Shadowing Practice: How Is a Memory Stored Inside Your Squishy Brain? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Memories are biological magic that enable you to experience bygone moments over and over.
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With them, your mind can encode, store and retrieve information about the world and yourself.
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But memories are not static like photos.
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Like dioramas made from wax, each time they're under the spotlight of your attention, they can melt and change a tiny bit.
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Which is a bit concerning because they are a huge part of what makes you, you.
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They are the personal law a lot of your identity is based on, and the basis for your decisions about your future.
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What does it mean if they change?
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And more fundamentally, what is a memory?
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How is a moment in time stored in squishy meat?
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Your brain is weird madness.
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The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe, so we need to simplify quite a bit.
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Scientific models work, but are not a perfect reflection of reality.
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It's a bit like talking about elementary particles, but in a nutshell, what makes you think and feel is a complex system of about 86 billion neurons.
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Extremely complex electrochemical root systems sending and receiving signals through synapses and tiny gaps between cells, where an electrical signal is converted into chemicals,
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bridges the distance, is received and converted into electricity again.
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This is how neurons talk to each other.
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And it's a busy conversation because a typical neuron is connected with up to 10,000 others.
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Together, they're a network of hundreds of trillions of connections.
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A hundred times more than galaxies in the observable universe.
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From these connections, the magic of your existence emerges.
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To create purpose in this chaos, some connections need to grow stronger.
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Whenever two neurons fire at the same time, their synapses change and their connection gets stronger.
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They become buddies if you want, and when their buddy calls, they join in.
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If we zoom out, patterns emerge.
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Dozens or thousands of neurons organize into local columns.
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These columns are very basic information processing units that process a tiny piece of all the input coming in from your senses, like dark and light, a location in space,
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how a texture feels, the sound of words and so on.
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You have columns for sound, images, touch, etc. all located in different parts of your brain.
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These columns are the gears of the biological machine that is your cortex.
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It's the fundamental hardware you emerge from.
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Everything you see, hear or feel causes the gears to move, which means your neurons to fire together.
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But for you to have a coherent experience, these very different gears need to be connected together.
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Any moment you perceive is made from different parts.
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As you're watching this video, your eyes activate columns for vision and color in your visual cortex, your ears transmit information to your auditory cortex,
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language areas are decoding my words, while other networks keep track of your body and emotions.
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All these signals are processed in deeper areas of your brain that evaluate them, boosting what seems important right now and tuning out what doesn't.
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Vastly simplifying, This concert of all these different gears connected by levers, wheels and screws comes together to create a new structure within your brain machine.
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The assembly.
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A new pattern of synchronized activity within the grand architecture of your brain.
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This assembly of very different neurons firing together is what gives you the experience of being a human being in this moment.
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So the assembly active in your brain right now is you watching this video, hearing my voice, and learning about memories.
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But this is only activity without permanent substance.
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Like ripples on a pond, nothing will remain.
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Without memories, you'll be forever trapped in the present.
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To become a being that transcends time, you need to etch these fleeting sensory inputs, these temporary moments, into something physical that will remain.
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And how does your brain decide what becomes permanent?
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With a deadly competition.
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How to store the past.
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In reality, there's not just one assembly active in your brain.
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Your brain can't process everything in the outer and inner world with full attention, so different assemblies are fighting for dominance.
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The details are complicated, but at any moment, one assembly is winning and deemed the most important by your brain.
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This is what you're aware of right now.
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In your brain, the assembly processing the sentence I'm speaking to you seems to be the most active and wins.
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Your brain thinks this matters and you're forming a new memory.
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Two things are happening right now.
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The neurons of the winning assembly are bathed in chemicals that make them more susceptible to change and tie them closer together, strengthening the synapses between them.
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And the memory centre and librarian of your brain, the hippocampus, is activated.
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The details here are super complicated and the exact process isn't fully understood yet.
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But in a nutshell, your hippocampus creates a blueprint saving the rough configuration of the assembly.
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The assembly is saved and put on an index with all your other memories
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that are associated with what was going on in this moment.
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every time I was confused by something in a Kurzgesagt video.
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Finally, you have a memory.
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An activation pattern of millions of neurons spanning many different regions of your brain.
