Hacking Cognition
summary
Claims concrete: aim for eight hours of sleep because chronic short sleep degrades cognition, do six minutes of exercise after study to amplify primacy, prefer low glycemic load foods, and use spaced repetition (five repetitions 1.5 hours apart) to grow synaptic change. Memory methods: PAO + memory palace to compress 30+ digits into six images. Hardware and results: DIY transcranial direct current stimulation at ~2 mA (visible phosphenes, skin redness) reportedly boosts dorsolateral prefrontal excitability and can accelerate learning (Air Force study reports ~2.5× speed).
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chapters (28)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:20Hacking Cognition Overclock your brain
- 0:58Basics first Sleep, exercise, eat
- 1:34Simon says Sleep You need 8 hours
- 4:07Exercise for 6 minutes
- 6:07Eat healthy foods that stabilize your blood sugar
- 7:43Glycemic Load GI * (Carbohydrate/100g)
- 9:04Neuroscience! How does it work?
- 9:41Thalamus Router for your senses
- 11:30Hippocampus H.M. and the Limbic System
- 12:45Noses skip the router and go straight for the Amygdala.
- 14:13How do we learn? Neuroplasticity
- 14:54The Persistence of Long- Term Memory: A Molecular Approach to Self- Sustaining Changes in Learning- Induced Synaptic Growth
- 15:05Eric Kandel Shocks California Sea Slugs
- 16:17Neurons physically change Synaptic varicosities grow and engage
- 17:38Primacy & Recency Memory.first, Memory.last
- 18:47Memory Consolidation Epinephrine and Cortisol
- 20:35Learned Helplessness Chronic Clinical Depression
- 22:12Signal more often to affect change
- 22:24Spaced repetition Learn just as you forget
- 23:11Moonwalking with Einstein
- 24:05Synesthesia Manipulate your medium
- 24:50Memory Training Person-Action-Object (PAO)
- 29:29Alternatives to Kermit TDCS
- 29:49Electrodes Excite, Suppress
- 30:35DLPFC Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
- 31:29Executive functions of the brain Working memory, problem solving and attention
- 32:02Anodal stimulation Neuronal Excitability
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