Science-Based Mental Training & Visualization for Improved Learning | Huberman Lab Podcast

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 as 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 etc 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 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 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

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 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 synesthesias

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

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checkout let's talk about mental

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 Galton 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 22

23 24 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 age zero and 25 and for

some people might occur somewhere around

26 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 for sake 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 where simply

adult plasticity is that there are many

different forms of neuroplasticy 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 to the

brain and nervous system do not allow it

to perform better in fact it often

impairs the brain and nervous system's

ability to function and therefore is

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 adolescence right

even though there's ongoing

developmental plasticity I mean let's be

really direct the brain of a 14 year old

is very different than the brain of that

same individual when that person is 21.

because there's ongoing developmental

plasticy however starting at about

adolescence 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 13

year old 14 year old or you're a 90 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

prostheses in the brain that are often

associated with agitation and

frustration believe it or not the

agitation and 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 and tend 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 its connections with the

body to change in any particular way

okay so you need focused dedicated

attention to the thing that you're

trying to learn it's off often

accompanied by agitation frustration Etc

so that's perfectly normal in fact

that's a signal that things are going

right meaning they're headed towards

learning but there's a second component

that's really required for self-directed

adaptive plasticity and that's periods

of deep rest in particular a good

night's 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 rest which

I've talked about before on this podcast

but really during our main 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 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 today we're mainly talking about

how to learn faster through mental

training and visualization and that

really Maps more closely onto

self-directed adaptive plasticity I just

really want to emphasize this two-step

process there 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

or 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-directed adaptive plasticity

that still will occur her but ideally

you got a great night's sleep on the

first night following trying to learn

and the second night and the third and

so on and so on now there are 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 cue

up right now that the word depression is

a very loaded word because the moment

people hear the word depression they

think oh 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 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 it's appears 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 numbers of

neural connection 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

um 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 of 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 a 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 incorrect

movements and when you are eliminating

incorrect movements to arrive at only

the correct movements in a very

reflexive and repeated way so think your

golf swing your tennis serve I think

serving a volleyball think a child

learning to crawl and then walk think a

child learning to eat with utensils an

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 the so-called

quote unquote fire together wired

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 for 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 too

widely on one trial and then they're

arcing 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 affect the tennis serve it's

going to be line drawn directly over

line draw and 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

coordinated 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 enunciation of particular 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 too I

know there are probably some aficionados

listening to this

who will be perhaps shouting back at uh

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 perform a given

cognitive or physical task in the real

world so we actually try the dance step

or the tennis serve or when we actually

try a math problem or we try and learn

some specific knowledge and write it

down and remember it

that is engaging particular neurons

right they're firing they're 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

strengthening of connections there is

also 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 and visualization protocols

that really harness the potentiation

versus the depression aspect and today

we will 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

complement 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 and visualization

cannot replace

real world execution of cognitive tasks

or of motor tasks if you want to learn

however mental training and

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 and body through mental

training and visualization in which I

just ask you to close your eyes and

imagine a yellow Cube okay and next to

that yellow cube is a red rose

and perhaps I also ask you to

float or fly up above the cube and the

rows and look at them from the 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 I

described that your visual cortex and

Associated areas quote unquote 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 meaning with

our eyes closed just in our Mind's 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 um

singer but let's just take the the

opening to AC DC's Back in Black right I

think I can do that when it's like

[Music]

okay got it

that's the actual sound although

admittedly a dreadful version of 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

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 again is that most people

somewhere between 90 and 95 of people

would be able to do all the sorts of

things I described right Cube and Rose

ACD Back in Black

even a somatosensory task I imagine you

need to imagine what it's like to touch

felt or to touch chinchilla hair or

something like that H Chinchilla's hair

ideally a live chinchilla sitting still

those little critters move really really

fast but they have very very soft hair

High hair density so soft

okay most people can do that

about five to fifteen percent of people

are less able to do that and there's a

small percentage of people in that five

to fifteen percent

that simply cannot do it at all that

just cannot visualize well we'll talk

later about these people they have

what's called aphantasia an 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 are 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 Minds I 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 that involve

a lot of different sensory stimuli this

is a really key point in fact as we

start to hone in on ideal mental

training and visualization protocols I'd

like to establish this as the first

principle of mental training and

visualization which is that if you are

going to use Mental training and

visualization to its best effect in

order to engage in 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 are

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 in 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

Mental 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 and

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

aphantasia 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

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order to develop the best mental

training and 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 Stephen coslin who's now at Harvard

of course others in the field but it's

really the work of Shepherd the lay the

foundation for our understanding of what

happens in the brain when we mentally

visualize something

Shepard did 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 Shepard 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 Mind's Eye well 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 Shepard 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 causalin 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 and visualization which is how

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 at 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 imagine moving or walking from

one location on the island to another so

they'd 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 you're 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

what causlin 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 Shepard and causlin showed great

