Charan Ranganath

what we see over and over again is that the brain does basically one of the cool things about the design of the brain is it's always less is more, less is more, right? It's like, I mean, I've seen estimates that the human brain uses something like 12 to 20 Watts, you know, in a day. I mean, that's just nuts, the low power consumption, right?

what we see over and over again is that the brain does basically one of the cool things about the design of the brain is it's always less is more, less is more, right? It's like, I mean, I've seen estimates that the human brain uses something like 12 to 20 Watts, you know, in a day. I mean, that's just nuts, the low power consumption, right?

So it's all about reusing information and making the most of what we already have. And so, um, That's why basically, again, what you see biologically is neuromodulators, for instance, these chemicals in the brain like norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin. These are chemicals that are released during moments that tend to be biologically significant—surprise, fear, stress, etc.

So it's all about reusing information and making the most of what we already have. And so, um, That's why basically, again, what you see biologically is neuromodulators, for instance, these chemicals in the brain like norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin. These are chemicals that are released during moments that tend to be biologically significant—surprise, fear, stress, etc.

So it's all about reusing information and making the most of what we already have. And so, um, That's why basically, again, what you see biologically is neuromodulators, for instance, these chemicals in the brain like norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin. These are chemicals that are released during moments that tend to be biologically significant—surprise, fear, stress, etc.

And so these chemicals promote lasting plasticity, right? Essentially, some mechanisms by which the brain can prioritize the information that you carry with you into the future. Attention is a big factor as well, our ability to focus our attention on what's important. And so there's different schools of thought. On training attention, for instance.

And so these chemicals promote lasting plasticity, right? Essentially, some mechanisms by which the brain can prioritize the information that you carry with you into the future. Attention is a big factor as well, our ability to focus our attention on what's important. And so there's different schools of thought. On training attention, for instance.

And so these chemicals promote lasting plasticity, right? Essentially, some mechanisms by which the brain can prioritize the information that you carry with you into the future. Attention is a big factor as well, our ability to focus our attention on what's important. And so there's different schools of thought. On training attention, for instance.

So one of my colleagues, Amishi Jha, she wrote a book called Peak Mind and talks about mindfulness as a method for improving attention and focus. So she works a lot with military like Navy SEALs and stuff to do this kind of work.

So one of my colleagues, Amishi Jha, she wrote a book called Peak Mind and talks about mindfulness as a method for improving attention and focus. So she works a lot with military like Navy SEALs and stuff to do this kind of work.

So one of my colleagues, Amishi Jha, she wrote a book called Peak Mind and talks about mindfulness as a method for improving attention and focus. So she works a lot with military like Navy SEALs and stuff to do this kind of work.

um with mindfulness meditation um adam gazali another one of my friends and colleagues has work on kind of training through video games actually as a way of training attention and so uh it's not clear to me you know one of the challenges though in training is you tend to overfit to the thing that you're trying to optimize right so you tend to if i'm looking at a video game and

um with mindfulness meditation um adam gazali another one of my friends and colleagues has work on kind of training through video games actually as a way of training attention and so uh it's not clear to me you know one of the challenges though in training is you tend to overfit to the thing that you're trying to optimize right so you tend to if i'm looking at a video game and

um with mindfulness meditation um adam gazali another one of my friends and colleagues has work on kind of training through video games actually as a way of training attention and so uh it's not clear to me you know one of the challenges though in training is you tend to overfit to the thing that you're trying to optimize right so you tend to if i'm looking at a video game and

I can definitely get better at paying attention in the context of the video game, but you transfer it to the outside world. That's very controversial.

I can definitely get better at paying attention in the context of the video game, but you transfer it to the outside world. That's very controversial.

I can definitely get better at paying attention in the context of the video game, but you transfer it to the outside world. That's very controversial.

i can say that in fact we do in certain ways right so if you are an expert in something you are training attention so we did this one study of expertise in the brain and uh you know so people used to think let's say if you're a bird expert or something right people will go like if you get really into this world of birds you start to see the differences in your visual cortex is tuned up and it's all about plasticity of the visual cortex and vision researchers love to say everything's visual but

i can say that in fact we do in certain ways right so if you are an expert in something you are training attention so we did this one study of expertise in the brain and uh you know so people used to think let's say if you're a bird expert or something right people will go like if you get really into this world of birds you start to see the differences in your visual cortex is tuned up and it's all about plasticity of the visual cortex and vision researchers love to say everything's visual but

i can say that in fact we do in certain ways right so if you are an expert in something you are training attention so we did this one study of expertise in the brain and uh you know so people used to think let's say if you're a bird expert or something right people will go like if you get really into this world of birds you start to see the differences in your visual cortex is tuned up and it's all about plasticity of the visual cortex and vision researchers love to say everything's visual but