基础要点：听觉与平衡如何提升专注力与学习效果

欢迎来到《Huberman Lab精华集》，我们将重温往期节目，为您呈现最实用、基于科学的心理健康、身体健康与表现提升工具。我是Andrew Huberman，斯坦福医学院神经生物学和眼科学教授。今天，我们将全面探讨听觉与平衡系统，以及如何利用您聆听特定声音的能力和平衡系统来加速学习。听觉系统（即听力系统）与被称为前庭系统的平衡系统，会与大脑和身体的其他所有系统相互作用，若运用得当，能让您更快掌握信息、更持久轻松地记忆，同时还能改善听力和平衡能力。我们将讨论实现这些目标的具体方法。

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're going to talk all about hearing and balance and how you can use your ability to hear specific things and your balance system in order to learn anything faster. The auditory system, meaning the hearing system and your balance system, which is called the vestibular system, interact with all the other systems of the brain and body and used properly can allow you to learn information more quickly, remember that information longer and with more ease, and you can also improve the way you can hear, you can improve your balance. We're going to talk about tools for all of that.

如许多听众所知，我持续服用AG1已超过十三年。但现在我发现了一款更优质的维生素矿物质益生菌饮品——本月刚推出的全新升级版AG1。这款AG1新一代配方是我多年每日服用的进阶临床验证版本，新增了生物可利用营养素和强化益生菌。

As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 daily for more than thirteen years. However, I've now found an even better vitamin mineral probiotic drink. That new and better drink is the new and improved AG1, which just launched this month. This next gen formula from AG1 is a more advanced clinically backed version of the product that I've been taking daily for years. It includes new bioavailable nutrients and enhanced probiotics.

新一代配方基于关于益生菌对肠道微生物组影响的最新研究，现含多种经临床研究的特定益生菌菌株，这些菌株被证实能同时支持消化健康和免疫系统健康，改善肠道规律性并减少腹胀。作为从事科研工作三十余年、同样长期关注健康健身的人士，我始终在寻找改善心理、生理健康与表现的最佳工具。早在2012年尚未开设播客时，我就开始每日服用AG1至今，它显著提升了我健康的各个方面。

The Next Gen Formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome. And it now includes several specific clinically studied probiotic strains that have been shown to support both digestive health and immune system health, as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating. As someone who's been involved in research science for more than three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered and started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast and I've been taking it every day since. I find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health.

服用后我感觉明显好转。这些年来我能持续长时间工作，同时保持充实生活、精力充沛、睡眠良好、少生病等，很大程度上归功于AG1。当然我还坚持锻炼、健康饮食等。但逐年累月——顺便一提今年九月我就满50岁了——我感觉状态越来越好。

I just feel so much better when I take it. And I attribute my ability to consistently work long hours over all these years while also maintaining a full life, having tons of energy, sleeping well, not getting sick, etcetera, in large part to AG1. And of course I do a lot of things. I exercise, I eat right, etcetera. But with each passing year, and by the way, I'm turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better.

我认为这很大程度上得益于AG1。AG1采用最优品质原料的科学配比，持续优化配方却不提价。很荣幸他们赞助本播客。若想尝试AG1，请访问drinkag1.com/huberman获取专属优惠——现在AG1正赠送内含5份旅行装和免费维生素D3K2的迎新礼包。

And I attribute a lot of that to AG1. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. So I'm honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3K2.

重申：访问drinkag1.com/huberman即可领取含5份旅行装和免费维生素D3K2的专属迎新礼包。能听到我说话吗？如果能，那太神奇了——这意味着我的声音正在您所处位置引起空气微粒的微小振动，而您的耳朵及其中构造能将这些声波转化为大脑可理解的信号，这绝对是生物学上惊人而精妙的壮举。

Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3K2. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay, well, if you can hear me, that's amazing because what it means is that my voice is causing little tiny changes in the airwaves wherever you happen to be, and that your ears and whatever's contained in those ears and in your brain can take those sound waves and make sense of them. And that is an absolutely fantastic and staggering feat of biology.

不过我们已对这一过程有深入理解。耳朵的学名是耳廓（oracles），更常称作pinna（P-I-N-N-A）。这些由软骨构成的耳廓结构会根据头型最优捕获声音——人类耳廓形状特别擅长放大高频声波。

And yet we understand a lot about how that process works. So what we call ears have a technical name. That technical name is oracles, but more often they're called pinna, the pinna, P I N N A, pinna. And the pinna of your ears, this outer part that is made of cartilage and stuff is arranged such that it can capture sound in the best way for your head size. So the shape of these ears that we have is such that it amplifies high frequency sounds.

高频声波如其名指较尖锐的声音（低频则相反）。声波本质就是空气朝向耳朵传播时的波动——就像水波那样，空气也会产生波动，即空气的振动。

High frequency sounds as the name suggests are the squeakier stuff. So we have low frequency sounds and high frequency sounds and everything in between. And those sound waves, for those of you that don't maybe fully conceptualize sound waves are literally just fluctuations or shifts in the way that air is moving toward your ear and through space. In the same way that water can have waves, the air can have waves, okay? So it's reverberation of air.

声波通过耳道抵达鼓膜。鼓膜内侧有个锤状小骨附着在这个可前后振动的薄膜上，这个"锤子"由三部分组成——

Those come in through your ears and you have what's called your eardrum. And on the inside of your eardrum, there's a little bony thing that shaped like a little hammer. So attached to that eardrum, which can move back and forth like a drum, it's like a little membrane. You've got this hammer attached to it. And that hammer has three parts.

