch back and forth, you are able to do it.
So what that illustrates is that it's the combination of imagined and real-world experiences, real motor movements real perceptual experiences combined with motor movements combined with what you imagine in your mind's eye.
That really gives you the most depth and flexibility
over your mental visualization. And in doing so we can really stamp
down a third principle of mental training and visualization, which is that your mental training and visualization will be far more effective. If you are performing the exact same or very similar mental,
and physical tasks in the real world,
okay? So, first principle is mental training. Visualization needs to be simple and brief and
That s is that mental training and visualization is not a replacement for real-world
motor training or cognitive training. It's an augment, it's an addition that can really help and the
third principle of mental training and visualization is that you need to combine mental training and visualization with real-world behaviors and experiences that are very,
very similar. It was a
brief, but I think really relevant to side. One of the things that also makes mental training and
Visualization. More effective is when we assign cognitive labels to what's going on when we visualize. So, what I mean is that people are much better at manipulating faces and vases in their minds
eye, of course only once they've drawn them out physically with their hand, as I mentioned before,
then they are manipulating abstract objects
like impossible figures
in part because by labeling them faces and vases.
People are able to capture a lot of other neural Machinery, that's related to faces and basis.
In fact, we have entire brain areas on both sides of the brain devoted to the processing of faces of the fusiform face area. We have other areas in our brain that are involved in processing of 3D
objects, but faces are of particular value. There's a, there's a value to understanding what a face is as opposed to a non face. And there's a value to understanding what a particular face is. In fact, the simplest way to put this is that the human brain is in many ways a face recognition
In an expression of
faces recognition, machine, of course, does other things, but it is exceptionally good at that. Unless
you're in a profession
in which the relationships between 3D objects in your ability to manipulate them as exceedingly
important, you're not going
to have a lot of neural real estate specifically devoted to that. Some people will be better at it some people worse
but when it comes to faces, unless you have a condition, like prophetic, no Co which is an inability to recognize say, famous faces
and distinguish them from non famous faces.
Or if you have some sort of face recognition deficit, which about anywhere from one, perhaps two, three percent of
people out there have they're just terrible at recognizing faces and by the way,
there's about half a percent of people out there that
are what are called super recognizers that can recognize faces in a
large crowd. They
can recognize specific faces. Even from just partial profiles. By the way, these people are extremely valuable to Securities agencies and security agencies are very good at finding these people
machines are quickly.
Getting better or at least as good as super
recognizers. But the best super recognizers are still better than the best AI and machine algorithms out there.
But the point is that in your mind's eye, you are better able to manipulate specific objects or to see things more clearly and with more specificity when it has a label that you recognize
from your real-world experience as opposed to abstract or
fictional labels. Okay? Against
Ring home, the idea that what you experience in the real world, really serves to support
your mental imagery and
therefore, the key importance of experiencing and doing things in the real world
and supporting that with mental training and visualization. And not just relying on mental training and visualization
and the tangent here that's a little bit of fun. And I don't think we've ever talked about before on this podcast. Is that of UFOs? Unidentified flying objects. There's a lot of people out there who think that they've seen UFOs. I guess. Technically they have because a
Was identified flying object. And if it's unidentified at least to them than it is indeed a UFOs. I guess the question is whether or not, we're the dispute rather is whether or not, those UFOs are actually flown by aliens or control by aliens, think that's where the dispute laws.
But you can imagine how if somebody sees
an object in their environment and decides? Ah,
that's a UFO. Okay? Remember these faces vases or these impossible figures if they say, oh, that thing is a UFO as opposed to something else they see. In other words, the face, not the vase. Well, that's stamped.
Sit down as a memory in their visual system and related systems. And then in their minds eye, they are seeing the UFO. They're not seeing the
other thing that it could possibly be okay. So it's stamped on a very specific memory.
So the point here is that mental training and visualization, relies on, not just the physical Contours and the exact spatial profiles in the
speed of movement of particular things that we experience in the real world,
it also heavily depends on the cognitive labels and the
Asians we make about the things that we see
and this will become very important as we build up toward our, fourth
principle of mental training visualization, which is
that our cognitive labels, that is what we decide is
happening. When we do mental training, visualization, turns out to be very
important. Now, this is not simply to say that you can decide, okay? I want to learn how
to play piano and so I'm going to tell
myself that a particular chord. I imagined in my mind's eye is identical to the real world chord just because I decided is
the brain doesn't work that way. It's not
possible to just lie to yourself and learn better as a consequence of the lies. You tell yourself, however,
what this tells us is that it is very, very important that your mental training and visualization accurately recapitulate, the real
world training that you're doing.
So we are going to stamp down a fourth principle of effective mental
training and visualization. Based on what we know from the scientific literature
is that your mental training and visualization should assign
Labels to what you're doing. That can be matched to real-world training and experiences. Now these can be somewhat abstract. So for instance, if you're trying to learn a particular
aspect of the golf swing, okay? So let's say that you're working on your golf swing seems to be there. A lot of people out there working on their golf
swing and you're going to do some mental training in visualization in order to improve your golf swing. We already know again, let's just March through them. That your mental training, visualization needs to be brief and simple. It needs
Has to be
the same. Or in fact, it will be. We can say the same as your real world golf
swing. In other words, it will take you exactly the same amount of time to perform that golf swing in your mind's eye as it would in the
real world. Incredible. Right. Again, something that maybe is take a little bit of time to sink in, but once it does, it'll be like, wow, the brain is really an incredible machine
and that third principle that you still have to do golf
swings in the real world. In addition to the mental training of golf swings and
forth that if you want that mental training, visualization,
To really improve your golf swing. You're going to have to name or apply an identity to the specific golf
swing or aspect of the golf swing that you're practicing. So this could be abstract, you could call it mental
training and visualization of golf swing 1A
and you can imagine your mind's eye, you know, the perfect golf swing over and over and over and over.
But then when you're in the real world you're also going to have to call that.
Either out loud or just to yourself, golf
swing one, a okay, as opposed to a
putt, which might
B, 1
B, so naming, and giving it an identity to a real-world skill and applying the same name or identity to the mental version of that the visualization of that can enhance the mental
training of visualization in significant ways.
So when we apply identities or names to these mental
trainings and visualizations and again,
provide that they are brief and repeated and so on, WE greatly enhance the amount of neural Machinery in the brain and body.
That we are able to
recruit. When we go to perform those real-world
golf swings, and golf pots in here, just replace golf swing and golf. But with anything that you're trying to learn, you're able to recruit a lot more neural machinery and greatly increase the probability of proper
execution. So before we go any further, I want to share with you a couple of incredible
aspects of mental visualization, that
really can be harnessed and applied toward mental
training and visualization. Some
of these were done by Roger Shepard.
