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How to Focus to Change Your Brain

Huberman Lab

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The Role of Sleep and NSDR in retaining knowledge and Neural Plasticity

Neural plasticity predominantly occurs during sleep rather than wakefulness, which is crucial for learning retention. Focusing intently on a subject for about 90 minutes stimulates neural circuits that strengthen during sleep, effectively reinforcing knowledge acquisition. If individuals experience poor sleep following a learning session, subsequent sleep can still facilitate retention due to the chemical markers established in the brain during learning. Deep sleep is essential for these changes; lacking it may hinder effective neural adaptation. However, alternative methods, such as Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR), can partially substitute for deep sleep, helping to bolster memory retention and learning outcomes in specific tasks, as evidenced by recent research on spatial memory.

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