专业术语称为锤骨、砧骨和镫骨，您只需理解成锤子即可。鼓膜带动锤骨敲击被称为耳蜗的螺旋组织——这个内耳中的蜗牛状结构会将声音转化为大脑可识别的电信号。

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

现在，耳蜗的一端比另一端更坚硬。因此一部分可以非常容易地移动，而另一部分则不太容易移动。这对于解码或区分低频声音和高频声音（如尖叫或刺耳声）非常重要。这是因为在这个被称为耳蜗的小螺旋结构中，有许多微小的毛细胞。它们看起来像毛发，但与头上或身体其他部位的毛发毫无关系。

Now, the cochlea at one end is more rigid than the other. So one part can move really easily and the other part doesn't move very easily. And that turns out to be very important for decoding or separating sounds that are low frequency and sounds that are of high frequency, like a shriek or a shrill. And that's because within that little coiled thing we call the cochlea, you have all these tiny little, are called hair cells. Now they look like hairs, but they're not at all related to the hairs on your head or elsewhere on your body.

它们只是形状像毛发，所以我们称它们为毛细胞。这些毛细胞一旦移动，就会向大脑发送信号，表明环境中存在某种特定的声音。这应该会让你感到震惊。如果没有，那它应该会，因为这意味着发生在我们周围的一切，无论是音乐还是人声，都被分解成其组成部分。然后你的大脑在理解它们的含义。

They're just shaped like hairs, so we call them hair cells. Those hair cells, if they move, send signals into the brain that a particular sound is in our environment. Now, this should stagger your mind. If it doesn't already, it should, because what this means is that everything that's happening around us, whether or not it's music or voices, all of that is being broken down into its component parts. And then your brain is making sense of what it means.

你的耳蜗本质上就像一个棱镜。它接收环境中的所有声音，并将这些声音分成不同的频率。然后大脑接收这些信息，将其重新组合并理解其含义。因此，你两个耳蜗中的毛细胞（因为你有两只耳朵，所以也有两个耳蜗）会发送微小的导线，我们称之为轴突，将它们的活动模式传递到大脑。这些信息在到达你意识清醒的大脑部分之前，会经过大脑中的多个不同站点。

Your cochlea essentially acts as a prism. It takes all the sound in your environment and it splits up those sounds into different frequencies. And then the brain takes that information and puts it back together and makes sense of it. So those hair cells in each of your two cochlea, because you have two ears, you also have two cochlea, send little wires, what we call axons that convey their patterns of activity into the brain. And there are a number of different stations within the brain that information arrives at before it gets up to the parts of your brain where you are consciously aware.

这有一个很好的理由，那就是比知道你听到什么更重要的是，你需要知道它来自哪里。我们的视觉系统可以帮助这一点，但我们的听觉和视觉系统会协作帮助我们找到并定位空间中物体的位置。这并不奇怪。如果你听到有人在你右边说话，你通常会转向右边，而不是左边。如果你看到某人的嘴在你面前动，你通常会认为声音来自正前方。

And there is a good reason for that, which is that more important than knowing what you're hearing, you need to know where it's coming from. And our visual system can help with that, but our auditory and our visual system collaborate to help us find and locate the position of things in space. That should come as no surprise. If you hear somebody talking off to your right, you tend to turn to your right, not to your left. If you see somebody's mouth moving in front of you, you tend to assume that the sound is going to come from right in front of you.

这种听觉和视觉匹配的干扰实际上是所谓的腹语效应的基础。腹语效应基本上可以用简单的术语描述为你认为声音来自一个它实际上并不来自的位置。你知道事物来自哪里、汽车或公交车或人来自哪个方向的原因是声音先到达一只耳朵，然后再到另一只耳朵。你的大脑中有站点，意味着你大脑中的神经元会计算声波到达右耳和左耳的时间差。如果它们同时到达，你会认为那个东西正在你正前方发出声音。

Disruptions in this auditory hearing and visual matching are actually the basis of what's called the ventriloquism effect. The ventriloquism effect can basically be described in simple terms as when you essentially think that a sound is coming from a location that it's not actually coming from. The way you know where things are coming from, what direction a car or a bus or a person is coming from is because the sound lands in one ear before the other. And you have stations in your brain, meaning you have neurons in your brain that calculate the difference in time of arrival for those sound waves in your right versus your left ear. And if they arrive at the same time, you assume that thing is making noise right in front of you.

如果声音来自你的右边，你会认为它在你的右边。如果声音先到达你的左耳，你会非常正确地认为那个东西正朝你的左耳方向来。但上下方向呢？如果你想一想，来自上方的声音会同时到达你的右耳和左耳。来自下方的声音也会同时到达你的右耳和左耳。

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

所以我们知道事物在所谓的仰角方向上的位置（即它们在上下平面中的位置）的方式是通过频率。你的耳朵形状实际上会根据声音是直接从地板还是从高处向你传来而改变声音。这一切在潜意识中发生得非常非常快，但现在你知道为什么如果人们真的想听清楚某件事时，他们会用手在耳朵旁做成杯状。他们基本上把自己的耳朵变成了更像耳廓狐的耳朵。如果你见过那些可爱的小耳廓狐，它们有大而尖的耳朵。

So the way that we know where things are in terms of what's called elevation, where they are in the up and down plane is by the frequencies. The shape of your ears actually modifies the sound depending on whether or not it's coming straight at you from the floor or from high above. Now this all happens very, very fast in the subconscious, but now you know why if people really want to hear something, they make a cup around their ear. They essentially make their ear into more of a fennec fox type ear. If you've ever seen those cute little fennec fox things, they have these big spiky ears.

