Science of Learning

You must have heard this old age saying that you can learn anything at any time and there is only one rule for it – Practice, Practice and Practice. In this article we will try to understand what goes in our brain and mind when we learn something new and how we can learn more quickly and efficiently by understanding our brain. We need conscious attempt to learn anything new in faster way. Our brain plays active role in learning the new technique and after lot of practice Mind take over it and from conscious activity it becomes automatic activity. But what changes occurs in our brain in initial learning and how mind carry on it automatically after learning? Lets talk about it.

Our brain and mind is the controller of our body. Our all senses of perception (eye, ears etc) and action (hand, lag etc) only follow what our brain ask them to do so. Our internal body functions are controlled by our mind. Just imagine a person who is learning cricket and ready to hit the ball. What happens in his mind when a ball is approaching her? His eyes capture the details of ball like line of ball and length of ball and send the details to brain. Brain analyzes the previously stored data and instructs hand to hit the ball with calculated speed and direction and all this happen in fraction of second. Same process happen in beginner and an expert then why a beginner misses the ball and expert is able to hit with perfect timing? The secret lies in a cell like structure that is called neurons. Neurons are signal careers in our body. When your eyes see the ball then information from eye to brain is transferred through neuron and when brain ask hand to hit the ball with a fixed speed and time that information from brain to hand is also transferred through neurons. There is a long pathway of neurons in our body. So the major difference between beginner and expert is in difference in their neural pathways. An expert has more efficient and strong neural pathway for that particular activity then a beginner who doesn’t have efficient neural pathway for that activity. You can compare neural highway with the expressways that carries signals in our body

Earlier it used to be believed that our brain structure (number of neurons, neural pathways) doesn’t change that means at early age we formed neural pathways in our body and those pathways live intact throughout the life but on later research it was find out that brain structure is keep changing. It means we keep producing new neurons and keep forming new neural highways in our body at all age. Whenever we learn something new some change occurs in our brain. Right now when you are reading this article and trying to grasp this phenomenon some change is happening in your brain. This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity. So can we say that these neural pathways in our body are the basis of skills? let’s talk about a very famous experiment.

London Taxi Driver’s brain experiment

To understand how do we learn and how do we become proficient in any activity we must know that how our brain functions. Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire of University College London (U.C.L.) carried out a wonderful research on how our brain structure changes while we learn something new. London is a very big city that has thousands of streets and locations. A taxi driver must remember all the streets and important locations before getting license to drive in London for that they need to go to a rigorous 3-4 memorizing training course. To earn their licenses, cab drivers in training spend three to four years driving around the city on mopeds, memorizing a labyrinth of 25,000 streets within a 10-kilometer radius of Charing Cross train station, as well as thousands of tourist attractions and hot spots. "The Knowledge," as it is called, is unique to London taxi licensing and involves a series of grueling exams that only about 50 percent of hopefuls pass. Maguire and her U.C.L. colleague Katherine Woollett decided to follow a group of 79 aspiring taxi drivers for four years to measure the growth of their hippocampus (a part of brain that is responsible for memory) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as they completed The Knowledge. For the sake of comparison, Maguire also measured brain growth in 31 people who did not drive taxis but were of similar age, education and intelligence as the taxi trainees. 

After 4 years of research, Maguire found some very interesting results that really changed the perception of world about brain. Maguire found that those drivers who cleared training hag got their hippocampus grown over time.  It seemed that the longer someone had been driving a taxi, the larger his hippocampus, as though the brain expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London's streets. Now interesting question is why this hippocampus ballooning occurred in their brain?

It happened due to the neurons. Hippocampus neurons made more connections with other neurons. Their neural pathway developed more efficient with over the time so that they can keep large data of streets and send to brain more efficiently. One of very interesting finding was that those driver performed very well in spatial memory test but performed very poor in visual memory test that means for different tasks we have different pathways.

