Lifestyle

Take a Waking Rest After Learning to Boost Retention

The core idea behind YourNextBrain! is that we have a wide-variety of  ways to improve how our minds and brains work. You can for example, improve how keenly you perceive the world, make decisions, solve problems, manage emotions and generate new ideas.   You can even improve how you learn. This is called learning-to-learn.

Making a conscious effort to improve our learning processes can pay a big dividend. Learning is both lifelong and lifewide – we are learning all the time and everywhere.  Even a small improvement in how we learn is magnified greatly. That’s why I was excited to see the results of a new scientific study from New York University, A Mind at Rest Strengthens Memories, that offers a simple but powerful technique for improving how we  learn.  What they found is that memories are strengthen during periods of rest even when we are awake.  The researchers advise:

“Taking a coffee break after class can actually help you retain that information you just learned,” explained Lila Davachi, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, in whose laboratory the study was conducted. “Your brain wants you to tune out other tasks so you can tune in to what you just learned.”

Of course you don’t need to take a coffee break or be learning by going to class – the principle should work for any form of wakeful resting and learning activity.

For a little more background and insight check out the 4.5 minute video by the researcher.

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Source for blue glowing brain image can be found here.