Neuroscience, thanks to a better understanding of how the brain works, can help us boost learning, whether it’s adopting the right mindset or identifying motivations before training, or using repetition and emotions during learning. In addition to our webinar “Unleashing the brain’s potential and boosting learning through neuroscience” in April, discover 7 ways to introduce neuroscience into your training programs.
Cognitive science has made significant progress in recent years. Neuroscience, which is part of cognitive science, along with cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, involves understanding and explaining how the human brain works. It is present in many fields, including neurobiology and neurophysiology, and is of real interest in terms of learning.
Neuroscience tells us that we have more power over our brains than we realize. We possess extraordinary capacities for “neuroplasticity,” that is, the ability to adapt to the outside world and tach a person’s experiences. To fully benefit from our brain’s potential, we must know the right levers to use, in order to progress without exhausting ourselves and without wasting our energy on inappropriate methods, especially when everything around us is changing, in this period of virtual work environment and “new normal.”
How can we best leverage this neuroplasticity in professional training? How can a better understanding of our brains help HR and L&D departments, as well as training professionals, boost learning and help teams improve their skills? We’ve listed 7 ways to boost learning through neuroscience:
1)Have a growth mindset or a conquering state of mind
Neural growth capacities show that we have power over our cognitive abilities at any age. We can shape both brain structures and our cognitive, emotional, motor, social, and organizational skills. These findings support those of experimental psychology research in the areas of “self-efficacy” and “growth mindset”: people who believe in their potential for progress are more involved, less stressed, and achieve better results than those who believe their abilities are fixed at birth. This change in mindset is crucial for resilience in the face of difficulties and failures.
2)Identify your motivations to get more involved
To maintain this state of mind, we must identify our lasting motivations and positive incentives. These fuel our brain’s powerful reward and desire networks, which influence our engagement and the level of energy we use. Identifying these deep motivations cannot be improvised and requires a minimum of self-knowledge to pinpoint the drivers that energize us and thus resist the inevitable periods of fatigue and discouragement, which can occur during long-term or distance learning, in particular.
3)Emphasize repetition and memorization
When information is heard for the first time (a new word in a language course, for example), it creates a path of neural connections in our brain. For this neural trace to last, it requires regular reinforcement, proportional to the number of repetitions. This neural mark is the source of lasting memorization. Attention, the mental effort of memorization and repetition is decisive. Without this, the information heard will be lost after a few hours, and the initially created neural trace will be impossible or even difficult to recover.
4)Introduce emotion
Emotions are the basis of all our actions; they filter and select priority information unconsciously from deep networks that feed our conscious cognitive networks. They precede thought and are a multiplier of memory encoding. Introducing them into a training program, therefore, allows the information to be acquired and anchored more deeply. Laughter, surprise, and the emotion conveyed by a personal story are all emotional factors that can optimize learning.
5) Practice and make mistakes
To learn, practical applications are as important as attention and the mental effort of memorization. Until information is experienced, it is only fleeting in our memory. Putting new knowledge into practice allows us to make mistakes, and the brain learns by making mistakes. We learn even better when we see someone else make a mistake than when we make a mistake ourselves. It can therefore be interesting to use a practical application in class to encourage learning through mistakes.
6) Take care of your mental hygiene to manage attention
It’s possible to manage your attention and mental workload by following several mental hygiene rules. Just as we train our bodies, we can take care of our minds. This can involve getting to know ourselves better (what are my strengths, what areas need improvement?) or identifying the things that drain our energy. Taking the time to take care of our minds will help optimize attention during training, a crucial concept for acquiring new information.
7) Get out of your comfort zone
There are barriers to memorization, engagement, and practice related to our limiting patterns and beliefs. These limitations are not those of our cognitive abilities, but rather those we create for ourselves through self-censorship or to preserve our comfort zone. Identifying your own beliefs promotes self-improvement and will optimize the success of any training program and the acquisition of new skills.
Cognitive science provides crucial insights into the effectiveness of our brain functions. It guides our efforts, supports our choice of methods, and sheds light on our lasting motivations to optimize learning.
