Flashing images can be lightbulb moment for faster learning

Tuning into brainwave rhythms helps people to pick up skills three times more quickly, study finds

SHOWING a person a bright flashing shape that aligns with their brainwaves can speed up learning threefold, researchers have found.

Briefly priming the brain with its own individual cycle for less than two seconds radically improves performance in visual identification tasks, according to a study by the University of Cambridge.

It is believed the technique could be used to help children with learning difficulties, older people, or professionals who need to learn vast amounts of information quickly.

Dr Elizabeth Michael said: “It was exciting to uncover the specific conditions you need to get this impressive boost in learning.

“The intervention itself is very simple, just a brief flicker on a screen, but when we hit the right frequency plus the right phase alignment, it seems to have a strong and lasting effect.”

Brain cells use electrical signals to communicate and process information, but their frequency is unique to individuals.

Scientists scanned the brains of 80 volunteers to find their rhythm and then recreated the beat on a screen using a flickering white square on a dark background. Although the flicker lasted just 1.5 seconds, it was enough to sync with the brain – a process known as entrainment, which appears to boost focus and concentration.

Participants were then asked to detect targets on a cluttered background. Some of the volunteers received pulses matching the peak of their waves, some the trough, while others were given rhythms that were either random or at the wrong rate.

Each person repeated more than 800 variations of the visual task, and the neuroscientists found the learning rate for those locked into the right rhythm was at least three times faster than for all the other groups.

“Our hypothesis is that by matching information delivery to the optimal phase of a brainwave, we maximise information capture because this is when our neurons are at the height of excitability,” said Prof Victoria Leong.

When participants returned the next day to complete another round of tasks, those who learned faster under entrainment had maintained their higher performance level.

The team believes the technique may mirror the way children learn.

“We are tapping into a mechanism that allows our brain to align to temporal stimuli in our environment, especially communicative cues like speech,

‘It was exciting to uncover the specific conditions you need to get this impressive boost in learning’

gaze and gesture that are naturally exchanged during interactions between parents and babies,” said Prof Leong.

“When adults speak to young children, they adopt child-directed speech – a slow and exaggerated form of speaking. This study suggests that childdirected speech may be a spontaneous way of rate-matching and entraining the slower brainwaves of children to support learning.”

Prof Zoe Kourtzi suggested that brainwave rhythms could also be useful when people were learning in a virtual environment or using computers.

“You would need an EEG device, but these are becoming more and more portable,” she said. “Virtual reality simulations are now an effective part of training in many professions. Implementing pulses that sync with brainwaves in these virtual environments could give new learners an edge, or help those retraining later in life.”

The research is published in the journal