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@Andrew Huberman ，在Huberman Lab Essentials节目中探讨了听觉和前庭系统（平衡系统）如何增强学习和提高专注力。我解释了听觉系统如何捕捉声波以及大脑如何解读这些信号以理解环境。我还讨论了使用白噪声和双耳节拍来支持有利于学习、专注和放松的大脑状态。此外，我还解释了前庭系统如何帮助维持平衡，并检查了增强听觉学习、认知能力和情绪的实用工具。 我详细解释了耳朵的解剖结构和功能，包括耳廓、鼓膜、锤骨、砧骨、镫骨和耳蜗的作用。我解释了耳蜗如何将声音转换成大脑可以理解的电信号，以及大脑如何处理这些信号以确定声音的来源和性质。我还讨论了双耳节拍如何影响大脑状态，以及低强度白噪声如何增强学习能力，同时强调了白噪声对幼儿听觉发育的潜在不利影响。 我还讨论了鸡尾酒会效应，解释了我们如何专注于特定声音，并提供了一种记住新名字的方法。最后，我解释了平衡系统与听觉系统密切相关，并解释了如何通过特定运动来改善平衡感和情绪，从而增强学习能力。

大家好，我是Andrew Huberman，斯坦福大学神经生物学和眼科学教授。在Huberman Lab Essentials节目中，我深入探讨了听觉和前庭系统（平衡系统）在增强学习和提高专注力方面的关键作用。 这两个系统与大脑和身体的其他系统相互作用，巧妙运用能显著提升学习效率和记忆力，同时改善听力和平衡能力。

耳朵的奥秘：声波到大脑信号的转化

我们通常所说的“耳朵”，其专业名称为耳廓（pinna）。耳廓的形状经过进化优化，能有效捕捉声波，尤其擅长放大高频声音。声波本质上是空气振动的波动，通过耳廓进入耳道，振动鼓膜。鼓膜内侧连接着三块听小骨：锤骨、砧骨和镫骨，它们像一个微型锤子，将振动传递到耳蜗。

耳蜗是一个螺旋状的结构，它将声波转化为大脑可以理解的电信号。耳蜗内壁的毛细胞根据声波频率的不同产生不同的电信号，这些信号通过神经纤维传递到大脑。耳蜗就像一个棱镜，将环境中的声音分解成不同频率的成分，大脑再将这些成分重新组合，形成我们对声音的感知。 大脑不仅处理声音本身的信息，更重要的是定位声音的来源。声音到达左右耳的时间差，以及耳廓对声音频率的细微改变，帮助我们判断声音的方向和距离。 这也是为什么人们在努力倾听时会用手捂住耳朵——人为地增大耳廓，从而更好地捕捉声波。

双耳节拍与白噪声：优化大脑状态

双耳节拍是指向左右耳分别播放不同频率的声音，大脑会将这两个频率平均，产生一个中间频率，从而影响大脑状态。研究表明，不同频率的双耳节拍能诱导不同的脑波状态：低频（例如Delta波）促进睡眠和放松；高频（例如Gamma波）则有利于学习和解决问题。 双耳节拍的有效性在于它能帮助一些人进入更有利于学习和放松的大脑状态，并非其本身具有独特的学习功效。

白噪声也是一种有效的工具。低强度白噪声已被证明能增强某些人的学习能力，特别是成年人。研究表明，白噪声可以通过调节多巴胺能中脑区域和右颞上沟的活动来提高学习效率。多巴胺是一种神经递质，与动机和奖励机制有关。白噪声可以提高多巴胺的基线水平，从而促进学习。 然而，需要注意的是，对幼儿来说，长时间暴露在白噪声环境中可能对听觉发育产生不利影响，因为白噪声缺乏清晰的频率信息，可能干扰大脑中听觉皮层的 tonotopic map 的正常发育。

鸡尾酒会效应与听觉学习

鸡尾酒会效应描述了我们在嘈杂环境中专注于特定声音的能力。我们的大脑能够通过关注单词的起始和结束来过滤掉背景噪音，从而提取所需信息。 记住新名字就是一个很好的例子：专注于名字的开头和结尾发音，可以提高记忆效率。

前庭系统与平衡：提升学习和情绪

前庭系统（vestibular system）位于内耳，负责维持平衡。它包含三个半规管，里面充满着可以感知头部运动的液体和毛细胞。半规管感知头部在三个平面（俯仰、偏航和滚动）的旋转运动，而耳石器官则感知头部在空间中的线性加速度。前庭系统与视觉系统密切合作，共同维持平衡。闭上眼睛站立时，平衡能力下降，正是因为失去了视觉信息的辅助。

为了增强平衡感，建议进行动态平衡训练，例如滑板、冲浪或骑自行车等运动。这些运动中，身体在加速的同时会发生倾斜，这种状态能刺激前庭系统，并促进多巴胺和血清素等神经递质的释放，从而提升情绪和学习能力。

