Dr. Matt Walker: Using Sleep to Improve Learning, Creativity & Memory | Huberman Lab Guest Series
Andrew Huberman
Apr 24, 2024
Mindsip insights from this episode:
Leverage REM sleep to enhance creative problem-solving
Waking from REM sleep can make you 30% more capable of solving creative insight problems, as this stage is critical for integrating new information and finding non-obvious connections.
Leverage evening second wind for final energy boost
The 'second wind' of alertness many people feel in the evening is a real, evolutionarily-driven circadian peak designed to give you a final spurt of energy to get home safely.
Utilize creative napping to capture innovative ideas
Thomas Edison napped holding steel balls that would drop into a saucepan to wake him, allowing him to capture ideas from the highly creative state between wakefulness and sleep.
Leverage your brain's non-conscious alarm clock for better sleep
Your brain can change its cortisol release schedule based on what time you expect to wake up, demonstrating a non-conscious time-keeping ability during sleep.
Prioritize full sleep to enhance motor skill memory consolidation
The last quarter of the night is especially rich in the Stage 2 sleep needed to consolidate motor skill memories, so cutting sleep short is particularly detrimental for physical learning.
Prioritize sleep to protect muscle mass during dieting
When you are dieting but sleep-deprived, your body loses lean muscle mass instead of fat because it holds onto the most energy-dense fuel in a perceived crisis.
Enhance motor skills with sleep after practice
It's not just practice that makes perfect, but practice with a night of sleep, which can enhance motor skill performance by 20% in speed and 37% in accuracy.
Avoid all-nighters to preserve memory function
A single all-nighter results in a 40% deficit in the brain's ability to make new memories, as it effectively shuts down your memory inbox, the hippocampus.
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