How Your Nervous System Works & Changes | Huberman Lab Podcast #1

发布时间 2021-01-04 16:00:44 来源

安德鲁·休伯曼博士在他的 Huberman Lab 播客中，首先深入探讨了神经系统，并强调它远不止大脑本身。这是一个连接大脑、脊髓和身体的整合回路，负责从思想、感觉、到行动的一切。他强调发现神经系统由数万亿个独立的神经细胞组成，这些神经细胞被称为神经元，神经元之间由突触分隔，在那里通过神经递质进行化学通讯。神经系统通过这些神经元之间的电活动运作，塑造着我们的感知和体验。他提到了推动神经科学发展的历史事件，特别是对战争伤亡造成的离散性脑损伤的研究。这些损伤使神经学家能够将特定的大脑区域与特定功能联系起来，例如面部识别和言语。他提到了现代的发现，例如单个神经元与识别特定面孔相关联，这说明我们的大脑本质上是我们经历的地图。休伯曼解释说，神经系统有五个主要功能：感觉、感知、感觉/情绪、思想和行动。感觉涉及感觉感受器，而感知涉及将注意力集中在特定感觉上。他强调理解注意力和感知的重要性，尤其是在使用工具优化神经系统功能时。有两个注意力的聚光灯，允许进行多任务处理。感觉和情绪是复杂的状态，受到多巴胺、血清素、乙酰胆碱和肾上腺素等神经调节剂的影响。这些化学物质调节神经回路，影响情绪、动机和行为。 20世纪中期抗抑郁药的发现源于对这些神经调节剂对情绪和行为影响的理解。思想，如同感知一样，可以是反射性的或深思熟虑的，并且会借鉴过去的记忆和对未来的期望。他强调认识到思维模式可以被有意识地控制的重要性。行动是神经系统最重要的表现，留下了我们存在的“化石记录”。运动，就像思想一样，可以是反射性的或深思熟虑的，由涉及脑干和前脑的通路控制。休伯曼强调了“持续时间、路径和结果”(DPO) 思考对于有意识的行动和学习的重要性。从事有意识的、以目标为导向的行为，尤其是当它需要努力和抑制冲动反应时，会由于去甲肾上腺素（肾上腺素）的释放而产生一种激动的感觉。这种激动实际上是神经可塑性的入口。神经可塑性，即神经系统根据经验改变的能力，使我们能够从具有挑战性的、深思熟虑的行动转变为反射性的行动。虽然神经可塑性在青少年时期更为明显，但在成年后通过集中的努力仍然可以发生。然而，它受到神经调节剂的控制或限制，特别是乙酰胆碱。当某些事情通过标记在这种高度警觉状态下变得特别活跃的神经元，触发一种高度的注意力集中状态时，就会释放这种化学物质。神经可塑性的一个阴暗面是创伤等负面事件的发生方式。它们可以快速创建大脑习惯性使用的神经通路。神经可塑性有好处，但也存在一个问题。突触的实际重塑和加强发生在睡眠和非睡眠深度休息 (NSDR) 期间，而不是在学习或体验阶段。研究表明，学习后立即进行 NSDR 以及睡眠期间的听觉提示可以加速神经可塑性。自主神经系统控制着警觉（交感神经）和冷静（副交感神经）之间的平衡，管理着清醒和睡眠之间的转换，以及全天90分钟的超昼夜节律周期。他强调需要掌握自主神经系统，并利用这些周期来优化注意力、学习和神经可塑性。

Dr. Andrew Huberman begins his Huberman Lab podcast with a deep dive into the nervous system, emphasizing that it encompasses far more than just the brain. It's an integrated loop connecting the brain, spinal cord, and body, responsible for everything from thoughts and feelings to actions. He highlights the discovery that the nervous system is composed of trillions of individual nerve cells called neurons, separated by synapses where chemical communication occurs via neurotransmitters. The nervous system operates through electrical activity between these neurons, shaping our perceptions and experiences. He references historical events that advanced neuroscience, particularly the study of discrete brain lesions caused by warfare injuries. These injuries allowed neurologists to correlate specific brain regions with particular functions, such as face recognition and speech. He mentions modern discoveries, such as individual neurons being associated with recognizing specific faces, illustrating that our brain is essentially a map of our experiences. Huberman explains that the nervous system has five primary functions: sensation, perception, feelings/emotions, thoughts, and actions. Sensation involves sensory receptors, while perception involves focusing attention on specific sensations. He emphasizes the importance of understanding attention and perception, especially when using tools to optimize nervous system function. There are two attentional spotlights allowing for multitasking. Feelings and emotions are complex states influenced by neuromodulators like dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, and epinephrine. These chemicals modulate neural circuits, affecting mood, motivation, and behavior. The discovery of antidepressants in the mid-20th century stemmed from understanding the effects of these neuromodulators on mood and behavior. Thoughts, like perceptions, can be reflexive or deliberate and draw on past memories and future anticipations. He stresses the importance of recognizing that thought patterns can be controlled deliberately. Actions are the most important manifestation of the nervous system, leaving a "fossil record" of our existence. Movement, like thoughts, can be reflexive or deliberate, controlled by pathways involving the brainstem and forebrain. Huberman highlights the importance of "duration, path, and outcome" (DPO) thinking for deliberate actions and learning. Engaging in deliberate, goal-oriented behavior, especially when it requires effort and suppression of impulsive responses, leads to a feeling of agitation due to the release of norepinephrine (adrenaline). This agitation is actually the entry point to neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, the ability of the nervous system to change in response to experience, allows us to shift from challenging, deliberate actions to reflexive ones. While neuroplasticity is more pronounced in youth, it can still occur in adulthood with focused effort. However, it is gated or controlled by neuromodulators, particularly acetycholine. This chemical is releases when something triggers a heightened state of focus by marking the neurons that become particularly active during this heightened state of alertness. A dark side of neuroplasticity is how negative events such as traumas happen. They can quickly create neural paths that the brain uses habitually. While there are benefits of neuroplasticity, there is a catch. The actual rewiring and strengthening of synapses occurs during sleep and non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) rather than during the learning or experiencing phase. Studies have shown that NSDR immediately after learning and auditory cues during sleep can accelerate neuroplasticity. The autonomic nervous system, controlling the balance between alertness (sympathetic) and calmness (parasympathetic), governs the transition between wakefulness and sleep, as well as 90-minute ultradian cycles throughout the day. He underscores the need to master the autonomic nervous system and leverage these cycles to optimize focus, learning, and neuroplasticity.

摘要

Today’s episode provides an introduction to how the nervous system works to create sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts and behaviors, as well as how we can change our nervous system— a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. The information sets the stage for all Huberman Lab Podcast episodes that follow by covering neurons, synapses, brain chemicals and the rhythms that control our ability to focus, learn and sleep… and more. Timestamps for the episode can be found below. Thank you for your interest in science. We'll see you next week. #HubermanLab #Neuroscience Thank you to our sponsors Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Social & Website Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hubermanlab Twitter: https://twitter.com/hubermanlab Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hubermanlab TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hubermanlab LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-huberman Website: https://hubermanlab.com Newsletter: https://hubermanlab.com/neural-network Timestamps 0:00 Introduction 5:00 What is the Nervous System 8:55 Deja Vu 10:50 How War, Guns & Soap Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain 13:30 Jennifer Aniston Neurons 14:30 Sensations 16:10 Magnetic Sensing & Mating 17:30 Perceptions & The Spotlight of Attention 18:30 Multi-Tasking Is Real 20:10 Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Control of Behavior 21:15 Focusing the Mind 21:55 Emotions + The Chemicals of Emotions 24:30 Antidepressants 27:40 Thoughts & Thought Control 28:35 Actions 33:20 How We Control Our Impulses 36:25 Neuroplasticity: The Holy Grail of Neuroscience 41:20 The Portal to Neuroplasticity 46:40 Accelerating Learning in Sleep 50:20 The Pillar of Plasticity 55:00 Leveraging Ultradian Cycles & Self Experimentation The Huberman Lab Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac - https://www.blabacphoto.com

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Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we 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. For today's podcast, we're going to talk about the parts list of the nervous system. Now that might sound boring, but these are the bits and pieces that together make up everything about your experience of life. From what you think about to what you feel, what you imagine, and what you accomplish from the day you're born until the day you die. That parts list is really incredible because it has a history associated with it that really provides a window into all sorts of things like engineering, warfare, religion, and philosophy.

欢迎来到Huberman实验室播客，在这里我们讨论科学以及用于日常生活的科学工具。我是Andrew Huberman，斯坦福医学院的神经生物学和眼科学教授。今天的播客中，我们将谈论神经系统的组成部分。乍一听可能有些无聊，但正是这些点滴细节共同构成了你生活中的所有体验。从你的思考、感受、想象，到从出生到去世期间的成就。这些组成部分非常令人惊奇，因为它们的历史实际上为工程、战争、宗教和哲学等各种事物提供了一个窗口。

So I'm going to share with you the parts list that makes up who you are through the lens of some of those other aspects of life and other aspects of the history of the discovery of the nervous system. By the end of this podcast, I promise you're going to understand a lot more about how you work and how to apply that knowledge. There's going to be a little bit of story. There's going to be a lot of discussion about the people who made these particular discoveries. There'll be a little bit of technical language. There's no way to avoid that. But at the end, you're going to have in hand what will be the equivalent of an entire semester of learning about the nervous system and how you work.

我将通过生活中其他一些方面以及神经系统发现历史的视角来分享构成你是谁的组成部分。在本次播客结束时，我保证你会更加了解自己的运作方式以及如何应用这些知识。节目中会有一些故事，以及大量关于那些做出这些特殊发现的人的讨论。可能会用到一些专业术语，这是无法避免的。但最终，你将获得相当于一个学期的关于神经系统及你自身运作方式的学习内容。

So a few important points before we get started. I am not a medical doctor. That means I don't prescribe anything. I'm a professor. So sometimes I'll profess things. In fact, I profess a lot of things. We are going to talk about some basic functioning of the nervous system, parts, and etc. But we're also going to talk about how to apply that knowledge. That said, your healthcare, your well-being is your responsibility. So anytime we talk about tools, please filter it through that responsibility. Talk to a healthcare professional if you're going to explore any new tools or practices. And be smart in your pursuit of these new tools.

在我们开始之前，有几点重要的说明。我不是医生，也就是说我不会开任何处方。我是一名教授，因此有时候会讲授一些知识，实际上，我会讲授很多内容。我们将讨论一些关于神经系统基本功能及其组成等方面的知识，但同时我们也会谈论如何应用这些知识。话虽如此，你的健康和幸福仍是你自己的责任。所以每当我们谈论某些工具时，请通过你个人的责任来过滤这些信息。如果你打算尝试新工具或做法，请咨询医疗专业人士。在追求这些新工具时，要聪明谨慎。

I also want to emphasize that this podcast and the other things I do on social media are my personal goal of bringing zero cost to consumer information. To the general public is separate from my role at Stanford University. In that spirit, I really want to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. The first one is Athletic Greens, which is an all-in-one drink. It's a green strength that has vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics. I've been using Athletic Greens since 2012. So I'm really delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I like it is because I like vitamins and minerals. I think they're important to my health.

我还想强调一下，这个播客以及我在社交媒体上做的其他事情，都是我个人为了给大众提供零成本信息的目标。这与我在斯坦福大学的职务是分开的。抱着这样的信念，我真的很想感谢今天播客的赞助商。第一个是Athletic Greens，这是一款全合一的饮品。它是一种绿色能量饮料，含有维生素、矿物质、益生菌和益生元。我从2012年开始使用Athletic Greens，所以我很高兴他们赞助了这个播客。我喜欢这款饮品的原因是我很喜欢维生素和矿物质，我认为它们对我的健康很重要。

And it can be kind of overwhelming to know what to take in that landscape. So by taking one thing that also happens to taste really good, I get all the vitamins, minerals, etc. that I need. There's also a lot of data out there now about the importance of the gut microbiome for immune health and for the gut-brain access, all these things. And the probiotics and prebiotics are important to me for that reason. If you want to try Athletic Greens, you can go to AthleticGreens.com slash Huberman and put in the code word Huberman at checkout. If you do that, they'll send you a year supply of vitamin D3 and K2.

