The "Unexpected" in Learning

Our brains are tuned to learn whenever anything unexpected happens but not when things are predictable, so says a new research by a team of psychologists and neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania. This is the first study to directly record neural activity underlying this learning process in humans, and it confirms that dopaminergic system of the human brain seems to be wired for the unusual and the unexpected.

According to the neuroscientists,"Learning, previously studied in animal models, seems to occur when dopaminergic neurons, which drive a larger basal ganglia circuit, are activated in response to unexpected rewards and depressed after the unexpected omission of reward. Put simply, a lucky win seems to be retained better than a probable loss."

If we can somehow imbue our students and children with the sense that there is an unexpected reward in everything they choose to learn, they will be tuned to learn.

If we can build the reward within the activity itself--so that the learning, the seeking is its own reward, how wonderfully challenging life will be?

I think educator James Zull has hit this nail in the head. In The Art of Changing the Brain, he says that learning does not proceed in a linear way; it stops and starts; it hits a snag; it loops back and up. This is true for both novice and experienced learners. Everything follows an up and down process ; we are overjoyed; we get depressed over failures, but then we come to a breakthrough: these are all part of the learning cycle because learning is dynamic! Nothing is static in learning as nothing is static in life.

So comforting it is to know that life is infinitely more exciting out of the box.