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Perhaps the characteristic that is most responsible for human success is our
amazing ability to learn and to communicate knowledge to one another. Learning
involves change, comparing new experiences to already existing related information
in memory. We adjust our existing models of the world with newly learned
facts. This leads to flexible adaptations, expanding the repertoire of understanding
and behavior.
A child’s brain is genetically wired with a core model of the world, and it is exceedingly
plastic compared to that of the adult. Our brains have a natural proclivity
for prediction. We make sense of our experiences based on already existing
memory models. When we encounter new information, it is transferred during
sleep into existing memory, updating old models. Our waking brain receives new
information, while our sleeping brain is actively sorting what is important to
save and integrates it into long-term memory. During the night also, extraneous
information is erased in the short-term memory storage area of the brain, leaving
available space for the next day. This is precisely why we usually learn better after
a nights sleep.
Children have an incredible aptitude to take new information into existing memory.
Engaging children in positive focused-directed language, enriches learning
and facilitates reading, a breathtaking resource for communicating learned information.
The complex communication of skills and concepts through language
and reading is unique to humanity. As an interesting side note, some neuroscientist
believe that reading involves our capacity to repurpose brain areas of object
recognition. Children are genetically wired to engage with adults in learning. Directing
attention, particularly our children’s attention, to what is important for
survival and wellbeing is a telling characteristic of the values of a family or geographic
culture.
There are critical periods for learning in particular areas of the brain. For instance,
mastering a new language is much easier before puberty. Learning to
read is far less challenging in childhood than in adulthood. Our brains become
more streamlined as we reach maturity. Etchings of myelinated neuronal connections
reflecting memory traces of our growing up experiences are engraved in
pathways. The more often we focus on something the more myelinated and facile
that route becomes. While we may continue in our learning quest as adults, our
brains are much less supple than before puberty.
Focused attention, active engagement, and curiosity are core aspects of the learning
process. We can cultivate learning in children with focused engagement and
mentored curiosity. This presumes captivating our learners with interest, fun,
and enthusiasm. The brain is a filter. Focusing means avoiding distraction and deliberately
amplifying, attention to a specific experience. Without engagement and
focus there is no learning. Paying attention to what our children are focused on,
or for that matter, what we ourselves are focused on, is vital to our developmental
path and emotional wellbeing. In cognitive behavioral therapy we encourage
thinking about your thinking, so that you are aware of your focus and can redirect
it for personal learning, values, and emotional quieting.
Pausing in the learning process both to check what we have mastered and to
make error corrections without criticism, is also a lynchpin of learning. Taking a
study break to test and correct what we recall is much more effective than powering
straight through. Error correction is an imperative component of learning,
and, if carried out by mentors with patience and good nature, it will facilitate
memory recollection.
Sleep too can be incorporated as a delicious period of active learning and
restoration. It is in sleep that we go through the stepwise progression of memory
consolidation, putting new experience into already existing memory. The transfer
of new information from the short-term memory center into the greater capacity
of long-term memory happens during NREM sleep, particularly during
short, powerful bursts of electrical activity called sleep spindles. It is here that
new information is elegantly tagged for recollection or forgetting. This process
clears the short-term memory center for new learning and has been shown to increase
learning ability the next morning.
Newly learned information is sorted through in NREM sleep by its initial transfer
from short-term storage to complex assessment. Then the parsed information is
consolidated with prior memories in REM sleep.This is the last stage of the memory consolidation process. Without the prefrontal cortex on board, logic is abandoned
and the mad hatter REM sleep relationship pairing ensues. Here new information
is linked with already existing related memory facts. Sometimes this
REM dream process lends fresh insight, creativity, and discovery. It almost always
reveals a more accurate model of how the world works.
Sleep loss compromises our ability to learn. Sleep-deprived people most often underestimate
their performance disability. Lost sleep degrades concentration and
focus in children and adults.Children need enriched experiences and plenty of
sleep. When children have learned a great deal they actually tend to sleep more.