结语

通过理解并运用听觉和前庭系统，我们可以显著提升学习效率和专注力，并改善情绪和平衡能力。 合理利用白噪声和双耳节拍，进行动态平衡训练，都能帮助我们更好地学习和生活。 记住，学习是一个动态的过程，需要我们不断探索和优化自身状态。

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00:29 听觉和平衡系统对学习和专注至关重要，可以提高学习速度和记忆力。

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03:25 声音通过声波传递，耳朵和大脑共同解读这些信号以理解环境。

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03:55 耳朵的结构和功能决定了我们如何感知声音，包括声波的收集、转换和大脑的解读。

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07:24 大脑不仅识别声音，还确定声音来源，并解释了“ ventriloquism effect ”以及如何通过调整耳朵形状来改善声音定位。

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11:56 双耳节拍可以影响大脑状态，从而改善学习和焦虑，但其效果并非独一无二。

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16:35 低强度白噪声可以提高学习能力，但对幼儿的听觉发育可能存在不利影响。

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25:36 鸡尾酒会效应解释了我们如何专注于特定声音，并提供了一种记住新名字的方法。

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29:36 平衡系统与听觉系统密切相关，并解释了如何通过特定运动来改善平衡感和情绪。

00:00

- Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're going to talk all about hearing and balance and how you can use your ability to hear specific things and your balance system in order to learn anything faster. 语法解析

00:29

The auditory system, meaning the hearing system and your balance system, which is called the vestibular system, interact with all the other systems of the brain and body and used properly can allow you to learn information more quickly, remember that information longer and with more ease. And you can also improve the way you can hear. You can improve your balance. We're going to talk about tools for all of that. 语法解析

00:54

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01:21

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01:46

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01:55

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02:22

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02:28

So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? 语法解析

02:57

Okay, well, if you can hear me, that's amazing because what it means is that my voice is causing little tiny changes in the airwaves wherever you happen to be and that your ears and whatever's contained in those ears and in your brain can take those sound waves and make sense of them. And that is an absolutely fantastic and staggering feat of biology. And yet we understand a lot about how that process works. 语法解析

03:25

So what we call ears have a technical name. That technical name is auricles, but more often they're called pinna. The pinna is P-I-N-N-A, pinna. And the pinnas of your ears, this outer part that is made of cartilage and stuff, is arranged such that it can capture sound in the best way for your head size. So the shape of these ears that we have 语法解析

03:55

is such that it amplifies high frequency sounds. High frequency sounds, as the name suggests, is the squeakier stuff. So we have low frequency sounds and high frequency sounds and everything in between. And those sound waves, for those of you that don't maybe fully conceptualize sound waves, are literally just fluctuations or shifts in sound. 语法解析

04:17

the way that air is moving toward your ear and through space in the same way that water can have waves, air can have waves, okay? So it's reverberation of air. Those come in through your ears and you have what's called your eardrum. And on the inside of your eardrum, there's a little bony thing that's shaped like a little hammer. So attached to that eardrum, which can move back and forth like a drum, it's like a little membrane, 语法解析

04:45

you've got this hammer attached to it. And that hammer has three parts. For those of you that want to know, those three parts are called malleus, incus, and stapes. But basically you can just think about it as a hammer. So you've got this eardrum and then a hammer. And then that hammer has to hammer on something. And what it does is it hammers on a little coiled piece of tissue that we call the cochlea. So this snail-shaped structure in your inner ear 语法解析

05:13

is where sound gets converted into electrical signals that the brain can understand. Now, the cochlea at one end is more rigid than the other. So one part can move really easily and the other part doesn't move very easily. And that turns out to be very important for decoding or separating sounds that are low frequency and sounds that are of high frequency, like a shriek or a shrill. And 语法解析

05:42

That's because within that little coiled thing we call the cochlea, you have all these tiny little, what are called hair cells. Now they look like hairs, but they're not at all related to the hairs on your head or elsewhere on your body. They're just shaped like hairs. So we call them hair cells. Those hair cells, if they move, send signals into the brain that a particular sound is in our environment. Now this should… 语法解析

06:11

If it doesn't already, it should. Because what this means is that everything that's happening around us, whether or not it's music or voices, all of that is being broken down into its component parts. And then your brain is making sense of what it means. 语法解析

06:28

Your cochlea essentially acts as a prism. It takes all the sound in your environment and it splits up those sounds into different frequencies. And then the brain takes that information and puts it back together and makes sense of it. So those hair cells in each of your two cochlea, because you have two ears, you also have two cochlea, send little wires, what we call axons, that convey their patterns of activity into the brain. 语法解析

