Sloan Senior Lecturer Tara Swart Bieber speaks with Newsweek reporter Pandora Dewan about exercises that can help improve memory. "Memory is something that can be trained using neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to be malleable throughout life," said Bieber.
Writing for The Washington Post, Vice President for Open Learning Sanjay Sarma and research associate Luke Yoquinto explore study habits and the science of learning, emphasizing the importance of spacing out learning, in lieu of cramming. “Introducing a bit of space into one’s study or practice schedule can improve long-term outcomes for just about anyone, at any age, trying to learn almost anything,” they write.
Writing for STAT, Justin Chen spotlights graduate student Eugene Lee’s work mapping the brain of worms in an effort to gain a better understanding of how worms, and animals in general, learn. “With science,” says Lee, “you might not know exactly where the research will take you, but you trust that when you arrive all the effort will have been worth it.”
Prof. Earl Miller speaks with Phyllis Korkki of The New York Times about why aging makes learning new skills more difficult. “Your mind’s bandwidth is smaller. You learn at a slower rate because less information is getting in,” explains Prof. Miller. To make learning easier, Miller says it's “important to keep yourself cognitively engaged.”
Lauren Hitchings reports for New Scientist on findings from Professor Earl Miller that show how the the synchronization of brain waves across different regions of the brain may explain our brain’s ability to rapidly process and interpret information.
New Scientist reporter Hal Hodson writes about a new experiment out of the MIT Media Lab that is aimed at investigating how well children learn from robots.