Huberman’s Neuroplasticity super protocol: Translating neuroscience research into teaching protocols

The field of education and teacher-practitioners needs to catch up with evidence-based research on how people learn and start applying these principles in their teaching. Too often we educators rely on habits and traditional practices that have been scientifically shown to be ineffective for promoting learning.   

Andrew Huberman has in the last 2-3 years been an inspiring mediator communicating science findings to the general public. He has been translating neuroscience findings into actionable behavioral tools that people – including teachers – can use in their lives.  

Learning is literally the changing of the brain structure: when you learn something, neurons connect with each other in new ways. This is what neuroscientists call neuroplasticity. 

So what can neuroscience teach us about learning and the conditions for learning? 

It turns out that science can teach us a lot about learning. Data from several studies point to best-practice approaches for learning that teachers and teacher training programs should pay more attention to. 

The neuroplasticity super protocol

Andrew Huberman has discussed many of these research findings on his podcast, the Huberman Lab, and in 2021 gave a lecture synthesizing what he takes to be 9 key protocols to make learning effective and efficient. Here is what he calls a neuroplasticity super protocol based on recent neuroscience research.  

1. Get alert

• Learning only happens if people are awake and alert. An easy and natural way to become alert is to use some breathing exercises. An example of this is to 1. take 25-30 deep breaths – inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth and hold your breath with lungs empty for 15-60 seconds, and then 2. inhale once and hold your breath.

2. Get focused

• Once you are alert, you need to get focused. You do this by staring at a point on a wall or screen, or object for 30-60 seconds before starting (blink as needed). This is challenging and the ‘effort’ you feel is “top-down” attentional engagement and reflects the activity of neural circuits involving acetylcholine release in the brain.

3. Generate repetitions (as many as possible in a given time)

• In a repeated practice session, try to repeat the process a bit faster than is comfortable. This helps the mind from drifting off task and naturally keeps you alert. This leads to errors and to protocol 4 …

4. Expect and embrace errors 

• Making errors is a bit “stressful,” but this increase in attention is good and puts us in a much better place to perform and execute learning-related behaviors for the next practice example or attempt. Computational modeling data suggests that an error rate of ~15% may be optimal and can help determine how difficult we should make a task. 

5. Randomly insert micro rest intervals

• Studies in humans show that to learn something efficiently, frequent 10-second pauses of doing nothing allow the neurons in the hippocampus and cortex (brain areas involved in learning and memory) repeat the same patterns of neural activity that occurred during the actual skill practice – but 10X faster. This means you get 10X neural repetitions completed during the pause. These “gap-effects” are similar to what happens in a deep sleep (see protocol 9). To effectively leverage this protocol, randomly introduce 10 second pauses during learning every 2 or 3 minutes. 

6. Random and intermittent rewards

• There are neural dopamine circuits that control rewards and they are closely connected to circuits that control motivation and the desire to pursue things – but to optimize the use of these circuits, rewards should be intermittent and unpredictable. This will create a bigger difference between the dopamine spikes (rewards) and the baseline dopamine levels (not expecting a reward).  

7. Limit learning trigger sessions to 90 mins or less

• Research shows that 90 minutes is about the longest period we can sustain intense focus and effort toward learning. At around 90 minutes, a break is important  (see protocol 8). It is optimal to space intense learning sessions 2-3 (or more) hours apart. Most people can’t do more than 270 minutes of intense learning per day. 

8. Incorporate 10-30 min meditative rests after learning trigger sessions 

• Recent studies show that shallow naps and/or meditative relaxation between 10-30 minutes after a study session (within 1 hour of the session) can simulate the brain activity described in protocol 2 to enhance the rate and depth of learning.  

9. Maximize quality and optimal duration of sleep that night (and every night)

• The actual rewiring of neural circuits that underlies learning occurs during sleep and meditative relaxation. It is important to understand that the learning session is only one side of the learning coin: it is “trigger” for the possibility that we might learn, but it is sleep and meditative relaxation when the actual learning (the neural circuit rewiring) happens.

Applying the protocols to lesson teaching and planning

Although a lot of these protocols seem most appropriate for more typically physical skill training and discrete knowledge learning, there is still a lot we as educators can glean and adopt as teaching practices or principles that can apply to lesson planning.

Perhaps the biggest insight I have recently gained from research into the neuroscience of learning is the value of rest and sleep and what learning mechanisms are actually running during these rest periods. I had long assumed, probably like most teachers and students, that the learning really happens in the classroom or during study sessions. But this is not true. This is only the trigger, but the real learning and changing of brain structure happens during deep rest and deep sleep when the learning is literally being played and replayed again and again. Good rest is therefore essential to effective and efficient learning. 

Even short 10-second breaks during class time. 

This intrigues me and reminds me of some meditative lectures I have attended during which a small bell would be randomly and intermittently rung to make everyone pause and take a few breaths –  including the meditation lecturer. The purpose of these short and random bell breaks was to remind everyone to be mindful and breathe, which served to refocus people’s. 

And now I understand that these breaks also helped to consolidate the learning of the ideas and principles in the meditation lecture.

On the topic of breathing, the alertness protocol is a great way to start a class – especially if learners have already had another morning class or they are coming back after lunch. Techniques of breathing to induce focus or relaxation have been practiced for 1000’s of years. It is nice to finally see that neuroscience and the science of learning are taking these practices seriously. For too long, educational research and practices have focused only on disembodied minds and knowledge. But it is clear that the physical state of the body can either help or hinder the learning process.  

In addition to strategically using rest and breath in my classes and workshops, I will be more mindful about using  intermittent and less predictable rewards. When rewards become predictable, such as at the end of every class, the brain starts to expect it and its impact starts to diminish. 

Although the above protocols seem most appropriate for situations of discrete item or skill learning, and may not be as easily applied to more subtle or complex topics and continuous skill sets, these protocols can be leveraged to help us make learning more scientific and help us create the best conditions for learners to learn.