Ed and his graduate students and postdocs some work done
by Steve kosslyn and by
others. What these experiments really show is that mental training and visualization is capturing many. Many of the exact same features of
real-world behavior and perceptions, not all of them but many of them. So
for instance, if I tell you to close your eyes
and imagine
A ceiling that has tiles that are black and white checkered
tiles. You know, one black tile one white tiled. For
instance, we know, based on experiments where we measure I've movements Behind Closed eyelids that people tend to move their
eyes up when they are imagining things above them such as the ceiling. Whereas, if I tell you to imagine things down on the floor, like
you're taking a hike. And you're looking
for rattlesnakes, actually, just recently, I experienced because it's spring here in, California. Rattlesnake along a hiking
trail, it's really quite beautiful. Although I
have
Confess I enjoy keeping my distance. Don't like snakes very much, I don't dislike snakes but I prefer not to interact with them. Unless I have to
if I have you imagine that rattlesnake depending on your
relationship or thoughts about rattlesnakes number of things will happen in your brain. Of course, activation the limbic system or not for instance,
but what I know is that regardless of how you feel about snakes,
Most of you will move your eyes
down when imagining a snake.
Hey, it might be subtle, it might be fast, but statistically, that result
shows up as opposed to, when I imagine, where I ask you to imagine something above, you tend to move your eyes up,
in addition to that, if I tell you, for instance, to imagine an elephant and a mouse next to one another, you presumably have some real world,
understanding about the relative sizes of elephants versus mice. Elephants generally are bigger than mice. Thank goodness.
Mice are smaller than elephants. If I asked you to tell me about the details of that Mouse is face. So for instance, can you see its whiskers the processing time required for you to do? That is much longer than the processing time required. If I say, tell me what the position of that elephant's trunk is
now, why would that be so? Okay, the
position of the elephant's trunk, wasn't something that I told you. It wasn't dictated by me, it's in your mind's eye. Maybe you don't even know. And you have to
Searching for it.
But what we do know is that if I tell you to look at a small object
in your mind's eye versus a larger object. So for instance, the mouse versus the elephant, it takes
longer for you to do that. In other words, just as with the map experiment, the distance between things on a map is conserved in your mind's eye as a linear relationship. Takes longer to go far distances between things on a map in your mind, then it does to go shorter distances.
It's also the case that it takes you longer to look at the details of a small object versus a large object. Because why, because you art zooming, in, in your mind's eye, again, all of which speaks to the equivalence of mental imagery with real-world imagery and perception. And as I mentioned earlier, and as we'll see in a moment, this also extends into the motor domain, it takes you longer to perform Complex Motor sequences in your mind's eye. Then it does simple motor sequences just
It would in the real world
and if you're saying of course of course of course. Well then great. Then we've really underscored the point which is that when you imagine things, it is not exactly the same but it is very very much the same as
actually doing or perceiving those things in the real world
and the fifth principle of effective mental training and visualization is this notion of equivalence of
mental imagery versus Real World perception and behavior. These are the experiments as you recall. Where
If people are told to look for clouds in their mental visualization, they tend to look up or if they're looking for something on the floor, they tend to look down. Even Behind Closed eyelids. Now, this can be applied toward
building, an especially effective mental training. In visualization protocol. If you deliberately move your eyes in the direction of the thing or things that
you are trying to recapitulate in your mind in your visualization, that is,
you don't necessarily have to include this step, but mental training visualization is going to be more effective.
Active. If you do because with consciously generated eye movements again even Behind Closed eyelids, you are bringing about more of the neural circuitry that one
would experience if you were to perform that particular cognitive tasks or motor tasks in the real world which as I mentioned before, in principle number three, you need to be doing anyway. Separately from your mental training and visualization. So what we're talking about here is thus far
five principles of mental training, visualization that are well established from the scientific research literature.
In fact, I haven't mentioned this quite yet and I'll refer to some other references. But there's a wonderful systematic review of a large. Number of studies that have looked at mental training and visualization, what's effective what's less effective across a bunch of different disciplines that include education medicine, music, psychology and sports. We will provide a link to this paper in the show. No captions, but the title of the paper is best practice for motor imagery. A systematic literature review on motor imagery
training elements in five different disciplines as the title suggests. It's mainly for
Motor imagery training,
but it extends into
music, which of course, involves motor training and execution.
But as well as education, this review establishes, a number of different important things. I'm going to read off some of the key or highlight takeaways. For instance I
described principle one of effective mental training and visualization which is that the visualization be brief and it be simple and it be repeated. May I ask how many times that very brief 5 to 15. Second
exercise.
Size of going through. Some routine
should be repeated, well, different Studies have used different ranges of let's call them repetitions in a given
training session. But the number that seems to be most effective is somewhere between
50 and 75 repeats per session. That brings about the question of how long one should rest between each repeat. This
gets a little tricky depending on what you're trying to do. Remember that
we have this threshold of about 15 seconds for completion.
Entire
motor sequence, let's say what you're trying to do. Like a golf swing takes you. Five
seconds to imagine in your mind's eye from the point where you, let's just say, have the ball on the tee, bring the the golf club up, you might reposition your feet, just a little bit, you know, that kind of little wiggle that golf golfers do, and then the swing,
if that whole thing, takes five seconds in your mind's eye and
roughly five seconds in the real world. Well, then you'd be able to repeat it, of course, three times in 15 seconds, that would be
one repetition.
Even though you're doing it three
times so there's one 15-second Epic as it's sometimes called EPO CH epoque. And then you would rest for an approximately equivalent amount of time, 15 seconds or so. And then repeat and rest 15 seconds or so. And then repeat, rest 15 seconds and then repeat again,
three golf swings within that 15
seconds. Rest, 15 seconds, three golf swings of them, that 15 seconds, rest. 15 seconds. Truth told these pox and these raspberries do
Need to be exact. You
could imagine, for
instance, that you get
three repetitions of the Swing within 14 seconds. Well, then, do you do another one or do you wait until the end of that 15
seconds? I encourage you not to obsess too much about those sorts of points. Rather
you want to do as many repeats as you can in about a
15-second
epoque, and then rest for
about 15 seconds and then repeat for a
total of fifty to
seventy five repetitions, which
might not sound like a lot.
To some of you might sound like an awful
lot to others of you to me, it sounds like a lot, you know,
50 repetitions of something. And where you're trying to concentrate in your
mind's eye on getting something
accomplished over and over over
again, in exactly the same way. Might seem like a
lot. We know, based on the learning literature that your ability to successfully, perform something in the real world, will
lend itself to better performance of that thing in the imagined world within your mind's eye. That's also one of these sort of does
but if
You're trying to get better at something that you've never performed before. You really should know that the mental training visualization is probably not the best
augment to that real-world training until you're able to perform it successfully in the real world. At
least some of the time mental training visualization can be effective however
at increasing the accuracy or the frequency at which you can do that real-world behavior. So if normally you're only getting the correct swing or you're only hitting the golf ball,
To correctly, say 10% of the time, mental training and visualization can really help bring that number up. But it is important that you are able to successfully complete that motor tasks in the real
world, similarly, for performance of cognitive tasks. So,
for instance, I'm speaking a new language, you might ask. Well, gosh, what, what in the landscape of speaking? A new language can be restricted to 5 to 15 seconds where I could repeat it anywhere from one to three times in a given epic and then rest and then keep repeating 50 to 75 times.
Well, there I would encourage you to pick something that you are able to do, perhaps very
slowly. So to
speak a particular sentence, but with
some challenging, getting the accent in the
Annunciation, right. But you've completed it successfully
before and you want to get more smooth or more fluid with it, likewise for playing piano or guitar again. You have to translate to the specific cognitive and/or motor activity, that you are seeking to improve that. But
those at pox lasting
Five to 15 seconds are really the
Cornerstone of an effective mental training and visualization practice. And the
repeated nature of it 50 to 75 repetitions in. A given session
is also another Cornerstone of an effective mental training and visualization practice. So says this review and some of the other papers that I'm going to get to in a few moments.
