We all know someone who has an amazing ability to learn a new skill in a matter of minutes; however, others need more time or much more practice. Why does this happen? A team of scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Pennsylvania and the Johns Hopkins University (USA) conducted an experiment to find the answer to this question. Their results have revealed what happens in our brain during the learning process .
To do this, they had a group of participants who, while learning to play a simple game of notes and colors, the experts measured the connections in different areas of the brain. The volunteers had to reproduce the sequences of notes through buttons as fast as they could based on codes that appeared on a screen . After the experiment was over, the participants were asked to practice at home for the next six weeks.
At two, four and six weeks after the initial study, identical tests were carried out in order to see the progress in the practice of the game and the change in their brains. Thus, some of the participants showed unusual speed when learning new musical sequences and others learned in a much more gradual way.
The brain scans revealed that the neuronal activity of the first group (those who learned very quickly) was different from that of the second group that took more time to do so. Specifically, the visual and motor processing regions showed high connectivity during the first trials but, as the experiment progressed, both areas became more autonomous. In the participants who learned faster , a decrease in neuronal activity was found in the frontal cortex and in the anterior cingulate cortex, both linked to what is known as executive function.
The executive function defines cognitive skills such as self-regulation of tasks , the ability to perform them appropriately, the formation of plans, the anticipation and establishment of goals or the initiation of activities.
Thus, the experiment revealed that “the disconnection of executive function can help to learn other types of tasks . It is the people who can turn off the communication of this part of their brain more quickly who have shorter learning times”, explains Scott Grafton, a co-author of the study.
