Improving Our Thinking and Learning
Our brains adjust their structures to reflect life experiences. This adjustment (that scientists call "plasticity") enables us to learn—and to change our brains by learning.
Nerve cells learn when they are exercised. Practice, for instance, stimulates connections and makes them learn. But nerve cells can also learn when we tell them to.
Making Our Nerve Cells Learn
We can deliberately activate the circuits (nerve cell connections) that signal something is important. This causes them to pass the message on, to tell other nerve cells that what is happening should be learned well. This happens when something is important to us emotionally.
The brain centers involved in emotions are directly connected to the learning system. When they are activated, they automatically start the teaching circuits (chains of nerve cells). This is why emotional events—our first day of school, the birth of child, a parent's death—become so engraved in our memories.
We can take advantage of this natural learning booster by believing something is important. If we try to learn without feeling interested, very little of that information will be saved in our memories. But if we force ourselves to treat what we're learning as if it were vitally important, our brains will join in, and will trigger our learning circuits.
The difference is astounding. When they are not interested, people learn 10 percent or less of what they're taught. But when we are interested, we remember more than 90 percent!
Conscious and Unconscious Thinking
As humans, we use memory to create miniature intelligences in our minds, to help us get through the "bottlenecks" of certain kinds of thinking.
This "bottleneck" happens in our conscious thinking. When we are fully alert, we can keep only a few thoughts—perhaps only one—in our minds at once.
But our unconscious, automatic mind can handle many thoughts at the same time. The good news is that much of our mental activity (such as perceptions, decisions, and actions) takes place unconsciously and automatically.
There was, however, a time when your mind had to learn such mental tasks.
For example, when you were learning to drive, you had to learn to pay attention. You watched your hands on the steering wheel, each sign and traffic light, the other cars on the road, and every single pedestrian. You also had to think about what to do if you came to a stop sign or the yield sign, or if a car got too close.
As you practiced driving and improved, you could easily see what was happening on the road ahead, and your reactions became automatic. You no longer needed to consciously look for a stop sign or a red light—you began to automatically respond in the right way.
Creating Automatic Responses
When we practice and pay attention, we create automatic mental abilities.
For example, when you learned to drive, you used your conscious mind and chose to instruct your brain. You programmed the necessary circuits so you could drive easily and naturally.
When this happened, your mind also established a network of override circuits. These circuits made sure that the need to stop in case of danger became more important than almost everything else. Your mind also set up a "watchdog" circuit, so you would not stop too quickly if another driver was tailgating you. Finally, your brain programmed what you have to do to stop—take your foot off of the gas pedal and push the brake pedal instead.
You practiced all of these mental processes as you learned to drive, to the point that they became instinctive, like a separate intelligence. Another way to think of this kind of intelligence is as a "mini-mind" operating on its own inside your larger mind.
This content is brought by Staying Sharp, a partnership between NRTA: AARP's Educator Community and the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives.