Now, one of the other key components of a
successful mental training in visualization, practice is how often you perform that mental training and
visualization practice and
Net number of different Studies have looked at this
through a number of different lenses.
Meaning anywhere from two to eight times per week, it does appear that performing these sessions anywhere from three to five times
per week is going to be effective. We could
perhaps even say most effective because most of the,
let's just call it
the strongest data really point to repeating these 50 to 75 Trials, of the
same thing, three to five times per week so you can come up with a number that's
Anibal for you to do
consistently and you might ask. Do you have to continue to
perform the mental training and visualization forever? And the good news is the answer to that. Question is no, it does seem that. Once you have what's called Consolidated, the Motor Performance, or the cognitive performance of something, it can
be further supported or reinforced.
That is Consolidated in the neural circuits that are responsible for performing that mental or physical
task. So, in other words, once you are performing,
Warming that cognitive or motor tasks in a way that's
satisfactory or perhaps just improved. Perhaps, you're not 100%, but it's improved in the real
world. You don't need to continue to do mental training and visualization to to maintain
that real-world performance. So that's a good thing. In fact, the ideal situation would be then to pick a different sequence or thing that you're trying to learn and do mental training and visualization for that. I perhaps might have misspoke there although I don't want to edit this out.
Misspoke in a sense that again, I said for the thing that you're trying to learn remember, mental training, visualization is going to be most effective for building up the number of accurate
trials or that your ability to do something
with a greater frequency of something that you're
already capable of doing or have done it at least once in the real world. Okay.
This is not to say that mental training and visualization can't be used to acquire new skills. It can in principle but it
Been shown to be most effective for enhancing the speed and the accuracy of skills. That one has already demonstrated some degree of proficiency at in the real world. I think that's important to point out because we often
hear mental training, visualization, and this equivalence of perceptual and motor experiences in Our Minds Eye, to the real world and we think, oh well, we have to do is Imagine doing
something and we will get better at it. And unfortunately, that's not the case. The good news is however, if you can do something once even very slowly in the real world and then you bring it too.
The
mental imagery and visualization
domain, you can get much faster at it in a way that really does translate back to the real
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number three of effective.
Mental training and visualization, which was that you have to be able to perform the thing that you're trying to get better at through visualization. And imagery in the real world,
that should raise the
question of what is the ratio of
real world training versus mental training. That's going to be most effective.
Well, here there are some really interesting data not just in the review that I mentioned but in a couple of the other papers that we're going to talk about in a few minutes.
But what I've done is I've synthesized the information across those papers and they really all point to the
Fact that real-world training is more effective than mental training. And mental training is more
effective than no training.
Now the mental training more effective than no training is kind of a duh except that there are people. For instance, people who are injured who are trying to maintain or replenish some motor skill or ability to move in a
particular way or who have had
traumatic brain injury and are trying to recreate experiences in a way that's safe for
them. Why?
All in a somewhat restricted format. So for instance,
if you've damaged a limb
or you're experiencing, chronic pain, and you need to take a layoff from
some physical activity, there are now many studies
looking at stroke patients at patients, that have been in accidents.
TBI also, people who are suffering from more conventional, Limb and connective tissue. Injuries that if they do mental training, it obviously is not going to put them at
risk of doing those same movements as it would in the
real world.
All right, but that it can actually accelerate or at least maintain skill performance. So it's pretty exciting if you think about it, what this means
and the reason it underscores this mental training is better than no training. Is
that should you find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being injured? Or unable to perform a given Behavior? Imagining the sequence of behaviour that you'd like to maintain or even build up over time. Provided you've done that
motor sequence before in the real
world. Well, the mental training visualization can really help keep that online.
Even help you improve over
time. In fact, I have a colleague in the psychology department at Stanford who told me an anecdote and I'm admittedly it's just an anecdote of a student who
was recruited to Stanford
both for their academic prowess, but also for their abilities in tennis and was injured in their first year. And at first
thought this was devastating. But did a cognitive reframe
around the idea that that
what's called extended lay
off from actual tennis
was going to afford them the ability to do.
Do more mental training than they would. Otherwise, even though
they were quite sad to not be able to do actual physical training for tennis
and when they came back from that injury, they did indeed managed to improve beyond the initial
non-injured State, they were in before the
injury, just pretty remarkable,
but it's called pointed out to me. They were very careful to include a lot of mental training and visualization during that quote unquote, lay off period.
So again, mental training better than no training physical training better than mental.
Inning. But when we say physical training better than mental training, what we're really talking about is when you allocate a certain amount of training hours for a
given skill per week, okay? So how would this look, what
these Studies have done is they've said, okay, if people have the option of doing the real world
training for 10 hours, a week versus mental training for 10 hours a week which group performs better and turns out, it's the ones that do the physical training for 10 hours per week.
However, we also know that combinations of
Physical training and mental training, can bring about results that are greater than either one of those
alone. How would that work? Well, I
wish I could tell you that if you did nine hours of physical training per week, plus 1 hour of mental training
that your performance will be better than if you did 10 hours of physical training and that's not the case,
okay? This is why we can reliably say physical real-world training
and again, this could be in the cognitive domain is always going to be more effective on an hour-by-hour.
As compared to mental training. So if you
can do real world training and perhaps we should be calling a real
world as opposed to physical. But
if you can do real world training compared to purely mental training, that's going to be the
best use of your time. This is really important, it doesn't
underscore everything that we're talking about because here's the really cool thing. If you do 10 hours per week of
real-world physical training, again, could be running, could be music, could be math,
could be whatever it is. You're trying to learn shooting,
basketballs hitting golf balls.
And you add one hour or
even half an hour of mental training to that real-world training.
Well, then the results are significantly greater than you would experience with physical
training alone and of course, it would be greater than you could achieve with mental training alone because we already established that real-world training is more powerful in learning skills and retaining skills than his mental
training, okay? If any of that was confusing, let me just say it one more time just to be ultra clear if you have
Have the option to do real world training for a
cognitive and/or motor skill versus
mental training. Always go with real-world
training. However, if you can add
to a maximum amount of
real-world training by doing some mental training, and you follow the principles that we've been discussing here, which are gleaned from the scientific literature.
Well, then you are going to get significantly greater
results in terms
of speed, accuracy and
consistency of performance of those real-world behaviors and cognitive abilities.
And, of course, if you are unable to do physical training, for whatever, reason,
injury travel,
whatever the case may be, well, then doing mental training is still
far significantly greater than doing no training at all.
Okay, so total layoffs, it turns out are a bad thing if you want to get better at something and indeed if you want to retain certain skills, both cognitive and motor.
Now, a couple of other things to keep in mind as you're thinking about how to build up skills through a
combination of physical and mental training. Well, remember, back to the beginning of the episode where we talked about neuroplasticity, and the fact that self-directed adaptive plasticity, which is really what we're talking about here in this entire episode things that you're trying to learn in a
A deliberate way. That is as you recall a two-part process requires
focused attention both when you're doing it in the real world and when you're doing mental training and it requires, rest and sleep. And in fact,
You would be very wise to try and get a good night's sleep. Both on the days
when you do physical training.
