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Greater understanding of our brain’s functioning, abilities, and limitations allows us to constantly improve our teaching skills and the productivity of our Brainscape study sessions and working hours (and after-work hours, for that matter). We’ve already given you tips on how to keep your brain in shape and how to boost your brain’s abilities through exercise.
This article, originally published by OnlinePHDPrograms.com, shares the 10 most significant breakthroughs that recent research has made on the science of learning, providing valuable insights on how to make the best use of your brain without wasting energy.
10 Key Learning Sciences Discoveries
When it comes to human organs, none is quite so mysterious as the brain. For centuries, humans have had numerous misconceptions and misunderstandings about how the organ works, grows, and shapes our ability to learn.
While we still have a long way to go before we truly unravel all the mysteries the brain has to offer, scientists have been making some major breakthroughs that have gone a long way in explaining how the brain functions and how we use it to organize, recall, and acquire new information. Here are a few of the biggest and most important of these breakthroughs in the science of learning.
[Here are the first three of ten breakthroughs.]
1. More information doesn’t mean more learning.
The brain is equipped to tackle a pretty hefty load of information and sensory input, but there is a point at which the brain becomes overwhelmed, an effect scientists call cognitive overload. While our brains do appreciate new and novel information (as we’ll discuss later), when there is too much of it we become overwhelmed. Our minds simply can’t divide our attention between all the different elements.
This term has become a major talking point in criticisms of multi-tasking, especially given the modern information-saturated world we live in. But the discovery of this cognitive phenomenon also has major implications for education. In order to reduce mental noise, teachers have had to take new approaches to presenting material. These methods include chunking, focusing on past experiences, and eliminating non-essential elements to help students remember a large body of information.
2. The brain is a highly dynamic organ.
Until the past few decades, people believed that the connections between the neurons in your brain were fixed by the time you were a teenager, and perhaps even earlier. One of the biggest breakthroughs in understanding the science of learning happened when scientists began to realize that this just wasn’t the case. In fact, the brain’s wiring can change at any age and it can grow new neurons and adapt to new situations — though the rate at which this happens does slow with age.
This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity, and it has had major ramifications in our understanding of how the brain works and how we can use that understanding to improve learning outcomes.
3. Emotion influences the ability to learn.
The ability to learn, retain, and use information isn’t just based on our raw IQ. Over the past few decades it has become increasingly clear that how we feel — our overall emotional state — can have a major impact on how well we can learn new things.
Educational situations where students feel stressed, shamed, or just uncomfortable can actually make it more difficult for them to learn, increasing negative emotions and sparking a vicious cycle that may leave some children reluctant to attend class.
Research is revealing why, as the emotional part of the brain, the limbic system has the ability to open up or shut off access to learning and memory. When under stress or anxiety, the brain blocks access to higher processing and stops forming new connections, making it difficult or impossible to learn. It may seem like common sense that classrooms should be welcoming, non-stressful environments, but different students have different triggers for negative emotional states, making it key for educators to watch for signs that indicate this problem is afflicting their students.
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Amanda Moritz-Saladino is the social marketing manager at Brainscape. She writes for the blog, reaches out to existing and future Brainscape users online, and keeps coming up with reasons why Brainscape is the best learning tool ever. Born and raised in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts, Amanda stayed in the area to receive her bachelor’s from MIT in Brain and Cognitives Sciences with a humanities concentration in writing. Anytime of day you’ll be able to find Amanda eating food and candy, walking around her new city, and hanging out at the Brainscape office, obviously! Follow her @aemoritz.