它们看起来有点像法国斗牛犬，尽管它们是狐狸版的法国斗牛犬。这些又大又高的耳朵，它们有出色的声音定位能力。所以当人们像这样用手靠近耳朵时（如果你在听这个，我只是用手在耳朵旁做成杯状），我是在给自己一个更大的耳廓。哦，是的，如果我在左边这样做，我会这样做。如果我真的想听清楚某件事，我会两边都这样做，好吗？

They kind of look like a French bulldog, although they're kind of fox version version of the French bulldog. These big, big tall ears, and they have excellent sound localization. And so when people lean in with their hand like this, if you're listening to this, I'm just cupping my hand at my ear, I'm giving myself a bigger pinna. Oh yeah, and if I do it on the left side, I do this side. And if I really want to hear something, I do it on both sides, Okay?

所以这不仅仅是手势，它实际上起到了机械作用。实际上，如果你想更准确地听出声音的来源，这确实有帮助，因为你在捕捉声波并更好地将它们引导进去。我想短暂休息一下，感谢我们的赞助商Eight Sleep。Eight Sleep生产带有冷却、加热和睡眠追踪功能的智能床垫套。我之前在这个播客中谈过我们每晚都需要充足的高质量睡眠的迫切需求。

So this isn't just gesturing, this actually serves a mechanical role. And actually, if you want to hear where things are coming from with a much greater degree of accuracy, this can actually help because you're capturing sound waves and funneling them better. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night.

确保一夜好眠的最佳方法之一是确保你的睡眠环境温度适宜。这是因为为了进入并保持深度睡眠，你的体温实际上需要下降约一到三度。而为了醒来时感觉精神焕发、充满活力，你的体温实际上需要上升约一到三度。Eight Sleep会根据你的独特需求自动调节整晚的床温。我发现这非常有用，因为我喜欢在入睡时让床非常凉爽，半夜更冷一些，醒来时温暖一些。

Now, of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up.

这正是让我获得最多慢波睡眠和快速眼动睡眠的原因。我知道这一点是因为Eight Sleep有一个很棒的睡眠追踪器，它能告诉我睡眠质量以及夜间获得的睡眠类型。我使用Eight Sleep床垫保护套已有四年，它彻底改变并提升了我的睡眠质量。他们的最新型号Pod 4 Ultra还具备鼾声检测功能，能自动抬高头部几度以改善气流并止鼾。如果你决定尝试Eight Sleep，你有30天在家试用期，不满意可无条件退货，但我相信你会爱上它。

That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Their latest model, the Pod four Ultra also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have thirty days to try it at home and you can return it if you don't like it, no questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it.

访问eightsleep.com/huberman可享Pod 4 Ultra最高350美元优惠。Eight Sleep配送范围覆盖全球多国，包括墨西哥和阿联酋。重申一次，通过eightsleep.com/huberman购买Pod 4 Ultra可省350美元。现在我想转向讨论如何利用你的听觉系统来加速学习——不仅是听觉信息，而是任何知识。我常被问到关于所谓双耳节拍的问题。

Go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod four Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and The UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod four Ultra. So now I want to shift to talking about ways to leverage your hearing system, your auditory system, so that you can learn anything, not just auditory information, but anything faster. I get a lot of questions about so called binaural beats.

双耳节拍，顾名思义，是向一只耳朵播放某频率声音，向另一只耳朵播放不同频率声音。其原理在于大脑会接收这两种频率——由于耳朵传入大脑的神经通路最终会交叉，信息实际上会共享给大脑两侧——然后计算出某种中间频率。理论依据是这些中间频率能让大脑进入更利于学习的状态。说到'更利于学习'，我需要明确其含义：这可能意味着更强的专注力用于信息编码或接收。

Binaural beats, as their name suggests, involve playing one frequency of sound to one ear and a different frequency of sound to the other ear. And the idea is that the brain will take those two frequencies of sound And because the pathways that bring information from the ears into the brain eventually crossover, they actually share that information with both sides of the brain, that the brain will average that information and come up with a sort of intermediate frequency. And the rationale is that those intermediate frequencies place the brain into a state that is better for learning. And when I say better for learning, I want to be precise about what I mean. That could mean more focus for encoding or bringing the information in.

你们可能听我说过，学习需要保持警觉和专注。那么双耳节拍能增强专注力吗？能缓解焦虑让我们更放松吗？关于双耳节拍的科学数据怎么说？相关研究其实非常广泛且精确。

You may have heard me say before, we have to be alert and focused in order to learn. So can binaural beats make us more focused? Can binaural beats allow us to relax more if we're anxious? So what are the scientific data say about binaural beats? The science on binaural beats is actually quite extensive and very precise.

声波通常以赫兹或千赫兹计量。我知道很多人不熟悉这种单位，但可以联想池塘涟漪——波纹密集就是高频，稀疏就是低频。千赫兹数值越大频率越高。你们可能听说过δ波、θ波、α波或β波等术语。

So sound waves are measured typically in hertz or kilohertz. I know many of you aren't familiar with thinking about things in hertz or kilohertz, but again, just remember those waves on a pond, those ripples on a pond, if they're close together, then they are of high frequency. And if they're far apart, then they are low frequency. So if it's many more kilohertz, then it's much higher frequency than if it's fewer hertz or kilohertz. And so you may have heard of these things as Delta waves or theta waves or alpha waves or beta waves, etcetera.

δ波属于缓慢的大波，即低频。确有权威研究表明1-4赫兹的δ波能助人入眠和维持睡眠；4-8赫兹的θ节律能让大脑进入浅眠或冥想状态（深度放松但未完全入睡）；8-13赫兹的α波可适度提升警觉性——这是大脑回忆既有信息的理想状态。

Delta waves would be big, slow waves, so low frequency. And indeed there is quality evidence from peer reviewed studies that tell us that Delta waves like one to four Hertz, so very low frequency sounds can help in the transition to sleep and for staying asleep. And that theta rhythms, are more like four to eight Hertz can bring the brain into a state of subtle sleep or meditation, so deeply relaxed, but not fully asleep. And you'll find evidence that alpha waves, eight to 13 Hertz can increase alertness to a moderate level. That's a great state for the brain to be in for recall of existing information, Okay.