Again also called real world training and mental training. You
may also be asking, can you do them on the
same day
and this gets into some Nuance in the literature but by my reading of the literature, here's the takeaway if you are doing the maximum amount of physical training that you can do according to your schedule preventing injury
and all those sorts of important constraints. And
you're
Going to add mental training and imagery, it doesn't really matter
when you do it, you could do it
immediately. After your physical training, you could do it on a separate day but you do want to place it at a time in which you can try and get good sleep that night. So for instance, believe or not Studies have been done. Where people are doing mental training at
times when they should be
sleeping, that is going to offset some of the degradation in performance that you would normally see, but it's generally a bad idea. You should do your real-world training and your mental training.
I never it is that you can and then you should try and get as much quality sleep as you possibly
can on the night. Following that physical and/or, mental training, okay? This is true of pretty much every night of your life, right? If I had my way that is if I had a magic wand which obviously, I don't, I would ensure the I and everyone else in the world get sufficient amounts of quality sleep every single night. But that's just not realistic. They're going to be times where that's simply not going to happen, for whatever reason. And I always say if you're not going to get sufficient amounts of quality sleep for whatever reason, trying to make it four,
Fun reason or a good
reason but I think getting sufficient amounts of
quality sleep 80%, the nights of your life is a reasonable goal and one that's worth striving toward and we have lots of episodes now or three really on mastering sleep on, perfecting your sleep and episode guest episode with the great, Matthew Walker, who wrote the book, why you, why we sleep
incredibly important book, all of those as well as our toolkit for Sleep. Describe ways to
improve your sleep, so you can refer to those episodes. If you're having challenges with sleep and want to
Yvonne sleep and things like non sleep deep breaths, which can support your ability to sleep and your ability to learn.
So sleep is still vitally important. Not just, for ensuring neuroplasticity occurs following real world
training, but also following mental training. And again, when you place that mental training is not so critical, at least it doesn't appear to be based on the literature. So
if anyone out there has knowledge of any
peer reviewed studies stating that mental training should be done either before, or after, or some hours away from Real World Training,
please send that to me or put it
in the show.
Excuse me, put it in the comments on YouTube and I'll see it there because I do read all the comments but I'm not aware of any any such data or
analysis. And by the way, if you are interested in understanding the relationship between motor skill acquisition and retention. And this first night phenomenon of sleep, the first night, after training
versus sleep on the second, I
etcetera. There's a really wonderful paper that was published
by none other than the great Matthew Walker. When I believe he was a graduate student, maybe he was a postdoc when he did this in Robert stickgold slab at
Harvard. The title of the paper is
Deep and time course of motor skill
learning. This is a paper published. In 2003 still an incredibly important paper. I will provide a link to it in the show notes. Captions, it really highlights some of the key
aspects of when people sleep and how critical
sleep is on the night following in the nights, following that
training in order to really
consolidate certain types of learning and what phases of sleep relate to the consolidation of motor learning, Etc, a really wonderful paper and of course but just one of
Of Matthew and Robert stickgold incredible papers on sleep and
learning. Remember the beginning of the episode? When I mention that many people are good at mental training, visualization,
but some people are not well sex.
Differences, have been explored and
age-related. Differences have been explored in terms of people's ability to mentally visualize and train up, specific skills. And
while initially, there were some sex differences, identified really the bulk of the subsequent.
Archer.
That is the majority of quality peer reviewed studies on this aspect of mental training. Visualization point to the fact that there are no significant differences between males and females in terms of their ability, to mentally
visualize nor their ability to use that
mental visualization toward improving cognitive or motor skills. That point was covered in some detail in the review. I mentioned earlier, best practice for motor imagery a systematic literature. Review on motor energy training, elements in five different disciplines.
This review also looked at age related effects
And perhaps, the only thing that really popped out from this literature review, in terms of age-dependent differences that point to changes in protocols, that you might make, is that for individuals, 65 or older, a combination of physical and mental training, may actually allow them
to
gain and consolidate skills,
better than were they to do physical training
alone, now whether or not that's due to some lower upper limit of physical training that they can do because of their age, or whether or not
that something specific to do with.
Older versus younger neural circuits as in clear. But what this review also makes clear is that for the vast majority of people out
there, so teens people in their 20s and their 40s and so on
physical training, more effective, the mental training, we said that before combination of physical and mental training, more effective than physical training alone. Provided the mental training is on top of the
maximum amount of physical training that one could do. And of course, mental training, more effective than no training at
all, okay? So we talked about sets and
Reps, we talked about, you know,
5 to 15 seconds at pox with about fifteen second breaks in between or rest between sets if you will. Repeat it for 50 to 75 trials, done. Three to five times per
week.
Some of the conditions of keeping it really simple, The Importance of Being able to actually perform those sequences in
the real world and so on. But we haven't discussed is first person versus third
person and eyes open versus eyes closed. What are we really talking about here? Well,
first person mental training and visualization,
Beware. You are
imagining doing something
and you are seeing yourself doing something from the inside out as opposed from the outside in
Imagine, for instance wearing a head cam. Okay, we're a
body Cam and doing something with your hands or
being in virtual reality and having the sense that whatever you see in front of
you and that's moving and that you're doing. That's you. So what I mean by this is a mental training or visualization protocol, for instance if you were at the piano or a guitar where you're actually looking
down at
Or sensing the feeling of your hands, but you're not actually
moving your hands,
okay, as opposed to seeing
yourself from outside of your body. So looking at yourself, say standing next to you or from
across the room, you're looking at yourself playing the
piano or playing guitar or swinging a golf club or doing a tennis serve. Okay. First person versus third person
and what the data tell us is that first person mental training, visualization is generally more
effective than third
Sun' mental training visualization, which perhaps raises another chorus of does out there
but it needn't have been the case, right? I mean, you could imagine that seeing yourself
doing something and doing it perfectly because you've done it perfectly once before. Hopefully
would allow you to build up that skill more quickly because you have that third person perspective, where you can really see every
aspect in every element of what you're trying to perform.
Well, turns out that the first person mental training of
visualization is significantly more effective than that. Third person mental training and visualization. So
if what you're trying to learn lends itself, well to this
first-person mental experiencing of self as you perform the cognitive and/or, motor skill. I suggest you do that as opposed to the third person version.
Now what if what you're trying to learn doesn't lend
itself? Well to first person, visualization,
for instance, what if you're trying to learn specific
Cognitive skill, that doesn't involve
any overt motor Behavior to be observed.
Well, in that case, it's very clear
that closing your
eyes, ideally, and trying to perform that specific cognitive task or
the statement or the
uttering of a particular sentence in another language, or doing some sort of computation or problem-solving of some sort in your head. Well, that
itself, of course, is first person because it's inside your own body
as opposed to
I don't know that anyone would actually do this,
but looking at yourself from a third person perspective in your mind's eye and seeing yourself perform that cognitive challenge, whatever that challenge may happen to be.
Okay. Now we have to address eyes,
open versus eyes closed and
this is where the literature gets pretty interesting. I always
thought for some reason, I don't know why,
but I presumed that mental training and
visualization should always be done eyes closed,
but it turns out that's not how a lot of studies of mental training in visualization have been done. In fact,
Any of them have arrived at really impressive
protocols, which are essentially the protocols that I've distilled out in him, listing out during today's
episode having people, either watch videos of themselves performing a given skill and imagining themselves in that role and again, it's them. So, again, during the mental training visualization, there watching a movie of themselves, so they're somewhat in the
third person perspective, I guess we could technically, say they are in the third person perspective, but they're watching themselves.
