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posted by mrcoolbp on Wednesday April 08 2015, @05:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the simon-says-don't-overthink-it dept.

MedicalXpress is reporting on new research into how our neural systems learn new skills. Led by UC Santa Barbara's Scott Grafton and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University, they sought to answer the question: "Why are some people able to master a new skill quickly while others require extra time or practice?"

Researches used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to identify regions of the brain involved with learning and new skill acquisition while subjects played a simple game. Rather than focus on specific areas of the brain for short periods of time, the researchers took a more holistic approach, examining the process of learning a more complex skill over a longer period of time.

Some of the results were surprising. Interestingly, using more of your brain won't help you learn more quickly; instead, as "counterintuitive as it may seem, the participants who showed decreased neural activity learned the fastest."

From the article:

The researchers discovered that the neural activity in the quickest learners was different from that of the slowest. Their analysis provides new insight into what happens in the brain during the learning process and sheds light on the role of interactions between different regions. The findings, which appear online today in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that recruiting unnecessary parts of the brain for a given task—similar to overthinking the problem—plays a critical role in this important difference.

At UCSB's Brain Imaging Center, study participants played a simple game while their brains were scanned with fMRI. The technique measures neural activity by tracking the flow of blood in the brain, highlighting which regions are involved in a given task.

Participants responded to a sequence of color-coded notes by pressing the corresponding button on a hand-held controller.

The study continued with participants practicing at home while researchers monitored their activity remotely. Subjects returned to the Brain Imaging Center at two-, four- and six-week intervals for new scans that demonstrated how well practice had helped them master the skill. Completion time for all participants dropped over the course of the study but did so at different rates. Some picked up the sequences immediately, while others gradually improved over the six-week period.

"Previous brain imaging research has mostly looked at skill learning over—at most—a few days of practice, which is silly," said Grafton, who is also a member of UCSB's Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies. "Who ever learned to play the violin in an afternoon? By studying the effects of dedicated practice over many weeks, we gain insight into never before observed changes in the brain. These reveal fundamental insights into skill learning that are akin to the kinds of learning we must achieve in the real world."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2015, @08:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2015, @08:12PM (#167975)

    Certain areas of the brain are specialized for a given type of task. Some people already had the well-developed areas of the brain required for the game. The others had to get help from other areas of the brain.

    There are parts of the brain that are highly specialized but they are multi-functional. Think of the brain as a virtual-server environment of parallel processing. The task comes in and all of the virtual nodes begin processing. One node gives the answer first. Another node learns which node can solve the task the fastest and direct similar tasks to that particular node in the future. With time and repition, the node best suited to the task gets so good at the task that it can 'do it with it's eyes closed'.

    These neural network nodes of the brain are simply clusters that are gears to toward solving particular types of tasks. They are 'virtual' because they can grow or shrink by conscripting other nodes and the boundaries or borders of a particular node are redefined. It's artfully organic.

    I know there well-established areas of the brain that well-suited to particular tasks - and these mappings of area/task will generally conform across many individuals. However, what if that conformity is a product of common developmental experiences? Not just the range of the common experiences but also the sequence and frequency of experiences. Is it similar to how plants grow toward light?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2015, @08:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2015, @08:54PM (#167983)

    I think much of it is that if you have two pieces of information located on opposite ends of the brain it will take longer to join those pieces of information together. It's like having multiple computers ten miles apart trying to collectively perform a common task that requires a lot of communication among them vs having them next to each other. The longer the distance traveled the more brain activity (in the form of transferring information back and forth) must be done and so the more latency is required. Just like playing online games, do you want everyone to be far away from each other connecting to a server far far away or do you want everyone to be in close proximity to each other and the server. What results in a smoother gaming experience and less energy use/activity.