How your brain learns

There has been so much research done on this - I'll just say some of the basics:

The brain learns by making connections. These connections are real; they involve connections between nerve cells. This suggests that in order to learn best, we should link facts and ideas together in order to create a big picture.

Connections are also made with feelings. So, if you imagine a banana, you'll probably sense the smell as well.

The brain is a fantastic pattern maker. It is nothing at all like a computer, which works things out in a fast stream of calculations. We see patterns, connections, links and associations between all of our five senses (touch, smell, hearing, sight and taste) as well as our emotions. This means that we can create amazingly rich memories if we use as many of these senses as we can.

The brain is not good at learning lists of unrelated facts. It is not good at taking in information in the form of text or lists. It has to interpret information in these forms and create a picture or pattern before it can store the right memory.

Traditional learning, involving just reading text from a book, is a hard way to learn. You will learn better if you use more than just one of your senses and if the information is presented in a multi-media way. For example, if you are learning a new topic, you will learn better if you read the text, see diagrams, read examples from real life, link new knowledge to existing ideas, view photographs, and so on. This helps the brain to create memory patterns which you can recall easily.

The sections on learning activities and note-taking use lots of ideas that are brain-friendly. One important feature is that the brain remembers better if you can absorb the information in your own way, rather than trying to 'photo-copy' it into your head. So, it's very important to read the information, see it, imagine it, think about it, talk about it, act it out even - and then put everything together in your own words, pictures and patterns. That's a creative learning process, which is the key to effective learning and easily recalled memories.

[-> next, go to the section on - How memory works ]

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