Neuroscience of Learning: Attention, Alertness, and Memory

Neuroscientist Anna Kalynchuk shares six critical ingredients to learn faster: attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, breaks, and mistakes.

### How to Learn Faster and More Effectively According to Neuroscience
* 🧠 Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to physically change in response to experience, with **synapses forming between neurons when learning**.
* 👶 Learning is easier for children because they are like sponges and can quickly absorb new information, so the **earlier one starts learning a skill, the better**.
* 😓 It gets harder to learn as we age, with learning becoming **exponentially more difficult after our mid-twenties**.
* 🎯 "There are six critical ingredients that can help you learn faster: **attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, breaks, and mistakes**."
* 🔍 Attention is crucial for learning, and focusing on a task helps **retain information, especially for the long term**.
* 🏃 Exercise can improve attention, with just **20 minutes of moderate exercise** enhancing attention for about **two hours**.
* 🚨 Activating the body's **fight-or-flight system** can increase alertness.
* 😴 Sleep is essential for memory consolidation, turning **short-term memories into long-term memories**.
* 🔁 Repetition is key to learning, as it **reinforces brain pathways** associated with the learned task.
* 😨 Making mistakes can be beneficial, as they release **neuromodulators that improve attention** and open up a window for **neuroplasticity**.
* ⏸ Taking breaks after learning is important, as it allows the brain to **replay information** and prevents newly encoded information from being lost due to **retrograde interference**.

Transcriber: Anna Kalynchuk
Reviewer: Michael Nystrom. I'm angry. And I’m angry because I wish
I knew this when I was younger. So I’m a neuroscientist and a lecturer. And as a neuroscientist, I study the brain and the nerves
that span out into the body. And as a lecturer, I teach the next
generation of healthcare professionals. And look, I see some students
struggle with their learning, especially the older ones,
but it’s not their fault. You know, we don't get
taught how to learn. We just kind of expect it to happen. And I think the worst curse of all, really,
is it gets harder to learn as we age. But what if I told you that
there are things that we can do to learn faster and more effectively? I’m going to take you
through the neuroscience behind six critical ingredients
that can help you learn faster: attention, alertness, sleep.

repetition, breaks, and mistakes. Now, first things first.
How do we actually learn? We need neuroplasticity to happen. So neuroplasticity is the scientific
term that essentially means our brain’s ability to physically
change in response to experience. So when we’re learning something,
whether it’s learning information or learning a skill, tiny little connections called synapses form between neighboring
neurons in the brain. And the more we do that thing,
whether it’s information or a skill, the more robust those connections become and the better we get
at doing whatever it is. Now, what you’re looking at here are two neurons that I filmed
in a petri dish connecting. Actually, this was a petri dish
that I was about to throw away, but I saw they were about to connect,
so I quickly took this video. Now, these incredible handlike structures
here are called “growth cones,” and every neuron has one. They actively sense
the environment around

and they help each and every one
of the 86 billion neurons in your brain find the correct place to connect to. So, for example, from here to here, or here to here. And this isn’t learning.
This doesn’t represent learning. What it represents is how our brain
wires itself during development. Now, when things go wrong
with that wiring process or when it doesn't happen
in the usual way, you can end up with things
like issues with learning and memory. Now, kids are a little bit
like sponges, right? They just seem to need
to be exposed to stuff, and they seem to remember it. Languages, skills, sports, whatever it is,
the learning just happens really quickly. Now, have you ever met someone
who’s incredibly talented, and you just thought, “Okay, they must have
some magic thing about them that the rest of us don’t have.” Well, what if I told you that
that's probably not true?

It mostly comes down
to practice, perseverance, and when in development,
they started learning that skill. So the earlier, the better. And people like
Serena Williams and Beethoven, they weren't born with their skills. They practiced, and they all 
actually started by age five. So really, our ability to learn
goes downhill after age five. (Laughter) But it certainly gets harder
through our childhood, through our teens. And once we hit our mid-twenties,
it gets exponentially harder to learn. But the good news is I’m going
to tell you what you can do about it because there are things you can do. You can use attention, alertness,
sleep, repetition, breaks, and mistakes to make your learning better. So first things first. In order to learn, we need
to pay attention, right? Attention is a really important function. So, for example, if I were
to ask you to close your eyes

