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Proof That Practice Does Make Perfect
eldavojohn sends us an article about a discovery by Carnegie Mellon researchers that explains why repetitive studying or training is effective. Previous research had suggested the opposite, which ran counter to nearly everyone's personal experience. Scientists hope that this information will help us to learn more about diseases which affect the memory, such as Alzheimer's. From the article:
"In a series of experiments the researchers blocked different receptors, including NMDA, to see the receptors' effect on long-term neural stimulation. They found that while the NMDA receptor is required to begin neural strengthening, a second neurotransmitter receptor -- the metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptor -- comes into play after this first phase of cellular learning. ...blocking mGlu receptors caused strengthening to stop."
Anyone who actually read the article might tell you that was not the point of the article. They were wondering why the brain seems at first to weaken the synapses in parts of your brain after the initial learning phase. Now they discovered that actually the opposite happens in different parts of the brain after this initial process.
GeoKone.NET
The researchers aren't explaining metaphysically "Why?" we learn by repetition,
The researchers aren't stating "Repetition works, you should try it sometime because it's a brand new discovery!!"
The only point of this experiment is that the researchers found the neurotransmitter and receptor sites that were shown to cause repetition to work, all we learn is that the chemical (mGlu) facilitates long-term learning...
Long term memory creation is called coding in the psych literature, which may appeal to some of the pretentious and humble nerds alike.
Now I love you guys, but we need to start moderating these "captain obvious" comments and stop making them in the first place.
10 Read
20 Think
30 React
40 Goto 10
A whopping 120 characters to take your mind off topic. Tested in MS Word.
I remember reading that many experts in expertise, if there is such a thing, believe that in order to master something, like a musical instrument or painting or an academic study you need about 30,000 hrs of training and practice. That's about 8 hrs a day for 10 years.