而15-20赫兹的β波能让大脑进入专注状态以持续思考或吸收新信息；最高频的γ波（32-100赫兹的'声波涟漪'）则利于学习和解决问题。这里我们讨论的是用双耳节拍调节警觉或平静程度——关键要明白：双耳节拍并非本质特殊，它只是通过低频声诱导深度放松，或通过高频声促成专注学习的又一种手段。它们有效，但非学习特效工具，只是帮助部分人进入更佳学习状态。确有强证据表明双耳节拍能减轻焦虑。

And that beta waves 15 to 20 Hertz are great for bringing the brain into focus states for sustained thought or for incorporating new information and especially gamma waves, the highest frequency, the most frequent ripples of sound, so to speak, 32 to a 100 Hertz for learning and problem solving. Here, we're talking about the use of binaural beats in order to increase our level of alertness or our level of calmness. Now that's important to underscore because it's not that there's something fundamentally important about the binaural beats, they are yet another way of bringing the brain into states of deep relaxation through low frequency sound or highly alert states for focused learning with more high frequency sound. They're effective, but it's not that they're uniquely special for learning, it's just that they can help some people bring their brain into the state that allows them to learn better. There's very good evidence for anxiety reduction from the use of binaural beats.

有趣的是，当双耳节拍引导大脑进入δ波（类似睡眠的缓慢大波）、θ波和α波状态时，抗焦虑效果最显著。也有证据表明其可治疗慢性疼痛，但主要优势仍在缓解焦虑和疼痛。许多人喜欢在学习时使用双耳节拍，部分原因可能与背景噪音能引导注意力的特性有关——这也是我被频繁询问的话题。

And what's interesting is the anxiety reduction seems to be most effective when the binaural beats are bringing the brain into Delta, so those slow big waves like sleep, Theta and Alpha states. There's good evidence that binaural beats can be used to treat pain, chronic pain, but the real boost from binaural beats appears to be for anxiety reduction and pain reduction. Many people like binaural beats and say that they benefit from them, especially while studying or learning. I think part of the reason for that relates to the ability to channel our focus when we have some background noise. And this is something I also get asked about a lot.

学习时听音乐或背景噪音好，还是绝对安静好？这方面已有不少研究（虽与双耳节拍关联不大），主要探讨人们是否该听音乐、白噪音或棕噪音（没错还有粉噪音）。需要明确的是：白噪音确实能提升某些成年人学习时的脑状态，但对婴幼儿听觉学习和听觉系统发育可能有害。先说说白噪音对学习的益处——这方面有些杰出研究。

Is it better to listen to music and have background noise when studying, or is it better to have complete silence? Well, there's actually a quite good literature on this as well, but not so much as it relates to binaural beats, but rather whether or not people are listening to music, so called white noise, brown noise, believe it or not, there's white noise and there's brown noise, there's even pink noise. I want to be very clear that white noise has been shown to really enhance brain states for learning in certain individuals, in particular in adults, but white noise actually can have a detrimental effect on auditory learning and maybe even the development of the auditory system in very young children, in particular in infants. So first I'd like to talk about the beneficial effects of white noise on learning. There are some really excellent studies on this.

我想强调的第一项研究题为《低强度白噪音改善听觉工作记忆任务表现：一项fMRI研究》。该研究探索背景白噪音是否能增强学习，其优势在于同时观察了受试者执行学习任务时的神经回路激活情况。核心发现是：只要强度足够低（不过于响亮），白噪音能显著提升学习效果——这一结论已在多种学习类型中得到验证。

The first one that I'd like to just highlight is one that's entitled Low Intensity White Noise Improves Performance in Auditory Working Memory Task, an fMRI study. This is a study that explored whether or not learning could be enhanced by playing white noise in the background. But the strength of the study is that they looked at some of the underlying neural circuitry and the activation of the neural circuitry in these people as they did the learning task. And what it essentially illustrates is that white noise provided that white noise is of low enough intensity, meaning not super loud, it actually could enhance learning to a significant degree. And this has been shown now for a huge number of different types of learning.

我非常欣慰地发现，或者说兴奋地发现这项发表在《认知神经科学杂志》上的研究。这是2014年的一篇论文。白噪音通过调节多巴胺能中脑区域和右侧颞上沟的活动来改善学习。好吧。我不指望你知道多巴胺中脑区域是什么，但如果你像我一样，你可能特别注意到了'多巴胺能'这个词。

I was very relieved to find, or I should say excited to find this study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. This is a 2014 paper. White noise improves learning by modulating activity in dopaminergic midbrain regions and the right superior temporal sulcus. Okay. I don't expect you to know what the dopamine midbrain region is, but if you're like me, you probably took highlighted notice of the word dopaminergic.

多巴胺是一种神经调节物质，意味着它是我们大脑和身体（主要是大脑）释放的一种化学物质，它调节——即控制某些脑区活跃而其他脑区不活跃的可能性。多巴胺与动机相关，与渴望相关，但最让我感兴趣的是，白噪音本身似乎能提高我们称之为基底水平的多巴胺释放量，这些多巴胺来自黑质区域。现在我们开始更全面地了解环境中的特定声音如何促进学习。我认为这部分是通过黑质释放多巴胺实现的。所以我不是要让你放弃双耳节拍（如果那是你的偏好），但确实开启低音量（不过不要太响）的白噪音似乎能让你学得更好，因为它能以特定方式调节你的大脑化学。

Dopamine is a neuromodulator, meaning it's a chemical that's released in our brain and body, but mostly in our brain that modulates, meaning controls the likelihood that certain brain areas will be active and other brain areas won't be active. And dopamine is associated with motivation, dopamine is associated with craving, but what's so interesting to me is that it appears that white noise itself can raise what we call the basal, the baseline levels of dopamine that are being released from this area, the substantia nigra. So now we're starting to get a more full picture of how particular sounds in our environment can increase learning. And that's in part, I believe through the release of dopamine from substantia nigra. So I'm not trying to shift you away from binaural beats if that's your thing, but it does appear that turning on white noise at a low level, but not too loud can allow you to learn better because of the ways that it's modulating your brain chemistry.