在当今纷繁复杂的健康产品中，选择合适的产品可能会让人感到有些不知所措。因此，我选择了一种既好吃又能提供我所需的所有维生素、矿物质等营养素的产品。现在有很多研究数据表明，肠道微生物组对于免疫健康和肠脑轴的重要性。正因如此，益生菌和益生元对我来说非常重要。如果你想尝试Athletic Greens，可以访问AthleticGreens.com/Huberman，并在结账时输入代码Huberman。这样，他们会送你一年的维生素D3和K2的供应。

There's a lot in the news lately about the importance of vitamin D3. We can all get vitamin D3 from sunlight, but many of us aren't getting enough sunlight. Vitamin D3 has been shown to be relevant to the immune system and the hormone systems, etc. So once again, that's AthleticGreens.com slash Huberman. Enter Huberman at checkout and you get the year supply of D3 and K2 along with your Athletic Greens. This podcast is also brought to us by Inside Tracker, which is a health monitoring company. It uses blood tests and saliva tests to look at things like DNA and metabolic markers and monitors your hormones, a huge number of different parameters of health that really can only be measured accurately through blood and saliva tests.

最近新闻中经常提到维生素D3的重要性。我们都可以通过阳光获取维生素D3，但很多人没有得到足够的阳光。研究表明，维生素D3与免疫系统和激素系统有关。再次提醒，可以访问AthleticGreens.com，输入代号Huberman进行结账，即可在购买Athletic Greens时获得全年供应的D3和K2。本播客还由Inside Tracker公司赞助，它是一家健康监测公司。它通过血液和唾液测试来分析DNA、代谢标记物及激素等多种健康参数，这些都是只能通过血液和唾液测试准确测量的。

I use Inside Tracker because I'm a big believer in data. There's a lot of aspects of biology that can only be accurately measured by way of blood tests and saliva tests. The thing that's really nice about Inside Tracker is that rather than just giving you a bunch of numbers back of the levels of these things in your body, it gives you through a really simple platform information about what to do with all those levels of hormones and metabolic markers, etc. It also has a feature which is particularly interesting, which it measures your inner age, which is more a measure of your biological age as opposed to your chronological age.

我使用Inside Tracker，因为我非常相信数据。在生物学中，有很多方面只能通过血液测试和唾液测试来准确测量。Inside Tracker的一个很大的优点是，它不仅仅给你一堆关于体内这些物质水平的数字，而是通过一个非常简单的平台提供信息，告诉你如何处理所有这些激素和代谢指标等。此外，它还有一个特别有趣的功能，那就是测量你的内在年龄，这更像是你的生物年龄，而不是你的实际年龄。

All that information is organized so that you can make changes in your nutritional regimes or your exercise regimes and watch how those markers change over time. If you want to try Inside Tracker, you can go to InsideTracker.com slash Huberman and they'll give you 25% off at checkout.

所有这些信息都经过整理，以便您可以调整您的营养方案或锻炼计划，并观察这些指标如何随时间变化。如果您想尝试使用 Inside Tracker，您可以访问 InsideTracker.com 斜杠 Huberman，在结账时他们会给您打75折。

So let's talk about the nervous system. The reason I say your nervous system and not your brain is because your brain is actually just one piece of this larger, more important thing, frankly, that we call the nervous system. The nervous system includes your brain and your spinal cord, but also all the connections between your brain and your spinal cord and the organs of your body. It also includes, very importantly, all the connections between your organs back to your spinal cord and brain.

那么，让我们来谈谈神经系统。我之所以说是你的神经系统而不是你的大脑，是因为你的大脑实际上只是这个更大、更重要的系统中的一部分，我们称之为神经系统。神经系统包括你的大脑和脊髓，还有连接大脑、脊髓与身体器官的所有通路。同样重要的是，它还包括器官返回到脊髓和大脑的所有连接。

So the way to think about how you function at every level from the moment you're born until the day you die, everything you think and remember and feel and imagine is that your nervous system is this continuous loop of communication between the brain, spinal cord and body and body spinal cord and brain. In fact, we really can't even separate them. It's one continuous loop.

从你出生的那一刻起直到你去世的那一天，你的思考、记忆、感受和想象的运作方式可以理解为一个神经系统的连续交流圈。这个交流圈在大脑、脊髓和身体之间不断循环。实际上，我们无法真正将它们分开，因为它们就是一个不间断的环路。

You may have heard of something called a mobius strip. A mobius strip is almost like one of these impossible figures that no matter which angle you look at it from, you can't tell where it starts and where it ends. And that's really how your nervous system is built. That's the structure that allows you to, for instance, deploy immune cells to release cells that will go kill infection when you're in the presence of infection.

你可能听说过一种叫做莫比乌斯带的东西。莫比乌斯带有点像那些看上去不可能的图形，无论你从哪个角度去看，都无法分辨它哪里是起点，哪里是终点。这实际上就像你神经系统的构造。这个结构使你能够在感染出现时，释放免疫细胞来对抗感染。

Most people just think about that as a function of the immune system, but actually it's your nervous system that tells organs like you're spleen to release killer cells that go and hunt down those bacterial and viral invaders and gobble them up. If you have a stomach ache, for instance, sure you feel that in your stomach, but it's really your nervous system that's causing the stomach ache. The ache aspect of it is a nervous system feature.

大多数人只是认为这与免疫系统有关，但实际上是你的神经系统告诉像脾脏这样的器官释放杀伤细胞，这些细胞会去寻找并消灭那些细菌和病毒入侵者。举个例子，如果你胃痛，当然你会觉得痛在胃里，但实际上是你的神经系统在引发这种胃痛。这种痛感实际上是神经系统的功能。

So when we want to talk about experience or we want to talk about how to change the self in any way, we really need to think about the nervous system first. It is fair to say that the nervous system governs all other biological systems of the body and it's also influenced by those other biological systems.

所以，当我们想要谈论经验或者我们想以任何方式改变自我的时候，我们真的需要首先考虑神经系统。可以说，神经系统掌控着身体的所有其他生物系统，同时也受到那些其他生物系统的影响。

So if we're talking about the nervous system, we need to get a little specific about what we mean. It's not just this big loop of wires. In fact, there's an interesting story about that because at the turn of the sort of 1800s to 1900s, it actually was believed that our nervous system was just one giant cell.

所以，当我们谈论神经系统时，我们需要具体说明我们的意思。神经系统并不仅仅是由一大圈电线组成的。实际上，这背后有一个有趣的故事：在1800年代到1900年代之交，人们确实认为我们的神经系统就是一个巨大的单细胞。

But two guys, the names aren't super important, but in fairness to their important discovery, Ramoni Cajal, a spaniard, Camilo Golgi, an Italian guy, figured out how to label or stain the nervous system in a way that revealed, oh my goodness, we're actually made up of trillions of these little cells, nerve cells that are called neurons. That's what a neuron is. It's just a nerve cell.

有两个人，他们的名字不是特别重要，但为了尊重他们的重要发现，我们还是提一下：西班牙人拉蒙·卡哈尔和意大利人卡米洛·高尔基。他们研发出一种标记或染色神经系统的方法，结果大吃一惊地发现，哦天呐，我们的身体实际上是由数万亿个小细胞构成的，这些神经细胞就是我们所说的神经元。神经元其实就是神经细胞。

They also saw that those nerve cells weren't touching one another. They're actually separated by little gaps and those little gaps you may have heard of before, they're called synapses. Those synapses are where the chemicals from one neuron are kind of spit out or vomited into and then the next nerve cell detects those chemicals and then passes electricity down its length to the next nerve cell and so forth.

他们还观察到那些神经细胞并没有互相接触。实际上，它们之间存在小缝隙，这些小缝隙你可能以前听说过，它们被称为突触。突触是一个神经元将化学物质释放出来的地方，接着另外一个神经细胞检测到这些化学物质，然后沿着自身传递电信号到下一个神经细胞，如此递推下去。

So really the way to think about your body and your thoughts and your mind is that you are a flow of electricity. Right, there's nothing mystical about this. You are a flow of electricity between these different nerve cells and depending on which nerve cells are active, you might be lifting your arm or lowering your arm. You might be seeing something and perceiving that it's red or you might be seeing something and perceiving that it's green, all depending on which nerve cells are electrically active at a given moment.

所以，其实可以把你的身体、思想和大脑想象成一个电流的流动。这里面没有什么神秘的东西。你的身体是不同神经细胞之间的电流流动，根据哪些神经细胞在活跃，你可能会抬起或放下手臂。你可能会看到某物并感知到它是红色的，或者看到某物并感知为绿色，这一切都取决于哪个神经细胞在某一时刻处于活跃状态。

The example of perceiving red or perceiving green as a particularly good example because so often our experience of the world makes it seem as if these out these things that are happening outside us are actually happening inside us but the language of the nervous system is just electricity. It's just like a mores code of some sort where the syllables or words and consonants and vowels of language, it just depends on how they're assembled, what order.

感知红色或绿色的例子是一个特别好的例子，因为我们的世界体验常常让我们觉得这些发生在我们外部的事情实际上是在我们内部发生的。但实际上，神经系统的语言只是电信号。这就像某种摩尔斯电码，其中的音节、词汇、辅音和元音，取决于它们如何组合、以什么顺序排列。

And so that brings us to the the issue of how the nervous system works. The way to think about how the nervous system works is that our experiences, our memories, everything is sort of like the keys on a piano being played in a particular order. Right, if I play the keys on a piano in a particular order and with a particular intensity, that's a given song.

这就引出了我们对神经系统如何运作的探讨。可以把神经系统的工作方式想象成钢琴上的琴键按特定顺序被弹奏。没错，如果我按照特定的顺序和力度弹奏钢琴键，那就是演奏一首特定的歌曲。我们的经验和记忆就像这样被演奏出来。

We could make that analogous to a given experience. It's not really that the key, you know, a sharp or E flat is the song. It's just one component of the song. So when you hear that, you know, for instance, there's a brain area called the hippocampus, which there is that's involved in memory. Well, it's involved in memory, but it's not that memories are stored there as, you know, sentences, they're stored there as patterns of electricity and neurons that when repeated, give you the sense that you're experiencing the thing again. In fact, deja vu, the sense that what you're experiencing is so familiar and like something that you've experienced previously is merely that the neurons that were active in one circumstance are now becoming active in the same circumstance again. And so it's really just like hearing the same song maybe not played on a piano, but next time on the classical guitar, there's something similar about that song, even though it's being played on two different instruments.

我们可以将其类比为某种体验。关键不是某一个音调，比如升调或降调，是整首歌。它只是歌曲的一个组成部分。所以，当你听到某个例子，比如大脑有一个叫海马体的区域，它与记忆有关。海马体确实与记忆有关，但记忆并不是以句子的形式储存在那里，而是以电流和神经元的模式储存，当这些模式被重复时，会让你感觉好像再次体验到了那个东西。事实上，似曾相识的感觉（即我们称的"似曾相识"），是因为在某种情境中活跃的神经元在相同的情境中再次活跃。其实，这就像听同一首歌，第一次可能是用钢琴演奏，下一次是用古典吉他演奏，虽然用的乐器不同，但这首歌有某种相似性。

So I think it's important that people understand the parts of their nervous system and that it includes so much more than just the brain and that there are these things neurons and synapses, but really that it's the electrical activity of these neurons that dictates our experience. So if the early 1900s were when these neurons were discovered, certainly a lot has happened since then. And in that time between the early 1900s and now, there's some important events that actually happened in history that give us insight or gave us insight into how the nervous system works. One of the more surprising ones was actually warfare. So as most everybody knows, in warfare, people get shot and people often die, but many people get shot and they don't die.

我认为让大家了解他们的神经系统各部分是很重要的，这不仅仅包括大脑。神经系统中还有神经元和突触，实际上是这些神经元的电活动决定了我们的体验。如果说在20世纪初我们发现了神经元，那么从那以后肯定发生了很多事情。在20世纪初到现在之间，有一些重要的历史事件实际上为我们提供了关于神经系统如何运作的见解。其中一个比较令人惊讶的事件就是战争。众所周知，在战争中，人们会中弹，许多人因此牺牲，但也有许多人虽然中弹但没有死亡。

And in World War One, there were some changes in artillery in bullets that made for a situation where bullets would enter the body and brain at very discrete locations and would go out the other side of the body or brain and also make a very small hole at that exit location. And in doing so, produced a lot of naturally occurring lesions of the nervous system. Now you say, okay, well, how does that relate to neuroscience? Well, unlike previous years where a lot of the artillery would create these big sort of holes as the bullets would blow out of the brain or body. I know this is rather gruesome. When the holes were very discrete, they entered at one point and left at another point. They would take out or destroy very discrete bits of neural tissue of the nervous system.