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Activating any part of the pattern now makes the whole assembly fire.
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Now, you're able to relive a moment of the past that's gone forever in the real world.
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But this new memory is very fragile and still pretty temporary.
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Your hippocampus holds its blueprint, but without reinforcement, the assembly will fade and the synapses will be weakened again.
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This is why you forget most moments of your life, why you don't remember how your coffee tasted 43 weeks ago on a Monday.
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You experience most of your life only once in the moment you live it.
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And you don't just forget what happens to you, you also forget what happens in the world.
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Most news stories disappear within days, and often you never even saw the full picture in the first place first place.
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This is why we've partnered with Ground News, a media literacy tool whose mission we fully support.
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Their app and website let you compare coverage, explore context and see how stories spread over time.
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You can even see how bias shapes the narrative.
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Take this study on Alzheimer's risk in women.
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More than 40 articles were published on it.
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Some focus on how menopause shrinks parts of the brain, others highlight the benefits of hormone therapy.
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You're actively weighing different aspects and that deeper engagement helps your brain to remember.
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Most importantly, Ground News reveals blind spots, stories that only one side is covering, showing you what your usual news feed is hiding.
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As information bubbles become the norm, thinking critically about the news is no longer optional.
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And Ground News makes it easier to do just
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that try it via the qr code on the screen
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or go to ground.news slash nutshell our link below gives you 40% off an unlimited access subscription
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and directly supports our channel and now back to your brand new memory
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for the past to be truly saved the assembly needs to fight for its life there are many ways this can happen.
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One of them is novelty.
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If you walk to the bus, listening to some mildly interesting podcasts as usual, this assembly's signal is too weak.
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This moment in time will be lost like tears in rain.
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But if one day you see a crow and a squirrel fighting over a nut, only for a mouse to steal it, the assembly will fire strongly just for the novelty of it all.
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Another one is to reactivate the memory over and over after it's formed.
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Thinking Talking about the animal fight all day and telling everyone about the strange event will etch it deeper into your brain,
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similar to doing loads of repetition when you try to learn something.
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And a major way to make a memory stick is to feel emotions.
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Emotions are really strong mechanisms to guide out behavior that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago.
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They motivate you to avoid danger, seek out food and reproduce.
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You experience this as something feeling good or bad.
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Whenever you feel something strongly, your ancient brain decides that whatever is going on is important for your survival, regardless if it's wrong or not.
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So many of your strongest memories have strong emotional flavors.
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The humiliation when you acted dumb in front of your crush.
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The joy when you beat your dad at Mario Kart.
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The devastation when your dog died.
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The overwhelming love when you held your first kid.
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If we just made you feel something, we increased the chances that you'll remember this video.
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Strong activation, repetition and emotions do the same thing to your memory.
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We said before that chemicals made the neurons able to change.
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Well, now they change drastically.
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Like wax warming up and melting together, the gears of the assembly grow new teeth to fit more tightly.
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Neurons grow more synapses and fire together even better.
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They become closer and more solid.
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A lot of this happens while you sleep.
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Your hippocampus replays the assembly over and over, making it more solid and easier to retrieve, which also means that if you don't sleep enough,
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you literally forget more of your life.
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Think about that when you have to study for a test next time.
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Without proper sleep, you'll be wasting your time.
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But in the end, you have a proper long-term memory.
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A diorama of hardened wax displaying a moment of your life.
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A scene etched into a pattern of connection inside your brain.
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Now, you can remember it forever.
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Well, why remembering changes your memories forever.
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To remember, you need a cue for the memory, something that's part of the original assembly.
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A smell, sound, word, or maybe the image of an angry crow.
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Your hippocampus searches its index for the cue, hopefully finding the right stored assembly, and activates it.
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It fires.
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Your past experience is retrieved.
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The diorama appears in your mind, and you relive seeing the crow and squirrel fighting.
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So far, so good.
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But as the diorama plays for you, you start changing it.
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Recalling memories is not like loading a video and pressing play.
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Under the light of your attention, parts of the wax become soft again, moldable, which means that as you experience the memory in your mind,
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the neurons involved are bathed in chemicals that make them able to change their structure again.
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Your hippocampus organizes memories based on a few things, but most importantly, the context of the experience.
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And the context is now very different.