I'm guessing however that for most

people out there you're still grasping

like okay interesting you know how

things happen in the real world dictates

how they happen in our mind's eye but I

want to make sure that I really nail

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 pen 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 to right word

motion for me and back and forth and

those are getting activated and they're

sending signals up to my visual cortex

and that information is processed at a

given speed

what the visualization experiments that

Shepard and koslin 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 mind's

eye or mind's ear

we are Imagining the real thing

happening and when I say the real 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 a

table now down on the table and so forth

or to migrate around the island 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 Mind's 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

brain's 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 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

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 involve the use

of what are called bistable images or

impossible figures now some of you are

probably familiar with impossible

figures these are figures or objects

that when you look at them

they have these odd features like you're

not sure where they stop and where they

start where they end one good example

would be the so-called Mobius 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 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

bi-stable images are somewhat similar

although different in the sense that

they typically are simple Silhouettes so

for instance the faces vases by 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

vases again but the faces disappear so

it's bi-stable meaning 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 because 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

co-active 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 end

it's 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 and I'll 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

saying wait I can do it I can do faces

faces in my mind's eye I promise you

that the neuroimaging

disputes your belief okay and supports

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 Mind's Eye we

simply can't do it we can't do the

perceptual shift in our Mind's Eye we

can't switch back and forth between

faces 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 an impossible figure

or the faces vases by stable image and

then I ask you to imagine that bi-stable

image or impossible figure and to switch

back and forth

you were 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 and

visualization needs to be simple and

brief and repeated second 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 now as a brief but I think

really relevant aside

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 bases in their Mind's 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 bases in fact we have entire

brain areas on both sides of the brain

devoted to the processing of faces

they're called 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 and expression of faces

recognition machine it 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 and your ability to

manipulate them is 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 will be worse but when it comes

to faces unless you have a condition

like prophetsagnosia which is an

inability to recognize say famous faces

and distinguish them from non-famous

phases or if you have some sort of face

recognition deficit which about anywhere

from one perhaps to three percent of

people out there have yeah they're just

terrible 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

security agencies and security agencies

are very good at finding these people

um 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 again

stamping 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 you

know there's a lot of people out there

who think that they've seen UFOs I guess

technically they have because a UFOs and

identified flying object and if it's

unidentified at least to them then it is

indeed a UFO I guess the question is

whether or not uh or the dispute rather

is whether or not those UFOs are

actually flown by aliens or controlled

by aliens I think that's where the

dispute lies but you can imagine how if

somebody sees an object in their

environment and decides Ah that's a UFO

okay remember these faces faces 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 stamps it down as

a memory in their visual system and

related systems and then in their Mind's

Eye they are seeing the UFO they're not

seeing the other thing that it could

possibly be okay so it's stamped down 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 and the speed of movement of

particular things that we experience in

the real world it also heavily depends

on the cognitive labels and the

decisions 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 and

visualization which is that our

cognitive labels that is what we decide

is happening when we do mental training

and 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

imagine in my mind's eye is identical to

the real world chord just because I

decide it 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 if 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 are a

lot of people out there working on their

golf swing and you're going to do some

mental training and visualization in

order to improve your golf swing we

already know again let's just March

through them that your mental training

and visualization needs to be brief and

simple it needs 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 taking a little

bit of time to sink in but once it does

you're gonna 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 fourth that if you want

that mental training and 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 1A okay as opposed to a putt which

might be 1B so naming and giving 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 and

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 putts

and here just replace golf swing and

golf butt 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 and his

graduate students in postdocs some were

done by Steve costlin 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 tile for instance

we know based on experiments where we

measure eye movements Behind Closed

eyelids is 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

to confess I enjoyed keeping my distance

I don't like snakes uh 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 in 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 okay it might be

subtle it might be fast but

statistically that result shows up as

opposed to when I imagine or I ask you

to imagine something above you 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 ask

you to tell me about the details of that

Mouse's 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 go 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

than 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 are 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 than it does simple motor

sequences just as 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 and 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 and

visualization is going to be more

effective 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 task or motor task in the real

world which as I mentioned before in

principle number three you need to be

doing anyway separately from your rental

training and visualization so what we're

talking about here is thus far five

principles of mental training and

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 note

captions but the title of the paper is

best practice for motor imagery a

systematic literature view 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 you may

ask how many times that very brief 5 to

15 second exercise 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 of the 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 you bring the

the golf club up you might reposition

your your feet just a little bit you

know that kind of a 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 it's one 15 second Epoch

as it's sometimes called Epoch Epoch and

then you would rest for an approximately

equivalent amount of time 15 seconds or

so and then repeat

and the 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 within

that 15 seconds rest 15 seconds truth

told these epochs and these rest periods

do not 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

Epoch and then rest for about 15 seconds

and then repeat for a total of 50 to 75

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 and 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

the golf ball 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 task in the real world similarly

for performance of cognitive tasks so

say for instance um 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 you know through one to three times

in a given Epoch 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 challenge in getting the