Off. So in doing that we know based on neuroimaging studies that when we watch
videos of ourselves doing things, we
experience that more from a first-person
perspective. Than if we watch videos of other people doing, things use your imagination here, folks.
So if you're somebody for instance, who's trying to get better at a
particular skill, this could be not just sport, but also public speaking
watching videos of yourself doing that can be very effective. But of course, we have to come back to the first principle of effective mental training and visualization.
Which is that whatever it is that we're trying to build up or consolidate as a skill needs to be brief and repeated. So what we're really talking about here is watching a video of ourselves on Loop or listening to a audio or audio/video recording of
ourselves on Loop for whatever aspect that we're trying to build up or improve
upon. Now for people that for instance, are trying to get better at
dealing with public
speaking. And there isn't a particular skill or utterance of particular.
Sentences or words that they're trying to accomplish. But rather they're trying to learn to be more relaxed or to articulate better in the public. Speaking
scenario. There would be one of the few instances in which I suggest more General theme. And
not exact recapitulation of some specific words that you're going to say.
Perhaps it could be a sequence of you walking out onto stage toward the podium or out from the podium and facing the audience and looking in
multiple directions up and down to see people in every corner of the room.
Just repeating that on Loop in your mind's eye or watching yourself. Do that on video and making yourself calm in your internal State. As you're doing
that this is more of a mental autonomic training because what you're
really trying to do is control your autonomic nervous system. The nervous system aspect that controls how
alert or calm you are as opposed to a specific
skill. However you could also translate this to dance steps or two motor sequences for playing an
instrument and so on. So the point here is that
It's not as if there is zero utility
to third person mental training and visualization.
There can be. But first person mental training, visualization is going
to be more effective as I mentioned before.
And if you are going to use the third person, mental training, visualization, ideally you would be looking at yourself either on video or listening to yourself and audio and/or video.
That is going to be more effective than closing your eyes and trying to imagine
yourself from a third person perspective in your mind's eye.
Okay? So, just to make it really simple. First
person better than third person visualization, if you're going to go with third person, visualization, try and go with real third person, visualization where you're actually seeing and or hearing yourself on a screen. And again, this was somewhat of
a surprise to me. I always thought that mental
training, a visualization was done with eyes closed, I thought, okay, close your eyes. You imagine this, you imagine that that's actually not the case for many, many studies, some of which,
Are considered real, Hallmark studies within the field of mental training and visualization and the different neural circuits that it recruits and
along those lines. There's a really interesting study that came out, not that long
ago. This was just a summer of 2022 like to discuss in a little bit of detail because it really
hammers home a number of the principles that we talked about the title of the article is mental practice. Modulates, functional connectivity between the
cerebellum and the primary motor cortex
going to tell you the essential features of this study. First of
Primary motor cortex
sometimes called M1 is a
relatively small but vitally important strip of neurons in or near the front of your brain. The neurons there are called upper motor neurons. They communicate through a set of neural connections with what are called
lower motor neurons. The lower motor
neurons sit What's called the
ventral Horn of the spinal cord. So along the spinal cord. You have
sensory inputs coming from
skin and muscle and it's called proprioceptive feedback. That tells you where your limbs are in relation to each other.
And to
yourself and so on. You also have motor neurons that live in the spinal cord. They're actually the ones that send
little wires that we call axons out to the muscles. Release, acetylcholine on to those muscles and allow those muscles to
contract lower motor neurons are the ones that actually
generate movement. However,
they are largely responsible for reflexive. Movements are already learned movements and they require some input
from things like Central pattern, generators and some other circuits within the spinal cord and
brain stem. But it's those M1 primary motor cortex neurons that are
Upper motor neurons because they control lower motor neurons
through directed action. Okay,
so when I say primary motor
cortex, I'm really talking about those upper motor neurons M1.
The cerebellum is an area in the back of your brain.
If you were to look at a brain, you see two lobes back there that are highly foliated foliated means that lots of
lots of folds and lots of bumps and grooves back there. And actually means mini
brain. It looks like a kind of a mini brain. Stuffed in the back of the brain
and certain animals. The cerebellum is
much larger.
ER, than the rest of the brain in humans. The cerebellum is relatively small compared to the rest of so-called Neo cortex, the outer shell, the human brain,
the cerebellum is involved in Balance. It's also involved in eye movements. It's also involved in timing and motor learning, and the key thing to understand is that the cerebellum communicates with the primary motor cortex. And it can do so through what's called inhibition, it has outputs that inhibit the activity of neurons in the motor
cortex and elsewhere and that has a profound influence.
On the execution of motor Behavior and the learning of particular motor behaviors. Now, I
don't want to get into too much
detail around all this.
But what you need to know is that the cerebellum communicates with M1 primary motor cortex, and one is primary motor cortex. As the upper motor neurons that
are going to control the lower motor neurons and are going to control physical behavior and execution of physical movements.
The communication between cerebellum and primary motor cortex is inhibitory, although it can activate motor cortex to and this gets into a little bit of technical detail but there can be inhibition of inhibition. So if you take something that's a break and you inhibit that break what you end up with is more excitation. Okay? So the takeaway here that's key and everyone should be able to understand even though you may
or may not be following. This all cerebellum primary motor
cortex thing is that when we gain a new skill or we get more proficient at a skill,
So faster and more accurate. There tends to be more net, excitation of the cerebellum to
motor cortex, communication and that is accomplished by reducing inhibition. So that's where it gets a little bit confusing to some but
in this paper what they did is they explored people's ability to
improve on a very specific but very simple motor sequence. It's one that you're already familiar with its that tapping sequence. I talked about before where the thumb is digit, 1
index, finger number
Middle finger number three
ring, finger number 4 and pinky finger number 5 and it's a
12 13, 14, 15
12, 13, 14 15. And they had people actually
perform this and they measured their
speed and accuracy.
And then they had them do a practice session that was either an intentional task to one group, just looked at an attentional q and had to maintain focus on that attention On Cue and another group did mental practice. They basically did 50 imagine.
And trial. So just in their
minds eye of this 12, 13, 14, 15 on, repeat, okay, 50 trials, much in the same way as what, I referenced, as the ideal protocol earlier. Okay,
50 rounds of that, then they got tested again on the motor tasks, in the real world. And there were also recordings of the cerebellar to primary motor
cortex communication.
So, there were a bunch of different results in this study, I think are interesting. But the ones that are most important are that quote, we found
That mental practice enhance, both the speed and accuracy
of this
12 13, 14
15 performance in the real world when people did these 50. Imagine trials,
there are many results out there, different papers that
parallel. And essentially say the same thing as what is said in this paper, remember there been studies of mental training, dating back to the 1880s.
But what this paper really does, it looks at the neural machinery and the changes in the neural machinery and what they found using transcranial, magnetic
stimulation both in the context of
stimulating, but also recording
activity and connectivity between cerebellum and primary motor cortex,
is that mental training, enhanced the net
excitation of cerebellum to motor cortex communication. That is it reduced the inhibition in a way that allowed motor cortex to generate these.