那么白噪音与发育期听力损失有什么关系？我知道很多有孩子的家庭会使用这类噪音机器，比如声波机等帮助孩子入睡。听着，我认为孩子和父母获得良好睡眠对身心健康及家庭健康至关重要。我当然理解这些需求。然而，有数据表明发育期间的白噪音可能对听觉系统有害。

So what about white noise and hearing loss in development? I know a lot of people with children have these kind of noise machines like sound waves and things like that, that help the kids sleep. And look, think kids getting good sleep and parents getting good sleep is vital to physical and mental health and family health. So I certainly sympathize with those needs. However, there are data that indicate that white noise during development can be detrimental to the auditory system.

我不想吓唬任何父母。如果你给孩子播放过白噪音，这并不意味着他们的听觉系统或语言模式会永远受损。但几年前《科学》期刊发表的数据显示，当幼年动物暴露于白噪音时，实际上会破坏大脑内对听觉世界的映射。听觉信息会上传到我们的皮层——基本上就是大脑外部负责高级认知、计划、决策、创造力等的部分。在那里有所谓的'音调拓扑图'。

I don't want to frighten any parents. If you played white noise to your kids, this doesn't mean that their auditory system or their speech patterns are going to be disrupted or that their interpretation speech is going to be disrupted forever. But there are data published in the journal Science some years ago showing that when they exposed very young animals to this white noise, it actually disrupted the maps of the auditory world within the brain. So, auditory information goes up into our cortex, into essentially the outside portion of our brain that's responsible for all of our higher level cognition, our planning, our decision making, etcetera, creativity. And up there, have what are called tonotopic maps.

什么是音调拓扑图？记得耳蜗吗？它呈螺旋状，一端对高频响应，另一端对低频响应，有点像钢琴。听觉系统中我们有这种音调拓扑图，从高频到低频及其中间所有频率都以非常系统的方式组织。而我们从婴儿到死亡的人生体验并非系统化的——我们不会在房间某处或一天某个时段只听低频，在另一处或另一时段只听高频，它们是混合的。

What's a tonotopic map? Well, remember the cochlea, how it's coiled and at one end it responds to high frequencies and the other end it responds to low frequencies, Sort of like a piano. In the auditory system, we have what are called tonotopic maps where frequency, high frequency to low frequency and everything in between is organized in a very systematic way. Now, our experience of life from the time we're a baby until the time that we die is not systematic. We don't hear low frequencies at one part of the room or at one part of the day and high frequencies at another part of the room, another part of the day, they're all intermixed.

但如果你记得，耳蜗会像棱镜分离不同波长的光那样分离不同频率。发育中的大脑会接收这些被分离的频率，并学习自身（即孩子）与外部世界的关系。而白噪音本质上不包含任何音调信息——所有频率都混在一起，只是噪音。

But if you remember the cochlea separates them out just like a prism of light separates out the different wavelengths of light, the cochlea separates out the different frequencies. And the developing brain takes those separated out frequencies and learns this relationship between itself, meaning the child and the outside world. White noise essentially contains no tone of topic information. The frequencies are all intermixed. It's just noise.

因此在发育期长时间接触大量白噪音可能损害听觉系统发展的原因之一，就是这些音调拓扑图无法正常形成（至少在实验动物中如此）。我提出这点是因为我认识的许多人——特别是有小孩的朋友——会问：'我想睡觉时用白噪音机，但婴儿用安全吗？'我咨询过多位科学家，他们说婴儿同时也在听父母说话、听音乐、听狗叫，所以这不是他们唯一接触的声音。但每个咨询对象都补充道：'要知道睡眠期间存在神经可塑性，这正是孩子睡觉的时候。'

So one of the reasons why hearing a lot of white noise during development for long periods of time can be detrimental to the development of the auditory system is that these tonotopic maps don't form normally, at least they don't in experimental animals. Now, the reason I'm raising this is that many people I know, particular friends who have small children, they say, I want to use a white noise machine while I sleep, but is it okay for my baby to use a white noise machine? And I consulted with various people, scientists about this, and they said, well, you know, the baby is also hearing the parents' voices and is hearing music and is hearing the dog bark. So it's not the only thing they're hearing. However, every single person that I consulted with said, but you know, there's neuroplasticity during sleep, that's when the kid is sleeping.

我不确定是否该让孩子整晚接触白噪音，因为这可能弱化音调拓扑图——未必摧毁或消除它，但可能使其清晰度降低，就像把钢琴键用胶带粘在一起几组。一旦听觉系统发育成熟、这些音调拓扑图建立后，背景白噪音就完全不是问题了。事实上它本就不该是问题，因为你也不会专注听它——关键在于音量足够低，让你几乎忘记它的存在，同时通过让大脑进入高度警觉状态（尤其是多巴胺能激活状态）来促进学习，这会使学习更快更轻松。

And I don't know that you'd want to expose a child to white noise the entire night, because it might degrade that tonotopic map. It might not destroy it, it might not eliminate it, but it could make it a little less clear, like sort of taking the keys on the piano and taping a few of them together. Once your auditory system has formed, once it's established these tonotopic maps, then the presence of background white noise should not be a problem at all. In fact, it shouldn't be a problem at all because you're also not attending to it. The idea is that it's playing at a low enough volume that you kind of forget it in the background and that it's supporting learning by bringing your brain into a heightened state of alertness and especially this heightened state of dopamine, dopaminergic activation of the brain, which will make it easier to learn faster and easier to learn the information.

