Welcome to the UBREM and Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew UBREM 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.

This is one area of science where we understand a lot about the cells and the mechanisms and the ear and the brain and so forth.

So we're going to talk about that a little bit and then we're going to get directly into protocols, meaning tools.

We're also going to talk about ways in which the auditory and balance system suffer.

We're going to talk about tinnitus, which is this ringing of the ears that unfortunately for people that suffer from it, they really suffer.

It's very intrusive for them. We're going to talk about some treatments that can work in some circumstances and some of the more recent emerging treatments that I think many people aren't aware of.

We're also going to talk about this, what seems like kind of a weird fact, which is that 70% of people, all people, make what are called autoacoustic emissions.

Their ears actually make noises. Chances are your ears are making noises right now, but you can't perceive them.

And yet those can have an influence on other people and animals in your environment.

It's a fascinating aspect to your biology. You're going to learn a lot about how your biology and brain and ears and the so-called inner ear that's associated with balance.

You're going to learn a lot about how all those work. You're going to learn a lot of neuroscience.

I'll even tell you what type of music to listen to. And if you listen to me, you can leverage that in order to learn faster.

Before we begin talking about the science of hearing imbalance and tools that leverage hearing imbalance for learning faster, I want to provide some information about another way to learn much faster.

There's a paper that was published recently. This is a paper that was published in cell reports, an excellent journal.

It's a peer-reviewed paper from a really excellent group looking at skill learning.

Now, previously, I've talked about how in the attempt to learn skills, the vital thing to do is to get lots of repetitions.

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