and focus on your contact
between your feet and the floor. You’ll suddenly be aware
of maybe the texture of your socks, maybe how tight your shoes are,
maybe how firm the floor is. And you weren’t aware
of any of that a second ago. And what that means is that
we have the ability to choose how much attention we pay to something. And studies have shown that
when we are fully focused on a task, we are more likely
to retain that information, especially for the long term. Now, until the last little
blip in human history, we have never had to work
this hard to pay attention. Like, let’s be honest, how many
times do you find yourself rereading or replaying something
because you got a bit distracted? Right? Yeah. We are designed to focus
on one thing at a time. There’s no secret that
the frequent context switching that happens when we use social media, so scrolling through our phones
and seeing lots of different bits of

completely unrelated bits of information,
like news, ads. You know, cat videos. That results in significantly
measurable attention deficits. So I’m not saying it causes ADHD, but studies have shown that if you use
your phone for more than an hour in teens, that results in these attention deficits. So try and use your phone
a little bit less. Now, if you wanted to improve
your attention in the long term, there are things like
focused attention meditation that you can do to improve that. And if you wanted to improve
your attention in the really short term, well, you can actually just exercise. I know you’re thinking, “Oh, well, my doctor always says
I have to exercise and eat well.” But hear me out for a second. Did you know that exercise
can actually increase the size of the part of your brain involved
in learning and memory? It also helps you make new brain cells. And studies have shown that
regular exercise improves memory.

It improves cognition,
so your ability to think. And just 20 minutes of moderate exercise - so not even, you know, intense exercise - that will actually improve your attention
for about two hours afterwards. So here’s what you should do:
if you’re sitting down to study, go for a jog, do some star jumps. It’s even better
if you challenge your balance. If you’re at work,
run up and down the stairs. There are lots of things that you can do
to make this happen. Next, we have... (Air horn blasts) alertness. (Laughter) In order to learn,
you’ve got to be alert, right? It's not rocket science. But he’s the thing. If you’re not fully focused on a task, then you’re going to have a harder time
retaining that information. Activating our body’s
fight-or-flight system or activating our sympathetic
nervous system, as it’s also known,

results in the release of things
like adrenaline and noradrenaline, and amongst other things,
that will increase our alertness. So what are some other
things that we can do to increase our fight-or-flight system? Because obviously, we can’t go around
blasting air horns all the time. Well, again, exercise -
a bit of a recurring theme here. You can do certain breathing techniques
like Wim Hof breathing. You can even end your shower
with a bit of a cold blast of water because that will certainly
make you feel very alert. And we also know that stress
will do the same thing. So we know that if you sit down
to learn after a small stressor - like this, for example -
that will enhance your learning. So what can you do? You can have too much stress, though, as you can see that
I’m experiencing right now. So when you have been experiencing
long-term stress or chronic stress,

it physically changes our brain, and it causes issues
with learning and memory. So if you have been experiencing stress
for a long period of time, you will have impairments in memory. It is that simple,
so do be kind to yourself. But little bits of stress are good. They actually help you
reach peak performance. And we know that having a little bit
of an increase in adrenaline after a learning task will actually
enhance your learning as well. Now you can also ingest substances
to enhance your alertness. Things like caffeine. And there’s a growing body of evidence now
that shows that having caffeine before a learning task or actually
just being a regular caffeine drinker can enhance your learning and memory through a range of different
mechanisms in the brain. We know that, for example, if you eat, you are less alert because that’s
switching off our fight-or-flight system. So maybe don’t sit down
to study after a big meal.

There’s also a limit
to our alertness as well. So it's still a little bit contentious, but studies have shown that we are constantly going through
what we call an “ultradian rhythm.” So about every 90 minutes,
we’re going in and out of peak alertness. So the reality is you can’t be
100% alert all the time, and it’s going to be a chunk of about
8 to 30 minutes in the middle there we will be most alert. Now, another thing for alertness is sleep. Yes, if you haven’t been sleeping,
then, yes, you won’t be as alert. But sleep is really important
for learning for another reason. So sleep serves a really important
constellation of functions. So, for example, it resets our immune
system, it resets our metabolism, it resets our emotional control, and it even gets rid of the waste
that builds up in our brain over the course of the day.