That's with more accuracy and more speed.
What's also interesting about this paper is that it showed that the Improvement in performance of this task was not related to activation of the motor pathways themselves. So it's not the case that the cerebellum activation or inhibition change the patterns of excitation going directly to the spinal cord because those Pathways actually exist through a couple of intermediate stations. What it really showed is that when people do mental training, and here you could say, Okay 50, trials out
Out of Trials, but it's not actually that many trials, it's pretty fast learning. If you think about do a task, in the real world, do 50, Trials of the Imagine task, do the trial in the real world. Again, significant Improvement in speed and accuracy through. Now, what are becoming to be established neural circuit connections between cerebellum and primary motor
cortex? Okay, so this study is one of several but not a tremendous number of studies out there that are starting to really pinpoint. The underlying neural circuits
that allow mental training of visualization to
We improve motor skill performance
but again, and please hear me on this
in this study and in the
vast majority of other studies that have shown significant Improvement in Motor Performance in the real world,
by use of mental training
visualization. There was an ability of each and everyone in the study to perform the specific motor sequence
in the real world that then they were able to enhance with mental training and visualization. Now, thus far
we've been talking mostly about performance of motor sequences and one of the things to really understand
about performance of
Or sequences both in the real world and in the Imagine context, is that it involves the doing, is what we call a go
action and not
doing certain things. What I mean by not doing
well for many tasks out there.
Even ones as simple as the 12, 13, 14, 15 tasks that we talked about a moment ago
there is the need not just to tap
those fingers in the correct sequence as quickly as possible. But also to be accurate about it to not do 13, 14, or 13 and 4 at the same time. So there's both a
Go component and action component. And a withhold action component,
and the ability to withhold action is strongly constrained
by the time domain. In other words, the faster that we need to
perform a given motor sequence, the more likely, we are to perform incorrect
components of the motor sequences well. Okay, so
one of the key things about mental training, visualization, that's really remarkable is that it can also be used and has been shown to improve, not just go
aspects.
Motor Performance and cognitive performance, but also no go aspects of Motor Performance and skill learning.
Now, the go/no-go thing is
something I've discussed before on this podcast in reference, to the so called basal ganglia, basal ganglia
are subcortical. So they're below that bumpy
surface of the human brain that were most accustomed to seeing when we look at it from the outside.
And the basal ganglia are strongly involved
in Go versus no. Go type tasks and learning.
Now,
there are only a few studies that have really looked at the learning and the Improvement of no-go components of motor learning, but these no-go
components are really, really important.
In fact, if we were to look at what's involved at Improvement in a golf swing or shooting free, throws or getting better at piano or getting better at math or language. Speaking, I think it's fair to say that at least half and probably, as much as 75% of motor learning is
Out, restricting,
inappropriate movements, or, utterances or thoughts. If what you're trying to learn is purely cognitive and I think that's an important point. That brings us back to our initial learning. When we come into this world that developmental plasticity, which, as you recall, we have a
lot of interconnected aspects of our brain and nervous system early in life.
Remember the example of the kid trying to eat and getting the spoon of food and Bowl on their head etcetera and then over time, getting more accurate at bringing food.
To their mouth and eating in a clean way things that most but not all people accomplish in at some point in the course of their
lifetime. Well, there haven't been many, but there been a few. Very interesting studies. Looking at how mental training and visualization can improve the no-go
aspect of motor learning. And I think
this is important to highlight because it really mirrors What's Done in the real world. As opposed to just the finger tapping type things which are mostly go tasks. Again there's a little bit of a no-go component there. But there are specific tasks that
people have developed for
Laboratory that really closely mimic action learning and cognitive learning in the real
world. And one of the
more important of those is What's called the stop signal task. Now the stop signal task is something that I'll explain to you. I'll also provide a link in the show notes caption so you can try it. It's actually a lot of fun to try this because it really gives you a sense of just how challenging some of these
laboratory tasks are, let me just describe it for a moment.
The stop signal task was really developed and popularized by Gordon.
Logan and William Cowan. Gordon. Logan is at Vanderbilt University, and has done a lot of really important work,
but one of the important aspects of his work is
looking at Motor Performance and skill acquisition
and the development of the stop signal task, I'll describe the stop signal task for you. Now, in Broad Contour, you or another research subject would sit in front of a
screen, there are two keys on that keyboard, or two keys, among the other keys on the
keyboard one,
which is designated
left the other, which is designated, right?
And then on the screen, you'll be presented for instance with a left facing or a right facing
Arrow. So, in the initial trial, what would happen is that Arrow would pop up on the screen and your job
is to press the left key.
When the right-facing arrow is presented. You press the right
key pretty straightforward. But there's a limited amount of time in which you can do this. And the idea is that you're going to need to do this within approximately 500 milliseconds of the presentation of that Arrow or
else, it's going to tell you that you missed that trial. Now of course,
If you press the wrong key, so if the arrow goes left and you press the right key, then you would be told you got that one wrong.
Okay, so this
is a reaction time test and not one that's particularly
novel. What's novel? And what Logan, and cow and developed was that in the stop signal, task every once in a while. Not every trial. But every once in a while that arrow is presented and then with some delay, ranging anywhere from a hundred milliseconds to maybe 350 milliseconds, there will be a
Circle or a red X also
presented, which is a stop signal. And your job is to not press the key
that corresponds to the direction of arrow. In
fact, not press any key at all.
Now you can imagine how if the stop signal shows up with a longer delay after the presentation of the arrow, there's a higher probability that you will have already
generated the key pressing movement, okay? So
at the link that we provide in the show, no caption, you can actually do these two tasks and what you'll find.
And is that you and most people will be able to do this Arrow to Reaction Time pressing of the left to right.
Key somewhere in the neighborhood between 300 milliseconds and maybe as long as 500 millisecond delay, you'll get an average of how quickly respond.
And then, of course, if you choose to, and I would hope you would choose to go on and do the stop signal task. You will be told trial by trial whether or not you are hitting the right
keys, because if you are, you'll be allowed to progress to the next
trial, or if
You are told to stop that is you get the stop signal and you press the key. Anyway, you'll be told that you made an error because you did not stop. Now again, with very short delays between the presentation of the arrow in the
stop signal. You are going to be much better at inhibiting or preventing yourself from the behavior at the no-go aspect of motor execution. That is
what you will find is that if the stop signal is presented, very shortly. After let's say 100
milliseconds, which is very, very brief amount of time
after the presentation of the arrow.
Oh, there's a good chance that you're going to be able to withhold the key pressing behavior. However, if the delay is anywhere from 200 to 350 milliseconds, after the presentation of the arrow chances are that you're going to press the button even when you shouldn't have on at least some of those trials, okay? And if you try and game the system and wait, a certain amount of time, after the presentation of each Arrow, there will also be times in which the stop signal does not appear and you fail to
hit the button in the appropriate amount of
time. So,
Fun little task. It doesn't cost anything or
it may be a couple of minutes of your time and if you do have time to go to
it, I think it will give you a much deeper
flavor for the sorts of experiments that we're talking about here. And find that these stop signals are actually pretty hard to generate when you're trying to learn some new motor behavior. And that actually illustrates a bigger Point here,
if today, you sense that we've been talking about studies of, you know, tapping fingers and, you know, stopping button presses and that those examples are highly artificial.
