Accelerate Learning & Increase Cognitive Capacity | Dr. Tommy Wood

A six‑month high‑intensity interval program in older adults, using the Norwegian four by four protocol, matched zone two for fitness but produced bigger, longer‑lasting gains in hippocampal function and structure that persisted for five years.

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we explore science and science‑based tools for everyday life; today I’m joined by Dr. Tommy Wood to dig into brain states for learning, how to access them, and how specific exercise, mental training, nutrition, and supplements can accelerate skill and memory at any age.

I think of neuroplasticity as the brain reshaping connections in response to experience so we can navigate the world better, and that includes strengthening some synapses and pruning others.

I appreciate you separating plasticity from neurogenesis; we may not add many new neurons in adulthood, but we can keep refining circuits, which is why pruning is so important for learning.

If I want to get great at something like billiards, is most progress about stripping away the wrong moves?

It takes both building and removing connections, and across life we often lose function when we stop giving the brain input, so pruning out unused patterns accelerates skill refinement.

For aging well, should we keep doing what we love, add novelty, exercise more, or all of the above?

People who stay mentally engaged tend to decline more slowly, and randomized trials show novel cognitive pursuits—like language, complex movement, or music—can improve executive function.

What did the large online programs actually have people do?

They combined diet, physical activity, cardiovascular risk management, cognitive‑behavioral support, and targeted brain training to boost processing speed, with follow‑ups showing reduced dementia risk decades later when people trained and got booster sessions.

Is processing speed just reaction time, or is it something more?

Reaction time is a simple response, but processing speed is how fast you encode and recall brief information, and it stays fairly stable until about sixty before dropping, which is why training it matters.

So should we go harder at what we already do, or switch to something unfamiliar?

Pick something hard that demands focused effort, and favor skills with broad demands—motor, cognitive, social—because complex inputs yield broader benefits.

Give us top picks for plasticity‑rich activities.

Learning ballroom or line dancing stands out because it blends skill, timing, music, social interaction, and physical effort; team ball sports, board sports, and non‑concussive martial arts also load many networks at once.

Adults hate being bad at things, yet that early awkwardness is the price of admission for growth, and even a small win in a new domain can lift mood and change how we show up in the rest of life.

We have a basic need to face challenge and overcome it, and when the difficulty is tractable, progress fuels motivation and spills over to other goals.

Flow gets miscast as effortless magic; how do you define it, and is it even needed for learning or peak performance?

Flow is a peak expression of a well‑learned skill at the edge of capacity, but top performance also happens in a clutch state where it still feels like hard work, and deep learning usually sits outside flow because it requires friction and mistakes.

Clutch resonates with tenacity circuits like the anterior mid‑cingulate, and it’s a state we should deliberately seek when we train or perform.

Remember the rule of thirds across weeks and months: some sessions feel great, some are average, and some are a grind—showing up through all three is how capacity grows.

Do fundamentals always need daily drills, or can complex practice cover them?

In pianists, practice volume outweighed age for specific skills, and advanced pieces often embed fundamentals, though warm‑ups and scales can still help keep basics sharp.

Kill the 10,000‑hour myth for us and set realistic session lengths.

That number was a youthful practice average for violinists, not a universal rule, and most people can do one to two focused blocks of about sixty to ninety minutes a day, broken into shorter bouts like Pomodoros.

Deep work for me tops out at a few solid hours spread over the day, and I guard that time by ditching notifications and keeping the phone out of the room.

Eliminating pings is huge because we get conditioned to self‑interrupt, and creating distraction‑free windows retrains attention and lets tough ideas click without brute forcing.

A phone even off and in a bag still taxes cognition, which is why meditation or simply shower time can help ideas surface by removing inputs.

On diet, can we extract core principles from the big cognitive trials?

Mediterranean‑style eating and mindful energy intake both help, and across studies it looks less about one hero food and more about whole foods, nutrient density, and matching calories to needs.

Key nutrients with strong links to cognition include vitamin D, iron, omega‑3s, B12 and folate, with supportive evidence for magnesium, carotenoids, polyphenols, fiber, choline, and zinc.

Timing and synergy matter, but consistency is hard, which is why people reach for supplements; how much day‑to‑day wiggle room do we really have?

The body has buffers like adipose stores for omega‑3s, so weekly patterns can average out, and testing levels to target true deficiencies beats blanket dosing.

Omega‑3 status and B‑vitamin status interact through homocysteine, so lowering homocysteine only helps when omega‑3s are adequate, and vice versa, which explains why some single‑nutrient trials look null.

A basic multivitamin modestly improved cognition in large trials, likely by covering common gaps, while flavanols mainly helped people with poorer diets.

Personalized bloodwork‑guided supplementation is the future, and while avoiding deficiency may get most people most of the way, it remains unclear if pushing well above normal ranges yields extra gains.

Peptides are exploding because GLPs normalized injections, but evidence and safety vary widely; where do you land?

Outside of approved GLP drugs and specific clinical uses, most peptides lack robust human efficacy and safety data, so my bar is documented safety first and a clear problem to solve.

Creatine is a rare example of a supplement with strong safety data and potential cognitive and physical benefits, making it reasonable to test even in older adults.

