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."

Comments

Stating the obvious?

[forgotten_my_nick]

The article is kind of stating the obvious. What really helps you learn though is having an interest in the subject matter.

Reading something over and over that is boring takes longer to learn but you learn. Your brain pretty much goes "Hey this stuff is boring and doesn't look important, but he keeps repeating it so it must be important".

What would be nice is more information on metacognition. This is art of studying how to study.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo ...

[arotenbe]

So, researchers were repetitively studying repetitive studying?

Did you know that learning by repetition is being studied repetitively by researchers?

Recently, researchers have been repetitively studying how knowledge is acquired via repetition.