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Temporary Brain Changes Lead to Accelerated Learning
An anonymous reader writes "In an advance that could help the treatment of learning impairments, strokes, tinnitus and chronic pain, UT Dallas researchers have found that stimulating nerves in the brain accelerates learning in laboratory tests. When the juice was turned off, researchers monitoring brain activity in rats found that brain responses eventually returned to their pre-stimulation state — but the animals kept the ability to perform their newly learned tasks."
This is the reason I never leave home without a balloon attached to my tin foil hat.
Normal existence:
1. Be presented with a new non compulsory task
2. Learn at your own leisure
Lab Existence:
1. Be presented with a new task
2. Have brain zapped repeatedly
3. Learn task faster to alleviate zapping
. .
Sounds similiar to the "breakthrough procedure" performed in the classic Flowers for Algernon, when they made the main character a genius for a short amount of time.
What could possibly go wrong with accellerating brain function in rats.
I for one welcome our new super intelligent rat overlords.
Don't worry, it may not have accelerated brain function. It was probably just the rats saying, "Holy F*CK! I better learn this trick so the guy in white coat can stop shocking the sh*t out of my skull!"
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Something like this could be useful.. heh heh.
You've already got it. The temporary brain change is called "Oh crap, I've got an exam tomorrow! Right, where are the books?"
... seem to be missing the parts where it says that the (yes, electrical) stimulation is stimulating neurotransmitters; and that any actual pain-effect is being countered by anaesthesia.
And I'm amazed that, all these comments in, we get "I for one welcome our super-intelligent rat overlords" but haven't yet got a "where do I sign up?". Man, when we were back in undergrad before USB was invented(*), we all wanted RS232 sockets near the bases of our skulls.
(*): Yes. You can all get off my lawn.
Life would be much simpler if we all had to literally run through mazes and be punished or rewarded by soulless overlords, rather than just figuratively.
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
(stolen from someone who stole it from someone on Usenet)
Sounds like Intel SpeedStep(TM) for humans!
Life would be much simpler if we all had to literally run through mazes and be punished or rewarded by soulless overlords, rather than just figuratively.
You obviously haven't seen the cubicle farm at my office.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
One step closer to "I know kung fu."
Sadly, still millions of steps to being in any sort of physical condition to use it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The study is intriguing and the experiment is commendable.
The theory is a bit odd. At the end they detail a theory that presupposes that there is some network in the brain that represents the activity being learned and that it is whittled down from a larger initial chunk of neurons.
A simpler mechanism would be that for Hebbian learning to be able to do its magic you need some random neurons firing. Some of the randomly fired neurons will fire at the times corresponding to when they would fire as part of the network (engram) to be formed and so through Hebbian learning they will soon fire together on purpose and not just by chance.
Overstimulating the brain increases the number of neurons firing at any given moment and thus increases the number of neurons available to learn the task at hand.
Seems awfully similar to http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/11/05/1441251/Scientists-Overclock-Peoples-Brains.
I shouldn't stop hitting myself?
Eureka! I think you've just discovered the ?????? step!
Interesting... would it be possible to come by in a lab coat with a cattle prod? For no reason in particular...
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
If you do that, if you change the state of the brain for advanced learning, the human brain -- indeed probably most animal brains -- adapt in one very predictable manner. They become excellent learners in the new state, and stop learning entirely in the old state.
Which means you'll learn great in the classroom, and you'll learn absolutely nothing from normal experiences -- when you're off the juice.
Which is crazy dangerous, since it'll basically erase the expertise part of experience.
Again, and as usual, this is a great idea for immediate safety-related stuff. Teach CPR this way, train soldiers this way. But normal learning is a different animal. Slower learning isn't usually a lack of learning skill -- it's often a stubborness to stick with existing knowledge, and that is most often a very good thing. You don't want to lose that in general.
I would imagine... as long as the brain you are replacing yours with comes from someone smarter than you, it should learn faster.
Another probable outcome not mentioned in the article as tested was the body that received the changed out brain probably lost all the advanced things learned previously.
One step closer to "I know kung fu."
Sadly, still millions of steps to being in any sort of physical condition to use it.
"I know sumo?"
Now I can finally read and understand all those "Learn programming in 24 hours" books I've purchased over the years...
They are already here....
We call the Politicians