Andrew Huberman explains the science of entrainment and how to use it to improve energy, focus, and performance
Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist and host of the Huberman Lab podcast, explains the biological mechanism of entrainment in a short solo presentation.
Summary
Andrew Huberman explains entrainment — the nervous system's ability to anticipate recurring events by pre-releasing the neurochemicals associated with them. He argues that if you perform an activity such as exercise or focused learning at roughly the same time for just two or three days in a row, your body will begin releasing adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol in advance of that activity, giving you a measurable boost in energy and alertness before you even begin. He distinguishes this clearly from placebo effect, framing it as a physiological process that can be deliberately leveraged. He also applies the same principle to morning light exposure and cognitive work, noting that consistency of timing — even approximate consistency — is the key mechanism.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
What Entrainment Is and Why It Matters
Andrew Huberman: Entrainment isn't just a word. It's not just a concept. It's a scientific process that you can leverage toward better energy, better focus, better learning, better workouts, and so on.
If you do an activity regularly — say for two or three days in a row — and that activity shifts your neurochemistry and your hormones in a particular direction, what will happen is that ten or fifteen minutes before you would normally do that activity, you'll start to notice an increase in energy. And that increase in energy is in part psychological, but it is in large part physiological.
Exercise as an Example of Entrainment
Let me give you an example. If you were to exercise at roughly the same time — it doesn't have to be the exact same time, let's say at a given time plus or minus fifteen minutes — for two or three days in a row, that exercise generates the release of adrenaline and epinephrine in your body, which most moderate to intense exercise does. It increases norepinephrine in the brain, which increases alertness. There may also be an increase in cortisol, and by the way, that's not an unhealthy increase. The exercise-induced increase in cortisol, provided those workouts aren't grueling and extended — hours and hours — and provided you can recover, is not a problem. It's a great thing.
In fact, if you do that regularly for a few days in a row, your body starts to anticipate the release of those molecules, leading to an increase in energy in the minutes preceding when you would normally start.
Morning Sunlight and the Same Principle
I've said many times before on the Huberman Lab podcast, on other podcasts where I've been a guest, and in my book — which includes a section on this as well — that viewing morning sunlight, ideally in the first hour after you wake or even within thirty minutes, is beneficial. If you wake up before the sun rises, you'll have to use a 10,000-lux artificial light or wait until the sun comes out. But if you do that for a few days in a row, what you'll notice is that you start to wake up and feel more alert in anticipation of that light exposure.
This is not placebo effect. It's entrainment. It's the ability of your nervous system to predict events that are soon to come because they've happened regularly. And you can leverage it so that you have more energy, more focus, better learning, and better workouts.
Applying Entrainment to Cognitive Focus and Learning
The key is to be somewhat regular about the timing of when you exercise — and this applies to cognitive activities as well, including learning. If you're somebody who has a hard time focusing, as many people do these days, but you force yourself to put your phone aside and read a book, and you do that at roughly the same time each day — you don't even have to do it every day — what you'll soon notice is that getting into the work becomes easier.
Yes, there is a psychological component to that. But it's also the case that the neuromodulators, neurotransmitters, and hormones that allow you to focus will start to ramp up in anticipation of the learning that you did at roughly the same time in the previous days.