06:56

And there are a number of different stations within the brain that information arrives at before it gets up to the parts of your brain where you are consciously aware. And there is a good reason for that, which is that more important than knowing what you're hearing, you need to know where it's coming from. And our visual system can help with that, but our auditory and our visual system collaborate to help us find and locate information 语法解析

07:24

the position of things in space. That should come as no surprise. If you hear somebody talking off to your right, you tend to turn to your right, not to your left. If you see somebody's mouth moving in front of you, you tend to assume that the sound is going to come from right in front of you. 语法解析

07:40

Disruptions in this auditory hearing and visual matching are actually the basis of what's called the ventriloquism effect. The ventriloquism effect can basically be described in simple terms as when you essentially think that a sound is coming from a location that it's not actually coming from. 语法解析

08:02

The way you know where things are coming from, what direction a car or a bus or a person is coming from is because the sound lands in one ear before the other. And you have stations in your brain, meaning you have neurons in your brain that calculate the difference in time of arrival for those sound waves in your right versus your left ear. 语法解析

08:23

And if they arrive at the same time, you assume that thing is making noise right in front of you. If it's off to your right, you assume it's over on your right. And if the sound arrives first to your left ear, you assume quite correctly that the thing is coming toward your left ear. But what about up and down? If you think about it, a sound coming from above is going to land on your right ear and your left ear at the same time. A sound from below is going to land on your right ear and your left ear at the same time. 语法解析

08:50

So the way that we know where things are in terms of what's called elevation, where they are in the up and down plane, 语法解析

08:59

is by the frequencies. The shape of your ears actually modifies the sound depending on whether or not it's coming straight at you from the floor or from high above. Now this all happens very, very fast in a subconscious, but now you know why if people really want to hear something, they make a cup 语法解析

09:21

around their ear, they essentially make their ear into more of a fennec fox type ear. If you've ever seen those cute little fennec fox things, they have these big spiky ears. They kind of look like a French bulldog, although they're kind of the fox version of the French bulldog. These big, tall ears, and they have excellent sound localization. And so when people lean in with their hand like this, if you're listening to this, I'm just cupping my hand at my ear, I'm giving myself a bigger pinna. 语法解析

09:48

Oh yeah, and if I do it on the left side, I can do this side. And if I really want to hear something, I do it on both sides. Okay, so this isn't just gesturing. This actually serves a mechanical role. And actually, if you want to hear where things are coming from with a much greater degree of accuracy, this can actually help because you're capturing sound waves and funneling them better. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. 语法解析

10:17

Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. 语法解析

10:29

And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. H-sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night. 语法解析

10:52

even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. 语法解析

11:12

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11:29

Go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. So now I want to shift to talking about ways to leverage your hearing system, your auditory system, so that you can learn anything, not just auditory information, but anything faster. 语法解析

11:56

I get a lot of questions about so-called binaural beats. Binaural beats, as their name suggests, involve playing one frequency of sound to one ear and a different frequency of sound to the other ear. And the idea is that the brain will take those two frequencies of sound, and because the pathways that bring information from the ears into the brain eventually cross over, they actually share that information with both sides of the brain, 语法解析

12:26

that the brain will average that information and come up with a sort of intermediate frequency. And the rationale is that those intermediate frequencies place the brain into a state that is better for learning. And when I say better for learning, I want to be precise about what I mean. That could mean more focus for encoding or bringing the information in. As you may have heard me say before, we have to be alert and focused in order to learn. So 语法解析

12:56

Can binaural beats make us more focused? Can binaural beats allow us to relax more if we're anxious? So what are the scientific data say about binaural beats? The science on binaural beats is actually quite extensive and very precise. So sound waves are measured typically in Hertz or kilohertz. I know many of you aren't familiar with thinking about things in Hertz or kilohertz, but again, just remember those waves on a pond, those ripples on a pond, if they're close together, 语法解析

13:25

then they are of high frequency. And if they're far apart, then they are low frequency. So if it's many more kilohertz, then it's much higher frequency than if it's fewer Hertz or kilohertz. And so you may have heard of these things as Delta waves or Theta waves or Alpha waves or Beta waves, et cetera. Delta waves would be big, slow waves, so low frequency. And indeed there is quality evidence from peer reviewed studies that 语法解析

13:52

tell us that delta waves like one to four Hertz, so very low frequency sounds can help in the transition to sleep and for staying asleep. And that theta rhythms, which are more like four to eight Hertz can bring the brain into a state of subtle sleep or meditation. So deeply relaxed, but not fully asleep. And you'll find evidence that alpha waves, eight to 13 Hertz can increase alertness to a moderate level 语法解析

14:21

That's a great state for the brain to be in for recall of existing information. And that beta waves, 15 to 20 Hertz are great for bringing the brain into focus states for sustained thought or for incorporating new information and especially gamma waves, the highest frequency, the most frequent ripples of sound, so to speak, 32 to 100 Hertz for learning and problem solving. 语法解析

