Learning how to learn: harnessing the brain’s potential for development at any age

November 1, 2021

Boussedra Bammadi

You might think that your phone is smart, but your brain is much smarter! The human brain has a tremendous ability to constantly change and develop throughout one’s life, which means that intelligence and mental abilities can be developed at any age.  Successfully harnessing brainpower can have a transformative impact on individuals and organizations.

Imagine immigrants arriving in a new country, learning a new language easily and without a different accent in just a few months.  Imagine how the lives of people who have lost their jobs could be transformed if they were able to learn a new skill with the same ease as in childhood.  According to certain researchers, our minds have much greater potential than we think, driving research into brain capabilities and many of its secrets.

Our brain is constantly learning how to learn 

It was neuroscientist Marcus Reichel who discovered the unique energy in our brain in 1990 while conducting a series of experiments using magnetic resonance imaging.  During these experiments, he observed people at rest while sitting, inactive and during periods of daydreaming. 

According to Norman Doidge’s book The Brain That Changes Itself, “[t]he brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us.”  His research shows that we must learn in order to feel alive.  Our brains continually evolve, particularly during critical periods of development, during which the cortex of the brain is so plastic that its structure changes easily once exposed to new stimuli.  This is what allows infants and young children to develop language in short periods of time and learn words by simply hearing them from their parents.  The adult brain has lower plasticity, which makes it increasingly difficult to for us to change our responses to the world.  As a result, in adulthood, we tend to find familiar types of situations pleasurable, seek out like-minded individuals and ignore information that does not match our belief or perception of the world.[1]

Learning in the critical period is easy because the basal ganglia is always in a working state, according to neuroplasticity specialist Micheal Merzenich. “Whatever the circumstances of a child’s early life, and whatever the history and current state of that child, every human has the built-in power to improve, to change for the better, to significantly restore and often to recover. Tomorrow, that person you see in the mirror can be a stronger, more capable, livelier, more powerfully centered, and still-growing person.”[2]  His research has focused on strategies to remediate speech, language and reading deficiencies, including techniques that allow adults to learn language skills without stressful recall.

Challenge your brain to keep it flexible

Plasticity is defined as malleability and changeability, a term that refers to the neurons in our brains and nervous systems. Scientists have shown that the mental abilities we are born with are not fixed and that a damaged brain can distinguish itself so that one part can replace another in the performance of a function. As a result, neuroplasticity allows brain regeneration, supports its ability to remember and recombine and limits the effect of structural imbalances caused by diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ADHD and others.[3]

We often think that being an adult means that we lose our ability to learn anything new efficiently.  However, by doing jobs that we have always done and continuing to speak our mother tongue languages, we may fail to harness the systems that regulate brain plasticity for much of our adult lives.

However, plasticity is present from cradle to grave, and brain exercises can create drastic improvements in cognitive function. Changing the way we learn, think, understand and remember is possible even among the elderly population.

As opposed to the natural weakness of our brain systems, it is rather our neglect of learning as we age that weakens the brain systems that adjust and control plasticity that hinders our ability to learn. As Merzenich tells us, learning activities that require focus, solving puzzles that challenge our minds or changing our professions stimulates the plasticity controller to continue working. In his view, everything a young brain can do can happen in an older brain, provided that the person receives from the reward or punishment to maintain attention and avoid boredom. Neuroscientists have also developed a number of brain exercises to treat age-related cognitive decline. 

Super learning is a shortcut to perfect learning

Super learning is generally understood as continuing to practice a skill after achieving a standard level of achievement. For example, when the criterion is 20 successful free throws in basketball within 20 attempts, the player continuing to exercise until he reaches 25 successful throws within 25 attempts will have achieved 50% on the standard of superior learning.

According to other views, the term “superior learning” sometimes refers to the continuation of playing in practicing the skill regardless of whether there is an improvement in the result or not, even when an individual reaches, for example, the required proficiency (in the example above, 20 successful throws). In 20 attempts, the player continues to practice additional skill training to enhance learning, making the skill less likely to be forgotten, with the ability to perform it easily at any time, no matter how complex.

What is important here is to note that the rate of improvement in performance decreases gradually and clearly whenever a person reaches a certain limit.  There are also limits to achievement that can be reached, and the degree of learning begins to decrease as the person’s competence reaches the highest level. In other words, the more competent a person becomes with respect to a particular skill, it takes to surpass the limits of achievement.

Over time, a person’s ability to push the limits of his or her own achievements becomes weaker, while others begin to achieve better results.  This often decreases the desire for superior learning, partly because the learning process becomes boring, and continuing does not lead to significant improvement.

Despite certain limitations, the idea that the brain can change its structure through thought and activity is can dramatically increase our understanding of love, grief, relationships, learning, addiction, culture and technology, and even extend to all social, human, and physical sciences.  It can also go a long way towards promoting investment and research into the human brain and lifestyle medicine as opposed to artificial intelligence and technologies.

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Based in Morocco, Boussedra Bammadi is a writer and translator of short stories and essays in law and social science.

[1] See Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. 

[2] See Michael Merzenich, Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life. 

[3] See Bryan Kolb, Muhammad Arif & Robbin Gibb, Searching for factors underlying cerebral plasticity in the normal and injured brain, Journal of Communication Disorders (2011).