Dr. Matt Walker: Using Sleep to Improve Learning, Creativity & Memory | Huberman Lab Guest Series

(instrumental music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series, where I and an expert guest 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's episode marks the fourth in our six-episode series all about sleep, with expert guest Dr. Matthew Walker. During today's episode, we discuss sleep and learning, as well as the impact of sleep and the specific stages of sleep on creativity and memory. We talk about when and how long to sleep relative to different bouts of learning, as well as the role of naps in consolidating information that you are trying to learn. We discuss the science and protocols of sleep as it relates to both cognitive learning and motor learning, and the mechanism by which sleep encodes memories. As with the previous episodes in this series, today's episode includes information about the biology of sleep as well as practical tools, that is, protocols in which you can use sleep to improve your learning, memory, and creativity. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. It's abundantly clear that sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. When we're getting enough quality sleep, everything in life goes so much better, and when we are not getting enough quality sleep, everything in life is that much more challenging. And one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is to have the appropriate mattress. Everyone, however, has slightly different needs in terms of what would be the optimal mattress for them. Helix understands that people have unique sleep needs, and they've designed a brief two-minute quiz that asks you questions like, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Or maybe you don't know the answers to those questions. If you go to the Helix site and take that brief quiz, they'll match you to a mattress that's optimal for you. For me, it turned out to be the Dusk, D-U-S-K, mattress. It's not too hard, not too soft, and I sleep so much better on my Helix mattress than on any other type of mattress I've used before. So if you're interested in upgrading your mattress, go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take their brief two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress for you, and you'll get up to $350 off any mattress order and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off and two free pillows. Today's episode is also brought to us by Whoop. Whoop is a fitness wearable device that tracks your daily activity and sleep, but also goes beyond that by providing real-time feedback on how to adjust your training and sleep schedule to perform better. I've been working with Whoop on their scientific advisory council to try and help advance Whoop's mission of unlocking human performance. As a Whoop user, I've experienced the health benefits of their technology firsthand for sleep tracking, for monitoring other features of my physiology, and for giving me a lot of feedback about metrics within my brain and body that tell me how hard I should train or not train, and basically point to the things that I'm doing correctly and incorrectly in my daily life that I can adjust using protocols, some of which are actually within the Whoop app. Given that many of us have goals such as improving our sleep, building better habits, or just focusing more on our overall health, Whoop is one of the tools that can really help you get personalized data, recommendations, and coaching toward your overall health. In addition to being one of the most accurate sleep trackers in the world, Whoop allows you to recover more quickly and fully from physical exercise and other kinds of stress, and thereby to train more effectively and sleep better. If you're interested in trying Whoop, you can go to join.whoop.com/huberman today to get your first month free. Again, that's join.whoop.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. The Waking Up app is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditations, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started meditating over 30 years ago. At that time, there wasn't very much science on meditation, but by now, we know that there's a lot of strong science supporting the fact that a daily meditation practice can improve mood, focus, and alertness, and can reduce stress and improve sleep and overall health. One thing that I and many others have noticed is that while meditation is excellent for buffering stress, it's oftentimes during periods of stress that we let our meditation practice go. The Waking Up app overcomes this by offering meditations of different durations. So they have some longer ones of 30 to 60 minutes, but also some much briefer ones, 10, 5, and even 1-minute meditations that are known to be effective. So no matter how busy or stressed you get, you always make time for your meditation practice. The fact that they have lots of different types of meditations and yoga nidra sessions and non-sleep deep rest protocols also makes sure that your meditations are kept fresh and interesting. You never get bored of them. I personally use the Waking Up app to do a 5 to 10-minute meditation or a non-sleep deep rest protocol, which is similar to yoga nidra, each and every day. And if I miss a day, I try and double up the amount of time that I do NSDR, yoga nidra, or meditation the following day. Yoga nidra and non-sleep deep rest protocols can be done essentially any time of day in order to restore mental and physical vigor. I'll sometimes do one first thing in the morning if I wake up and I feel I didn't get quite enough sleep the previous night. You can also do yoga nidra or NSDR in the middle of the night if you wake up and you're having trouble falling back asleep. Sometimes they will allow you to fall back asleep, and if they don't, you'll still feel more refreshed than you would have had you been tossing and turning and worrying about not getting sleep. So NSDR and yoga nidra are terrific for both restoring mental and physical vigor and potentially for restoring sleep that you otherwise would have missed. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com/huberman to get a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman. And now for my conversation with Dr. Matthew Walker. Dr. Walker. Dr. Huberman. Welcome back. We have covered a lot of material. First episode of this series, you gave us an overview of sleep and some actionable items about sleep.... then in the second episode, you gave us far more actionable items of how to think about one's sleep in a way that leads to very concrete decisions about controlling light, temperature, when to sleep, and then some really in-depth advanced tools-