14:48

Here we're talking about the use of binaural beats in order to increase our level of alertness or our level of calmness. Now that's important to underscore because it's not that there's something fundamentally important about the binaural beats. They are yet another way of bringing the brain into states of deep relaxation through low frequency sound or 语法解析

15:11

for focused learning with more high frequency sound. They're effective, but it's not that they're uniquely special for learning. It's just that they can help some people bring their brain into the state that allows them to learn better. There's very good evidence for anxiety reduction from the use of binaural beats. And what's interesting is the anxiety reduction seems to be most effective 语法解析

15:42

when the binaural beats are bringing the brain into Delta, so those slow big waves like sleep, Theta and Alpha states. There's good evidence that binaural beats can be used to treat pain, chronic pain, but the real boost from binaural beats appears to be for anxiety reduction and pain reduction. Many people like binaural beats and say that they benefit from them, especially while studying or learning. I think part of the reason for that 语法解析

16:11

relates to the ability to channel our focus when we have some background noise. And this is something I also get asked about a lot. Is it better to listen to music and have background noise when studying or is it better to have complete silence? Well, there's actually a quite good literature on this as well, but not so much as it relates to binaural beats, but rather whether or not people are listening to music 语法解析

16:35

“so-called white noise, brown noise.” Believe it or not, there's white noise and there's brown noise. There's even pink noise. I want to be very clear that white noise has been shown to really enhance brain states for learning in certain individuals, in particular in adults, but white noise actually can have a detrimental effect on auditory learning and maybe even the development of the auditory system in very young children, in particular in infants. 语法解析

17:03

So first I'd like to talk about the beneficial effects of white noise on learning. There are some really excellent studies on this. The first one that I'd like to just highlight is one that's entitled Low Intensity White Noise Improves Performance in Auditory Working Memory Task, an fMRI study. This is a study that explored whether or not learning could be enhanced by playing white noise in the background, 语法解析

17:32

But the strength of the study is that they looked at some of the underlying neural circuitry and the activation of the neural circuitry in these people as they did the learning task. And what it essentially illustrates is that white noise, provided that white noise is of low enough intensity, meaning not super loud, it actually could enhance learning to a significant degree. And this has been shown now for a huge number of different types of learning. 语法解析

17:58

I was very relieved to find, or I should say excited to find this study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. This is a 2014 paper. White noise improves learning by modulating activity in dopaminergic midbrain regions and the right superior temporal sulcus. Okay, I don't expect you to know what the dopamine midbrain region is, 语法解析

18:21

if you're like me, you probably took highlighted notice of the word dopaminergic. Dopamine is a neuromodulator, meaning it's a chemical that's released in our brain and body, but mostly in our brain, that modulates, meaning controls the likelihood that certain brain areas will be active and other brain areas won't be active. And dopamine is associated with motivation. Dopamine is associated with craving. But what's so interesting to me is that it appears that 语法解析

18:49

that white noise itself can raise the, what we call the basal, the baseline levels of dopamine that are being released from this area, the substantia nigra. So now we're starting to get a more full picture of how particular sounds in our environment can increase 语法解析

19:08

and that's in part, I believe, through the release of dopamine from substantia nigra. So I'm not trying to shift you away from binaural beats, if that's your thing, but it does appear that turning on white noise at a low level, but not too loud, can allow you to learn better because of the ways that it's modulating your brain chemistry. So what about white noise and hearing loss in development? 语法解析

19:33

I know a lot of people with children have these kind of noise machines, like sound waves and things like that, that help the kids sleep. And look, I think kids getting good sleep and parents getting good sleep is vital to physical and mental health and family health. So I certainly sympathize with those needs. 语法解析

19:53

However, there are data that indicate that white noise during development can be detrimental to the auditory system. I don't want to frighten any parents. If you played white noise to your kids, this doesn't mean that their auditory system or their speech patterns are going to be disrupted or that their interpretation of speech is going to be disrupted forever. But 语法解析

20:13

There are data published in the journal Science some years ago showing that when they exposed very young animals to this white noise, it actually disrupted the maps of the auditory world within the brain. So auditory information goes up into our cortex, into essentially the outside portion of our brain that's responsible for all of our higher level cognition, our planning, our decision making, et cetera, creativity. 语法解析

20:43

Up there, we have what are called tonotopic maps. What's a tonotopic map? Well, remember the cochlea, how it's coiled and at one end it responds to high frequencies and the other end it responds to low frequencies? Sort of like a piano. In the auditory system, we have what are called tonotopic maps where frequency, high frequency to low frequency and everything in between is organized in a very systematic way. 语法解析