在第一次世界大战中，炮弹和子弹的变化导致一种情况：子弹进入身体或大脑时的位置非常精确，然后从另一侧穿出，并在出口位置只留下一个很小的孔。这样一来，就自然形成了许多神经系统的损伤。你可能会问，这与神经科学有什么关系？与以往相比，过去的炮弹往往会在大脑或身体内爆炸，造成大面积的损伤。而在这次战争中，当弹孔非常精确时，子弹从一个点进入，从另一个点射出，它们会破坏或摧毁非常特定的神经组织。虽然听起来有些可怕，但这也为研究神经系统的特定部位提供了机会。

So people were coming back from war with holes in their brain and in other parts of their nervous system that were limited to very specific locations. In addition to that, there was some advancement in the cleaning of wounds that happened. So many more people were surviving. What this meant was that neurologists now had a collection of patients that would come back and they'd have holes in very specific locations of their brain and they'd say things like, well, I can recognize faces, but I can't recognize who those faces belong to. I know it's a face, but I don't know who belongs to. And after that person eventually died, the neurologist would figure out, ah, I've had 10 patients that all told me that they couldn't recognize faces and they all had these bullet holes that went through a particular region of the brain. And that's how we know a lot about how particular brain regions like the hippocampus work.

人们从战争中归来时，大脑和其他神经系统的某些特定位置出现了损伤。同时，战伤清理技术有所进步，更多的人因此得以存活。这意味着神经学家面对一群有特定脑损伤的病人，他们会说：“我能认出是张脸，但不知道这是谁。”在这些人去世后，神经学家会发现：“我遇到了10位患者，他们都告诉我无法识别面孔，而他们的大脑在同一个区域有弹孔。”这样，我们逐渐了解了像海马体这样的特定大脑区域的功能。

In fact, some of the more amazing examples of this where people would come back and they, for instance, would speak in complete gibberish. Whereas previously, they could speak normally. And even though they were speaking in complete gibberish, they could understand language perfectly. That's how we know that speech and language are actually controlled by separate portions of the nervous system. And there are many examples like that, people that couldn't recognize the faces of famous people. Or, and that actually brings us to an interesting example in modern times, many, many years later in the early 2000s. There was actually a paper that was published in the journal Nature, excellent journal showing that in a human being, a perfectly healthy human being, there was a neuron that would become active, electrically active, only when the person viewed the picture of Jennifer Aniston, the actress.

事实上，有一些非常奇妙的例子，比如有些人曾经可以正常说话，但后来却开始说些完全无法理解的胡话。然而，尽管他们说的是胡话，他们对语言的理解能力依然完好无损。由此可见，言语和语言的控制其实是由神经系统中不同的部分负责的。这类例子还包括一些人无法认出著名人物的面孔。其中一个现代的有趣案例发生在2000年代早期。《自然》杂志上曾发表一篇论文，报道有一位完全健康的人，大脑中有一个神经元只会在看到女演员詹妮弗·安妮斯顿的照片时变得活跃。

So literally a neuron that represented Jennifer Aniston, so-called Jennifer Aniston cells. Neuroscientists know about these Jennifer Aniston cells. If you can recognize Jennifer Aniston's face, you have Jennifer Aniston neurons. And presumably also have neurons that can recognize the faces of other famous and non-famous people. So that indicates that our brain is really a map of our experience. We come into the world and our brain has a kind of bias towards learning particular kinds of things. It's ready to receive information and learn that information. But the brain is really a map of experience.

可以把这段话翻译成中文，并尽量使其易于阅读：字面上来说，大脑中有一种神经元代表着詹妮弗·安妮斯顿，我们称之为詹妮弗·安妮斯顿细胞。神经科学家了解这些詹妮弗·安妮斯顿细胞。如果你能认出詹妮弗·安妮斯顿的面孔，那你就有詹妮弗·安妮斯顿神经元。而且，大脑中可能还存在能够识别其他名人或普通人面孔的神经元。这表明我们的脑子实际上是我们经历的一个地图。我们来到这个世界时，大脑对学习特定类型的信息有一种倾向。大脑已经准备好接收和学习信息，但本质上，大脑就是经验的地图。

So let's talk about what experience really is. What does it mean for your brain to work? Well, I think it's fair to say that the nervous system really does five things. Maybe six. The first one is sensation. So this is important to understand for any and all of you that want to change your nervous system or to apply tools to make your nervous system work better. Sensation is a non-negotiable element of your nervous system. You have neurons in your eye that perceive certain colors of light and certain directions of movement. You have neurons in your skin that perceive particular kinds of touch like light touch or firm touch or painful touch. You have neurons in your ears that perceive certain sounds. Your entire experience of life is filtered by these what we call sensory receptors if you want to know what the name is.

那么让我们来谈谈究竟什么是体验。你的大脑如何运作又意味着什么呢？我觉得可以这么说，神经系统实际上做五到六件事情。第一件就是感觉。对于那些想要改变自己的神经系统或运用一些工具来提升神经系统运作的人来说，这一点非常重要。感觉是神经系统中不可或缺的元素。你的眼睛中有一些神经元能够感知特定颜色的光和特定方向的运动；你的皮肤中有一些神经元可以感知各种触碰，比如轻触、重触或痛感触碰；你的耳朵中有一些神经元则能够感知特定的声音。你对生活的所有体验都是通过这些我们称之为感受器的东西来过滤的。

So this always raises an interesting question. People ask, well, is there much more out there? Is there a lot more happening in the world that I'm not experiencing or that humans aren't experiencing? And the answer of course is yes. There are many species on this planet that are perceiving things that we will never perceive unless we apply technology. The best example I could think of at the top of my head would be something like infrared vision. There are snakes out there, pit vipers and so forth that can sense heat emissions from other animals. They don't actually see their shape. They sense their heat shape and their heat emissions. Humans can't do that unless of course they put on infrared goggles or something that would allow them to detect those heat emissions.

这总是引发一个有趣的问题。常有人问：“外面还有更多的东西吗？在这个世界上，是否有很多我没有体验到，或者说人类没有体验到的事情？”答案当然是肯定的。在地球上，有许多物种能够感知到我们无法感知的事物，除非我们借助科技。我能立即想到的最佳例子就是红外感知。有些蛇，比如蝮蛇等，能够感应到其他动物发出的热量。它们并不是看见这些动物的形状，而是感知到它们散发的热量形状和热辐射。人类是无法做到这些的，除非我们戴上红外线眼镜或其他设备，来帮助我们探测这些热量发射。

There are turtles and certain species of birds that migrate long distances that can detect magnetic fields because they have neurons. Again, it's the nervous system that allows them to do this. So they have neurons in their nose and in their head that allow them to migrate along magnetic fields in order to as amazing as this sounds, go from one particular location in the ocean, thousands of miles away to all aggregate on one particular beach at a particular time of year so that they can mate, lay eggs and then wander back off into the sea to die and then their young will eventually hatch.

有一些乌龟和特定种类的鸟类会进行长途迁徙，它们能够探测地磁场。这是因为它们的神经系统中有特殊的神经元。具体来说，它们在鼻子和头部有这样的神经元，使它们能够沿着地磁场迁徙。令人惊讶的是，这使得它们能够从海洋中的某个地方，长途跋涉数千英里，到达一个特定的海滩，并在一年中的特定时间汇聚在一起进行交配和产卵。之后，它们又会返回大海，最终死去，而它们的后代将孵化并继续这个生命循环。

Those little cute little turtles will shuffle to the ocean, swim off and go do the exact same thing. They don't migrate that distance by vision. They don't do it by smell. They do it by sensing magnetic fields. Many other species do these incredible things. Humans are not magnetic sensing organisms. We can't do that because we don't have receptors that sense magnetic fields. There are some data that maybe some humans can sense magnetic fields but you should be very skeptical of anyone that's convinced that they can do that with any degree of robustness or accuracy because even the people that can do this aren't necessarily aware that they can maybe a topic for a future podcast.

那些可爱的小海龟会缓慢地爬向大海，游走然后去做同样的事情。它们不是通过视觉来迁徙这么远的距离，也不是通过嗅觉。它们是通过感知磁场来做到这一点的。许多其他物种也能做这些不可思议的事情。人类不是能够感知磁场的生物。我们做不到这一点，因为我们没有感知磁场的受体。有一些数据表明，也许有些人类可以感知磁场，但你应该对那些坚信自己能够以任何稳健性和准确性做到这一点的人持怀疑态度，因为即使那些能够做到的人也未必意识到自己有这个能力。这可能是一个未来播客的话题。

So we have sensation. Then we have perception. Perception is our ability to take what we're sensing and focus on it and make sense of it to explore it, to remember it. So really perceptions are just whichever sensations we happen to be paying attention to at any moment and you can do this right now. You can experience perception and the difference between perception and sensation very easily. If for instance I tell you to pay attention to the contact of your feet, the bottoms of your feet with whatever surface they happen to be in contact with. Maybe it's shoes, maybe it's the floor, if your feet are up, maybe it's air.

所以我们首先有了感觉，然后才有了知觉。知觉是我们能够把感受到的东西加以关注，并使其有意义，进行探索和记忆的能力。实际上，知觉就是在任何时刻我们所关注的那些感受。你现在就可以体验一下知觉，以及它与感觉的区别。比如，如果我让你注意你脚底与接触物体的感觉，可能是鞋子、地板，或者如果你的脚抬起来了，可能是空气。

The moment you place your what we call the spotlight of attention or the spotlight of perception on your feet, you are now perceiving what was happening there, what was being sensed there. The sensation was happening all along however. So while sensation is not negotiable, you can't change your receptors unless you adopt some new technology. Perception is under the control of your attention and the way to think about attention is it's like a spotlight. Except it's not one spotlight. You actually have two attentional spotlights. Anyone that tells you you can't multitask tell them they're wrong and if they disagree with you, tell them to contact me because in old world primates of which humans are, we are able to do what's called covert attention.

当你把我们称之为“注意力的聚光灯”或“感知的聚光灯”放在你的脚上时，你就在感知那里的感觉，这种感觉其实一直都在发生。不过，感知是不可改变的，除非你采用了新技术，否则无法改变你的感受器。注意力是可以控制的，你可以把它想成一个聚光灯。但其实不止一个聚光灯，你实际上有两个注意力的聚光灯。如果有人告诉你不能同时做多件事，你可以告诉他们这是错的。如果他们不同意，让他们来找我，因为在人类这类旧世界灵长类动物中，我们能够做到所谓的“隐性注意力”。

We can place a spotlight of attention on something. For instance, something we're reading or looking at or someone that we're listening to and we can place a second spotlight of attention on something we're eating and how it tastes or our child running around in the room or my dog. You can split your attention into two locations but of course you can also bring your attention that is your perception to one particular location. You can dilate your attention kind of like making a spotlight more diffuse or you can make it more concentrated. This is very important to understand if you're going to think about tools to improve your nervous system whether or not that tool is in the form of a chemical that you decide to take, maybe a supplement to increase some chemical in your brain if that's your choice or a brain machine device or you're going to try and learn something better by engaging in some focus or motivated pursuit for some period of time each day.

我们可以将注意力集中在某件事物上，例如我们正在阅读的东西、观看的画面或者聆听的人。同时，我们也可以将另一部分注意力放在正在吃的食物及其味道上，或是房间里跑来跑去的孩子，又或是我的狗身上。你可以将注意力分散到两个地方，当然你也可以将所有注意力集中在一个特定的地方。你可以像调节聚光灯那样扩散你的注意力，使其更加宽泛，或者让其更为集中。如果你打算使用一些工具来改善自己的神经系统，包括选择服用某种化学物质，比如通过补充剂来增加大脑中的某种化学物质，或使用大脑机器设备，或者每天通过专注或有动机的追求来更好地学习，那么理解这一点是非常重要的。

Attention is something that is absolutely under your control in particular when you're rested and we'll get back to this but when you are rested and we'll define rest very clearly, you are able to direct your attention in very deliberate ways and that's because we have something in our nervous system which is sort of like a two-way street and that two-way street is a communication between the aspects of our nervous system that are reflexive and the aspects of our nervous system that are deliberate. So we all know what it's like to be reflexive. You go through life, you're walking, if you already know how to walk you don't think about your walking, you just walk and that's because the nervous system wants to pass off as much as it can to reflexive action.

