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.

Let's continue our discussion about neuroplasticity, this incredible feature of

our nervous system that allows it to change itself in response to experience and even in ways

that we consciously and deliberately decide to change it. Most people don't know how to access

neuroplasticity. And so that's what this entire month of the Huberman Lab podcast has been about.

We've explored neuroplasticity

from a variety of different perspectives.

We talked about representational plasticity.

We talked about the importance of focus and reward.

We talked about this amazing and somewhat surprising aspect

of the vestibular system, how altering our relationship to

gravity. And in addition to that, making errors as we try and learn can open up windows to

plasticity. But we have not really talked so much about directing the plasticity toward particular

outcomes. And thus far, we really haven't talked yet about how to undoing the plasticity toward particular outcomes. And thus far, we really haven't talked yet about how to undo things that we don't want.

And so today, we are going to explore that aspect of neuroplasticity.

And we are going to do that in the context of a very important and somewhat sensitive topic, which is pain and in some

cases injury to the nervous system. We as always here on this podcast are going to discuss

some of the science. We get into mechanism, but we also really get at principles.

Principles are far more important than any one

experiment or one description of mechanism and certainly far more important than

any one protocol because principles allow you to think about your nervous system

...