Kids learn faster than adults, with their developing brains sopping up information at a mind-blowing pace. Even in a constant stream of new experiences, their neurons hold onto the knowledge they've learned.
A team of neuroscientists from the University of Regensburg in Germany and Brown University in the US may have found a way to make young brains more efficient.
Children's brains are turned into 'uber-sponges' when they experience a surge in a brain chemical called GABA.
The scientific support for the idea that children learn better than adults has been weak.
The team used an advanced neuroimaging technique called functional MRS (fMRS) to measure concentrations of GABA in the visual cortex of kids during a visual learning activity.
55 children and 56 adults were measured before the visual learning task began, during the learning process and after the activity had ended.
The results showed that adults have the same levels of the brain chemical gypsum. The children's levels of GABA were more adventurous than adults.
"What we found is a rapid increase in GABA in children, which is related to learning." The post-learning period had high levels of GABA as well.
It's a finding that's new.
In order to learn new information, the brain uses a chemical messenger called gyga. It plays a key role in stabilization, a 'cooling off period' after learning where the fragile new neural networks are consolidated and the information successfully stored.
If something new is learned during the cooling-off period, it can cause a phenomenon called retrograde interference, where previously learned information is lost.
It's similar to leaving a pie to cool off after it's been baked. The starches in the filling can be put into a gel that will hold everything together. The piping hot filling spills out if you cut it into the pie.
The team conducted behavioral experiments to see if the knowledge of giap levels in kids allowed visual learning to be more stable. The thing they found was amazing.
The adults needed a cooling off period. The children were able to relearn what they had learned in a few minutes. Their pie sets a lot quicker due to their high levels of giana.
The researchers found that resilience to retrograde interference and therefore stabilization occurred within minutes after training ended in children, whereas learning was in a fragile state in adults for at least one hour after training.
"This rapid stabilization of learning in children enables them to learn more items within a given period of time and makes learning more efficient in children than adults," says Sebastian Frank, a co-author on the study now at the University of Regensburg in Germany.
The researchers found that consecutive sessions of learning seemed to increase the concentration of a brain chemical in children.
Frank says that the results show that GABA is a key player in making learning efficient.
The study was done in visual learning, but it could be generalized to other types of learning.
These findings can be used to help adults learn more quickly.
A new technology could be developed to increase the amount of a brain chemical in adults. That is one possibility.
The research was published in a journal.
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