注意力是完全在你掌控之中的，尤其是在你休息好的时候。我们稍后会回到这个话题，但首先明确一下，当你充分休息后，你能够以非常有意图的方式引导你的注意力。这是因为我们的神经系统中存在一种类似双向通道的机制，这种双向通道是我们神经系统中反射部分和有意图部分之间的交流。大家都知道什么是反射，比如说走路，当你已经学会走路的时候，你并不需要思考如何走，你就是顺其自然地走路。这是因为神经系统希望尽可能多地将工作交给反射动作来完成。

That's called a bottom-up processing. It really just means that information is flowing in through your senses regardless of what you're perceiving that information is flowing up and it's directing your activity but at any moment for instance let's say a car screeches in front of you around the corner and you suddenly pause. You are now moving into deliberate action. You would start looking around in a very deliberate way. The nervous system can be reflexive in its action or it can be deliberate. If reflexive action tends to be what we call bottom-up, deliberate action and deliberate perceptions and deliberate thoughts are top-down. They require some effort and some focus but that's the point. You can decide to focus your attention and energy on anything you want.

这被称为自下而上的处理方式。它的意思其实就是信息通过你的感官流入，不管你意识到什么，这些信息向上传递并指导你的行动。但在任何时刻，例如说，有一辆车突然在你前面转角处紧急刹车停下，你立刻停住脚步。这时你就进入了有意识的行动阶段。你会以非常有意识的方式环顾四周。神经系统的反应可以是反射性的，也可以是有意识的。如果反射性行为我们称为自下而上，那么有意识的行动、有意识的感知和有意识的思考则是自上而下。它们需要一些努力和专注，但这正是重点。你可以决定把你的注意力和精力集中在任何你想专注的事情上。

You can decide to focus your behavior in any way you want but it will always feel like it requires some effort and some strain whereas when you're in reflexive mode just walking and talking and eating and doing your thing it's going to feel very easy and that's because your nervous system basically wired up to be able to do most things easily without much metabolic man without consuming much energy but the moment you try and do something very specific it's going to you're going to feel a sort of mental friction. It's going to be challenging. So we've got sensations, perceptions and then we've got things that we call feelings slash emotions and these get a little complicated because almost all of us I would hope all of us are familiar with things like happiness and sadness or boredom or frustration.

你可以选择以任何方式来调整自己的行为，但这总会显得需要付出一些努力和精力。相反，当你处于反射模式时，比如走路、说话、吃东西、自然而然地做这些事情时，会觉得非常轻松。这是因为你的神经系统基本上已经建立起一个能够轻松地进行大多数活动的机制，不需要消耗太多精力。然而，当你尝试做一些特定的事情时，就会感受到某种心智上的摩擦，这是有挑战性的。我们感受到的是一种感觉和知觉，然后会引发情感或情绪，这部分比较复杂。几乎所有的人，我希望是所有的人，都对快乐、悲伤、无聊或挫折感到熟悉。

Scientists argue like crazy neuroscientists and psychologists and philosophers for that matter. Arduing like crazy about what these are and how they work. Certainly emotions and feelings are the product of the nervous system. They involve the activity of neurons but as I mentioned earlier neurons are electrically active but they also released chemicals and there's a certain category of chemicals that has a very profound influence on our emotional states. They're called neuromodulators and those neuromodulators have names that probably you've heard of before things like dopamine and serotonin and acetylcholine epinephrine.

科学家们，包括神经科学家、心理学家和哲学家，都在激烈争论这些情感是什么以及它们是如何运作的。毫无疑问，情感和感觉是神经系统的产物。它们涉及神经元的活动，但正如我之前提到的，神经元不仅具有电活动，还会释放化学物质。有一类化学物质对我们的情感状态有非常深远的影响，被称为神经调节剂。你可能听说过这些神经调节剂的名字，比如多巴胺、血清素、乙酰胆碱和肾上腺素。

Neuromodulators are really interesting because they bias which neurons are likely to be active and which ones are likely to be inactive. A simple way to think about neuromodulators is they are sort of like playlists that you would have on any kind of device where you're going to play particular categories of music. So for instance dopamine which is often discussed as the molecule of reward or joy is involved in reward and it does tend to create a sort of upbeat mood when released in appropriate amounts in the brain but the reason it does that is because it makes certain neurons and neural circuits as we call them more active and others less active.

神经调节物质非常有趣，因为它们会影响哪些神经元更容易活跃，哪些不容易活跃。可以简单地把神经调节物质想象成类似播放列表的东西，就像在任何设备上播放特定种类的音乐一样。例如，多巴胺通常被认为是与奖励或快乐相关的分子，它参与奖励机制，当在大脑中适量释放时，会让人感到愉快的情绪。之所以产生这样的效果，是因为多巴胺让某些神经元和神经回路更加活跃，而让其他的则不那么活跃。

So serotonin for instance is a molecule that when released tends to make us feel really good with what we have, our sort of internal landscape and the resources that we have. Whereas dopamine more than being a molecule of reward is really more a molecule of motivation toward things that are outside us and that we want to pursue. And we can look at healthy conditions or situations like being in pursuit of a goal where every time we accomplish something en route to that goal a little bit of dopamine is released and we feel more motivation that happens.

例如，血清素是一种分子，当它释放时，会让我们对已有的事物感到非常满意，对内心的状态和拥有的资源感到良好。而多巴胺则不仅仅是一种奖励的分子，更是一种促使我们追求外部目标的动力分子。在健康的情况下，比如追求一个目标时，每当我们在实现目标的过程中完成一件事情，少量的多巴胺就会被释放，从而增强我们的动力。

We can also look at the extreme example of something like mania where somebody is so relentlessly in pursuit of external things like money and relationships that they're sort of in this delusional state of thinking that they have the resources that they need in order to pursue all these things when in fact they don't. So these neuromodulators can exist in normal levels, low levels, high levels and that actually gives us a window into a very important aspect of neuroscience history that all of us are impacted by today which is the discovery of antidepressants and so-called anti-psychotics.

我们可以看一个极端例子，比如狂躁症。在这种情况下，某些人会不顾一切地追求外在事物，比如金钱和人际关系，他们会处于一种错觉之中，认为自己有足够的资源去追求所有这些事情，而实际上并没有。因此，这些神经调节物质可以在正常水平、低水平和高水平存在，这实际上为我们打开了一扇了解神经科学历史重要部分的窗户，这一部分与我们今天息息相关，那就是抗抑郁药和所谓的抗精神病药物的发现。

In the 1950s, 60s and 70s it was discovered that there are compounds, chemicals that can increase or decrease serotonin that can increase or decrease dopamine and that led to the development of most of what we call antidepressants. Now the trick here or the problem is that most of these drugs, especially in the 1950s and 60s, they would reduce serotonin but they would also reduce dopamine or they would increase serotonin but they would also increase some other neuromodulator or chemical and that's because all these chemical systems in the body but the neuromodulators in particular have a lot of receptors.

在20世纪50年代、60年代和70年代，人们发现有些化合物和化学物质可以增加或减少体内的血清素和多巴胺，这为我们现在所称的抗抑郁药的发展奠定了基础。然而，其中的问题在于，当时的大多数药物，尤其是50年代和60年代的药物，在减少血清素的同时也会减少多巴胺，或者在增加血清素的同时也会增加其他一些神经调节物质或化学物质。这是因为人体内的这些化学系统，尤其是神经调节物质，有很多受体。

Now these are different than the receptors we were talking about earlier. The receptors I'm talking about now are sort of like parking spots where dopamine is released and if it attaches to a receptor say on the heart it might make the heartbeat faster because there's a certain kind of receptor on the heart whereas if dopamine is released and goes and attaches to muscle it might have a completely different effect on muscle and in fact it does. So different receptors on different organs of the body are the ways that these neuromodulators can have all these different effects on different aspects of our biology.

现在我们讨论的这些受体与我们之前提到的受体不同。我现在提到的受体有点像多巴胺释放后的一些“停车位”。如果多巴胺附着在心脏的某个受体上，可能会让心跳加快，因为心脏上有特定类型的受体。而如果多巴胺释放后附着在肌肉上，它可能在肌肉上产生完全不同的效果，实际上确实如此。因此，身体不同器官上的不同受体是这些神经调节物质在我们生物学不同方面产生各种不同影响的途径。

This is most salient in the example of some of the antidepressants that have sexual side effects or that blunt appetite or that blunt motivation. You know if you, many of these which increase serotonin can be very beneficial for people. It can elevate their mood, it can make them feel better but they also at if they're the doses are too high or if that particular drug isn't right for somebody that person experiences challenges with motivation or appetite or libido because serotonin is binding to receptors in the areas of the brain that control those other things as well.

这在一些抗抑郁药物的例子中最为显著，这些药物可能有性方面的副作用，或会降低食欲，或会降低动力。很多增加血清素的药物可以对人们非常有益。它们可以改善情绪，使人感觉更好，但如果剂量过高或者某种药物不适合某个人，可能导致该人面临动力、食欲或性欲方面的挑战，因为血清素也会结合到大脑中控制这些功能的区域的受体上。

So we talked about sensation, we talked about perception, when we talked about feelings we have to consider these neuromodulators and we have to consider also that feelings and emotions are contextual in some cultures showing a lot of joy or a lot of sadness is entirely appropriate. In other cultures it's considered inappropriate. So I don't think it's fair to say that there's a sadness circuit or area of the brain or a happiness circuit or area of the brain.

我们讨论了感觉，谈到了知觉，当我们讨论情感的时候，我们必须考虑到这些神经调节物质，也要考虑到情感和情绪是有文化背景的。在某些文化中，表现出极大的喜悦或悲伤是完全合适的；而在其他文化中，这样的表现则被视为不恰当。所以，我认为并不能简单地说大脑中有一个专门负责悲伤或快乐的回路或区域。

However, it is fair to say that certain chemicals and certain brain circuits tend to be active when we are in motivated states tend to be active when we are in non-motivated lazy states tend to be active when we are focused and tend to be active when we are not focused. I want to emphasize also that emotions are something that we generally feel are not under our control. We feel like the kind of guys are up within us and they just kind of happen to us. And that's because they are somewhat reflexive.

然而，可以公平地说，当我们处于有动力的状态时，某些化学物质和某些脑部回路倾向于活跃，而在懒洋洋、没有动力的状态时，那些回路也可能活跃。同样，当我们专注时，某些回路会变得活跃，而在不专注时，那些回路也可能活跃。我还想强调，情绪通常让我们感觉难以掌控。我们感觉好像这些情绪是从我们内心涌现出来的，自然而然地发生。这是因为它们有一定的反射性质。

We don't really set out with a deliberate thought to be happier, deliberate thought to be sad. We tend to experience them in kind of a passive reflexive way. And that brings us to the next thing which are thoughts. Thoughts are really interesting because in many ways they're like perceptions except that they draw on not just what's happening in the present but also things we remember from the past and things that we anticipate about the future.

我们并不是有意去让自己变得更快乐，或刻意让自己变得更悲伤。我们通常是以一种被动的、反射性的方式来体验这些情绪。这就引出了我们接下来要谈论的事情——想法。想法非常有趣，因为在很多方面，它们就像感知一样，不仅涉及当前发生的事情，还包括我们对过去的记忆和对未来的预期。

The other thing about thoughts that's really interesting is that thoughts can be both reflexive. They can just be occurring all the time sort of like pop up windows on a poorly filtered web browser or they can be deliberate. We can decide to have a thought. In fact, right now you could decide to have a thought just like you would decide to write something out on a piece of paper. You could decide that you're listening to a podcast that you are in a particular location.

关于思想，另一个非常有趣的方面是，思想可以是自发的，也可以是有意的。思想就像一个过滤不良的网页浏览器里的弹出窗口那样，可以随时随地冒出来。但同时，我们也可以有意识地决定去想一些事情。实际上，你现在就可以决定去想一个念头，就像你决定在纸上写点东西一样。你可以决定你正在听播客，也可以决定自己身处某个特定的地方。

You're not just paying attention to what's happening. You're directing your thought process. And a lot of people don't understand or at least appreciate that the thought patterns and the neural circuits that underlaw thoughts can actually be controlled in this deliberate way. And then finally there are actions. Actions or behaviors are perhaps the most important aspect to our nervous system because first of all our behaviors are actually the only thing that are going to create any fossil record of our existence. After we die the nervous system deteriorates. Our skeleton will remain but it's in the moment of experiencing something very joyful or something very sad. It can feel so all-encompassing that we actually think that it has some meaning beyond that moment.