我想短暂休息并感谢我们的赞助商Function。去年在寻找最全面的实验室检测方案后，我成为了Function会员。Function提供100多项高级实验室检测，能全面反映你的身体健康状况。这些检测能提供关于心脏健康、激素健康、免疫功能、营养水平等多方面的洞察。他们最近还新增了对有害塑料中BPA暴露的毒素检测，以及PFAS（永久化学物质）检测。

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS or forever chemicals.

Function不仅提供对100多种关乎身心健康的关键生物标志物检测，还分析结果并提供相关领域顶尖医生的专业解读。比如在我第一次Function检测中，发现血液汞含量偏高。他们不仅帮我发现这点，还给出了降低汞水平的建议方案，包括限制金枪鱼摄入。我过去常吃大量金枪鱼，后来努力多吃绿叶蔬菜并补充NAC和乙酰半胱氨酸（两者都能支持谷胱甘肽生产和解毒）。通过第二次Function检测验证——这个方案确实有效。

Function not only provides testing of over a 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood. Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption. I've been eating a lot of tuna while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say by taking a second function test, that approach worked.

全面的血液检测至关重要。许多与您身心健康相关的指标只能通过验血来发现。问题在于传统血液检测一直昂贵且复杂。相比之下，Function的简便性和亲民价格令我印象深刻。因此我决定加入他们的科学顾问委员会，并非常高兴他们能赞助本播客。

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

若想尝试Function服务，请访问functionhealth.com/huberman。目前候补名单已超25万人，但他们为听众提供了优先通道。重申一次：functionhealth.com/huberman可获取优先资格。现在我们来探讨听觉学习——如何更高效掌握听到的信息（不仅是书面内容或动作技能）。这涉及名为'鸡尾酒会效应'的现象。

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

即使从未参加过鸡尾酒会，您也体验过这种效应。它指的是在声音混杂的环境（如城市、教室、多人交谈的车内）中，大脑能精妙地构建听觉注意锥——从众多声波中提取关键信息并过滤其余的能力。

Now, even if you've never been to a cocktail party, you've experienced and participated in what's called the cocktail party effect. The cocktail party effect is where you are in an environment that's rich with sound, many sound waves coming from many different sources, many different things. So in a city, in a classroom, in a car that contains people having various conversations, you somehow need to be able to attend to specific components of those sound waves. Meaning you need to hear certain people and not others. You and your brain are exquisitely good at creating a cone of auditory attention, a narrow band of attention with which you can extract the information you care about and wipe away or erase all the rest.

这需要消耗注意力资源。从嘈杂场所（体育场或酒会）归来后的疲惫感，正源于持续专注对话时大脑的能量消耗——即使静息状态也耗能，高度专注时更会燃烧大量葡萄糖等能量物质。神经科学已从机制层面解析了我们如何在声波轰炸中锁定特定声音。

Now this takes work, it takes attention. One of the reasons why you might come home from a loud gathering, maybe a stadium, a sports event, or a cocktail party for that matter, and feel just exhausted is because if you were listening to conversations there or trying to listen to those conversations while watching the game, it takes attentional effort and the brain uses up a lot of energy just at rest, but it uses up even more energy when you are paying strong attention to something, literally caloric energy, burning up things like glucose, etcetera. Even if you're ketogenic, it's burning up energy. So the cocktail party effect has been studied extensively in the field of neuroscience. And we now know at a mechanistic level, how one accomplishes this feat of attending to certain sounds, despite the fact that we are being bombarded with all sorts of other sounds.

实现方式主要有二：首先，如同调节视觉视野范围，我们也能扩展或收缩'听觉视窗'。

So there are a couple ways that we do this. First of all, much as with our visual system, we can expand or contract our visual field of view. Okay, we can do that. We can expand and contract our visual field of view. Well, we can expand and contract our auditory field of view, so to speak, or our auditory window.

在嘈杂背景中锁定某人对话的关键，在于捕捉词语的起始与结束音。常见现象如派对上刚介绍的姓名转眼即忘——并非因为不重视，而是其他听觉信息干扰导致信噪比不足。

We can really hear one person or a small number of people amidst a huge background of chatter because we pay attention to the onset of words, but also to the offset of words. So one of the more common phenomenon that I think we all experience is you go to a party and, or you meet somebody new and you say, hi, I would say, hi, I'm Andrew. And they'd say, hi, I'm Jeff, for instance. I'd say, great, great to meet you. And then a minute later, I can't remember the guy's name.

这种遗忘与是否用心无关，而是对方姓名的发音方式未能形成足够高的信噪比。重点在于：接收端（您的耳朵）如何解析这些声波。

Now, is it because I don't care what his name is? No, somehow the presence of other auditory information interfered. It's not that my mind was necessarily someplace else. It's that the signal to noise, as we say, wasn't high enough. Somehow the way he said it or the way it landed on my ears, which is really all that matters, right?

下次询问姓名时，请专注捕捉首尾音素（如'Jeff'的'J'和'f'），记忆成功率将显著提升。

When it comes down to learning is such that it just didn't achieve high enough signal to noise. So the next time you ask somebody's name, remember, listen to the onset of what they say and the offsets. It would be paying attention to the j in Jeff, and it would be paying attention to the f in F in Jeff, excuse me. All right? And chances are, you'll be able to remember that name.

