Stanislas Dehaene is one of Europe's leading neuroscientists, and has been studying how education changes our brains for over thirty years. He outlines 4 pillars of learning :
1.Attention : a set of neural circuits that select, amplify, and propagate the signals that we view as relevant multiplying their impact in our memory a hundred fold.
2.Active engagement: a passive organism learns almost nothing, because learning requires an active generation of hypotheses, with motivation and curiosity.
3.Error feedback: whenever we are surprised because the world violates our expectations, error signals spread throughout our brain. They correct our mental models, eliminate inappropriate hypotheses, and stabilize the most accurate ones.
4.Consolidation : over time, our brain compiles what it has acquired and transfers it into long-term memory, thus freeing neural resources for further learning. Repetition plays an essential role in this consolidation process. Even sleep, far from being a period of inactivity, is a privileged moment during which the brain revisits its past states, at a faster pace, and recodes the knowledge acquired during the day.
While error feedback is essential, many children lose confidence and curiosity because their errors are punished rather than corrected. In schools worldwide, error feedback is often synonymous with punishment and stigmatization. Negative emotions crush our brain's learning potential, whereas providing the brain with a fear-free environment may reopen the gates of neuronal plasticity.
According to an emerging theory, the reason that our brain is still superior to machines is that it acts as a statistician. By constantly attending to probabilities and uncertainties, it optimizes its ability to learn. During its evolution, our brain seems to have acquired sophisticated algorithms that constantly keep track of the uncertainty associated with what it has learned and such a systematic attention to probabilities is, in a precise mathematical sense, the optimal way to make the most of each piece of information.
Changing our practices at school, at home, or at work is not necessarily as complicated as we think. Very simple ideas about play, curiosity, socialization, concentration, and sleep can augment what is already our brain's greatest talent: learning.
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