你不仅仅是在关注发生的事情，而是在主动引导自己的思维过程。很多人并不理解，或者至少并不认可，其实我们的思维模式和大脑神经回路是可以以这种有意识的方式进行控制的。最终还有行为。行为或者行动可能是我们神经系统中最重要的部分，因为首先，只有我们的行为才能留下我们存在的痕迹。我们死后，神经系统会衰退，骨骼会留下，但在体验到非常快乐或非常悲伤的事情时，这种感觉会如此强烈，让我们觉得它有着超越当下的意义。

But actually for humans and I think for all species the sensations, the perceptions and the thoughts and the feelings that we have in our lifespan none of that is actually carried forward except the ones that we take and we convert into actions such as writing, actions such as words, actions such as engineering new things. And so the fossil record of our species and each one of us is really through action. And that in part is why so much of our nervous system is devoted to converting sensation, perceptions, feelings and thoughts into actions. In fact the great neuroscientist or physiologist, Sherrington, won a Nobel Prize for his work in mapping some of the circuitry, the connections between nerve cells that give rise to movement.

实际上，对于人类以及所有物种来说，我们在一生中体验到的感受、知觉、思维和情感，真正得以保留下来的只有那些被转化成行动的部分，比如写作、言语，以及通过工程创造新事物。因此，我们物种的“化石记录”（指遗留下来的痕迹），实际上是通过我们的行动来体现的。这也是为什么我们大量的神经系统致力于将感受、知觉、情感和思维转化为行动。事实上，伟大的神经科学家或生理学家谢灵顿曾因他在绘制神经细胞之间连接并产生运动的电路图方面的研究而获得诺贝尔奖。

And he said movement is the final common pathway. The other way to think about it is that one of the reasons that our central nervous system, our brain and spinal cord, include this stuff in our skull but also connect so heavily to the body is because most everything that we experience including our thoughts and feelings was really designed to either impact our behavior or not. And the fact that thoughts allow us to reach into the past and anticipate the future and not just experience what's happening in the moment gave rise to an incredible capacity for us to engage in behaviors that are not just for the moment. They're based on things that we know from the past and that we would like to see in the future.

他说，运动是最终的共同途径。换句话说，我们的中枢神经系统，包括大脑和脊髓，它们被大脑壳保护着，同时却与身体有着密切联系的原因之一，是因为我们经历的几乎所有事情，包括我们的想法和感受，基本上都是为了影响我们的行为。我们的思想让我们能够回顾过去，预见未来，而不仅仅是体验当下，这赋予了我们极大的能力，可以从事不仅限于当下的行为。这些行为是基于我们从过去得知的信息，以及我们对未来的期望。

And this aspect to our nervous system of creating movement occurs through some very simple pathways. The reflexive pathway basically includes areas of the brainstem we call central pattern generators. When you walk provided you already know how to walk. You are basically walking because you have these central pattern generators, groups of neurons that generate right foot, left foot, left foot kind of movement. However, when you decide to move in a particular deliberate way that requires a little more attention, you start to engage areas of your brain for top down processing where your forebrain works from the top down to control those central pattern generators so that maybe it's right foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, right foot, left foot, if maybe you're hiking along some rocks or something and you have to engage in that kind of movement.

我们神经系统中负责产生运动的部分是通过一些非常简单的路径实现的。反射性路径基本上包括我们称为中央模式生成器的大脑干区域。当你走路时，只要你已经学会了走路，你基本上就是因为这些中央模式生成器在起作用，这些神经元群体负责产生左右脚、左脚这样的运动。然而，当你决定以一种特定方式移动时，这种动作需要更多的注意力，你会开始使用大脑中负责自上而下处理信息的区域。在这种情况下，大脑的前部区域会自上而下地控制这些中央模式生成器，例如当你在岩石间行走时，可能需要右脚、右脚、左脚、右脚、右脚、左脚的方式行走。

So movement is just like thoughts can be either reflexive or deliberate. And when we talk about deliberate, I want to be very specific about how your brain works in the deliberate way because it gives rise to a very important feature of the nervous system that we're going to talk about next, which is your ability to change your nervous system. And what I'd like to center on for a second is this notion of what does it mean for the nervous system to do something deliberately? Well, when you do something deliberately, you pay attention. You are bringing your perception to an analysis of three things. Duration, how long something is going to take or it should be done, path, what you should be doing, and outcome. If you do something for a given length of time, what's going to happen?

运动就像思维一样，可以是反射性的或是有意的。当我们谈论有意时，我想非常具体地说明大脑在有意状态下是如何运作的，因为这引发了一个我们接下来将讨论的重要特征，即你的神经系统改变的能力。我想强调一下，神经系统有意地做某事究竟是什么意思呢？当你有意识地做某事时，你会集中注意力。你会分析三个方面：持续时间，即事情需要多长时间或应如何进行；路径，即你应该做什么；以及结果，即在特定时间长度内做某事会发生什么。

Now, when you're walking down the street or you're reading or you're just talking reflexively, you're not doing this what I call DPO, duration path outcome type of deliberate function in your brain and nervous system. But the moment you decide to learn something or to resist speaking or to speak up when you would rather be quiet, anytime you're deliberately forcing yourself over a threshold, you're engaging these brain circuits and these nervous system circuits that suddenly make it feel as if something is challenging, something has changed. Well, what's changed? What's changed is that when you engage in this duration path and outcome type of thinking or behavior or way of being, you start to recruit these neuromodulators that are released from particular areas of your brain and also it turns out from your body and they start queuing to your nervous system.

现在，当你走在街上、阅读或者随意交谈时，你不会进行我所谓的DPO——即持续性、路径和结果类型的刻意思考。这种思考需要大脑和神经系统的参与。不过，一旦你决定去学习某样东西，或者压抑自己的发言冲动，又或是在宁愿保持沉默的时候选择开口，任何时候你刻意让自己越过某个门槛，你就在激活这些大脑和神经系统回路，这会让你感觉好像出现了挑战，或者有什么东西发生了变化。那么，是什么变化了呢？改变的是，当你进行这种持续、路径和结果类型的思考、行为或存在方式时，你开始调用某些神经调节物质，这些物质从大脑的特定区域释放出来，事实上，也会从身体中释放出来，它们开始向你的神经系统发出信号。

Something's different, something's different now about what I'm doing, something's different about what I'm feeling. Let's give an example where perhaps somebody says something that's triggering to you, you don't like it and you know you shouldn't respond. You feel like, oh, I shouldn't respond, I shouldn't respond, I shouldn't respond. You're actively suppressing your behavior through top down processing. Your forebrain is actually preventing you from saying the thing that you know you shouldn't say or that maybe you should wait to say or say in a different form. This feels like agitation and stress because you're actually suppressing a circuit. We actually can see examples of what happens when you're not doing this well. Some of the examples come from children. If you look at young children, they don't have the forebrain circuitry to engage in this top down processing until they reach age 22, even 25.

有什么东西变了，现在我做的事情有些不同，我感受到的东西也有些不同。举个例子，也许有人说了让你不高兴的话，你不喜欢，但你知道自己不应该回应。你心里想着，“我不应该回应，我不应该回应，我不应该回应。” 你在通过高层次的思维处理来主动抑制自己的行为。你的前脑实际上在阻止你说出那些你知道不该说的话，或者那些你应该等待时机再说的话。这种过程会让你感到烦躁和压力，因为你实际上是在抑制一个神经回路。我们实际上可以看到一些例子，展示的是当你没有做好这种抑制时会发生什么。有些例子来自于儿童。如果你观察小孩，他们的大脑前额叶回路并没有完全发育成熟，不能进行这种高层次的思维处理，直到他们大约22岁，甚至25岁时才逐渐成熟。

But in young children, you see this in a really robust way. You'll see they'll be rocking back and forth. It's hard for them to sit still because those central pattern generators are constantly going in the background whereas adults can sit still. A kid sees a piece of candy that it wants and will just reach out and grab it, whereas an adult probably would ask if they could have a piece or wait until they were offered a piece in most cases. People that have damaged to the certain areas of the frontal lobes don't have this kind of restriction. They'll just blur things out. They'll just say things. We all know people like this. Impulsivity is a lack of top down control, a lack of top down processing. The other thing that will turn off the forebrain and make it harder to top down processing is a couple of drinks containing alcohol.

在小孩子身上，这种现象非常明显。你会发现他们可能会来回晃动，很难安静地坐着，因为他们的大脑中枢模式发生器一直在后台活动。而成年人则能够安静地坐着。比如，一个小孩看到一块糖果，会直接伸手去拿，而成年人通常会问能不能拿一块，或者等人主动给他们。在某些前额叶区域受损的人中，他们失去了这种约束，可能会不自觉地脱口而出地说出一些话。我们都认识这样的人。冲动是一种缺乏自上而下控制的表现，也就是说缺乏自上而下的加工能力。另一个会影响前脑功能，使得上层控制困难的因素是饮用含酒精的饮料。

Well, the removal of inhibition is actually a removal of neural inhibition of nerve cells suppressing the activity of other nerve cells. When you look at people that have damaged to their frontal lobes or you look at puppies or you look at young children, everything is a stimulus. Everything is a potential interaction for them and they have a very hard time restricting their behavior and their speech. A lot of the motor system is designed to just work in a reflexive way. Then when we decide we want to learn something or do something or not do something, we have to engage in this top down restriction and it feels like agitation because it's accompanied by the release of a neuromodulator called Norapinephrine which in the body we call adrenaline and it actually makes us feel agitated.

实际上，抑制的解除是指神经细胞之间相互抑制活动的解除。当你观察那些额叶受到损伤的人，或者小狗，或者小孩子时，你会发现对他们来说，一切都是刺激物，一切都是可能的互动对象，他们很难限制自己的行为和言语。许多运动系统都是以一种反射性方式运作的。当我们决定要学习某件事、做某件事或不做某件事时，我们必须进行一种自上而下的限制，这种限制让人感到烦躁不安，因为它伴随着一种叫去甲肾上腺素的神经调节物质的释放，在身体里我们称之为肾上腺素，它实际上让我们感到烦躁不安。

For those of you that are trying to learn something new or to learn to suppress your responses or be more deliberate and careful in your responses, that is going to feel challenging for a particular reason. It's going to feel challenging because the chemicals in your body that are released in association with that effort are designed to make you feel agitated, that low level tremor that sometimes people feel when they're really, really angry is actually a chemically induced low level tremor and it's the what I call limbic friction. There's an area of your brain that's involved in our more primitive reflexive responses called the limbic system and the frontal cortex is in a friction, it's in a tug of war with that system all the time.

对于那些尝试学习新事物或学会抑制自己的反应、更加慎重和谨慎回应的人来说，这可能会特别具有挑战性。之所以会让人觉得困难，是因为在这个过程中，你体内释放的化学物质会让你感到躁动。某些人在非常生气时感受到的那种轻微震颤，其实就是由化学物质引起的，我称之为“边缘摩擦”。你的大脑中有一个负责原始反射反应的区域，叫做边缘系统，而额叶皮层则与这个系统持续处于摩擦或拉锯状态。

Unless of course you have damaged to the frontal lobe or you've had too much to drink or something in which case you tend to just say and do whatever. This is really important to understand if you want to understand neuroplasticity, you want to understand how to shape your behavior, how to shape your thinking, how to change how you're able to perform in any context. The most important thing to understand is that it requires top down processing. It requires this feeling of agitation. In fact, I would say the agitation and strain is the entry point to neuroplasticity. Let's take a look at what neuroplasticity is. Let's explore it not as the way it's normally talked about in modern cultures.