21:07

Now, our experience of life from the time we're a baby until the time that we die is not systematic. We don't hear low frequencies at one part of the room or at one part of the day and high frequencies in another part of the room, another part of the day, they're all intermixed. But if you remember the cochlea separates them out just like a prism of light separates out the different wavelengths of light, the cochlea separates out the different frequencies. 语法解析

21:30

And the developing brain takes those separated out frequencies and learns this relationship between itself, meaning the child and the outside world. White noise essentially contains no tonotopic information. The frequencies are all intermixed. It's just noise. So, 语法解析

21:55

One of the reasons why hearing a lot of white noise during development for long periods of time can be detrimental to the development of the auditory system is that these tonotopic maps don't form normally. At least they don't in experimental animals. Now, the reason I'm raising this is that many people I know, in particular friends who have small children, they say, “I want to use a white noise machine while I sleep, but is it okay for my baby to use a white noise machine?” 语法解析

22:26

And I consulted with various people, scientists about this, and they said, well, you know, the baby is also hearing the parents' voices and is hearing music and is hearing the dog bark. So it's not the only thing they're hearing. However, every single person that I consulted with said, but you know, there's neuroplasticity during sleep. That's when the kid is sleeping. And I don't know that you'd want to expose a child to white noise the entire night because it might, 语法解析

22:54

that tonotopic map. It might not destroy it, might not eliminate it, but it could make it a little less clear, like sort of taking the keys on the piano and taping a few of them together. Once your auditory system has formed, once it's established these tonotopic maps, then the presence of background white noise should not be a problem at all. 语法解析

23:16

It shouldn't be a problem at all because you're also not attending to it. The idea is that it's playing at a low enough volume that you kind of forget it in the background and that it's supporting learning by bringing your brain into a heightened state of alertness and especially this heightened state of dopamine, dopaminergic activation of the brain, which will make it easier to learn faster and easier to learn the information. 语法解析

23:37

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. 语法解析

23:59

They've also recently added tests for toxins, such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics, and tests for PFASs, or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood. 语法解析

24:24

Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption. I'd been eating a lot of tuna while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say by taking a second function test, 语法解析

24:43

that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by function simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. 语法解析

25:08

If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman to get early access to Function. So now I want to talk about auditory learning and actually how you can get better at learning information that you hear, not just information that you see on a page or motor skill learning. 语法解析

25:36

So there's a phenomenon called the cocktail party effect. Now, even if you've never been to a cocktail party, you've experienced and participated in what's called the cocktail party effect. The cocktail party effect is where you are in an environment that's rich with sound, many sound waves coming from many different sources, many different things. So in a city, in a classroom, in a car that contains people having various conversations, you somehow, 语法解析

26:03

You need to be able to attend to specific components of those sound waves, meaning you need to hear certain people and not others. You and your brain are exquisitely good at creating a cone of auditory attention, a narrow band of attention with which you can extract the information you care about and wipe away or erase all the rest. Now, this takes work. It takes attention. 语法解析

26:30

One of the reasons why you might come home from a loud gathering, maybe a stadium, a sports event or a cocktail party for that matter, and feel just exhausted is because if you were listening to conversations there or trying to listen to those conversations while watching the game, it takes attentional effort and the brain uses up a lot of energy 语法解析

26:50

just at rest, but it uses up even more energy when you are paying strong attention to something, literally caloric energy, burning up things like glucose, et cetera. Even if you're ketogenic, it's burning up energy. So the cocktail party effect has been studied extensively in the field of neuroscience. And we now know at a mechanistic level how one accomplishes this feat of attending to certain sounds, despite the fact that we are being bombarded with all sorts of other sounds. 语法解析

27:19

so there are a couple ways that we do this first of all much as with our visual system we can expand or contract our visual field of view okay we can do that we can expand and contract our visual field of view well we can expand and contract our auditory field of view so to speak or our auditory window we can really hear one person or a small number of people amidst a huge background of chatter 语法解析

27:49

because we pay attention to the onset of words, but also to the offset of words. So one of the more common phenomenon that I think we all experience is you go to a party and or you meet somebody new and you say, hi, I would say, hi, I'm Andrew. And they'd say, hi, I'm Jeff, for instance. Great, great to meet you. And then a minute later, I can't remember the guy's name. 语法解析

28:14

Now, is it because I don't care what his name is? No. Somehow the presence of other auditory information interfered. It's not that my mind was necessarily someplace else. It's that the signal to noise, as we say, wasn't high enough. 语法解析

28:28

Somehow the way he said it or the way it landed on my ears, which is really all that matters, right? When it comes down to learning is such that it just didn't achieve high enough signal to noise. So the next time you ask somebody's name, remember, listen to the onset of what they say and the offsets. It would be paying attention to the J in Jeff and it would be paying attention to the F in F in Jeff, excuse me. 语法解析

