2022年4月4日星期一
TED——我们该怎样学习，颠覆你对大脑的认知
So how do we learn? And why does some of us learn things more easily than the others? So, as I just mentioned,I am Dr. Lara Boyd. I am a brain rearcher here at the University of British Columbia. The are questions that fascinate me. So brain rearch is one of the great frontiers in the understanding of human physiology, and also in the consideration of what makes us who we are. It’s an amazing time to be a brain rearcher, and I would argue to you that I have the most interesting job in the world. What we know about the brain is changing at a breathtaking pace. And much of what we thought,we knew and understood about the brain turns out to be not true or incomplete. Some of the misconceptions are more obvious than others. For example, we ud to think that after childhood the brain did not, really could not change. And it turns out that nothing could be farther from the truth. Another misconception about the brain is that you only u parts of it at any given time and it’s silent when you do nothing. Well, this is also untrue. It turns out that even when you’re a
t a rest and thinking of nothing, your brain is highly active. So it’山楂梨s been advances in technology, such as MRI, that’s allowed us to make the and many other important discoveries. And perhaps the most exciting, the most interesting and transformative of the discoveries is that, every time you learn a new fact or skill, you change your brain. It’s something we call neuroplasticity. So as little as 25 years ago, we thought that after about puberty, the only changes that took place in the brain were negative: the loss of brain cells with aging, the result of damage, like a stroke. And then, studies began to show remarkable amounts of reorganization in the adult brain. And the ensuing rearch has shown us that all of our behaviors change our brain. That the changes are not limited by age. It’s a good news right? And in fact, they are taking place all the time. And very importantly, brain reorganization helps to support recovery after you damage your brain. The key to each of the changes is neuroplasticity. So what does it look like? So your brain can change in three very basic ways to support learning.
And the first is chemical. So your brain actually functions by transferring chemicals signals between brain cells, what we call neurons, and this triggered a ries of actions a
nd reactions. So to support learning, your brain can increa the amount or the concentrations of the chemical signaling that’s taking place between neurons. Becau this change can happen rapidly, this supports short-term memory or the short-term improvement in the performance of a motor skill.
The cond way that the brain can change to support learning is by altering its structure. So during learning, the brain can change the connections between neurons. Here, the physical structure of the brain is actually changing, so this takes a bit more time. The types of changes are related to long-term memory, the long-term improvement in a motor skill. The process interact, and let me give you an example of how. So we’ve all tried to learn a new motor skill, maybe playing the piano, maybe learning to juggle. You ‘ve had the experience of getting better and better within a single ssion of practice, and thinking”I have got it.” And then maybe you return the next day, and all tho improvement from the day before are lost.what happened? Well, in the short-term, your brain was able to increa the chemicals signaling between your neurons. But for some reason, tho changes did not induce the structural changes that are necessary to suppo
rt long-term memory. Remembers that long-term memories take time. And what you e in the short-term does not reflect learning. It’端午节的诗句古诗大全优化代理s the physical changes that are now going to support long-term memories, and chemical changes that support short-term memories. Structural changes also can lead to integrated networks of brain regions that function together to support learning. And they can also lead to certain brain regions that are important for very specific behaviors to change your structure or to enlarge. So here’中华民国成立时间s some examples of that. So people who read Braille have large hand nsory areas in their brain than tho of us who don’t. Your dominant hand motor region, which is on the left side of your brain, if you are right-handed, is larger than the other side. And rearch shows the London taxi cab drivers who actually have to memorize a map of London to get their taxi cab licen, they have larger brain regions devoted to spatial, or mapping memories.
