Science-Based Mental Training & Visualization for Improved Learning

**Andrew D. Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing mental training and visualization. Mental training and 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, in dance, across essentially all domains. The other incredible thing about mental training and visualization is that you'll soon see, when you go into the literature, that is the scientific studies on mental training and visualization, you quickly realize that it does not take a lot of mental training and visualization in order to get better at anything. However, that mental training and visualization has to be performed in a very specific way. And today we will discuss exactly how to do mental training and 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 tasks, motor tasks, et cetera, for long periods of time without ever forgetting how to do them. All of mental training and visualization relies on what I consider really the holy grail of our brain and nervous system. And that's 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 or 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 preexisting 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. Then 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, et cetera, et cetera, 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 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. I'll also briefly touch on the fact that certain people, in particular people on the autism spectrum, as well as people with synesthesia, which is the combining of different perceptual experiences. So you may be one of these people, or 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. We'll 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 and 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 and visualization practices that are 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 the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, meaning sodium, magnesium and potassium, but nothing that you don't, meaning no sugar. And it has the sodium, magnesium and potassium in the ideal ratios for hydrating and providing electrolytes to the cells and tissues of your body. So I use Element in my water when I wake up. I like to hydrate right away. So I'll have an Element packet in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up. I tend to do the same while I exercise, which I typically do in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. And I'll drink another one throughout the day. The great thing about Element is it also tastes terrific. I particularly like the watermelon flavor, but frankly I like all the flavors. Just mixed in again about 16 to 32 ounces of water. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/huberman.