当然，除非您有额叶损伤或喝了太多酒，否则您往往会不假思索地随便说或做任何事情。如果您想理解神经可塑性，这一点非常重要，因为这关系到如何塑造您的行为、思维方式，以及如何在任何情况下改变自己的表现。最关键的是要认识到这一过程需要自上而下的处理，这需要一种烦躁不安的感觉。事实上，我会说，烦躁和压力是神经可塑性的切入点。让我们来看看什么是神经可塑性，不要以现代文化中常见的方式来讨论它。

Neuroplasticity, plasticity is great. What exactly do people mean? Plasticity itself is just a process by which neurons can change their connections in the way they work so that you can go from things being very challenging and deliberate, requiring a lot of effort and strain to them being reflexive. Typically when we hear about plasticity, we're thinking about positive or what I call adaptive plasticity. A lot of plasticity can be induced, for instance, by brain damage, but that's generally not the kind of plasticity that we want. So when I say plasticity, unless I say otherwise, I mean adaptive plasticity.

神经可塑性，可塑性非常棒。那么，人们具体指的是什么呢？可塑性本身就是一种过程，通过这种过程，神经元可以改变它们之间的连接方式，使得从事某些原本非常具有挑战性且需要大量努力和紧张的任务，变得像反射动作一样轻松。通常，当我们谈论可塑性时，我们想到的是积极的或者我称之为适应性可塑性。很多可塑性也可能由脑损伤引起，但一般来说，这并不是我们想要的那种可塑性。因此，当我提到可塑性时，除非特别说明，我指的是适应性可塑性。

In particular, most of the neuroplasticity that people want is self-directed plasticity because if there's one truism to neuroplasticity, it's that from birth until about age 25. The brain is incredibly plastic. Kids are learning all sorts of things, but they can learn it passively. They don't have to work too hard or focus too hard, although focus helps to learn new things, acquire new languages, acquire new skills. But if you're an adult and you want to change your neural circuitry at the level of emotions or behavior or thoughts or anything really, you absolutely need to ask two important questions.

特别是，大多数人想要的神经可塑性是自我导向的神经可塑性。因为关于神经可塑性，有一个不变的道理，那就是从出生到大约25岁，大脑具有极强的可塑性。孩子们在这个阶段学习各种各样的东西，他们可以被动地学习，不需要太努力或集中精力，尽管集中精力有助于学习新知识、掌握新语言和习得新技能。但是，如果你是成年人，并希望在情绪、行为、思想或其他任何方面改变你的神经回路，你必须认真思考两个重要的问题。

One, what particular aspect of my nervous system am I trying to change? Meaning am I trying to change my emotions or my perceptions, my sensations? And which ones are available for me to change? And then the second question is, how are you going to go about that? What is the structure of a regimen to engage neural plasticity? And it turns out that the answer to that second question is governed by how awake or how sleepy we are. So let's talk about that next.

首先，我需要明确，我想要改变的是我的神经系统的哪个特定方面？也就是说，我是想改变我的情绪还是感知、感觉？以及我可以在哪些方面进行改变？然后，第二个问题是，我准备如何实现这个改变？有哪些方法和步骤可以利用神经可塑性进行调节？事实证明，这个问题的答案与我们的清醒或困倦程度有关。所以，接下来我们来讨论这个问题。

Neural plasticity is the ability for these connections in the brain and body to change in response to experience. And what's so incredible about the human nervous system in particular is that we can direct our own neural changes. We can decide that we want to change our brain. In other words, our brain can change itself and our nervous system can change itself. And the same can't be said for other organs of the body. Even though our other organs of the body have some ability to change, they can't direct it.

神经可塑性是指大脑和身体中的这些连接能够根据经验发生变化的能力。令人惊叹的是，人类的神经系统有特别之处，我们可以主动引导这些神经变化。我们可以决定自己想要改变大脑。换句话说，我们的大脑能够自我改变，神经系统也能自我调整。而身体的其他器官则不具备这种能力。虽然其他器官也有一定的变化能力，但它们无法自主引导这些变化。

They can't think and decide, oh, you know, your gut doesn't say, oh, you know, I want to be able to digest spicy foods better. So I'm going to rearrange the connections to be able to do that. Whereas your brain can decide that you want to learn a language or you want to be less emotionally reactive or more emotionally engaged. And you can undergo a series of steps that will allow your brain to make those changes so that eventually it becomes reflexive for you to do that, which is absolutely incredible.

他们没办法通过思考和决定来改变，比如你的直觉不能说“哦，我想更好地消化辣的食物，所以我要重新调整连接来实现这个目标。” 而你的大脑则可以决定你要学习一门语言，或者想要减少情绪反应或者更加情感投入。你可以采取一系列步骤，让你的大脑进行这些改变，最终这些改变就会成为你的反射行为。这真的是非常不可思议。

For a long time, it was thought that neural plasticity was the unique gift of young animals and humans, that it could only occur when we're young. And in fact, the young brain is incredibly plastic. Children can learn three languages without an accent reflexively. Whereas adults, it's very challenging. It takes a lot more effort and strain, a lot more of that duration path outcome kind of thinking in order to achieve those plastic changes.

很长时间以来，人们认为神经可塑性是年轻动物和人的特有天赋，这种变化只在年轻时才能发生。实际上，年轻的大脑的确非常具有可塑性。小孩子可以自然而然地学会三种语言而没有口音。而对于成年人来说，这就非常具有挑战性，需要付出更多努力和精力，花更多时间和思考才能实现这些大脑的可塑性改变。

We now know, however, that the adult brain can change in response to experience. Nobel prizes were given for the understanding that the young brain can change very dramatically. I think one of the most extreme examples would be for people that are born, born blind from birth, they use the area of their brain that normally would be used for visualizing objects and colors and things outside of them for braille reading. In brain imaging studies, it's been shown that, you know, people who are blind from birth, when they braille read, the area of the brain that would normally light up, if you will, for vision lights up for braille reading.

我们现在知道，成年人的大脑也会因为经历而发生改变。诺贝尔奖曾授予那些理解年轻大脑能有显著变化的研究者。我认为最极端的例子之一就是那些天生失明的人，他们使用大脑中原本用于视觉化事物和颜色的区域来阅读盲文。在脑成像研究中显示，天生失明的人在阅读盲文时，大脑中通常用于视觉的区域会被激活，用于盲文阅读。

So that real estate is reallocated for an entirely different function. If someone has made blind in adulthood, it's unlikely that their entire visual brain will be taken over by the areas of the brain they're responsible for touch. However, there's some evidence that areas of the brain that are involved in hearing and touch can kind of migrate into that area. And there's a lot of interest now in trying to figure out how more plasticity can be induced in adulthood, more positive plasticity.

为了让大脑的区域重新分配，用于完全不同的功能。如果一个人在成年后失明，那么他们整个视觉大脑被负责触觉的大脑区域取代的可能性不大。然而，有证据表明，与听觉和触觉相关的大脑区域可能会在一定程度上迁移到视觉区域。目前，很多人对研究如何在成年期诱导更多的大脑可塑性，特别是积极的可塑性，十分感兴趣。

And in order to understand that process, we really have to understand something that might at first seem totally divorced from neuroplasticity, but actually lies at the center of neuroplasticity. And for any of you that are interested in changing your nervous system, so that something that you want can go from being very hard or seem almost impossible and out of reach to being very reflexive, this is especially important to pay attention to. Plasticity in the adult human nervous system is gated, meaning it is controlled by neuromodulators.

为了理解这一过程，我们确实需要了解一些乍一看似乎与神经可塑性完全无关的东西，但实际上它正是神经可塑性的核心所在。如果你有兴趣改变自己的神经系统，使得原本非常困难或看似几乎不可能达成的事情变得更加自然流畅，这一点尤其值得注意。成年人神经系统的可塑性是有“闸门”的，这意味着它是由神经调节物质控制的。

These things that we talked about earlier, dopamine, serotonin, and one in particular called acetylcholine are what open up plasticity. They literally unveil plasticity and allow brief periods of time in which whatever information, whatever thing we're sensing or perceiving or thinking, or whatever emotions we feel can literally be mapped in the brain such that later it will become much easier for us to experience and feel that thing. Now, this has a dark side and a positive side. The dark side is it's actually very easy to get neuroplasticity as an adult through traumatic or terrible or challenging experiences. But the important question is to say why is that? And the reason that's the case is because when something very bad happens, there's the release of two sets of neuromodulators in the brain, epinephrine, which tends to make us feel alert and agitated, which is associated with most bad circumstances, and acetycholine, which tends to create a even more intense and focused perceptual spotlight.

我们之前讨论过的这些物质：多巴胺、血清素，尤其是乙酰胆碱，能够开启大脑的可塑性。它们实际上揭开了大脑的可塑性，让我们在短时间内可以将无论是感知到的信息、思考的内容或是感受到的情绪，在大脑中映射出来，使得我们以后更容易体验和感受这些事物。不过，这有好的一面，也有不好的一面。不好的一面是，成年人在面对创伤、糟糕或挑战性经历时，很容易获得神经可塑性。关键的问题是，为什么会这样呢？原因是，当非常糟糕的事情发生时，脑中会释放出两类神经调节物质：肾上腺素，它让我们感到警觉和不安，通常与不好的情况有关；乙酰胆碱，它使我们的注意力更加集中和敏锐。

Remember earlier we were talking about perception and how it's kind of like a spotlight. Acetycholine makes that light particularly bright and particularly restricted to one region of our experience. And it does that by making certain neurons in our brain and body active much more than all the rest. So acetycholine is sort of like a highlighter marker upon which neuroplasticity then comes in later and says, wait, which neurons were active in this particularly alerting phase of whatever day or night whenever this thing happened to happen. So the way it works is this. You can think of epinephrine as creating this alertness and this kind of unbelievable level of increased attention compared to what you were experiencing before. And you can think of acetycholine as being the molecule that highlights whatever it happens during that period of heightened alertness.

还记得我们之前谈到的感知，就像一个聚光灯。乙酰胆碱让这束光显得特别明亮，并且特别集中在我们体验中的某个区域。它通过使我们大脑和身体中的某些神经元比其他神经元更加活跃来实现这一点。所以，乙酰胆碱有点像一个荧光笔，之后神经可塑性会介入，看看当时在白天或夜晚的某个时刻，哪些神经元在这个特别警觉的阶段变得活跃。其工作原理是这样的：你可以认为肾上腺素让我们达到一种警觉状态，与之前相比，它让我们的注意力大大提高。而乙酰胆碱则是标记这种高度警觉状态下发生事情的分子，把它们突出显示出来。

So just to be clear, it's epinephrine creates the alertness that's coming from a subset of neurons in the brain stem, if you're interested. And acetycholine coming from an area of the forebrain is tagging or marking the neurons that are particularly active during this heightened level of alertness. Now that marks the cells, the neurons and the synapses for strengthening, for becoming more likely to be active in the future, even without us thinking about it. Okay. So in bad circumstances, this all happens without us having to do much. When we want something to happen, however, we want to learn a new language, we want to learn a new skill, we want to become more motivated. What do we know for certain? We know that that process of getting neural plasticity so that we have more focus, more motivation, absolutely requires the release of epinephrine. We have to have alertness in order to have focus. And we have to have focus in order to direct those plastic changes to particular parts of our nervous system.

为了更清楚地说明，如果你感兴趣的话，是肾上腺素引发了来自脑干中一些特定神经元的警觉。而乙酰胆碱来自前脑的一个区域，它标记那些在这种高度警觉状态下特别活跃的神经元。这个标记作用让这些细胞、神经元和突触在未来更容易被激活，即使我们不去特意思考。也就是说，在不好的情况下，这一切都会自动发生，不需要我们多加干预。然而，当我们希望有所作为时，比如学习一门新的语言、掌握一项新技能、或提高自己的动机时，我们确定知道些什么呢？我们知道，要确保神经可塑性以提高注意力和动机，绝对需要释放肾上腺素。我们必须有警觉状态，才能聚焦注意力，并将这些可塑性变化引导至我们神经系统的特定部分。

Now this has immense implications in thinking about the various tools, whether or not those are chemical tools or machine tools or just self-induced regimens of how long or how intensely you're going to focus in order to get neural plasticity. But there's another side to it. The dirty secret of neural plasticity is that no neural plasticity occurs during the thing you're trying to learn, during the terrible event, during the great event, during the thing that you're really trying to shape and learn, nothing is actually changing between the neurons that is going to last. All the neural plasticity, the strengthening of the synapses, the addition in some cases of new nerve cells or at least connections between nerve cells. All of that occurs at a very different phase of life, which is when we are in sleep and non-sleep deep rest.

