NEUROSCIENTIST: LATEST STUDY on how you can LEARN 20X FASTER | Andrew Huberman
Summary
TLDRThe video script discusses the importance of repetition and rest in the learning process. It emphasizes that while the '10,000 hours' rule suggests extensive practice is key, incorporating rest periods can significantly enhance learning efficiency. A study highlighted in the script demonstrated that by taking short, 10-second breaks during practice sessions, such as learning a piano sequence, participants experienced 'micro offline gains.' This means that during rest, the brain continues to rehearse the learned material at a much faster pace, leading to a 20 times increase in repetition effectiveness. This phenomenon is related to the 'spacing effect,' a concept proposed as early as 1885, which has been shown to improve learning across various domains. The summary concludes with the advice to include short rest periods during learning sessions to maximize skill acquisition and retention.
Takeaways
- 🔄 Repetition is crucial for learning new skills, and the more repetitions, the better the learning and retention.
- 🕒 The '10,000 hours' rule suggests that a significant amount of time and practice is needed to master a skill.
- 📚 The 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, implies that focusing on the most effective 20% of learning strategies can lead to 80% of the results.
- 🧠 Errors made during practice are valuable for learning, as they provide opportunities for improvement.
- 💤 Taking rest within a learning session is beneficial, with studies showing that a 20-minute nap or doing nothing after learning can enhance learning rates and depth.
- 🎹 A study on learning piano sequences found that injecting short rest periods (10 seconds) between practice sessions significantly improved learning and retention.
- 🤔 The reason behind the effectiveness of rest periods is that the brain continues to rehearse the learned material during rest, albeit at a faster pace.
- 🧬 The hippocampus and neocortex are active during rest periods, allowing for a 'temporal compression' of learning, which effectively multiplies the number of repetitions.
- 🔬 Brain imaging studies have confirmed that these rest periods lead to a 20 times increase in the rehearsal of learned material.
- 📚 The spacing effect, first proposed by Ebbinghaus in 1885, has been demonstrated across various learning domains, including cognitive and physical skills.
- 📈 To maximize learning, incorporate short rest periods during practice sessions, and avoid focusing on anything else during these breaks to allow the brain to continue the learning process.
Q & A
What is the significance of repetition in learning a skill?
-Repetition is vital in learning a skill because it allows for the generation of many repetitions of the task, which is crucial for skill acquisition and retention. The errors made during practice are also important for learning.
What is the '10,000 hours' rule mentioned in the transcript?
-The '10,000 hours' rule is a popular concept suggesting that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field or skill.
How does taking rest within a learning session benefit the learning process?
-Taking rest within a learning session, such as a 20-minute shallow nap or doing nothing for a period after learning, enhances the rate and depth of learning, improving one's ability to learn and remember information.
What does the study involving piano keys demonstrate about learning with rest periods?
-The study showed that injecting short periods of rest, such as 10 seconds, during practice led to significantly faster learning, skill acquisition, and retention compared to continuous practice without breaks.
What are 'micro offline gains' and how do they relate to the learning process during rest periods?
-Micro offline gains refer to the brain's continued rehearsal of the learned material during brief rest periods, which are separate from the active learning task. This process occurs even when the learner is not consciously engaged in the task.
What brain areas are particularly active during the rest periods in the study?
-During the rest periods, the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, and the neocortex, which processes sensory information, are both active, contributing to the learning process.
How does the brain's activity during rest periods enhance learning?
-The brain's activity during rest periods allows for a temporal compression, where the rehearsal of the learned material continues but at a much faster speed, effectively increasing the number of repetitions and enhancing learning.
What is the 'spacing effect' in the context of learning?
-The spacing effect is a learning phenomenon where information is better remembered and learned when studied over increasingly longer intervals of time rather than in a single, concentrated session.
When was the spacing effect first proposed and what is its relevance today?
-The spacing effect was first proposed by Ebbinghaus in 1885. It remains relevant today as it has been demonstrated across various domains of learning, including cognitive and physical domains.
What is the practical advice given for learners based on the findings of the study?
-The practical advice is to incorporate short rest periods of around 10 seconds during learning sessions. During these periods, learners should avoid engaging in other activities and allow their minds to rest or drift, which can lead to more effective learning.
How can the spacing effect be applied to improve learning efficiency?
-To apply the spacing effect, learners should distribute their study sessions over time with breaks in between, rather than attempting to cram all learning into a single session. This can lead to more effective encoding and retrieval of information.
What is the role of functional brain imaging in understanding the learning process?
-Functional brain imaging allows researchers to observe the activity within different brain regions during various tasks, providing insights into the neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory processes.
Outlines
🎼 Enhancing Skill Learning with Strategic Rest Periods
The script discusses the importance of repetition in learning new skills and introduces a new study that emphasizes the benefits of incorporating rest periods during the learning process. The '10,000 hours' rule and other learning strategies are mentioned, highlighting the need for substantial practice and the significance of errors in the learning process. The author clarifies that taking a break, such as a 20-minute nap or simply doing nothing, after a learning session can enhance learning and memory retention. The study described in the script involved participants learning sequences of piano keys, comparing continuous practice with practice interrupted by 10-second rest periods. The surprising result was that learning and retention were significantly improved with the inclusion of these rest periods. The script explains that during these rests, the brain's hippocampus and cortex continue to rehearse the learned material at a much faster rate, a phenomenon known as the 'spacing effect,' which was first proposed in 1885 and has been demonstrated across various learning domains.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Repetition
💡Rest
💡Learning Episode
💡Shallow Nap
💡Micro Offline Gains
💡Hippocampus
💡Neocortex
💡Skill Acquisition
💡Retention
💡Spacing Effect
Highlights
Learning skills requires lots of repetitions and practice.