They need more sleep than adults and generally consolidate new information
more effectively during sleep than adults. Chronic sleep loss will gradually unravel
into accumulated poor learning and ill health. After staying awake for nineteen
hours people are as cognitively compromised as someone who is legally
drunk. Interestingly, regular adequate sleep for company CEO’s is clearly related
to successful, smarter leadership and employee productivity.
Learning involves transferring consciously focused material into unconscious
memory consolidation. Previously learned information is stored in mostly unconscious
recollection. The new material can become automatized as it is rehearsed
in the sleeping brain. For instance, we know that we can teach a rat a
maze during the day and amazingly see the exact pattern of the recently navigated
maze appear in placement cells in the brain the next night. The replay
happens quickly and many times during the rat’s sleep. He awakens the next day
easily finding his way through the maze that was encountered for the first time
the day before. This happens to us also.
Once focused learned information has been incorporated during sleep into already
consolidated existing memory, it is stored in a mostly unconscious repository.
When you are practicing something for the first time and still awake you
typically reach an asymptote. After sleep you can execute the new learning often
better than the night before without much conscious effort. With this in mind it is
easy to understand why learning is remarkably decreased with sleep loss. As a
side note, one study indicated that even a single glass of wine impeded newly
learned recollection by 40% compared to a matched group who learned the same
material and slept without the glass of alcohol.
Learning happens best in a quieted, rested mind. The brain can’t focus well if we
are in an aroused state of emotional agitation. Scientists recently ascertained
that REM sleep plays a very important role in quieting emotional upset, that is,
as long as Norepinephrine, a brain chemical associated with anxiety, increased
heart rate, and blood pressure among other things, is off line. We are now
schooled to focus on the emotional undercurrent of the dream rather that than
the exact content. When we are quieted at night the wonderful magic of REM
sleep tamps down negative emotion. If you are anxious however, and REM sleep
is taking place with Norepinephrine on board, emotional quieting will not occur.
For instance, PTSD patients have dreams that are more like terrifying trauma
reliving. One of the reasons the old blood pressure drug Prazosin has some efficacy
for traumatized veterans, is because it decreases Norepinephrine during sleep.
As the intense early morning period of REM sleep winds up the ongoing process
of memory integration and emotional calibration, it also assists with thermal
regulation bringing our sleeping body temperature back up to a waking level.
With good rest we awaken with renewed energy, increased knowledge, an emotionally
peaceful mind, and a warm body ready to learn.
REM sleep’s quieting effect on negative emotional states may help to enhance
strategic thinking and learning. Highly emotionally defensive mental dispositions
deter reception of new information that may require thoughtful, conciliatory effort
and adjustments. There is, then, a treacherous cost to agitated emotion and
defensiveness, the forfeiture of learning. Another related side note is that medicated
sleep fails us in many ways compared to non-medicated sleep. For instance,
the popular drug Ambien has been shown to actually weaken brain connections
made with new learning, unlike the strengthening and streamlining of
learning associations characteristic of unmedicated sleep.
Learning in a therapeutic context should foster resilience and the ability to overcome,
and diminish emotional reactivity associated with earlier encountered insults.
We can learn to learn many things, including new ways of thinking about
ourselves and others. We can learn to relate to ourselves and others with compassion
and respect, even if we have been brought up to treat ourselves and others
poorly. We can learn to be consciously aware of the potential downside of reviewing
old emotional wounds, choosing instead to focus forward. Recall the
wonderful scene in the movie “ A Beautiful Mind”. The esteemed mathematician
recovering from psychosis answers a query about inner voices, saying that although
the voices persisted, he no longer focused on them. Importantly we can learn to refocus and to quiet ourselves in myriad ways such as exercise, meditation,
calming distraction, or connection.
The more we understand how the brain is wired for information acquisition, the
better we can calculate how to nurture learning. Learning demands our willingness
to employ self-correction, to nurture curiosity, to practice self disciplined
engagement and focus, and to adhere to careful habits of sleep/wake management.
Learning is an ongoing process of updating your knowledge base and hopefully
a better rendition of yourself.
- Dr. Linda Klaitz, Medical Psychologist
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