The last way that your brain can change to support learning is by altering its function. As you u a brain region, it become more and more excitable and easy to u again. And as your brain has the areas that increa their excitability, the brain shifts how and whecos10
n they are activated. With learning, we e that whole networks of brain activity are shifting and changing. So neuroplasticity is supported by chemical, by structural, and by functional changes, and the are happening across the whole brain. They can occur in isolation from one or another, but most often, they take place in concert. Together, they support learning. And they’re taking place all the time. I just told you really how awesomely neuroplastic your brain is. Why can’t you learn anything you choo to with ea? Why do our kids sometimes fail in school? Why as we age do we tend to forget things? And why don’t people fully recover from brain damage? That is: what is is that limits and facilitates neuroplasticity? And so this is what I study. I study specifically how it relates to recovery from stroke. So recently, stroke dropped from being the third leading cau of death in the US to be the forth leading cau of death. Great news, right? But actually, it turns out that the number of people having a stroke has not declined. We are just better at keeping people alive after a vere stroke. It turns out to be very difficult to help the brain recover from stroke. And frankly, we have failed to develop effective rehabilitation interventions. The net result of this is that stroke is the leading cau of long-
term disability in adults in the world; individuals with stroke are younger and tending to live longer with that disability, and rearch from my group actually shows that the health-related quality of life of Canadians with stroke has declined. So clearly we need to be better at helping people recover from stroke. This is an enormous social problem, and it’s one that we are not solving. So what can be done? One thing is absolutely clear: the best driver of neuroplastic change in you brain is your behavior. The problem is that the do of behavior, the do of practice that’s required to learn new and relearn old motor skills, is very large. And how to effectively deliver the large dos of practice is a very difficult problem; it’s also a very expensive problem. So the approach that my rearch has taken is to develop therapies that prime or that prepare the brain to learn. And the have included brain simulation, exerci and robotics. But through my rearch, I’ve realized that a major limitation to the development of therapies that speed recovery from stroke is that patterns of neuroplasticity are highly variable from person to person. As a rearcher, variability ud to drive me crazy. It makes it very difficult to u the statistics to test your data and your ideas. And becau of this, medical interventions studies are specifically d
esigned to minimize variability. But in my rearch, it’s becoming really clear that the most important, the most informative data we collect is showing this variability. So by studying the brain after stroke, we’ve learned a lot, and I think the lessons are very valuable in other areas. The first lesson is that the primary driver of change in your brain is your behavior, so there is no neuroplasticity drug you can take. Nothing is more effective in than practice at helping you learn, and the bottom line is you have to do the work. And in fact, my rearch has shown incread difficulty, incread struggle if you will, during practice, actually leads to both more learning, and greater structural change in your brain.
The problem here is that neuroplasticity can work both ways. It can be positive, you can learn something new, and you refine a motor skill. And it also can be negative though, you forgot something you once knew, you become addicted to drugs, maybe you have chronic pain. So your brain is tremendously plastic, and it’s been shaped both structurally and functionally by everything you do, but also by everything that you don’t do. The cond lesson we’ve learned about the brain is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach
to learning. So there is no recipe for learning. Consider the popular belief that it takes 10000 hours of practice to learn and to master a new motor skill. I can assure you it’s not quite that simple. For some of us, it’圆形的面积s going to take a lot more practice, and for others it may take far less. So the shaping our plastic brains is far too unique for there to be any single intervention that’s going to work for all of us. This realization has force us to consider something call personalized medicine. This is the idea that to optimize outcomes each individual requires their own intervention. And the idea actually comes from cancer treatments. And here it turns out that genetics are very important in matching certain types of chemotheraphy with specific forms of cancer. My rearch is showing that this also applies to recovery from stroke. There’re certain characteristics of brain structure and function we call biomarkers. And the biomarkers are proving to be very helpful and helping us to match specific therapies with individual patients. The data from my lab suggests it道理与人生’s a combination of biomarkers that best predicts neuroplastic change and patterns of recovery after stroke. And that’s not surprising, given how complicated the human brain is. But I also think we can consider his concept much more broadly. Give
n the unique structure and function of each of our brains what we’光电感烟探测器ve learned about neuroplasticity after strokr applies to everyone. Behaviors that you employ in your everyday life are important. Each of them is changing your brain. And I believe that we have to consider not just personalized medicine but personalized learning. The uniqueness of your brain will affect you both as a learner and also as a teacher. This idea helps us to understand why some children can thrive in tradition educations ttings and other don’t; why some of us can learn language easily and yet, others can pick up any sport and excel. So when you leave this room today, you brain will not be the same as when you entered this morning. And I think that’s pretty amazing. But each of you is going to have changed your brain differently. Understanding the differences, the individuals patterns, this variability and change is going to enable the next great advance in neuroscience; it’s going to allow us to develop new and effective interventions, and allow for matches between learners and teachers, and patients and interventions. And this does not just apply the recovery from stroke, it applies to each of us, as a parent, as a teacher, as a manager, and also becau you are at TEDx today, as a lifelong learner.
Study how and what you learn best. Repeat tho behaviors that are healthy for your brain, and break tho behaviors and habits that are not. Practice. Learning is about doing the work that tour brain requires. So the best strategies are going to vary between individuals. You know what, they’re even going to vary within individuals. So for you, learning music may come very easily, but learning to snowboard, much harder. I hope that you leave today with a new appreciation of how magnificent your brain is. You and your plastic brain are constantly being shaped by the world around you. Understand that everything you do, everything you encounter and everything you experience is changing your brain. And that can be for better, but it can also be for wor. So when you leave today, go out and build the brain you want. Thank you very much.