But sleep is actually critical
for memory consolidation, so for turning short-term memories
into long-term memories. There’s a particular part
of the brain called the hippocampus, which is important
for learning and memory. So when you do stuff throughout the day,
your hippocampus is keeping track of that. It’s a bit like a diary. So if I were to ask you
what you were doing before you sat down
to listen to this talk, you’re using your hippocampus
to recall that information. But it only keeps information
there for the short term. And when you sleep,
all of those short-term memories get flitted off to other parts
of the brain, the cortex, and turned into long-term memories. So if you don’t sleep, you can’t turn those short-term
memories into long-term memories. And that’s why sleep
is so important for learning. That’s why pulling
an all-nighter and cramming is the worst thing you can do for study.

because you are not going to retain
that information for the long term. So really, here's what you should do. Make sure you prioritize
your sleep before you study, just so you can be a bit more alert, but also really prioritize
that study after learning because you will need that to retain
that information for the long term. Now, the old adage says
that practice makes perfect, but there's so much truth to that because repetition is key
when it comes to learning. Repetition is key
when it comes to learning. It's not enough to just hear
or see something once and expect to remember it forever. Just like exercising builds muscle, repetitive patterns of thinking or doing
things will reinforce those pathways and those connections in the brain
associated with doing that thing, so it'll become easier to recall. So through the process of neuroplasticity,
you’re making these brand-new connections. And that takes energy,
requires fatty acids.

requires lots of little
proteins to be made. It’s a big job. It takes a lot of energy. And the brain’s not going
to want to invest all of this energy in creating these new connections if it’s something that
you’ve only done once, right? That is why repetition
is so important for learning. It’s basically flagging to your brain
at the cellular level that “Hey, this is the thing that 
keeps coming up in my life. So in order to be more efficient, I need to reinforce this
and do it better.” So here's what you should do. Repeat the thing that you are trying
to learn as many times as you can in that learning period,
and use the spacing technique. So space your learning out
over multiple days so that way your learning has a chance
to build on those new long-term memories. We know that two shorter
learning periods over different days will result in significantly
better learning

than using that same amount
of time on a single day. Sometimes we can learn things in one go, and this is a thing called “one-trial
learning” in psychology and neuroscience. And it basically happens when there’s
a really strong emotional component tied to that experience. So, for example, if it makes us really
happy or really sad or scared, especially if it makes
us afraid, actually, and there’s a really important
biological reason for that if you think about it. So, your brain wants
to remember in exquisite detail everything to do with that scary event, so that way, you know how to respond
the next time you encounter it, or just so you can avoid it completely. And when things go wrong
with that process, you can end up with things like PTSD. Breaks are incredibly important
for learning as well, and there are two main reasons for that. So, first of all, it gives our brains
a chance to replay that information.

It happens completely subconsciously. So, for example, if you were learning
a sequence on the piano, then if you were to take
a ten-second break afterwards, your brain will actually
be brain recording so that you’ll be replaying that sequence,
and you’ll be doing it 20 times faster. And it looks like it might be even better
if you spend 10 to 20 minutes afterwards either just having a quiet break -
no phones, of course - having a nap or doing a round
of nonsleep, deep rest. Now, the other reason
why breaks are important is because that newly encoded information
isn’t very stable. And if you were to use those same networks
to learn something else soon afterwards, what will happen is that newly encoded
information can be destroyed in a process called
“retrograde interference.” And in kids, they stabilize
pretty quickly, within a few minutes. But in adults, as far as we know,
they’re still unstable after an hour.

maybe longer. So here’s what you should do: Make sure you take a 10- to 20-minute
break after you finish learning. And if you're at work, well, then just try and do those mundane tasks
that you can do without thinking too much and wait at least an hour
before trying to learn something similar, preferably do it on a different day. Next, we have mistakes, and I know making mistakes is terrifying. It is really scary, but there’s
a biological reason behind that. So that feeling of anxiety and stress
you get when you make a mistake, it serves a really important purpose. So when you make a mistake, what happens is you’re releasing
neuromodulators like acetylcholine, and you're getting increased activity
in your focused attention networks. And that increase in attention
and that feeling of anxiety serves a really important purpose. It’s basically saying to us,
“Hey, you made a mistake.