Shal and don't really translate to the real world. Well, keep in mind that the tasks that are used in these studies, really Target, the specific neural circuits that is the same neural
circuit that you would use for the performance of essentially, any motor task. Now, of course, other motor tasks like ones where you involve your feet or
cognitive tasks where you have to think really hard about specific information and search for that information assemble. It in particular ways, of
course, involve other neurons and neural circuits that we haven't discussed today, but
the core components of these go and no go.
Task or they stop signal. Task
really capture the core. Elements of most,
all of cognitive and/or, motor learning in some way, that's fundamentally important, okay? So they have real world relevance.
The paper that I'd like to just briefly describe to you is entitled motor imagery combined with physical training, improves response, inhibition in the stop signal
task, okay? So that title is a little bit wordy but now you know
what the stop signal task is and what this paper essentially found was that if people did
physical training. So the sort of experiment that I just described
versus mental training, where they sat eyes open and imagine their
responses to those arrows and stop signals, but they didn't actually generate any key presses.
US versus
a combination of the physical training.
So the actual pressing of the buttons are withholding pressing of the buttons. As the case may be plus mental training.
Over the course of about five days using the Contour described of the key principles of mental training
performance. We talked about, I'll get to the specifics and moment, but it really obeyed. Most all of what we've talked about, if not all of it. So repetition simple repeated over about five days and so on and
so forth, what they found was that the mental training and physical training group. So mental and real-world training, groups performed significantly better in the stop signal reaction time. That is they were able to with
Hold action when they needed to withhold action.
More frequently and with more accuracy, vended either the physical training or mental training, groups alone. So this actually spits in the face of what we said earlier, which is that physical training
is always better than mental training. And mental training is always better than no
training and it's important to point out here that both the physical training and the mental training groups experienced significant improvements
in their reaction time and accuracy at the stop signal task.
But in the case of this study, which is exploring the withholding of
Appropriate
behaviors
the combination of mental training, and physical training,
out performed, either physical, or mental training alone.
So, while earlier, we said that, if you have a certain amount of time
in order to train something up, physical training is always going to be better than
mental training. Well, here we have somewhat of an exception where if the thing you're trying to learn involves withholding mistakes as opposed to trying to generate the right behaviors per
se. Well then
You are probably better off doing a combination of mental training and physical
training. Let me state that a little bit differently. If you're finding that you're screwing up something, not because you can't initiate that particular motor Behavior but you're doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, you're not able to withhold a particular action. Well then in that case, mental training in combination with physical training becomes, especially important.
So for you coaches for you students out there, keep that in mind
when trying to learn how to
withhold.
Particular action sequences because they're not serving you. Well, in the real
world, using a combination of real-world training and physical training is actually better for
you on an hour per hour basis. Then is physical training alone,
a couple of key details about this study, should you decide to implement these protocols in this study, they did approximately 30 Trials of the thing that they were trying to get better at now? They do those in the real world. So,
in this case, the stop signal tasks, involve actually pressing those buttons.
And then
Had a test phase of about 144, go, trials and about 48. Stop trials, okay? So this is important, if you are a coach or your student or your just going to self-direct, this kind of
learning in your self-directed adaptive, plasticity,
it's important that you mix in both go and no go trials, okay?
Wasn't always the case that there was a stop signal generated.
The other thing that was really impressive about the study is that the change has occurred very quickly, so the training
Was performed five times
over five days. So once a day for five days again, back to this, three to five times per week, principal and
the improvements were really
significant in some cases. In fact, if you decide to produce this paper, you can go to table
two. You can see, you know, in some cases, a near doubling in the reduction in reaction time through a combination of mental and
physical training compared to physical training alone or mental training alone again.
However,
Both physical training and mental training groups alone. Saw significant improvements but the combination of mental
training and physical training was far greater than you saw, with either one of those alone. So that's all nicely Quantified for you in this paper.
So, again, I really like this paper, despite it not involving a huge number of subjects. I think it is a key paper because it really points to such an important element of motor learning and training, which is this
action withholding component. This no-go component that here is captured so nice.
SLI in the stop signal
task. So before we round up our discussion about motor training of visualization want to just briefly touch on some of the studies that have explored, why certain individuals are better or worse at
motor training and visualization and what that might correlate with.
At the beginning of today's episode, I briefly mentioned a Fantasia which is
this phenomenon where some people just simply can't work seem to have extreme Challenge generating visual imagery.
Been a number of studies exploring. How a fan
Shakes as they're sometimes called. Although,
nowadays, it's not considered
polite. If you will, to refer to people according to their condition. So for instance, professed agnosia is a condition in which people are unable to
recognize particular phases.
And in the past, these people were referred to, as professed diagnosis X, okay, as if their condition defined them, right
now, it is, it's
not considered polite to do that, rather we say that,
Person has professed like no CEO or suffers from profiles like no shh, although the word suffer, then also has become a little bit touchy.
I'm going to do my best to just try me as clear as possible here and explain that people who have a Fantasia can have a Fantasia to varying degrees,
so they can either have a
complete absence of ability to generate mental imagery or they have a poor or kind of rudimentary ability to generate visual imagery in their minds
eye.
It was thought that people who have a Fantasia or not capable of what's called synesthesia, synesthesia has or when people have perceptual blending
and this is not while under the influence of any kind of psychedelic or other kind of drug
perceptual, blending of an
atypical kind or rare kind actually have some friends to friends that have different forms of synesthesia One, Associates different keys on the piano or musical notes with specific colors in a very very 12.
Specific way. So they'll tell you that E
flat on the piano is a particular tone in their mind of Amber
Hue. Okay. And that,
I forget what other key is associated with a
particular shade of red and so on and so forth. Are these people better at piano? Are they more
perceptive of colors in their environment? Not necessarily. So this is just the
perceptual blending, it doesn't necessarily lend itself to any improved
ability. Now you could imagine why
people would hypothesize
Sighs that people have a Fantasia, especially its extreme
form would not be capable
of or have synesthesia has
that turns out that's not the case. A couple of really interesting papers again,
we will link these in the show. No captions
one is entitled, what is the relationship between F and Tasia? Synesthesia and autism. And the other one is a Fantasia, the science of visual
imagery extremes. And I really like to
review a Fantasia, the science of visual imagery extremes for those of you that are interested,
In understanding a Fantasia with more
depth, the study addressing the relationship between a Fantasia synesthesia, and autism. Found that a Fantasia is indeed linked to week visual imagery, but that a Fantasia is can also be synesthesia X and vice versa. What was also interesting about this study is the address the question of whether or not people who have a Fantasia that is a challenge or inability to generate mental or visual imagery tend to have.
Features associated with autism, were residing, somewhere on the autism
spectrum, and I'm not trying to use ambiguous language here, but the whole
set of language and nomenclature around, autism, and autism spectrum is also undergoing revision now, because we are now coming to understand that autism. And nowadays, it's generally not considered correct to
call. People autistics in that sense, but autism
is considered one set of positions along a spectrum.
From that includes things like Asperger's Etc. But that may also include other aspects of cognition and even
personality. So, these are starting to be viewed, not just as a spectrum or one
Continuum ranging from, you know, non-autistic to autistic, but a lot of variation and subtlety in between, and even crossing over with other
aspects of Personality Psychology and Neuroscience. Okay, so I'm not trying to be vague here. I'm trying to be accurate rather by saying the whole
description and categorization of autistic
Non-autistic, Etc,
is undergoing. Vast revision right now.