28:54

And chances are you'll be able to remember that name. Now I do acknowledge that trying to learn every word in a sentence by paying attention to its onset and offset could actually be kind of disruptive to the learning process. So this would be more for specific attention. Using the attentional system, we can actually learn much faster and we can actually activate neuroplasticity in the adult brain, something that's very challenging to do. 语法解析

29:23

and that the auditory system is one of the main ways in which we can access neuroplasticity more broadly. I'd like to now talk about balance and our sense of balance, which is controlled by, believe it or not, 语法解析

29:36

and things in our ears, as well as by our brain and elements of our spinal cord. The reason why we're talking about balance and how to get better at balancing in the episode about hearing is that all the goodies that are going to allow you to do that are in your ears. They're also in your brain, but they're mostly in your ears. 语法解析

30:00

So as you recall from the beginning of this episode, you have two cochlea, cochleas, that are one on each side of your head. And that's a little spiral snail-shaped thing that converts sound waves into electrical signals that the rest of your brain can understand. Right next to those, you have what are called semicircular canals. The semicircular canals can be best visualized as thinking about three hula hoops with marbles in them. So imagine that you have a hula hoop 语法解析

30:30

and it's not filled with marbles all the way around. It's just got some marbles down there at the base, okay? So if you were to move that hula hoop around, one of those hula hoops is positioned vertically with respect to gravity, but basically it's upright. Another one of those hula hoops is basically at a 90 degree angle, basically parallel to the floor if you're standing up right now, if you're seated, okay? And the other one, 语法解析

31:02

It's kind of tilted about 45 degrees in between those. Now, why is the system there? Well, those marbles within each one of those hula hoops can move around, but they'll only move around if your head moves in a particular way. And there are three planes or three ways that your head can move. 语法解析

31:23

Your head can move up and down like I'm nodding right now. So that's called pitch. Or I can shake my head no, side to side. That's called yaw. And then there's roll, tilting the head from side to side, the way that a cute puppy might look at you from side to side. Pitch, yaw, and roll are the movements of the head in each of the three major planes of motion, as we say. And each one of those, 语法解析

31:49

causes those marbles to move in one or two of the various hula hoops, okay? They aren't actually marbles, by the way. These are little, kind of like little stones, basically, little calcium-like deposits. And when they roll back and forth, 语法解析

32:08

they deflect little hairs, little hair cells that aren't like the hair cells that we use for measuring sound waves, but they're basically rolling past these little hair cells and causing them to deflect. And when they deflect downward, the neurons, because hair cells are neurons, send information up to the brain. 语法解析

32:29

So if I move my head like this, there's a physical movement of these little stones in this hula hoop as I'm referring to it, but they deflect these hairs, send those hairs, which are neurons, those hair cells send information off to the brain. Any animal that has a jaw has this so-called balance system, which we call the vestibular system. One of the more important things to know about the vestibular, the balance system, is that it works together with the visual system. 语法解析

32:59

Let's say I hear something off to my left and I swing my head over to the left to see what it is. There are two sources of information about where my head is relative to my body. And I need to know that. First of all, when I quickly move my head to the side, those little stones as I'm referring to them, they quickly activate those hair cells in that one semi-circular canal 语法解析

33:22

and send a signal off to my brain that my head just moved to the side. But also visual information slid past my field of view. I didn't have to think about it, but just slid past my field of view. And when those two signals combine, my eyes then lock to a particular location. Now, if this is at all complicated, you can actually uncouple these things. It's very easy to do. If you get the opportunity, you can do this safely wherever you are. You're going to stand up 语法解析

33:52

and you're going to look forward about 10, 12 feet. You can pick a point on a wall, stand on one leg and lift up the other leg. You can bend your knee if you like, and just look off into the distance about 10, 12 feet. If you can do that, if you can stand on one leg, now close your eyes. 语法解析

34:10

chances are you're going to suddenly feel what scientists call postural sway. It is very hard to balance with your eyes closed. You might think, well, and if you think about that, it's like, why is that? That's crazy. Why would it be that it's hard to balance with your eyes closed? 语法解析

34:26

information about the visual world also feeds back onto this vestibular system. So the vestibular system informs your vision and tells you where to move your eyes and your eyes in their positioning tell your balance system, your vestibular system, how it should function. 语法解析

34:40

So up until now, I've been talking about balance only in the static sense, like standing on one leg, for instance, but that's a very artificial situation. Even though you can train balance that way, most people who want to enhance their sense of balance for sport or dance or some other endeavor want to engage balance in a dynamic way, meaning moving through lots of different planes of movement. For that, we need to consider that the vestibular system also cares about acceleration. 语法解析

35:08

So it cares about head position, it cares about eye position and where the eyes are and where you're looking, but it also cares about what direction you're moving and how fast. And one of the best things that you can do to enhance your sense of balance is to start to bring together your visual system, the semicircular canals of the inner ear, and what we call linear acceleration. So if I move forward in space rigidly upright, 语法解析