当然，逐字关注首尾音可能影响整体学习效率。此法更适合重点信息记忆——通过激活注意系统，我们能加速学习并诱发成人大脑神经可塑性（通常极难实现）。听觉系统正是开启广泛神经可塑性的主要途径之一。接下来让我们探讨由耳部结构主导的平衡感机制。

Now I do acknowledge that trying to learn every word in a sentence by paying attention to its onset and offset could actually be kind of disruptive to the learning process. So this would be more for specific attention. Using the attentional system, we can actually learn much faster and we can actually activate neuroplasticity in the adult brain, something that's very challenging to do. And that the auditory system is one of the main ways in which we can access neuroplasticity more broadly. I'd like to now talk about balance and our sense of balance, which is controlled by, believe it or not, our ears and things in our ears, as well as by our brain and elements of our spinal cord.

在本期讨论平衡能力的原因是：相关感知器官主要位于耳内。除了两侧耳蜗（将声波转化为脑电信号的螺旋结构），紧邻的还有三个充满内淋巴液的半规管——想象成内置弹珠的呼啦圈，它们共同构成我们的平衡传感器。

The reason why we're talking about balance and how to get better at balancing in the episode about hearing is that all the goodies that are going to allow you to do that are in your ears. They're also in your brain, but they're mostly in your ears. So as you recall from the beginning of this episode, you have two cochleas, that are one on each side of your head, and that's a little spiral snail shaped thing that converts sound waves into electrical signals that the rest of your brain can understand. Right next to those, you have what are called semicircular canals. The semicircular canals can be best visualized as thinking about three hula hoops with marbles in them.

想象你有一个呼啦圈，它并非整个圈内都装满弹珠，只在底部有一些弹珠。如果你移动这个呼啦圈，其中一个呼啦圈相对于重力是垂直放置的，基本上是直立的。另一个呼啦圈则呈90度角，与地面平行——假设你现在是站着的，如果是坐着的话。还有一个呼啦圈则介于两者之间，倾斜约45度角。

So imagine that you have a hula hoop and it's not filled with marbles all the way around, it's just got some marbles down there at the base. So if you were to move that hula hoop around, one of those hula hoops is positioned vertically with respect to gravity, but basically it's upright. Another one of those hula hoops is basically at a 90 degree angle, basically parallel to the floor if you're standing up right now, if you're seated. Okay? And the other one is kind of tilted about 45 degrees in between those.

这个系统为何如此设计？每个呼啦圈内的弹珠可以移动，但只有当你头部以特定方式运动时才会移动。头部运动有三种基本平面或方式：可以上下移动（如我现在点头），这称为俯仰；也可以左右摇头（表示‘不’），这称为偏航；还有滚动，即头部左右倾斜，就像可爱的小狗歪头看你的样子。

Now, why is the system there? Well, those marbles within each one of those hula hoops can move around, but they'll only move around if your head moves in a particular way. And there are three planes or three ways that your head can move. Your head can move up and down, like I'm nodding right now, so that's called pitch, or I can shake my head no side to side, that's called yaw. And then there's roll, tilting the head from side to side, the way that a cute puppy might look at you from side to side.

俯仰、偏航、滚动是头部在三大运动平面的动作。每个动作都会导致弹珠在不同呼啦圈内移动（这些其实不是真正的弹珠，而是类似小石头般的碳酸钙沉积物）。当它们来回滚动时，会拨动微小的毛细胞——不同于感知声波的毛细胞，而是通过滚动使这些毛细胞偏转。当毛细胞向下偏转时，作为神经元的它们就会向大脑传递信息。

Pitch, yaw, roll are the movements of the head in each of the three major planes of motion, as we say. And each one of those causes those marbles to move in one or two of the various hula hoops, okay? They aren't actually marbles by the way, these are little, kind of like little stones, basically, little calcium like deposits. And when they roll back and forth, they deflect little hairs, little hair cells that aren't like the hair cells that we use for measuring sound waves, but they're basically rolling past these little hair cells and causing them to deflect. And when they deflect downward, the neurons, because hair cells are neurons, send information up to the brain.

当我这样移动头部时，呼啦圈内的小石头会产生物理位移，拨动作为神经元的毛细胞，将信息传递给大脑。所有有颌动物都拥有这种平衡系统（前庭系统）。关于前庭系统最重要的一点是：它与视觉系统协同工作。比如我听到左侧有声响转头查看时，有两个信息源告诉我头部与身体的相对位置——这至关重要。

So if I move my head like this, there's a physical movement of these little stones in this hula hoop as I'm referring to it, but they deflect these hairs, send those hairs, which are neurons, those hair cells send information off to the brain. Any animal that has a jaw has this so called balance system, which we call the vestibular system. One of the more important things to know about the vestibular, the balance system, is that it works together with the visual system. Let's say I hear something off to my left and I swing my head over to the left to see what it is. There are two sources of information about where my head is relative to my body, and I need to know that.

首先，当我快速侧头时，那些小石头会立即激活半规管中的毛细胞，向大脑发送头部侧移的信号。同时视觉信息也从视野中掠过——无需思考，但确实发生了。当这两种信号结合时，我的眼睛就能锁定特定位置。如果觉得这很复杂，其实可以拆解验证。

First of all, when I quickly move my head to the side, those little stones, as I'm referring to them, they quickly activate those hair cells in that one semicircular canal and send a signal off to my brain that my head just moved to the side. But also visual information slid past my field of view. I didn't have to think about it, but just slid past my field of view. And when those two signals combine, my eyes then lock to a particular location. Now, if this is at all complicated, you can actually uncouple these things.