Errors generated during practice are crucial for learning.
The '10,000 hours' rule suggests extensive practice for mastery.
Rest within learning episodes enhances learning rates and depth.
Taking a 20-minute nap or doing nothing post-learning can improve memory.
Injecting rest periods within the learning process is beneficial.
A study showed that practicing with short rest intervals led to faster skill acquisition.
The study involved learning sequences of numbers or piano keys.
Two conditions were tested: continuous practice and practice with 10-second rest intervals.
Learning with rest intervals showed significantly faster skill retention.
Micro offline gains occur when the brain appears to be resting but is actually processing information.
The hippocampus and neocortex are active during rest periods, enhancing learning.
Brain imaging showed a 20 times increase in repetition speed during rest periods.
The spacing effect, first proposed in 1885, has been demonstrated across various learning domains.
The spacing effect suggests that learning is more effective when spaced out over time.
Injecting 10-second rest periods can lead to 20 times the number of repetitions.
During rest periods, it's best to avoid focusing on anything else to maximize learning.
The study provides practical applications for enhancing learning efficiency through rest periods.
Transcripts
now previously I've talked about how in
the attempt to learn skills the vital
thing to do is to get lots of
repetitions Sammy should still be able
to learn through repetition you've heard
of the 10 000 hours thing you've heard
of uh you know lots of different
strategies for learning faster 80 20
Rule and all that the bottom line is
you need to generate many many
repetitions of something that you're
trying to learn and the errors that you
generate are also very important for
learning
more practice
it also turns out that taking rest
within the learning episode is very
important I want to be really clear what
I'm referring to here
in earlier episodes I've discussed how
when you're trying to learn something
it's beneficial it's been shown in
scientific studies
that if you take a 20-minute shallow nap
or you simply do nothing after a period
of learning that it enhances the rates
of learning and the depth of learning
your ability to learn and remember that
information what I'm about to describe
are new data that say that you actually
should be should be injecting rest
within the learning episode I'm not
talking about going to sleep while
learning
this is the way that the study was done
the study involved having people learn
sequences of numbers or keys on a piano
so let's use the keys on a piano example
I'm not a musician but I think I'll get
this correct
they asked people to practice a sequence
of keys g d f e g g d f e g g d f e g
and they would practice that either
continually for a given amount of time
or they would just do that for 10
seconds they would play gdfeg gdfeg gdf
EG for 10 seconds and then they would
take a 10 second pause arrest
it was just space take a space or a
period of time but they do nothing for
10 seconds then they would go back to
gdfeg gdfeg so the two conditions
essentially
were to have people practice continually
lots of repetitions or to inject or
insert these periods of of 10 seconds
idle time where they're not doing
anything they're not looking at their
phone they're not focusing on anything
they're just letting their mind drift
wherever it wants to go and they are not
touching the keys on the keyboard
what they found was that the rates of
learning the skill acquisition and the
retention of the skills was
significantly faster when they injected
these short periods of rest these 10
second rest periods you might ask why
would this work why would it be that
injecting these 10 second rest periods
would enhance rates of learning what
they called them was micro offline gains
because they're sort of taking their
brain offline from the learning task for
a moment Well turns out the brain isn't
going offline at all
probably heard of the hippocampus the
area of the brain involved in memory and
the neocortex the area of the brain
that's involved in processing sensory
information well it turns out that
during these brief periods of rest these
10 second rest periods
the hippocampus and the cortex
are active in ways
such that you get a 20 times repeat of
the GD FEG it's a temporal compression
as they say so basically the rehearsal
continues while you rest but at 20 times
the speed so if you were normally
getting just let's just say five
repetitions of gdfeg gdfeg gdfeg per 10
seconds now you multiply that times 20
in the rest periods you've practiced it
a hundred times your brain has practiced
it we know this because they were doing
brain Imaging functional Imaging of
these people with brain scanners while
they were doing this this is an
absolutely
staggering effect and it's one that
believe it or not has been hypothesized
or thought to exist for a very long time
this effect is called the spacing effect
and it was actually first proposed by
ebbington in 1885 and since then it's
been demonstrated for a huge number of
different what they call domains in the
cognitive domain so for learning
languages for in the physical domain so
for learning skills that involve a motor
sequence
it's been demonstrated for a huge number
of different
categories of learning so the takeaway
is if you're trying to learn something
you need to get those reps in but one
way that you can get 20 times the number
of reps in is by injecting these little
10 second periods of doing nothing
again during those rest periods you
really don't want to attend to anything
else as much as possible you could close
your eyes if you want or you can just
simply wait and then get right back into
generating repetitions
Просмотреть больше связанных видео
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/r8MLGFbOhYM/hq720.jpg)
The STANFORD secret to learning 10x FASTER
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RvZiOrZwjDk/hq720.jpg)
How To Learn Anything Fast | Dr. Andrew Huberman
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zE_byQr9V8E/hq720.jpg)
Los pequeños descansos que ayudan al cerebro a aprender cosas nuevas
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z2N5a7XZWg8/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCIAKENAF8quKqQMa8AEB-AH-CYAC0AWKAgwIABABGH8gEygTMA8=&rs=AOn4CLDiRg735nlWCG6Qvp2YK5aWex7zzA)
How to Learn: Pretty Much Anything
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yPWnyn7pBzs/hq720.jpg)
Best Revision Technique For Exams🔥| Remember Everything you Read| Prashant Kirad
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_CgmMnBjnz0/hq720.jpg)
Lernen lernen: 13 Tipps aus der Gehirnforschung
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)