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When you form the memory, you are tired, in a mildly bad mood before work, and very surprised.
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Right now, you're putting the memory as you're having a night out with your friends
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and are telling your hilarious story of the epic squirrel crow fight.
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And this new context seeps into the memory.
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New connections form, some synapses are weakened, while others reconfigure.
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The diorama changes, becomes funnier and more absurd.
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Not because you wanted to, your brain is just incorporating the new context of your life into the memory.
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As you finish your story, the light of your attention moves on.
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The diorama hardens again, now in a new form.
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The next time you remember the animal fight, you'll remember it as way funnier than when you actually experienced it.
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And it's the same with all your memories.
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When you retrieve them, your brain adds new information or forgets some and incorporates your emotions and expectations.
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In a sense, it updates your past life to fit the narrative of your present life.
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Over time, even core memories can shift, combine with others or generate entirely new elements.
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Your memory system is deeply intertwined with the mechanisms for learning.
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It was never designed to create an accurate representation of the world.
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So your memories are updated as you gain new experiences and information.
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Ironically, the more you remember something actively, the less of the original experience remains.
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This also means that just because you remember something really well, it doesn't mean your memory is correct.
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It just means that its assembly is really strong and vivid.
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It's not a sudden process.
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Your identity is safe for today.
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It's a slow shift in the overall patterns inside your mind.
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You are who you are today, but your future self will be different, and they'll think and feel differently about the things you experience today.
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This is also why therapy can be so helpful.
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By revisiting hurtful memories in a safe context, ideally with helpful introspection, you are literally changing your brain.
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Literally rewiring yourself to get a chance to be happier.
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Because yes, your memories may be the law of your life and the basis for your future, but it turns out, with some help,
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you may be able to rewrite your law and be who you want to be.
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And if you want to rewrite the law of your home, new human-made original art prints just landed in the Kurzgesagt shop.
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Choose a dramatic meteor shower, a tranquil lunar dreamscape, or a powerful volcanic eruption.
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Or even better, all of them.
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Each print is created with bold neon colors and set in a matching fluorescent acrylic frame.
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The sturdy frame is designed to stand solo on your desk or hang on your wall with ease.
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And when the light hits it just right, it radiates vivid color into your room.
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Get yours now and literally brighten up your space.
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You want to listen to the beautiful soundtrack without my annoying voice?
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Well, it's up to you.
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Just select the audio track Interlingua down here and watch the video again as a music video.
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Este vídeo tiene 172 frases y 2321 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 13:51. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 167 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. El 83 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| gear sustantivo | /ɡɪɚ/ | pertrecho, pertrechos |
| emotion sustantivo | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | afecto, emoción |
| crow sustantivo | /kɹoʊ/ | corneja, cuervo |
| activate verbo | /ˈæktɪˌveɪt/ | activar |
| retrieve verbo | /ɹɪˈtɹiːv/ | recobrar |
| emerge verbo | /ɪˈmɝd͡ʒ/ | emerger, aparecer |
| squirrel sustantivo | /ˈskwɪ.ɹ(ə)l/ | ardilla |
| temporary adjetivo | /ˈtɛmp(əˌɹ)ɛɹi/ | temporario, temporáneo |
| complicated adjetivo | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | complicado |
| strongly adverbio | /ˈstɹɔŋli/ | fuertemente |
| bath sustantivo | /bɑːθ/ | bañera |
| helpful adjetivo | /ˈhɛlp.fl̩/ | servicial, adyuvante |
| buddy | /ˈbʌdi/ | compañero, acompañante |
| narrative sustantivo | /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/ | narrativa |
| input sustantivo | /ˈɪnpʊt/ | aportación, aporte |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| zoom out verbo | /ˌzuːm ˈaʊt/ | alejar el zoom, quitar zoom (el) |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 23 contracciones y formas reducidas, como you're, you'll, don't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “th”: bath /bɑːθ/, strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, activation /ˌæktəˈveɪʃən/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, reflection /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: temporary /ˈtɛmp(əˌɹ)ɛɹi/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, biological /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, importantly /ɪmˈpɔɹ.tənt.li/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como gear, emotion, crow.
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | is based · is converted · is received |
| Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa | move, which means · moldable, which means |
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.