How your brain learns
You have likely heard people say that the human brain is the most complex computer in the universe. While it can sometimes be helpful to think of the brain as a computer, this is definitely not how you want to think of your brain when you are learning or teaching.
It’s much better to think of your brain as a cartographer.
Your brain doesn’t just take in data, it maps the relationships between what it already knows and what it is learning next. Here’s an example of how your brain does this in real time:
Think back to your last encounter with someone who rambled on and on. At some point you likely thought to yourself…
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That’s your brain trying to map the conversation. If information were just data, you would process it and store it away. That’s not what you’re doing though- you’re mapping new information in relation to everything else you’ve heard. You sometimes focus so much on mapping that you stop listening to the rambling (not that you’re missing something important, anyway).
When I say that your brain “maps” out new information, I don’t just mean metaphorically. Recent studies have found that the same group of cells, called “grid” cells, are active in mapping both physical space and conceptual information. So in theory, moving around a room and organizing a to-do list activate the same underlying framework in your brain that maps all aspects of your experience.
Understanding learning as map-making will make the single biggest improvement in your ability learn and teach effectively. We’re so used to focusing on accuracy of information as the primary goal of learning and teaching. Instead, we should focus on capturing the relationships between concepts and giving ourselves and our learners time to explore the details in ways that feel natural for our individual mental maps.
We are going to keep examining this concept in future posts, but for now I invite you to check out some ideas below to take advantage of your brain’s map-making abilities.
Relay in Action
Try these brain hacks to get to know how your brain maps information.
Description: Text with one image of a two-dimensional brain icon.When something isn't clicking:Usually, when people struggle to understand something they focus even more on the thing they don’t understand. The next time you feel stuck on something, don’t focus on that topic- look at everything related to it. Try to draw connections between concepts to understand what you are really missing.Need to cram?If you have a lot of information to take in at once, move to a different part of your study space every time you switch to a different topic. Because your brain maps space and information in the same way, making the simple move from a work desk to the couch will help each topic stand out more vividly in your memory.