现在，这对思考各种工具有着深远的影响，无论这些工具是化学工具、机械工具，还是自我设定的专注时长与强度的训练以获得神经可塑性。但还有另一方面。神经可塑性的“秘密”在于：在你尝试学习某件事、经历某个事件或努力塑造并学习某件事的过程中，实际上没有任何持久的神经变化发生。所有的神经可塑性，例如突触的加强，某些情况下新神经细胞的增加或者至少是神经细胞之间连接的增加，都发生在一个非常不同的阶段，那就是我们在睡眠和非睡眠深度休息状态时出现的。

And so neural plasticity, which is the kind of holy grail of human experience of, you know, this is the new year and everyone's thinking new year's resolutions. And right now, perhaps everything's organized and people are highly motivated, but what happens in March or April or May? Well, that all depends on how much attention and focus one can continually bring to whatever it is they're trying to learn. So much so that agitation and a feeling of strain are actually required for this process of neural plasticity to get triggered. But the actual rewiring occurs during periods of sleep and non-sleep deep rest. So study published last year that's particularly relevant here that I want to share was not done by my laboratory that showed that 20 minutes of deep rest, this is not deep sleep, but essentially doing something very hard and very intense and then taking 20 minutes afterward, immediately afterwards, to deliberately turn off the deliberate focused thinking and engagement actually accelerated neural plasticity.

神经可塑性是人类体验中的“圣杯”，尤其在新年时，大家都会制定新年计划。此时，人们可能将一切安排得井井有条，充满动力。但到了三月、四月或五月会怎么样呢？这就取决于一个人能在多大程度上持续专注于他们想要学习的东西。实际上，这个过程中需要一些紧张和压力感来触发神经可塑性。然而，真正的神经重塑是在睡眠和非睡眠的深度休息期间发生的。一项去年的研究（并不是我的实验室进行的）表明，花20分钟进行深度休息，这不是深度睡眠，而是完成非常困难和高强度的任务后，立即进行20分钟的深度休息，刻意停止专注和思考，实际上可以加速神经可塑性。

There's another study that's just incredible. And we're going to go into this in a future episode of the podcast not too long from now that showed that if people are learning a particular skill, it could be a language skill or a motor skill and they hear a tone just playing in the background. The tone is playing periodically through the background like just a bell. In deep sleep, if that bell is played, learning is much faster for the thing that they were learning while they were awake. It somehow cues the nervous system in sleep. I wasn't even have to be in dreaming that something that happened in the waking phase was especially important. So much so that that bell is sort of a Pavlovian cue. It's over a reminder to the sleeping brain, oh, you need to remember what it is that you were learning at that particular time of day.

有一项非常不可思议的研究，我们将在未来的一期播客中详细讨论。研究表明，如果人们在学习某项特定技能时，比如语言技能或运动技能，背景中有一个音调在间歇播放，比如一个铃声，那么在深度睡眠中如果再次播放这个铃声，学习进度会加快。这种方法似乎在睡眠中给神经系统提供了提示。我甚至不需要做梦，这种铃声可以让大脑回忆起清醒时学习的内容是多么重要。这样一来，铃声就相当于是一个巴甫洛夫式的提示，提醒睡梦中的大脑：“哦，你需要记住你在那一天特定时间学习的内容。”

And the learning rates and the rates of retention, meaning how much people can remember from the thing they learned, are significantly higher under those conditions. So I'm going to talk about how to apply all this knowledge in a little bit more in this podcast episode, but also in future episodes. But it really speaks to the really key importance of sleep and focus. These two opposite ends of our attentional state when we're in sleep, these DPO's duration, path and outcome analysis are impossible. We just can't do that. We are only in relation to what's happening inside of us. So sleep is key.

在这些条件下，学习速度和记忆保留率，也就是说人们能记住所学内容的能力，显著提高。所以我将在这期播客节目中进一步讨论如何应用这些知识，也会在未来的节目中提到。但这实际上强调了睡眠和专注的重要性。当我们睡觉时注意状态的两个极端，这时候我们无法进行DPO分析（持续时间、路径和结果分析），因为我们只能关注自身内部的变化。所以睡眠是关键。

Also key are periods of non-sleep deep rest where we're turning off our analysis of duration, path and outcome in particular for the thing that we were just trying to learn. And we're in this kind of um, liminal state where our attention is kind of drifting all over. It turns out that's very important for the consolidation, for the changes between the nerve cells that will allow what we were trying to learn to go from being deliberate and hard and stressful and a strain to easy and reflexive. This also points to how different people, including many modern clinicians, are thinking about how to prevent bad circumstances, traumas from routing their way into our nervous system permanently.

关键在于非睡眠深度休息的时间。在这些时间里，我们停止对刚刚努力学习的内容进行分析，比如思考它的持续时间、路径和结果。这样的状态让我们处于一种过渡期，注意力会随意漂移。事实证明，这对于神经细胞之间的变化非常重要，这些变化能让我们所学的东西从刻意并困难、压力大、令人紧张的状态，变得简单和反射性。这也解释了许多人，包括许多现代临床医生，如何思考防止不良情况和创伤永久地在我们的神经系统中扎根。

It says that you might want to interfere with certain aspects of brain states that are away from the bad thing that happened. That happened, the brain states that happened the next day or the next month or the next year. And also I want to be, I want to make sure that I pay attention to the fact that for many of you, you're thinking about neuroplasticity, not just in changing your nervous system to add something new, but to also get rid of things that you don't like, right? That you want to forget bad experiences or at least remove the emotional contingency of a bad relationship or a bad relationship to something or some person or some event. Learning to fear certain things less, to eliminate a phobia, to erase a trauma.

这句话的意思是：你可能希望通过调整大脑状态中某些方面，来远离那些不好的经历，这些经历可能发生在第二天、下个月或明年。我也想强调，对于许多人来说，你们思考神经可塑性时，不仅仅是为了在神经系统中增加新事物，而是为了摆脱那些不喜欢的东西，对吧？你希望遗忘不好的经历，或者至少能够消除一段不好的关系所带来的情绪影响，无论是对某件事情、某个人还是某个事件的坏关系。从而学会减少对某些事物的恐惧，消除恐惧症，抹去创伤。

The memories themselves don't get erased. I'm sorry to say that the memories don't, the selves get erased, but the emotional load of memories can be reduced. And there are a number of different ways that that can happen, but they all require this thing that we're calling neuroplasticity. We're going to have a large number of discussions about neuroplasticity in depth, but the most important thing to understand is that it is indeed a two phase process. What governs the transition between alert and focused and these deep rest and deep sleep states is a system in our brain and body, a certain aspect of the nervous system, called the autonomic nervous system.

记忆本身不会被抹去。我很遗憾地说，记忆不会消失，但记忆所带来的情感负担可以减轻。有很多不同的方法可以实现这一点，但它们都需要我们所谓的神经可塑性。我们将深入讨论神经可塑性，但最重要的是要理解这是一个由两个阶段组成的过程。在大脑和身体中，有一个系统控制着我们从警觉和专注状态转变到深度休息和深度睡眠状态，这个系统是神经系统的一部分，称为自主神经系统。

And it is immensely important to understand how this autonomic nervous system works. It has names like the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system, which frankly are complicated names because they're a little bit misleading. Sympathetic is the one that's associated with more alertness. Parasympathetic is the one that's associated with more calmness. And it gets really misleading because the sympathetic nervous system sounds like sympathy and then people think it's related to calm. I'm going to call it the alertness system and the calmness system because even though sympathetic and parasympathetic are sometimes used, people really get confused.

理解自主神经系统的工作原理是非常重要的。这个系统包括交感神经系统和副交感神经系统，这些名称有点复杂且容易引起误解。交感神经系统其实是与提高警觉性有关的，而副交感神经系统则是与增加放松感有关的。名字很容易让人混淆，因为“交感”听起来像“同情”，人们可能会以为它与平静有关。我将它们称为“警觉系统”和“放松系统”，因为尽管有时使用交感和副交感这些术语，人们还是很容易搞混。

So the way to think about the autonomic nervous system and the reason it's important for every aspect of your life, but in particular for neuroplasticity and engaging in these focused states and then these defocus states is that it works sort of like a seesaw. Every 24 hours, we're all familiar with the fact that when we wake up in the morning, we might be a little bit groggy, but then generally we're more alert. And then as evening comes around, we tend to become a little more relaxed and sleeping. Eventually, at some point at night, we go to sleep.

自主神经系统的重要性在于它影响你生活的方方面面，尤其是神经可塑性以及进入专注和放松状态的能力。可以将它想象成一个跷跷板。我们每24小时的变化模式是，当早上醒来时，我们可能会有些昏昏沉沉，但一般会慢慢变得警觉。而到了晚上，我们则通常会逐渐放松，最终在夜间的某个时候入睡。

So we go from alert to deeply calm. And as we do that, we go from an ability to engage in these very focused duration path outcome types of analyses to states in sleep that are completely divorced from duration path and outcome in which everything is completely random and untethered in terms of our sensations, perceptions and feelings and so forth. So every 24 hours, we have a phase of our day that is optimal for thinking and focusing and learning and neuroplasticity and doing all sorts of things. We have energy as well. And at another phase of our day, we're tired and we have no ability to focus. We have no ability to engage in duration path outcome types of analyses. And it's interesting that both phases are important for shaping our nervous system in the ways that we want.

所以，我们从警觉状态逐渐进入深度平静状态。在这个过程中，我们从能够进行专注的时长、路径和结果分析，过渡到在睡眠中完全脱离这些因素的状态，这时我们的感受、知觉和情感等都是完全随机且无拘束的。每24小时中，我们都会有一个阶段非常适合思考、专注、学习和神经可塑性，进行各种活动，我们的精力充沛。而在另一个阶段，我们感到疲惫，无法集中注意力，也不能进行时长、路径和结果分析。有趣的是，这两个阶段对我们以理想方式塑造神经系统都很重要。

So if we want to engage in neuroplasticity and we want to get the most out of our nervous system, we each have to master that both the transition between wakefulness and sleep and the transition between sleep and wakefulness. Now so much has been made of the importance of sleep and it is critically important for wound healing, for learning, as I just mentioned, for consolidating learning, for all aspects of our immune system, it is the one period of time in which we're not doing these duration path and outcomes types of analyses. And it is critically important to all aspects of our health, including our longevity.

所以，如果我们想要参与神经可塑性，并充分利用我们的神经系统，我们每个人都需要掌握从清醒到入睡、从入睡到清醒的过渡。现在，很多研究都强调了睡眠的重要性，它对伤口愈合、学习（包括巩固学习效果）、免疫系统的所有方面都至关重要。睡眠是一段我们不进行持续、路径和结果分析的时间。它对我们健康的各个方面，包括我们的寿命，都极其重要。

Much less has been made, however, of how to get better at sleeping, how to get better at the process that involves falling asleep, staying asleep, and accessing these states of mind and body that involve total paralysis. Most people don't know this, but you're actually paralyzed during much of your sleep so that you can't act out your dreams presumably. But also where your brain is in a total idle state where it's not controlling anything, it's just left to kind of free run. And there are certain things that we can all do in order to master that transition. And in order to get better at sleeping and it involves much more than just how much we sleep.

然而，很少有人关注如何提高睡眠质量，即如何改善入睡过程，包括如何更好地入睡、保证睡眠不被打扰，以及进入那些涉及全身麻痹的身心状态。大多数人并不知道，在你睡觉的很多时间里，你的身体实际上是处于瘫痪状态，这样你就无法在梦中行动。同时，你的大脑也处于完全休闲的状态，不再控制任何东西，只是自由运作。为了掌握这种转换过程以及提高睡眠质量，有一些事情是我们都可以做的。这远远不只是增加睡眠时间那么简单。

We're all being told, of course, that we need to sleep more, but there's also the issue of sleep quality accessing those deep states of non-DPO thinking, accessing the right timing of sleep. Not a lot has been discussed publicly as far as I'm aware of when to time your sleep. I think we all can appreciate that sleeping for half an hour throughout the day so that you get a total of eight hours of sleep every 24 hour cycle is probably very different and not optimal compared to a solid block of eight hours of sleep. Although there are people that have tried this, I think it's been written about in various books. Not many people can stick to that schedule.