You need to change and do better
and become more efficient.” And it's opening up this window
for neuroplasticity. So, whatever happens next,
your brain is ready to take in. Now, if you make a mistake and you feel
a bit anxious, and you walk away, well, ‘A’, you’re not going
to learn that thing, and ‘B’, well, you’re actually learning
to be less able to cope with failure. Here’s what you should do. You should set yourself up
for a little bit of failure, right? Quiz yourself on that topic as you go.
Don’t wait until you’re ready. If you’re learning something -
for example, soccer - don’t just kick it straight at the goal. Change the angle. Make it
more difficult, so you make mistakes. Don't wait for everything to be
perfect before you have a go, because at the end of the day
if you make a mistake

you'll be releasing neuromodulators
that improve your attention. And if you get it right, you’ll be releasing things
like dopamine in your reward circuits, which makes you feel good, which makes you feel more motivated and consolidates the learning of the thing
that you just did correctly, right? So that’s why turning our learning
into a bit of a game can work so well. It’s a bit of a win-win situation
for our brain either way, right? So when you make a mistake, you know,
don't view that anxiety as a bad thing. Lean into that feeling and keep going because it's really your brain's way
of helping you be your best. It’s helping you be better
than the person that you were yesterday. So, as you can see, I’m not angry anymore. I’m still quite nervous. (Laughter) But that’s because
by understanding the brain, I know that you have the keys
to unlock your potential to learn faster.

and more effectively. Those keys are attention, alertness,
sleep, repetition, breaks, and mistakes. So next time you’re sitting down to learn, get rid of those distractions,
increase your attention, increase your alertness,
maybe through a little bit of exercise, repeat the thing that you are trying
to do as many times as you can in that training period,
and repeat it over multiple days, making sure that you prioritize
that sleep in between. Embrace your mistakes, and make sure you take
a 10- to 20-minute break after learning because your brain
is going to thank you. And now I’m going to thank you
for your attention, and I hope you learnt something new. (Applause)

Brain Hack: 6 secrets to learning faster, backed by neuroscience | Lila Landowski | TEDxHobart

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TEDx Talks

The Neuroscience of Learning: How to Learn Faster

As we age, learning becomes more challenging due to decreased neuroplasticity, but there are ways to improve the learning process.

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change in response to experience, forming connections between neurons.

Practice, perseverance, and the timing of skill acquisition are more influential than innate talent, and using attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, breaks, and mistakes can enhance learning at any age.

- Our ability to choose where to focus our attention has a significant impact on information retention, especially for long-term memory.

- Frequent context switching, such as when using social media, has been shown to result in measurable attention deficits.

- Exercise has been proven to improve attention in the short term, with just 20 minutes of moderate exercise significantly increasing attention for about two hours.

Ways to Increase Alertness and Enhance Learning

Engaging in exercise, using breathing techniques like Wim Hof breathing, and exposing yourself to cold water can boost the fight-or-flight response and alertness.

While some stress can enhance learning, long-term or chronic stress can impair memory and learning abilities.

Ingesting caffeine and being mindful of meal times can also impact alertness, but it's important to note that alertness follows a natural ultradian rhythm, and adequate sleep is crucial for optimal learning and alertness.

The Importance of Sleep and Repetition in Learning

Sleep is crucial for the brain to convert short-term memories into long-term ones, so prioritizing sleep is essential for effective learning.

Repetition plays a vital role in learning, as it helps reinforce brain connections and pathways, signaling to the brain that the information is important.

Using the spacing technique and spreading out learning over multiple days significantly improves the learning process compared to cramming all at once.

The Science of Learning: One-Trial Learning, the Importance of Breaks, and Embracing Mistakes

One-trial learning occurs when a strong emotional component is tied to an experience, especially if it evokes fear, leading to detailed memory retention.

Taking breaks after learning is crucial as it allows the brain to replay and stabilize newly encoded information, preventing retrograde interference.

Embracing mistakes is important as the anxiety and stress caused by errors trigger increased activity in focused attention networks, serving a crucial purpose in the learning process.

Embracing mistakes and pushing through anxiety can improve learning and brain function.

Turning learning into a game can release neuromodulators that enhance attention and motivation.

Prioritizing attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, breaks, and embracing mistakes can maximize the potential for faster and more effective learning.