Pt 2: NEUROPLASTICITY & LEARNING - 6 secrets to learning faster, backed by neuroscience

Now, first things first, how do we actually learn? We need

neuroplasticity

to happen, so

neuroplasticity

is the scientific term that essentially means the ability of our brain to physically change in response to experience, so when we're

learning

something, whether it's

learning

information or, you know, learning. a skill, little connections called synapses, form between neighboring neurons in the brain and the more we do that, whether it's information or a skill, the stronger those connections become and the better we can do whatever it is that you're looking at now. Here are two neurons I filmed in a petri dish connecting.

This was actually a petri dish that I was about to throw away, but I could see that they were about to connect, so I quickly took this video. Now these amazing hand-like structures here. They are called growth cones and every neuron has one, they actively sense the environment around them and help each and every one of the 86 billion neurons in your brain find the right place to connect, for example from here to here or from here to here and to this. It is not learning, this does not 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 the usual way, you can end up with things like problems with learning and memory Now, children are a bit like sponges, they seem to need to be exposed to things. and they seem to remember them. Language skills, you know. Sports, whatever it is, learning happens very quickly. Have you ever met someone? who is incredibly talented and you thought okay, they must be, they must have something magical that the rest of us don't have. What if I told you that probably isn't true? It mainly comes down to practicing perseverance and when you are developing.

They started to learn that skill, so the sooner the better, and people like Serena Williams and Beethoven were not born with the skills they practiced and in fact, they all started at age five, so really our ability to learn goes downhill after age five, but it certainly gets harder during our childhood and adolescence and once we hit our 20s it becomes exponentially harder to learn, but the good news is I'm going to tell you what you can actually do about it because there are things what can you do. Can you use attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, breaks and errors to improve your learning?