Take a Break for Learning's Sake

Contrary to popular behavior, information cramming may not be the best approach to learning. Quite to the contrary, brain mechanisms engaged when people allow their minds to rest and reflect on things they have learned before, may help to enhance later learning.  Alison Preston, from The University of Texas at Austin (Texas, USA), and colleagues enrolled subjects in a study involving two learning tasks in which participants were asked to memorize different series of associated photo pairs. Between the tasks, participants rested and could think about anything they chose.  Brain scans found that the subjects who used that time to reflect on what they had learned earlier in the day fared better on tests pertaining to what they learned later, especially where information between the two tasks overlapped.  Observing that: “the degree of functional coupling during rest was predictive of neural engagement during the new learning experience itself,” the study authors submit that: “These results suggest that through rest-phase reactivation and hippocampal-neocortical interactions, existing memories may come to facilitate encoding during subsequent related episodes.”