Many arousal boosters make us feel sharp but can impair complex performance, as seen with caffeine or non‑prescribed stimulants, whereas endogenous arousal from movement reliably helps learning.

Brief resistance work, a twenty to thirty minute easy jog, or short all‑out sprints with long rests can lift arousal and improve learning if you avoid full exhaustion right before cognitive work.

Leaving a little volume in the tank keeps me energized for the day, whereas going to the well blunts afternoon focus.

For long‑term brain changes, intensity matters more: zone two walking can enlarge the hippocampus, but repeated high‑intensity intervals can drive bigger, longer‑lasting gains.

In older adults, four by four intervals at eighty‑five to ninety‑five percent of max heart rate improved hippocampal function and structure for years, and higher effort and cortisol tracked with better outcomes.

Acute cortisol spikes from hard training are part of healthy adaptation, and the fear of any rise ignores that stress hormones rise and fall across the day and support learning and memory.

We’ve conflated chronic stress harms with acute stress benefits, but intermittent stressors drive adaptation and even make us more resilient to other stress, including psychological load.

Pick your stress wisely, protect your sleep, and use training to buffer life’s demands; now, is there a resistance‑training approach that best opens the plasticity window?

Short bouts of machine-based compound lifts give a quick bump in thinking, much like a 20 to 30 minute jog, but the real split shows up long term: aerobic work tends to fortify gray matter and memory while resistance training strengthens white matter and executive function. IGF-1 likely drives the white matter gains from lifting, whereas BDNF and lactate help explain cardio’s effects, which is why both belong in the plan.

That lands: different exercise types target different brain tissues and release a mix of plasticity molecules, so I now see cardio and lifting as true triggers for learning and adaptation. With that in mind, what actually makes someone vulnerable to Alzheimer’s, and what else can we do to lower risk?

Dementia is the final stage of cognitive decline, with Alzheimer’s making up roughly two thirds of cases and vascular disease overlapping heavily; monogenic early-onset forms are rare, while most risk is polygenic with APOE a major contributor. The Lancet Commission estimates about 45 percent of cases could be prevented through modifiable factors like education, blood pressure, diabetes, hearing and vision care, head injury prevention, high LDL management, and staying physically active.

They left out sleep and nutrient status, but the evidence suggests consistent sleep under six hours raises risk and that omega-3 fatty acids and B vitamins may help, so the preventable fraction is likely higher, though some drivers sit at the societal level.

Controversial but intriguing: recent reports claim the shingles vaccine cuts dementia rates; given the herpes–neuron link, is there anything solid here, and at what ages would it matter?

Natural experiments in the UK, Australia, and Canada found lower dementia incidence in people newly eligible for shingles vaccination, with both Zostavax and especially Shingrix associated with reduced risk, though early curve separation hints at residual confounding. The signal is strong enough to merit a randomized trial, and mechanisms could include fewer severe shingles bouts, broader viral suppression, or immune recalibration, with a slightly larger effect in women in several datasets.

Those studies mainly involved people in their seventies and eighties, so earlier use may not map to dementia timing, but the broader lesson is clear: avoid serious illness because cognitive scores often drop in steps after major infections or hospitalizations, and vaccines that keep you from getting very sick can protect that trajectory.

Switching gears, after a moderate concussion with no red flags for bleeding, what helps most in the first days, and are there any supplements worth trying?

Keep cool and prevent fever, avoid big sugar hits, skip alcohol and possibly caffeine, because overheating and stimulation widen the energy gap in already stressed neurons. Consider a short creatine load around 0.4 grams per kilogram per day split across the day, noting GI issues are uncommon with quality products, and understand that typical five to ten gram doses still support mood and memory outside acute injury.

Add magnesium glycinate at 400 milligrams once or twice daily and use omega-3s consistently if you play contact sports; for sleep issues after TBI, melatonin or high-dose branched-chain amino acids up to 60 grams per day have shown benefits in small trials. Citicoline at one to two grams daily has supportive data, with Boswellia and pine bark extract as niche options, and then return to activity in graded steps, using vestibular and oculomotor therapy and physical therapy when symptoms linger.

That’s hugely useful for athletes and parents alike; before we wrap, you’re prepping for a natural strongman meet—how old are you, what class, and what does a day of events look like?

I’m forty-one, compete as a lightweight master, and usually do a quick water cut under two hundred pounds for weigh-in, then rehydrate by the next day. Events include a farmer’s carry of about 264 pounds per hand for max distance, a 700 pounds yoke walk that can flow into heavy circus dumbbell reps, a loading medley with sandbags and kegs, a max axle back squat for reps at roughly 170 or 200 kilograms to pads, a log press for reps at about 100 or 120 kilograms, plus a sled push and sandbag drag; it’s at the end of August and I’ll post clips on Instagram.

Love that blend of brain and brawn; thanks for the clear, actionable tour through plasticity, prevention, and recovery, and let’s have you back to go deeper on brain injury and stroke. Thanks to everyone for listening—links to Dr. Tommy Wood’s work are in the show notes, and thank you for your interest in science.

Happy to, and thanks for having me.