THE SCIENCE BIT

Every time we try to learn anything new, the information has to be stored in the brain. But how exactly does this all work? We asked neuroscientist Professor Gary Marcus for tips on how to pick up chops quicker…

We asked Professor Gary Marcus from New York University, neuroscientist and author of several books on the workings of the brain, to shed some light on the learning process itself… So, exactly how does one assimilate a new task? “Every time you learn something you’re changing your memories, but we only know some things about the neural basis of memories and so there are different circuits involved in memory in different places; there are different kinds of memory. When you’re talking about a skill that you practise a lot, you’re talking about learning a motor skill. People call it ‘muscle memory’, but it’s really in your brain – it’s in your cortex and the subcorticals distribute it across the brain.” Is there a particular environment that’s good for learning? “One is not being distracted, and so having an area where you can focus on what you’re learning is obviously useful. There’s a famous phenomena called ‘context dependent memory’, which means that if you learn something in a particular context it’s easier to remember it in the same context. The weirdest study I ever saw was called ‘posture dependent memory’, which means that if you’re sitting down when you practise, it will be easier to remember if you’re also sitting down. You can learn in any environment. The other famous study is that if you’re drunk when study for an exam, it may actually be better to be drunk when you take the test, because it’s the same environment! The brain uses all these cues as a reminder, which is very different to a computer. A computer has this master table that says, ‘this thing is stored in this place and this thing is stored in this other place’. It’s very systematic, which is why Google works as well as it does. But our brains don’t have the equivalent; we just store things somewhat randomly and then we look for reminders of those things, so having a similar context is important. Then there are tricks that musicians do, like practising the middle of a song, because it’s easier to remember the first few notes – you keep practising them over and over and so you’ve got those pretty well – and the last few notes because we have something called ‘recency’. But the stuff in between is actually hard, so a good classical musician who has to remember a long piece might focus on the parts in the middle where they have trouble.” Is there a particular time of day when the brain is more open to learning? “There’s some good data to show that some people are ‘night people’ and some are ‘morning people’. I would say that everybody has a prime time when they’re most lucid and so you have to prioritise what you have to do. It’s not good to use your clearest time of the day to answer stupid emails. That’s the time that you should practise, and then when you’re exhausted you should probably be doing your B-list tasks. The brain will get better at what you do and so, if you do it the wrong way, the brain gets better at doing it the wrong way. If you practise sloppy riffs at the end of the day because you’re tired, your brain says, ‘Okay, this is how I do this sloppy riff,’ and you’re worse at it.” Is repetition – say with learning scales – still the best way of programming information into the brain? “I think that repetition is still the best thing we’ve got. What’s happening when you learn scales, for example, is you’re getting one thing that’s helping you learn other things. When you’re playing scales, you’re building a whole bunch of context that you can then elaborate on in different ways.”