Rewiring the brain with learning - Neuroplasticity

Neurons are speeded all over in our body and transfer information from senses to brain to senses. Neurons can connect to each other to form neural networks. Neurons are the core components of the brain and spinal cord of the central nervous system. Those neurons that transfer information from senses to brain are called sensory neurons and the neurons that transfer information from brain to muscles are called motor neurons. Neuron transfer information to another neuron by making connection with another neuron by an electro chemical process and that connection is called synapses and series of those neurons are called neuron pathway and this entire process is called neurotransmission. The human brain has a huge number of neuron connections. We have around 10¹¹ (one hundred billion) neurons in our body and each neuron has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 10¹⁵ synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 10¹⁴ to 5 x 10¹⁴ synapses (100 to 500 trillion). Earlier it used to be believed that production of neurons stopes with the age but in 1999 a researcher at the Salk Institute, San Diego discovered neuron production in a 72 year old person

Neuron and learning

Imagine universe on the canvas. There are billions of stars and you can connect any star to another star. Same happen in our body. Our body has billions of neurons and a neuron can make connection with 7000 other neurons so whenever we learn something new a neural connection is formed in our brain. When we repeat that activity that connection becomes strong and when we stop practice that connection gets weaker with time and that strong neural connections and pathway distinguishes an expert from beginner. So an expert musician have strong and well developed neural pathway then a beginner musician related to that activity but a beginner musician can become expert musician by practicing since with the practice his neural pathway will also get strong and efficient that’s why it is said that practice makes man perfect

Neural Pathway, Habit and Behavior

Why we keep doing some things without any conscious efforts because we are habitual to do so. Habits are defined as “behavior done with little or no conscious thought”. When you are expert in guitar you don’t need any conscious effort, you will play it like as you trained. If you are trained to play with straight bat in cricket you will play with straight bat habitually and secret of habit lies in neural pathways. Habit is nothing but well-travelled neural pathway where information flows smoothly. After lot of practice you developed a strong neural pathway in your brain and information always flow through that pathway and we call ourselves that we are habitual to do so. That’s why it is said that if we do some activity for 21 days or 66 days we become habitual of it. Basically a strong new neural pathway is formed in brain that time and as we leave that activity the connection gets weaker. If you are addicted to cigarette or foods it means you have created a strong neural pathway related to that activity and you have programed your mind that whenever information flows through this pathway special neurons in this pathway release the chemical dopamine. The release of dopamine gives you a little jolt of pleasure. These special neural pathways are called reward pathways. So if you want to change some habit then you need to weaker your existing pathway and need to develop new pathways that can be done by conscious attempt to learn new habit and avoid to old habit. After all we are the architect of our brain and we can change its wiring whenever we want.  

Learning just by thinking

Till now we learnt that we learn by practicing. When we do practice a new neural pathway created and with practice it gets strong now the next question is can we control this process that means can we create neural pathway in our brain without doing just by thinking. That means I just close my imagine and I just think that I am playing cricket but I will not go to ground so by merely only thinking can I develop neural pathway in my brain. Our mind is power house and controls all the internal activity of our body. As explained in previous chapters by controlling mind we can control our internal functions so by controlling my mind can I order my brain to create neurons and develop neural pathways. So can I learn something new just by controlling my mind and thinking about that activity?

A fantastic experiment was carried out at Harvard Medical School in 2007.Some volunteers in a lab were asked to learn and practice a five-finger piano exercise. A neuroscientist instructed half of the volunteers to play as fluidly as they could. The other half were instructed to merely think about practicing the piano, holding their hands still while playing the music in their heads. At the end of the five days, both groups underwent a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation test, which enabled scientists to infer the function of neurons.

The test results showed that in both groups, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas. Practice rewires the brain. More startling, however, was that the same region of the brain had expanded in the volunteers who merely thought about playing in a discipline way that means mental training may have the power to change the physical structure of the brain and brain doesn't distinguish between a real or imagined exercise but it does not mean that you stop physical practice and focus only on mental training because it is very difficult to control the mind all the time and it’s have its own limitation. But this experiment proves the power of thought. By merely thinking we can create neural connections in our brain and it signifies the benefits of positive thinking. Every thought matters since every thought rewire your brain and this process keeps going on 24x7

So if you ever dreamed to learn something new and think that you have passed the age of learning and can’t learn now then it’s time to make list of all your desired skills that you wanted to learn and start practicing. You can learn anything at any age. So science of learning proves that there is only one golden rule to become master of anything and that is practice, practice and practice.