35:37

It's a vastly different situation than if I'm leaning to the side. One of the best ways to cultivate a better sense of balance, literally, within the sense organs and the neurons and the biology of the brain 语法解析

35:54

is to get into modes where we are accelerating forward, typically it's forward, while also tilted with respect to gravity. Now this would be the carve on a skateboard or on a surfboard or a snowboard. This would be the taking a corner on a bike while being able to lean safely, of course, lean into the turn so that your head is actually tilted with respect to the earth. 语法解析

36:21

The head being tilted and the body being tilted while in acceleration, typically forward acceleration, but sometimes side to side has a profound and positive effect on our sense of mood and wellbeing. And as I talked about in a previous episode, it can also enhance our ability to learn information in the period after generating those tilts and the acceleration. 语法解析

36:44

And that's because the cerebellum has these outputs to these areas of the brain that release these neuromodulators like serotonin and dopamine, and they make us feel really good. Those modes of exercise seem to have an outsized effect, both on our wellbeing and our ability to translate the vestibular balance that we achieve in those endeavors to our ability to balance while doing other things. 语法解析

37:11

So I encourage people to get into modes of acceleration while tilted every once in a while, provided you can do it safely. It's an immensely powerful way to build up your skills in the realm of balance. And it's also for most people, very, very pleasing. It feels really good because of the chemical relationship between forward acceleration and head tilt and body tilt. Once again, we've covered a tremendous amount of information. 语法解析

37:37

Now you know how you hear, how you make sense of the sounds in your environment, how those come into your ears and how your brain processes them. In addition, we talked about things like low-level white noise and even binaural beats, which can be used to enhance certain brain states, certain rhythms within the brain, and even dopamine release in ways that allow you to learn better. 语法解析

38:00

And we talked about the balance system and this incredible relationship between your vestibular apparatus, meaning the portions of your inner ear that are responsible for balance and your visual system and gravity. And you can use those to enhance your learning as well, as well as just to enhance your sense of balance. Last but not least, I'd like to thank you for your time and attention and desire and willingness to learn about vision and balance. And of course, thank you for your interest in science. 语法解析

38:31

Thank you. 语法解析

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今天我们来聊聊听觉和平衡，以及如何利用这两个系统加速学习、提升记忆和改善健康。我们会回顾过去节目中最实用、基于科学的工具，帮助你在心理健康、身体健康和个人表现上更进一步。听觉系统，也就是你的听力系统，和平衡系统，也就是前庭系统，与大脑和身体的其他部分密切协作。如果用对了方法，它们能让你学得更快、记得更久、更轻松，还能提升你的听力和平衡能力。

听觉和前庭系统对学习和专注非常重要。你的耳朵能捕捉声音，帮你快速记住信息，同时前庭系统让你保持身体稳定，这两者还能一起提高学习效率。我们会聊到一些具体方法，比如如何用声音和运动来优化这些能力。

现在回到听觉。如果你能听到我的声音，说明我的声音通过空气中的微小波动传到你耳朵，你的耳朵和大脑把这些波动变成了有意义的信息。这是个了不起的生物学过程，我们已经很了解它是怎么工作的。耳朵的科学名字叫auricle，但更常叫pinna，也就是耳廓。耳廓的形状是为你的头专门设计的，能最好地捕捉声音，尤其是高频声音，比如尖锐的声响。声音其实就是空气的波动，像水面上的波纹，有低频和高频之分。这些声波进入耳朵，碰到耳膜，耳膜像鼓面一样振动，后面连着三个小骨头，叫锤骨、砧骨和镫骨，合起来像个小锤子。它们把振动传到内耳的耳蜗，耳蜗是个蜗牛形状的结构，把声音变成大脑能懂的电信号。耳蜗一端硬一端软，分别处理低频和高频声音，里面有毛细胞，形似毛发但跟头发没关系。当声波让这些毛细胞动起来，它们就告诉大脑环境里有某种声音。

耳蜗就像个棱镜，把环境里的所有声音拆成不同频率，大脑再把这些信息拼起来，弄清楚是什么意思。每个耳朵有个耳蜗，两个耳蜗通过神经纤维把信号送到大脑，经过好几个处理站，才到你有意识感知的区域。大脑不仅要知道你在听什么，还要知道声音从哪来。这靠听觉和视觉系统一起工作。比如，你听到右边有人说话，就会转头看右边；看到前面有人嘴动，你会觉得声音从前面来。如果听觉和视觉信号不匹配，就可能出现腹语效应，觉得声音从错误的地方传来。声音定位靠的是声波到达左右耳的时间差。如果同时到两耳，你觉得声音从正前方来；如果右耳先听到，声音在右边。大脑里的神经元会算这个时间差，帮你判断方向。上下方向的定位靠耳廓形状，声音从上面或下面来，频率会不一样。所以当你想听清什么，手会不自觉地在耳朵边做杯状，增大耳廓，就像狐狸的大耳朵，能更好地抓声音。

