Funnily enough I wonder if a burst of adrenaline after learning is effective. Kind of tricking your brain into thinking it just survived a dangerous situation and must retain whatever lead up to it.
Using our evolutionary predispositions for good rather than evil??
I always wondered in a half serious way if sex (just innuendo or tittilating images or something) could have positive effects on learning if done right for the same reasons: evolutionarily wanting to retain information if it has a better chance of leading to mating. Of course you'd only test this with adult students.
I was watching one of those performance science podcasts (Hubermann, I think) and I do believe he said that if you take a cold shower immediately after learning, it increases the likelihood that you'll remember it. So I wonder if the optimal learning pattern would be learn > cold shower > sleep.