验证方法很简单：安全站立后，目视前方约3-4米处选一个墙上的点，单腿站立抬起另一条腿（可屈膝），保持远眺姿势。

It's very easy to do. If you get the opportunity, you can do this safely wherever you are. You're to stand up and you're going to look forward about ten, twelve feet. You're to pick a point on a wall, stand on one leg and lift up the other leg. You can bend your knee if you like, and just look off into the distance about ten, twelve feet.

若能保持单腿站立，现在请闭上眼睛——你很可能会立即体验到科学家所称的姿势摇摆。闭眼平衡极其困难，仔细想想会觉得这很反常识。

If you can do that, if you can stand on one leg, now close your eyes. Chances are you're going to suddenly feel what scientists call postural sway. It is very hard to balance with your eyes closed. You might think, and if you think about that, it's like, why is that? That's crazy.

为何闭眼难以保持平衡？因为视觉信息也会反馈给前庭系统。前庭系统引导眼球运动，而眼球位置又反过来调节平衡系统的运作。目前我们讨论的都是静态平衡（如单腿站立），但这属于非自然状态。虽然这种训练有效，但运动/舞蹈等需要动态平衡——即在多平面运动中保持平衡。

Why would it be that it's hard to balance with your eyes closed? Well, information about the visual world also feeds back onto this vestibular system. So the vestibular system informs your vision and tells you where to move your eyes and your eyes in their positioning tell your balance system, your vestibular system, how it should function. So up until now, I've been talking about balance only in the static sense, like standing on one leg for instance, but that's a very artificial situation. Even though you can train balance that way, most people who want to enhance their sense of balance for sport or dance or some other endeavor want to engage balance in a dynamic way, meaning moving through lots of different planes of movement.

为此必须认识到：前庭系统还感知加速度。它既关注头部/眼球位置，也监测运动方向与速度。提升平衡感的最佳方法，就是整合视觉系统、内耳半规管和线性加速度感知。比如直立前进与侧倾前进时，前庭系统的处理截然不同。培养生理层面平衡感的关键，在于实现加速度（通常是前进）与重力倾斜的结合。

For that, we need to consider that the vestibular system also cares about acceleration. So it cares about head position, it cares about eye position and where the eyes are and where you're looking, but it also cares about what direction you're moving and how fast. And one of the best things that you can do to enhance your sense of balance is to start to bring together your visual system, the semicircular canals of the inner ear, and what we call linear acceleration. So if I move forward in space rigidly upright, it's a vastly different situation than if I'm leaning to the side. One of the best ways to cultivate a better sense of balance literally within the sense organs and the neurons and the biology of the brain is to get into modes where we are accelerating forward, typically it's forward, while also tilted with respect to gravity.

这正是滑板/冲浪/滑雪板 carving（弧线滑行）的原理，也是自行车过弯时需要安全内倾的原因——让头部相对地面产生倾斜。在加速度（多为前进，有时侧向）中保持头身倾斜，能显著提升情绪与幸福感。正如我之前节目所述，这种状态还能增强后续学习能力——因为小脑会向脑区输出血清素/多巴胺等神经调节物质，让我们感觉愉悦。

Now this would be the carve on a skateboard or on a surfboard or a snowboard. This would be the taking a corner on a bike while being able to lean safely, of course, lean into the turn so that your head is actually tilted with respect to the earth. The head being tilted and the body being tilted while in acceleration, typically forward acceleration, but sometimes side to side has a profound and positive effect on our sense of mood and well-being. And as I talked about in previous episode, it can also enhance our ability to learn information in the period after generating those tilts and the acceleration. And that's because the cerebellum has these outputs to these areas of the brain that release these neuromodulators like serotonin and dopamine, and they make us feel really good.

这些运动模式似乎对我们的身心健康以及将前庭平衡能力迁移至其他活动中的表现有着超乎寻常的影响。因此，我建议人们在确保安全的前提下，偶尔尝试在倾斜状态下进行加速运动。这是提升平衡技能的极其有效的方式，对大多数人而言也极具愉悦感——由于前向加速与头部身体倾斜产生的化学反应，这种体验会让人感觉非常美妙。

Those modes of exercise seem to have an outsized effect both on our well-being and our ability to translate the vestibular balance that we achieve in those endeavors to our ability to balance while doing other things. So I encourage people to get into modes of acceleration while tilted every once in a while, provided you can do it safely. It's an immensely powerful way to build up your skills in the realm of balance. And it's also for most people, very, very pleasing. It feels really good because of the chemical relationship between forward acceleration and head tilt and body tilt.

我们再次涵盖了海量信息。现在你们已了解听觉原理、如何解析环境声音、声波如何传入耳朵及大脑如何处理这些信息。此外，我们还探讨了诸如低频白噪音乃至双耳节拍等技术，这些都能用于增强特定脑波状态、优化大脑节律，甚至通过促进多巴胺分泌来提升学习效能。关于平衡系统，我们揭示了前庭器官（内耳中负责平衡的结构）与视觉系统及重力之间精妙的联动关系。这些机制不仅能强化平衡感，更能助力学习能力的提升。

Once again, we've covered a tremendous amount of information. Now, you know how you hear, how you make sense of the sounds in your environment, how those come into your ears and how your brain processes them. In addition, we talked about things like low level white noise and even binaural beats, which can be used to enhance certain brain states, certain rhythms within the brain, and even dopamine release in ways that allow you to learn better. And we talked about the balance system and this incredible relationship between your vestibular apparatus, meaning the portions of your inner ear that are responsible for balance and your visual system and gravity. And you can use those to enhance your learning as well, as well as just to enhance your sense of balance.

最后但同样重要的是，我要感谢诸位投入时间、专注力以及探索视觉与平衡系统的求知热情。当然，也感谢你们对科学始终怀抱的兴趣。

Last but not least, I'd like to thank you for your time and attention and desire and willingness to learn about vision and balance. And of course, thank you for your interest in science.