with less brain activity. So stop thinking and learn! … wait what?!

Hi Everyone! Crystal here for DNews exploring the idea that over thinkers like me, may learn

new tasks more slowly and be less successful at those tasks than those who don’t analyze

and evaluate their every move.

Scientists have known for a while that cognitive control from the frontal cortex can have a

depressing effect on our ability to learn new tasks. This is probably because that brain

region is responsible for problem solving, planning and execution, and its “top down”

regulation of our behavior can lead us to make things more complicated for ourselves

than they really are.

Children learn wayyy faster than adults because they are not subject to this cortical control.

They CAN’T over think because their judgy frontal cortex hasn’t been fully developed

yet! This is one reason why kids are more creative and frequently take risks that an

adult probably wouldn’t.

When humans are exposed to a new task almost our entire brain is active and desperately

trying to make sense and associations from the new input. As we get better at the task

and “figure it out” this global network activity gets pruned to only what we need

specifically for task performance (eg. motor and visual cortices). How quickly this specification

happens corresponds to how “quickly” we learn the task.

Researchers at several universities, looked at this process across the whole brain and

recorded which regions maintained their connections and activity, and which ones didn’t. These

data were recorded as fMRI scans of whole brain as subjects learned a simple musical

computer game. The scientists were hoping to visualize the changes that happened as

people learned, but what they didn’t expect is that subject data would organize itself

into two categories: “fast” learners and “slow” learners.

Those who learned the musical video game very quickly showed rapid drop off of global brain

activation. The “slow” learners maintained more global brain activity over the six week

trial and showed prolonged involvement of associative regions of the cortex. This lead

researchers to conclude that “over thinking” - by maintaining vigilance, monitoring errors,

and frequently making associative judgements - makes it more difficult for individuals

to “transform a task from slow and challenging to fast and automatic”.

More studies are needed to truly understand this process but it very well could be that

analyzing your thinking about thinking about what you are trying to learn isn’t doing

you any favors and making it harder for you to be successful.

So get out of your own way, stop second-guessing and re-optimizing everything and just let

it happen!!

What do you think? What task are you making more difficult for yourself?