But the important point, I think from this paper is that indeed, it was found that people who have a Fantasia tend to exhibit more of the features that are associated with
the autism spectrum.
Now, how those things relate to one another, in terms of their clinical relevance, isn't clear? And of course is entirely unclear
as to what's the chicken and what's the egg there.
So you could imagine no pun intended. For instance, that people that are on the autism spectrum might be
Less proficient at generating visual imagery because they are exceedingly proficient at other things. You could also imagine
that people are placed onto the autism spectrum. As it's sometimes referred to,
or are associated with particular features on the autism spectrum because in a causal way of the a Fantasia, and of course it's extremely important to highlight that, not all
people that
consider themselves or that
people consider Autistic or that,
Are on the autism spectrum or Asperger's or any variation thereof necessarily have a Fantasia.
Just as it is that not all people that are on the autism
spectrum, completely lack or even lack, what's called theory of mine, which is the ability to
sort of empathizing this scribe feelings and motivations
of others. When viewing the actions and perceived feelings of others,
okay? So what I just described hopefully doesn't come across as just a bunch of words soup. What I'm trying to pin point is that there does seem
To be a relationship between one's ability to generate visual imagery and certain constellations of cognitive and emotional
perception, and behavior and vice versa. Okay.
In a future episode, I promise to cover synesthesia and autism and some of the related cognitive and motor
aspects of autism. And things like, Asperger's, I'm going to feature an expert, guests or actually several expert guests in this area because it is a
rapidly evolving and somewhat
official field. Meanwhile, I think it's important to at least consider how mental training and visualization, might relate to certain aspects of cognition, and our ability to
visualize things not just in terms of other people's behavior, which is one of the common ways that people probe for autism and Asperger's versus non-autistic and non Asperger's. And so on the so-called theory of Mind tasks in effect, asking whether or not children are adults, can really get in the mind of others, that's a typical task developed by Simon
baron-cohen.
But also, whether or not children and adults are capable of generating mental imagery in a really Vivid way, or whether or not they have minor or
even extreme Challenge in doing. So,
and perhaps the most direct way to explain why I included this aspect of the discussion of mental training of visualization. As it relates to different cognitive phenotypes or
neurocognitive phenotypes such as autism, Asperger's Etc.
Is because if you think about motor skill,
execution or cognitive
Execution, and the relationship
between mental training of visualization
and motor skills or cognitive skills.
That's all pretty straightforward when you're talking about finger tapping and gonogo tasks and learning piano and things of that sort. But in many, many ways are learning of social cognition are learning of how to behave in certain circumstances, what's considered normal or a typical neurotypical and neuro, a typical if you will. A lot of that is not just generated from the inside out but it also involves observation and
Oh ization of what are considered appropriate and inappropriate? Definitely placed in quotes. By the way, folks, I'm
not placing judgment, I'm just saying
appropriate and inappropriate for a given
context behavior. In other
words, social learning and social cognition is every bit as much a learned behavior and pattern of cognitive and motor patterns as is tapping fingers or withholding key presses in a go no-go. Task is just that it transmits into a domain that involves
smiling versus frowning versus asking you.
Question versus staying silent versus sitting still versus fidgeting, what's
appropriate? And when what's inappropriate, and when all of that is what we call social cognition and
it has direct parallels to everything. We've been talking about up until this point. So today, we did a deep dive, which is often the case on this
podcast into mental training and visualization.
During the course of the episode. I tried to lay down one by one, the key components of an effective mental training, in
visualization, practice everything ranging from
making sure that the practice involve brief that pox repeats of specific sequences of motor and or cognitive behavior that those be relatively simple. So that you can imagine
them even if you're somebody who's not good at doing mental training,
visualization. And I should mention that if you do mental training and visualization repeatedly over time, you get better at mental training
and visualization, there's
Say What's called meta plasticity here.
So it's not just about engaging. Neuroplasticity of particular, circuits is also
about getting better at engaging plasticity. So, plasticity of plasticity,
also describe the key Importance of Being able to actually execute specific movements and cognitive tasks in the real world. If you want, the mental training
of visualization to be, especially
effective and we talked about the importance of naming things, we talked about
the importance of
creating, not just one, but many parallels between
Real
world training and mental training and visualization
and really on the whole what we established was that cognitive and/or motor learning really is something that you should do in the real world as much as possible. But if you can't do to injury or whatever conditions using mental training, is a reasonable substitute but not a complete substitute. And if you can't do a real world training for whatever reason injury, or otherwise that mental training is going to
be better than no training at all.
And of course, we established that at least for withholding action, in order to get better at a skill, a combination of physical training, and mental training is going
to be best. But that
if you're trying to learn a new skill and you're having challenges with performing that skill because of an inability to do the skill
in the first place, we're on a consistent
basis will then on an hour-by-hour basis. You're
best off. Investing your time into the physical training,
only incorporating
mental training and visualization. If you are able to
Do that, on top of the maximum amount of real-world training that you're capable of doing.
And of course we talked about the actual neural circuits and a bit about how
the actual neuroplasticity occurs
early in the episode. I mentioned long-term depression, well in describing the improvements in no goat a slow, stop signal tasks, a lot of what's observed during those tasks is an
improvement or rather an increase in long-term depression of specific neural connections.
So my hope is that in learning about those basic neural circuits and plasticity mechanisms,
And in learning about the critical importance of
focus and attention during learning both real world and imagined as well as the importance of sleep and deep rest for really consolidating learning and the different tools. The various steps are principles of
effective, mental training,
visualization. That you now have a fairly coherent, or maybe even a very coherent picture of how to develop the best mental training and visualization
protocols for you.
I realize that everyone has different goals. Everyone has different time, constraints.
If you are somebody that's interested in developing a mental training of visualization protocol. So if you're a coach or teacher, or simply a learner or you're trying to self-direct your
own adaptive plasticity,
I want to emphasize that the key components that we discussed today are essential to include but I wouldn't obsess about whether or
not a given epic is 15 or 20 seconds or even 25 seconds.
I wouldn't have assessed over whether or not you got 30 repetitions in, then your mind drifted, or whether or not
you could do the full 50 to
75 or whether or not even in your mind's eye you made some errors.
Hers. What's been shown over and over again? In this literature, is that performing mental training visualization repeatedly. And in a very restricted way, that makes it easier to perform those trials
over and over and over again and with a high degree of accuracy,
almost always. Really, we can fairly say in essentially every study where it's been explored has led to improvements in real world.
Performance of both cognitive and/or physical tasks,
so if you're trying to learn anything at all, I do encourage you.
Explorer motor training and visualization because basically all the studies out
there fact I couldn't find one exception, where
some degree of improvement, wasn't observed, when people use motor
training a visualization on a consistent basis, even just the three to five times per week. The simple repeats over and over. So I don't want to
over complicate, or make it sound like mental training and visualization has to be performed in a very precise way or that it has to be done perfectly each and every time quite to the contrary what is clear is that mental training
Any visualization is a very effective way to
improve real-world performance.
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Thank you, once again, for joining me for today's discussion.
All about the science and effective implementation of mental training and visualization and last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
