The little breaks that help the brain learn new things

To learn something new, you have to practice, practice, practice, says common sense – that idea that “practice makes perfect”.

But a number of scientific studies have pointed out that incessant practice may not be the most efficient way to learn a new skill: the brain needs rests to consolidate newly acquired knowledge and transform it from a transient memory to a lasting memory.

And one of the most recent findings is that short breaks interspersed with the activity lead to big learning gains: the brain takes advantage of these breaks to perform a super-fast mental “replay” of what it has just learned, reinforcing the newly acquired skill.

These short breaks can be particularly productive for the brain of those who practice new, minute, repetitive movements, such as athletes or musicians — or even patients trying to regain skills lost after a stroke (see later in the article).

“Imagine a scenario where a person starts to learn to play a new song on the piano. We found that during pauses, the brain repeats a 50 times faster version of the movements used to play the song, over and over again, that reinforces the connection of neurons in the areas associated with that new memory”, explains to BBC News Brazil the Brazilian researcher Leonardo Claudino, one of the co-authors of a study on the subject carried out by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). and published in 2021 in the journal Cell Reports.

In that study, he and other NIH researchers recorded the brain activity of 33 right-handed volunteers as they learned to type a sequence of numbers with their left hand on the keyboard. The volunteers had to type as many sequences as possible for ten seconds, and then take a ten-second break.

Some members of this same research team, led by scientist Marlene Bönstrup, had already observed in previous studies that, after the brief intervals, the volunteers improved the speed and precision with which they typed numerical sequences of this type.

Now, the goal was to understand what happens in the brain in this process. And, using magnetoencephalography tests, the scientists were able to observe the quick “replays” that the brain made of what it had just learned.

“And we discovered that (consolidation) happens on a much faster time scale than previously believed”, points out Leonardo Claudino. “A two-second skill happens to be repeated in the brain on the millisecond scale.”

By doing these “replays”, the brain then consolidates the learning.

The memory pathway in the brain

Even before studying the effect of these small pauses, scientists already knew that the brain needed rest to consolidate memories – in practice, according to scientific knowledge so far, this involves transferring the memory from the hippocampus, where the temporary records are, to areas of the neocortex, where longer lasting memory is located.

But until these more recent discoveries, it was believed that it was only during sleep – when the brain is most free from external sensory stimuli – that this consolidation process took place.

With the new studies, points out Claudino, it is possible to perceive that memories are also consolidated almost simultaneously with the practice – a process that seems to be complementary to what happens while we sleep.

But this is something that still needs to be confirmed by further research.

“We still don’t know much, and they are certainly (pauses) physiologically different. (…) But perhaps sleep encodes a more complete experience – the whole context (of that memory), who was there, what the environment was like. A quick pause may register more minute details: the synergy between the fingers when typing, the movement. It is a hypothesis for someone to investigate in the future”, ponders Leonardo Claudino.

How to put it into practice

How, then, can we take practical advantage of the scientific knowledge accumulated so far?

“I see a more direct use when I think about sports practices or musical performance, which involve sessions in which the athlete or artist will perform the same movement several times”, explains Claudino.

“One lesson to take away is this: when you start to learn a new technique, avoid practicing to exhaustion, to failure. Instead, it’s better to take breaks. Perfection will come more quickly if you give yourself time. brain consolidate (learning) instead of practicing endlessly for perfection.”

“Usually we learn a new technique by repeating it several times – you repeat, repeat, and there comes a time when you already know the sequences of movements that will produce the final activity. exhaustion, do it ten times, for example, then take a break, and do it again.”

The same reasoning can also guide pedagogical practices in schools or universities.

“In a teaching environment, perhaps the teacher, when introducing a fundamentally new concept, can think of the learning session as including these breaks. It is important that the student has these rest periods, because his brain will be active, despite of rest – this is our discovery. His hippocampus and his cortex will be carrying out these exchanges, which will consolidate recent learning”, the researcher details.

What is not yet known for sure is the ideal duration of a break for the optimal consolidation of new learning.

“This is one of the challenges of practical application”, says Claudino, remembering that this can also depend on the type of skill learned and on the individual characteristics of each practitioner.

But in the NIH studies, those in which volunteers typed sequences on the keyboard, researchers observed that the learning gain was greater when practice and breaks were of similar duration. For example, ten minutes of practice and ten minutes of break.

Claudino emphasizes, however, that these are controlled studies, carried out in the laboratory, so their conclusions do not necessarily translate exactly to real life.

How to take a productive break for the brain?

Likewise, the fact that the experiments take place in fully controlled environments makes it difficult to have a “cake recipe” for the most efficient type of pause to help the brain learn.

In the case of laboratory studies, during the break, each volunteer stood still, without typing on the computer.

In real life, the researcher suggests giving the brain a little rest from whatever it is learning.

“If the person is learning to play a song, I would imagine that (the pause) would simply be to stop playing, to think about something else, or not to do another activity that might interfere with that one – for example, don’t try to learn another song when you are resting. from the first, because you use the same regions and capacities”, he explains.

Other lines of research have also contributed to the science of learning – and bring complementary conclusions that can help in the consolidation of knowledge.

In an interview with BBC News Brazil in 2020, cognitive psychology researcher Barbara Oakley, author of the book Learning to Learn, explained that the brain works in two different ways, which complement each other in learning: the focused mode (when we are paying attention to a exercise, a movie or the teacher, for example) and the diffuse mode (when the brain is relaxed).

According to Oakley, the brain needs to switch between diffuse and focused mode to learn effectively. Relaxing the mind – whether taking a walk or changing activities – therefore directly helps to improve learning and problem solving.

“When you’re stuck on a math assignment, the best thing to do is shift focus and study some geography. That way, you’ll be able to get ahead when you get back to math,” suggested Oakley.

stroke patients

Back to Leonardo Claudino’s research, one of the focuses in the study of memory consolidation during short breaks is to help people who are recovering their skills after having suffered a stroke. This can happen, in the future, optimizing the rehabilitation sessions to the maximum.

“We now have a biological marker of when the brain is consolidating the ability and where it is happening”, explains the scientist. “We can think about developing a monitoring system while the person is undergoing occupational therapy or a neurostimulation or neuromodulation technique, (…) and having the system maximize repetitions of the skill.”

This optimal brain stimulation can make rehabilitation produce faster results, says Claudino.

“Our results suggest that it may be important to optimize the timing and configuration of rest intervals when implementing rehabilitation treatments in stroke patients or when learning to play the piano among normal volunteers.” laboratory responsible for this research at the NIH.

They are, for the time being, fields of research that are still open, adds Leonardo Claudino. The important thing is to understand that even during rest, the brain never stops learning.

“What goes against common sense is that when you are still, your brain is not still. We are still understanding this phenomenon, but (in these pauses) you occupy your brain with less stimulus processing and movement production . Then you give him that window of opportunity to consolidate what he is already learning.”