现在我们说说怎么用听觉系统学得更快，不只是听觉信息，任何内容都行。很多人问到双耳节拍，双耳节拍是给左右耳播不同频率的声音，大脑会把它们平均，产生中间频率，改变大脑状态。科学上，双耳节拍研究很多，低频的Delta波，1-4赫兹，帮你入睡；Theta波，4-8赫兹，让你深度放松，像冥想；Alpha波，8-13赫兹，提高适度警觉，适合回忆；Beta波，15-20赫兹，增强专注；Gamma波，32-100赫兹，适合解决问题和深度学习。双耳节拍能减焦虑、缓解慢性疼痛，尤其是Delta、Theta和Alpha状态效果好。但它不是学习的神器，只是帮你进入更适合学习的状态，其他方法也能做到。

还有人问学习时听音乐、背景噪声好，还是安静好。研究发现，低强度白噪声能显著提高学习效果，比如听觉工作记忆任务。2014年一篇《Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience》的论文说，白噪声通过调节多巴胺能中脑区域，比如黑质，增强学习。多巴胺跟动机和渴望有关，白噪声能提高它的基线水平，让你学得更快。不过，对幼儿来说，白噪声可能有风险。研究表明，长时间听白噪声会干扰听觉系统发育，因为它没有音调信息，可能会让大脑的音调图形成不正常。音调图就像钢琴键，把高频到低频系统化组织。白噪声把这些“键”混在一起，可能影响幼儿听觉处理。成人没这问题，低强度白噪声还能通过提升多巴胺帮你学得更好。但如果家里有婴儿，最好别整夜放白噪声，睡得好重要，但也要让孩子听父母的声音、音乐、狗叫等其他声音。

接下来聊聊听觉学习怎么提高。鸡尾酒会效应是个现象，意思是你在嘈杂地方，比如派对、教室、城市，能专注听某个人说话，忽略其他噪声。大脑能形成一个听觉注意力锥，挑出你关心的信息，擦掉其他杂音。这需要注意力，费能量，所以在吵闹地方听久了会很累。研究发现，大脑靠关注单词的起始和结束来区分声音。比如认识新朋友，他说“我叫Jeff”，但你一分钟后忘了。不是不在乎，是其他声音干扰了信号-噪声比。解决办法是专注名字的开头“J”和结尾“ff”，这样更容易记住。这招适合快速记特定信息，比如名字，但整句都这么听会干扰学习。听觉系统还是激活成人神经可塑性的重要途径，能让大脑更快适应和学习。

最后说说平衡系统，它跟听觉系统有关，都靠内耳，还有大脑和脊髓。平衡系统在你耳朵里，耳蜗旁边有三个半规管，想象成三个呼啦圈，里面有小石子，实际是钙质沉积物。头部动的时候，这些石子在液体里滚，刺激毛细胞，毛细胞是神经元，把信号送大脑。头部有三种运动：俯仰，上下点头；偏航，左右摇头；滚动，侧倾，像小狗歪头。每种运动激活不同半规管，告诉大脑你的头在哪。平衡系统跟视觉系统一起工作。比如，听到左边有声音，你转头看，半规管告诉你头动了，视觉信息也滑过视野，两者结合让眼睛锁定目标。试试这个：站直，单腿站，盯着10-12英尺外一点，闭眼，你会感到摇晃。因为没视觉输入，平衡全靠前庭系统，难度大增。

静态平衡，比如单腿站，挺人工的。动态平衡，比如运动中保持稳定，才是大多数人想练的。前庭系统关心头部位置、眼睛看哪、还有加速度。比如，你直立向前走，跟侧倾走完全不同。提高平衡感最好的方法是结合视觉系统、半规管和线性加速度。比如滑板、冲浪、自行车转弯时，身体和头倾斜，相对于地面有角度。这些动作刺激前庭系统，增强平衡，还能提升心情。小脑会释放血清素和多巴胺，让你感觉很好。这种倾斜加速度运动还能提高之后的学习能力，因为这些化学物质让你更专注、更容易学。所以，安全的情况下，偶尔试试滑板、自行车转弯，特别爽，还能练平衡。

我们讲了很多。你现在知道声音怎么通过耳廓、耳膜、听小骨、耳蜗变成信号，大脑怎么处理它们；还知道低强度白噪声和双耳节拍能调大脑状态，提升多巴胺，帮你学得更好；也知道平衡系统怎么靠内耳半规管、视觉和重力协作，动态平衡训练还能改善心情和学习。最后，谢谢你的时间和对科学的兴趣，希望这些工具能帮你优化听觉、平衡和学习！

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