accent and the enunciation right but

you've completed it successfully before

and you want to get more smooth or more

fluid with it likewise for you know

playing piano or guitar again you have

to translate to the specific cognitive

and or motor activity that you are

seeking to improve at but

those epochs lasting 5 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 and

visualization practice is how often you

perform that mental training and

visualization practice and again a

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 uh 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

reasonable 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 that cognitive or motor task

in a way that's satisfactory or perhaps

just improved perhaps you're not a

hundred percent 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 I

misspoke in the sense that again I said

for the thing that you're trying to

learn remember mental training and

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 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

has 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 Mind's Eye to the

real world and we think oh all 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 to the mental imagery

and visualization domain you can get

much faster at it in a way that really

does translate back to the real world

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if you recall principle number three or

what I'm calling principle 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's 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 while 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 right but

that it can actually accelerate or at

least maintain skill performance so this

is 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 behavior 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 and visualization can really

help keep that online or even help you

improve over time in fact I have a

colleague in the psychology department

at Stanford who told me an anecdote and

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 let's call it extended layoff from

actual tennis was going to afford them

the ability to 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 manage to improve beyond

the initial non-injured state that we're

in before the injury which is pretty

remarkable but

as Kelly pointed out to me they were

very careful to include a lot of mental

training and visualization during that

quote-unquote layoff period so again

mental training better than no training

physical training better than mental

training

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 it 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 one hour

of mental training

that your performance would 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 basis

compared to mental training so if you

can do real world training and perhaps

we should be calling it 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

basketball's 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

that 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 is 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 the option to do real world

training for a cognitive indoor 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

four 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 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 read 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 It 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 and performance that you

would normally see but it's generally a

bad idea you should do your real world

training and your mental training

whenever 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

that I and everyone else in the world

get sufficient amounts of quality sleep

every single night but that's just not

realistic there are 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 for a fund

reason or a good reason but I think

getting sufficient amounts of quality

sleep 80 percent of the nights of your

life

is a reasonable goal and one that's

worth driving toward and we have lots of

episodes now or three really on

mastering sleep on perfecting your sleep

and uh 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 improve on sleep

and things like non-sleep depressed

which can support your ability of 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 or 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 in the 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 eye Etc 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's stick Gold's Lab at Harvard

the title of the paper is sleep 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 note

captions it really highlights some of

the key aspects of when people sleep and

how critical sleep is on the night

following and 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 Matthew and Robert stick

Gold's incredible papers on sleep and

learning remember at the beginning of

the episode when I mentioned that many

people are good at mental training and

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 literature

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

view on motor imagery 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's something specific

to do with older versus younger neural

circuits isn't clear

but what this review also makes clear is

that for the vast majority of people out

there so teens people in their 20s

in their 40s and so on physical training

more effective than 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 five to

Fifteen second epochs with about 15

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 what we

haven't discussed is first person versus

third person and eyes open versus eyes

closed so what are we really talking

about here well first person mental

training and visualization would be

where 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 headcam okay or 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 at 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 and visualization

is generally more effective than third

person mental training and visualization

which perhaps raises another course 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 and 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 uh 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 you know 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 and 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 and

visualization have been done in fact

many of them have arrived at really

impressive protocols which are

essentially the protocols that I've

distilled out and I'm 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 they're

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

themself 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 and

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 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 you

know dance steps or to 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're going to use the third person

mental training visualization ideally

you would be looking at yourself either

on video or listening to yourself in

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 and visualization

was done with eyes closed I thought okay

could you 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 it 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

I'm going to tell you the essential

features of this study first of all

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 in 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 what'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 onto 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 called 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'd see two little

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

in certain animals the cerebellum is

much larger than the rest of the brain

in humans the cerebellum is relatively

small compared to the rest of the

so-called neocortex 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 M1 is primary motor

cortex so the upper motor neurons that

are going to control that lower murder

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 too 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

whole 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 it's

that tapping sequence that I talked

about before where the thumb is digit

one index finger number two middle

finger number three

ring finger number four and pinky finger

number five and it's a one two one three

one four one five one two one three one

four one five 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 so one group

just looked at an intentional cue and

had to maintain uh focus on that

attentional cue and another group did

mental practice they basically did 50

imagined trials so just in their Mind's

Eye of this one two one three one four

one five 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 task 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 enhanced both the

speed and accuracy of this one two one

three one four one five 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 and

remember there have 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 movements 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

changed 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 that's a

lot 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 and visualization to

really 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 motor sequences both in

the real world and in the Imagine

context is that it involves the doing

that's 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 one

two one three one four one five task

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 one three

one four or one three and four at the

same time so there's both a go component

an 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 sequence as well okay so one of

the key things about mental training and

visualization that's really remarkable

is that it can also be used and has been

shown to improve not just go aspects of

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 we're

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 percent

of motor learning is about restricting

inappropriate movements or utterances or

thoughts if what you're trying to learn

is purely cognitive okay 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