We're back. Sorry it's been a little while, but Conversation Topic Tuesday is up and running again. This week, in honor of John going back to school in the fall, I thought we could read up a little on how our brains learn. Turns out it's really interesting.
Sleep affects learning. According to the Society for Neuroscience, sleeps helps to secure procedural memories, which are important for learning skills. In one study, a group was trained to type a sequence on a keyboard. They were then tested 12 hours later with no significant improvement in performance. They then got a full night's sleep, and the next morning their performance was nearly 20 percent better. A second group was taught the sequence in the evening. The next morning, after getting enough rest, they also showed about a 20% improvement in skill. They were then tested 12 hours later that day and showed no significant progress.
When learning physical movements, like playing a piano piece or a dance or a sport, imagining is almost as good as going through the motions physically. Dr. Norman Doidge wrote about the phenomenon in his book The Brain That Changes Itself (which is definitely worth reading, if you have the chance). In the experiment he references, two groups of people who did not play the piano were taught a sequence of notes to play. They were shown how their fingers should move and were played the notes that should result. Then one group practiced the music for two hours a day, playing it on a keyboard. The other group spent the same amount of time practicing every day, but instead of playing the music physically, they sat in front of a keyboard and imagined playing and hearing the notes in the sequence.
Doidge writes that the study "found that both groups learned to play the sequence, and both showed similar brain map changes. Remarkably, mental practice alone produced the same physical changes in the motor system as actually playing the piece. By the end of the fifth day, the changes in motor signals to the muscles were the same in both groups, and the imagining players were as accurate as the actual players were on their third day." So it's not exactly as good, but for not moving, it's pretty good. In Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw drew the same conclusion.
And we know that exercising helps.
We learn different things at different times. This interactive graphic from The New York Times does a great job of illustrating the stages of learning in people between ages 4 and 21. Then as we move into middle age, our brains get better at understanding and recognizing big picture ideas, which helps identify the significance of thing and find solutions.
That's according to an article by Barbara Strauch in The New York Times. In the article, she quotes Dr. Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary's College. Dr. Taylor suggest that as a result of this different brain functioning in middle age, rather than focusing on learning facts during this stage of life, deeper levels of learning are fostered when we are exposed to people and ideas that are different from what's common to us and from what we already agree with.
"As adults we have these well-trodden paths in our synapses," Dr. Taylor says. "We have to crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up. And if you learn something this way, when you think of it again you'll have an overlay of complexity you didn't have before—and help your brain keep developing as well."
