Science & Tools of Learning & Memory | Dr. David Eagleman

**David Eagleman** (0:00)
Oftentimes, people will ask me, like an older person will say, hey, I do crossword puzzles, is that good? Yeah, it's good until you get good at it, and then stop and do something that you're not good at, and constantly find the next thing that's a real challenge for you. That's the key thing about plasticity. Your brain is locked in silence and darkness. It's trying to make a model of the outside world. And if you're constantly pushing and challenging it with things it doesn't understand, then it'll keep changing.

**Andrew Huberman** (0:27)
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. My guest today is Dr. David Eagleman. Dr. David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, a best-selling author and a longtime science public educator. Today we discuss several different features of brain science that impact your everyday life. And once you understand the mechanisms behind these features, it will position you to make better decisions. And if you choose to rewire your brain to be a more effective learner, we start by discussing neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to change in response to experience or any form of deliberate learning that you are trying to impose on yourself. We talk about the mechanisms for it and how you can get better at learning and unlearning in the context of skills and information. We also discuss memory formation and the relationship between stress and time perception and why it is that people experience things in slow motion if those things are very stressful or traumatic and how that can be useful for undoing traumatic memories. David also takes us through the neuroscience of cultural and political polarization, something that's very timely right now. False memories, déjà vu, dreams and the meaning of dreams and a lot more. David is an absolutely legendary science communicator. I say this as a fellow neuroscientist. He is able to imbed factual information about the brain into real life stories. And in doing so, he's able to shed light on how we work as humans and how we can all improve our life experience. He's a true virtuoso of neuroscience and science education more generally. What David shares with us today will change the way that you think about thinking and your own mind, and no doubt will also change the way that you view the world. 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, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. David Eagleman. Dr. David Eagleman, welcome.

**David Eagleman** (2:37)
Thanks. Great to see you, Andrew.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:39)
Man, I feel like the kid that was a freshman when you were a senior, because you got into this public-facing science education long before I did, and you've had an amazing career also in your laboratory work. And today, I want to talk about all of it by mostly listening and you doing the talking. And there are so many topics in neuroscience that are fascinating, as you know, but I think perhaps the most fascinating thing about the human brain is its ability to change itself.

**David Eagleman** (3:11)
Yeah.

**Andrew Huberman** (3:11)
Plasticity. So I know how I think about neuroplasticity. I want to know how you think about neuroplasticity, what it is and how we should think about it, and what we could possibly do with that information.

**David Eagleman** (3:23)
Okay, great. I mean, this was Mother Nature's big trick with humans, was figuring out how to drop a creature into the world with a half-baked brain and then let the world wire up the rest of it. And so, you know, 1953, Crick and Watson, I worked with Crick at the Salk. They burst into the Eagle and Child Pub and said, we've discovered the secret to life, because they figured out the structure of DNA. But that was really half the secret of life, because the other half is all around us. It's every bit of experience that you have. It's your culture, it's your language, it's your neighborhood. All of that stuff gets absorbed by the brain and wires us up. And I often think about this issue of, what if you were born 30,000 years ago? Exactly your DNA, you pop out and you look around, and the question is, would you be you? The answer is you wouldn't be. You'd look maybe similar because of the same genetic blueprint, but you would have a different culture and a different language and different stories and all that stuff. You'd be a very different kind of person. So brain plasticity, for anyone who doesn't know, it's that the brain is constantly reconfiguring itself. Every second of your life, you got 86 billion neurons. And really the way to think about it is, these are like little creatures that are all crawling around and moving around. Each one is on average contacting 10,000 of its neighbors. But it's not like a fixed thing like you might see in a textbook. Instead, they're plugging and unplugging and searching around and finding new places to plug in, and of course, changing the strength of those connections. And I actually always find this weird. It's like having all these little creatures in your head that are slithering around. But that's what makes us absorb every single thing in our worlds. And this is what humans have that other creatures have less of. And that's why we've taken over every corner of the earth. That's why we've gotten off the planet. We build skyscrapers and compose symphonies and so on. Because each generation, we land and we get to spend our first few years absorbing everything that's been discovered before us. And then we springboard off of that and do something new. Because we are able to figure out all the discoveries that have come before us because of this ability to reconfigure our own circuitry.