我们当然都被告知需要多睡觉，但睡眠质量也是一个问题，例如进入深度非-DPO（深非睡眠）状态，找到合适的睡眠时间。目前，我所知的公开讨论中，关于何时入睡的内容并不多。我想我们都能理解，与其一天中分散睡半小时以凑满24小时内累计八小时的总睡眠时间，不如一整块地睡满八个小时，这种方法可能会有很大不同，并不理想。虽然有些人尝试过这样做，而且在一些书中也有写到，但很少有人能长期坚持这种安排。

Incidentally, I think it's called the uberman schedule not to be confused with the uberman schedule because first of all, my schedule doesn't look anything like that. And second of all, I would never attempt such a sleeping regime. The other thing that is really important to understand is that we have not explored as a culture the rhythms that occur in our waking states. So much has been focused on the value of sleep and the importance of sleep, which is great, but I don't think that most people are paying attention to what's happening in their waking states and when their brain is optimized for focus, when their brain is optimized for these DPO's, these duration path outcome types of engagements for learning and for changing.

顺便提一下，我觉得它被称为Uberman睡眠模式，不过不要与Uberman睡眠模式混淆。首先，我的作息时间表看起来完全不是那样的；其次，我绝不会尝试那么极端的睡眠方式。还有一个非常重要的观点是，作为一个文化，我们并没有深入探索清醒状态下的节律。大家对睡眠的重要性和价值给予了很多关注，这当然是好事，但我觉得大多数人并没有留意清醒状态下发生了什么，比如什么时候大脑最适合集中注意力，什么时候最适合进行这些DPO（持久-路径-结果）类型的活动来进行学习和改变。

And when their brain is probably better suited for more reflexive thinking and behaviors. And it turns out that there's a vast amount of scientific data which points to the existence of what are called ultradion rhythms. You may have heard of circadian rhythms. Circadian means circa about a day. So it's 24 hour rhythms because the earth spins once every 24 hours. Ultradion rhythms occur throughout the day and they require less time. They're shorter. The most important ultradion rhythm for sake of this discussion is the 90 minute rhythm that we're going through all the time in our ability to attend and focus.

当他们的大脑更适合进行反射性思考和行为时，科学研究发现存在大量证据支持"超昼节律"的存在。你可能听说过"昼夜节律"。昼夜节律是指大约一天的节律，因为地球每24小时自转一圈。而超昼节律则是在一天中多个时间段发生，所需时间更短。对于我们讨论来说，最重要的超昼节律是我们一直经历的90分钟周期，这影响着我们专注和集中注意力的能力。

And in sleep, our sleep is broken up into 90 minute segments. Early in the night, we have more phase one and phase two lighter sleep and then we go into our deeper phase three and phase four sleep. And then we return to phase one, two, three, four. So all night, you're going through these ultradion rhythms of stage one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. It's repeating. Most people perhaps know that, maybe they don't, but when you wake up in the morning, these ultradion rhythms continue. And it turns out that we are optimized for focus and attention within these 90 minute cycles so that at the beginning of one of these 90 minute cycles, maybe you sit down to learn something new or to engage in some new challenging behavior.

在睡眠中，我们的睡眠被分成90分钟的周期。晚上早期，我们更多处于第一阶段和第二阶段的浅睡眠，然后进入深度的第三和第四阶段睡眠。接着我们又回到第一、二、三、四阶段。整晚，我们都在经历这些一至四阶段的循环。这种循环重复不断。大多数人可能知道，也可能不知道，当你早上醒来时，这些节律继续存在。事实证明，我们在这90分钟的周期内，对于专注和注意力是最佳状态。因此，当你开始一个90分钟的周期时，你可以坐下来学习新东西或进行一些新的挑战性活动。

For the first five or 10 minutes of one of those cycles, it's well known that the brain and the neural circuits and the neuromodulators are not going to be optimally tuned to whatever it is you're trying to do, but as you drop deeper into that 90 minute cycle, your ability to focus and to engage in this DPO process and to direct neural plasticity and to learn is actually much greater. And then you eventually pop out of that at the end of the 90 minute cycle. So these cycles are occurring in sleep and these cycles are occurring in wakefulness. And all of those are governed by this seesaw of alertness to calmness that we call the autonomic nervous system. So if you want to master and control your nervous system, regardless of what tool you reach to, whether or not it's a pharmacologic tool or whether or not it's a behavioral tool or whether or not it's a brain machine interface tool, it's vitally important to understand that your entire existence is occurring in these 90 minute cycles, whether or not you're asleep or awake.

在这些周期的最初五到十分钟，人们普遍认为大脑、神经回路和神经调节器都不会完美地适应你正在做的事情。但是，随着你逐渐深入到这个90分钟的周期中，你专注和参与这一过程，以及引导神经可塑性和学习的能力实际上会大大提高。最后，你会在90分钟周期结束时脱离这个状态。这些周期不仅在睡眠中发生，也在清醒时发生。它们都受控于我们称之为自主神经系统的警觉与平静之间的平衡。所以，如果你想掌握和控制你的神经系统，无论你使用什么工具，不管是药物、行为方式，还是脑机接口工具，理解你的整个存在都是在这些90分钟周期内发生的这一点至关重要，无论你是在睡觉还是清醒。

And so you really need to learn how to wedge into those 90 minute cycles. And for instance, it would be completely crazy and counterproductive to try and just learn information while in deep sleep by listening to that information because you're not able to access it. It would be perfectly good, however, to engage in a focus bout of learning each day. And now we know how long that focus bout of learning should be. It should be at least one 90 minute cycle. And the expectation should be that the early phase of that cycle is going to be challenging. It's going to hurt. It's not going to feel natural. It's not going to feel like flow. But that you can learn and the circuits of your brain that are involved in focus and motivation can learn to drop in to a mode of more focus, get more neural plasticity. In other words, by engaging these ultra-adion cycles at the appropriate times of day, for instance, some people are very good learners early in the day and not so good in the afternoon.

你需要学会如何利用每个90分钟的周期进行学习。例如，在深度睡眠时通过听信息来学习是完全不切实际且适得其反的，因为你无法在这种状态下获取信息。然而，每天专注地学习是非常有效的。而我们现在知道，每次专注学习的时间至少应该是一个90分钟周期。要有心理准备，这个周期的早期阶段可能会很有挑战性，会让你感到不舒服，不自然，也没有进入“心流”状态。但是，通过这种方式，你可以增强大脑中与专注和动机相关的神经回路，从而提高专注力和神经可塑性。换句话说，通过在一天中的适当时间运用这些昼夜周期，比如，有些人擅长在早上学习，而在下午效果不佳。

So you can start to explore this process even without any information about the underlying neurochemicals by simply paying attention not just to when you go to sleep and when you wake up each morning, how deep or how shallow your sleep felt to you subjectively, but also throughout the day when your brain tends to be most anxious because it turns out that has a correlate related to perception that we will talk about. You can ask yourself when are you most focused, when you least anxious, when you feel most motivated, when you feel most least motivated. By understanding how the different aspects of your perception, sensation, feeling, thought, and actions tend to want to be engaged or not want to be engaged, you develop a very good window into what's going to be required to shift your ability to focus or shift your ability to engage in creative type thinking at different times of day should you choose.

所以你可以开始探索这个过程，即使在没有任何关于底层神经化学物质的信息的情况下。只需注意你每天什么时候入睡和醒来，主观上觉得睡眠有多深或多浅，还可以观察一天中大脑通常什么时候最焦虑，因为事实证明这与某种感知有关，我们将对此进行讨论。你可以问自己什么时候最专注，什么时候最不焦虑，什么时候最有动力，什么时候最没有动力。通过了解感知、感觉、思想和行为的不同方面倾向于在何时被调动或不被调动，你可以很好地了解如何在一天中的不同时间调整自己的注意力或提高自己的创造性思维能力。

And so that's where we're heading going forward. It all starts with mastering this seesaw that is the autonomic nervous system that at a course level is a transition between wakefulness and sleep, but at a finer level and just as important are the various cycles, these all trading 90 minute cycles that govern our life all the time 24 hours a day every day of our life. And so we're going to talk about how you can take control the autonomic nervous system so that you can better access neuroplasticity, better access sleep, even take advantage of the phase that is the transition between sleep and waking to access things like creativity and so forth. All based on studies that have been published over the last 100 years mainly within the last 10 years and some that are very, very new and that point to the use of specific tools that will allow you to get the most out of your nervous system.

因此，这就是我们未来要前进的方向。所有的一切都始于掌握像跷跷板一样的自主神经系统。这个系统在宏观层面上是清醒和睡眠之间的转换，但在更细微的层面上，同样重要的是各种周期性变化，这些都遵循90分钟的周期，24小时不间断地影响着我们生活的每一天。因此，我们将讨论如何掌控自主神经系统，以更好地实现神经可塑性，更好地进入睡眠，甚至利用睡眠与清醒之间的过渡阶段来激发创造力等。这些方法都基于过去100年中发表的研究成果，尤其是最近10年内以及一些非常新的研究，这些研究指出了使用特定工具的方法，这将帮助你最大限度地利用神经系统。

So today we covered a lot of information. It was sort of a whirlwind tour of everything from neurons and synapses to neuroplasticity in the autonomic nervous system. We will revisit a lot of these themes going forward. So if all of that didn't sink in in one pass, please don't worry. We will come back to these themes over and over again. I wanted to equip you with language that we're all developing a kind of common base set of information going forward. And I hope the information is valuable to you and you're thinking about what is working well for you and is what's working less well and what's been exceedingly challenging what's been easy for you in terms of your pursuit of particular behaviors or emotional states where your challenges or the challenges of people that you know might reside.

今天我们讨论了很多信息，可以说是一场从神经元和突触到自主神经系统的神经可塑性的旋风之旅。未来我们还会反复讨论这些主题，所以如果你这次没有完全理解也不用担心，我们会一遍又一遍回到这些主题。我希望能够为大家提供一些共同的基础信息，让我们有一个共同的起点。我希望这些信息对你有用，让你思考哪些对你有效，哪些不太有效，哪些特别具有挑战性，哪些对你来说很容易，无论是在追求特定行为还是情绪状态方面，或者是你自己或你认识的人可能面临的挑战方面。

As promised in our welcome video, the format of the Hubertman Lab podcast is to dive deep into individual topics for an entire month at a time. So for the entire month of January, we're going to explore this incredible state that is sleep and a related state which is non-sleep depressed and what they do for things like learning, resetting our emotional capacity. Everyone is probably familiar with the fact that when we're sleep deprived, we're so much less good at dealing with life circumstances. We're more emotionally labile. Why is that? How is that?

正如我们在欢迎视频中承诺的那样，Hubertman Lab 播客的形式是每个月深入探讨一个主题。所以，在整个一月份，我们将探索睡眠这一奇妙状态，以及一个相关状态——非睡眠抑郁，看看它们如何影响我们的学习和情绪调节。大家可能都知道，当我们缺乏睡眠时，我们处理生活环境的能力会明显下降，我们的情绪也更容易波动。这是为什么呢？这是怎么回事呢？

But most importantly, we're going to talk about how to get better at sleeping and how to access better sleep even when your sleep timing or duration is compromised. We're also going to talk about the data that support this very interesting state called non-sleep deep rest where one is neither asleep nor awake, but it turns out one can recover some of the neuromodulators and more importantly, the processes involved in sensation perception, feeling thought and action.

最重要的是，我们将讨论如何改善睡眠以及在睡眠时间或持续时间受限的情况下如何获得更好的睡眠。我们还将探讨有关一种非常有趣的状态——非睡眠深度休息——的数据。在这种状态下，人既不是在睡觉也不是清醒，但事实证明，这种状态可以恢复一些神经调节物质，更重要的是，还可以恢复涉及感知、感受、思维和行动的过程。我们将详细介绍这些内容。

It's sure to be a very rich discussion back and forth where I'm answering your questions and providing tools and I'm certain you're also going to learn a lot of information about neuroscience and what makes up this incredible phase of your life where you think you're not conscious, but you're actually resetting and renewing yourself in order to perform better, feel better, etc. in the waking state.

这必然会是一次非常丰富的讨论，我将会回答你们的问题并提供一些工具。同时，我相信你们也会学到很多有关神经科学的信息，了解是什么构成了这个奇妙的生命阶段。在这个阶段，你可能以为自己没有意识，但实际上你是在重置和更新自己，以便在清醒状态下表现得更好，感觉更好。

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