Huberman Lab
Enhance Your Learning Speed & Health Using Neuroscience Based Protocols | Dr. Poppy Crum
29 Sep 2025
My guest is Dr. Poppy Crum, PhD, adjunct professor at Stanford, former Chief Scientist at Dolby Laboratories and expert in neuroplasticity—our brain’s ability to change in response to experience. She explains how you can learn faster and ways to leverage your smartphone, AI and even video games to do so. We also discuss “digital twins” and the future of health technology. This episode will change the way you think about and use technology and will teach you zero-cost protocols to vastly improve your learning, health and even your home environment. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AGZ by AG1: https://drinkagz.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Helix: https://helixsleep.com/huberman Rorra: https://rorra.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (0:00) Poppy Crum (2:22) Neuroplasticity & Limits; Homunculus (8:06) Technology; Environment & Hearing Thresholds; Absolute Pitch (13:12) Sponsors: David & Helix Sleep (15:33) Texting, Homunculus, Mapping & Brain; Smartphones (23:06) Technology, Data Compression, Communication, Smartphones & Acronyms (30:32) Sensory Data & Bayesian Priors; Video Games & Closed Loop Training (40:51) Improve Swim Stroke, Analytics & Enhancing Performance, Digital Twin (46:17) Sponsors: AGZ by AG1 & Rorra (49:08) Digital Twin; Tool: Learning, AI & Self-Testing (53:00) AI: Increase Efficacy or Replace Task?, AI & Germane Cognitive Load (1:02:07) Bread, Process & Appreciation; AI to Optimize Physical Environments (1:09:43) Awake States & AI; Measure & Modify (1:16:37) Wearables, Sensors & Measure Internal State; Pupil Size (Pupillometry) (1:23:58) Sponsor: Function (1:25:46) Integrative Systems, Body & Environment; Cognitive State & Decision-Making (1:32:11) Gamification, Developing Good Habits (1:38:17) Implications of AI, Diminishing Cognitive Skill (1:41:11) Digital Twins & Examples, Digital Representative; Feedback Loops (1:50:59) Customize AI; Situational Intelligence, Blind Spots, Work & Health, “Hearables” (2:01:08) Career Journey, Perception & Technology; Violin, Absolute Pitch (2:09:44) Incentives & Neuroplasticity; Technology & Performance (2:13:59) Acoustic Arms Race: Moths, Bats & Echolocation (2:21:17) Singing to Spiders, Spider Web & Environment Detection; Crickets; Marmosets (2:31:44) Acknowledgements (2:33:18) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
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. My guest today is Dr. Poppy Crum. Dr. Poppy Crum is a neuroscientist, a professor at Stanford, and the former chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories.
Her work focuses on how technology can accelerate neuroplasticity in learning and generally enrich our life experience. You've no doubt heard about and perhaps use wearables and sleep technologies that can monitor your sleep, tell you how much slow-wave sleep you're getting, how much REM sleep, and technologies that can control the temperature of your sleep environment and your room environment.
Well, you can soon expect wearables and hearable technologies to be part of your life. Hearable technologies are, as the name suggests, technologies that can hear your voice and the voice of other people and deduce what is going to be best for your immediate health and your states of mind.
Believe it or not, these technologies will understand your brain states, your goals, and it will make changes to your home and working in other environments so that you can focus better, relax more thoroughly, and connect with other people on a deeper level.
As Poppy explains, all of this might seem kind of space age and maybe even a little aversive or scary now, but she explains how it will vastly improve life for both kids and adults and indeed increase human-human empathy. During today's episode, you'll realize that Poppy is a true out of the box thinker and scientist. She has a really unique story.
She discovered she has perfect pitch at a young age. She explains what that is and how that shaped her worldview and her work. Poppy also graciously built a zero cost step-by-step protocol for all of you. It allows you to build a custom AI tool to improve at any skill you want and to build better health protocols and routines.
I should point out that you don't need to know how to program in order to use this tool that she's built. Anyone can use it. And as you'll see, it's extremely useful. We provide a link to it in the show note captions. Today's conversation is unlike any that we previously had on the podcast. It's a true glimpse into the future.
And it also points you to new tools that you can use now to improve your life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.
In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my conversation with Dr. Poppy Crum. Dr. Poppy Crum, welcome.
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