Project 3 - Education
Learning to Learn
Learning to learn
When we are at school as children we are exposed to a highly structured education that aims to provide a uniform foundation for students with diverse interests and strengths. The curriculum and classroom experience that we experience during our formative years have been honed over a long period of time to produce effective learning for as many students as possible, but the system is tightly constrained so that there is no great pressure for students to develop their own strategies for learning. Success in professional life requires us to create our own structures that will benefit not only the acquisition of knowledge and skills but an improvement in our ability to synthesize ideas and think critically about new material while integrating it with our existing expertise. Most very smart and motivated students arrive at university for their undergraduate degrees ill-equipped to make the transition from a highly structured learning environment to the seemingly limitless world beyond. Thus, a major function of university is not just to take a deeper dive on your chosen subject or vocation but, more generally, to learn to learn. Given that our laboratory has the biology of learning as its core interest, we believe that we can enormously aid undergraduate students by providing sessions at a very early stage of their time at university, which enable them to understand the biological limits on how humans/animals learn. As they gain some appreciation that learning has these fundamental biological limits, students can harness this knowledge to improve deeper and longer-lasting information storage as well as providing general strategies for their own future approach to study.
When we are at school as children we are exposed to a highly structured education that aims to provide a uniform foundation for students with diverse interests and strengths. The curriculum and classroom experience that we experience during our formative years have been honed over a long period of time to produce effective learning for as many students as possible, but the system is tightly constrained so that there is no great pressure for students to develop their own strategies for learning. Success in professional life requires us to create our own structures that will benefit not only the acquisition of knowledge and skills but an improvement in our ability to synthesize ideas and think critically about new material while integrating it with our existing expertise. Most very smart and motivated students arrive at university for their undergraduate degrees ill-equipped to make the transition from a highly structured learning environment to the seemingly limitless world beyond. Thus, a major function of university is not just to take a deeper dive on your chosen subject or vocation but, more generally, to learn to learn. Given that our laboratory has the biology of learning as its core interest, we believe that we can enormously aid undergraduate students by providing sessions at a very early stage of their time at university, which enable them to understand the biological limits on how humans/animals learn. As they gain some appreciation that learning has these fundamental biological limits, students can harness this knowledge to improve deeper and longer-lasting information storage as well as providing general strategies for their own future approach to study.
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In his seminal book 'The organization of Behavior' (1949), Donald Hebb introduced the key concepts of Hebbian synaptic plasticity, cell assemblies and phase sequences to explain why memory is associative, generalised and infers causality.
The power of association
We aim to introduce students to concepts of associativity, such as those to that are harnessed effectively in a wide range of mnemonic devices. Mnemonic devices are used widely by students to memorise facts and figures, for instance by medical students who are striving to remember the names of all the cranial nerves ('oh, oh, oh to touch and feel very good velvet, such heaven'). They are also the foundation for the memory expertise used by comedians and card tricksters. If you ever have to deliver a highly pressured speech without cue cards (as many of us do in our professional and personal lives) you might find these mnemonic devices a powerful tool. You could use the famous roman room strategy (see figure below) in which you imagine the placement of a sequence of points you want to say in locations around a room that is highly familiar to you. For instance, you might place the opening line on a mirror, the next on the pillow of your bed, the next in an armchair and the next on your desk etc. Then you could expand to other rooms, perhaps moving through the house you grew up in from bedroom, to bathroom to kitchen, to dining room etc. In this way multiple sequences of things you want to say can be learned and stitched together into an entire wedding speech, enormously aiding you in remembering the correct order when you are under the pressure of doing the speech while nervous. This mnemonic device, which actually predates the romans and was known to be used by the ancient greeks, takes advantage of specific properties of our memory. Principal among these is associativity, which dominates much of our learning. The formation of associations between two or more stimuli, which dominate how our brains learn about scenes and objects, or stimuli and outcomes, which underlies how our brains learn about causal relationships, or actions and outcomes, which is the foundation for how our brain acquires skills. In this specific mnemonic system, there is the added factor of navigating through space, which takes advantage of our predisposition to remember routes through our environment. Where numbers are concerned, you might employ a different type of mnemonic, such as using symbols with physical resemblance to represent numbers, for instance a swan for number 2, a sailboat for number 4 and Laurel and Hardy for number 10. If you needed to remember a string of numbers, you could create a narrative sequence in which these animals, objects and characters interact, for instance a swan jumping onto a sailboat and saving Laurel and Hardy from drowning. True memory experts will forge these different mnemonic devices together, as shown in the schematic below, to create an even more powerful system. The purpose of teaching students this early on in their time at university is not primarily to arm them with new ways to cram facts and figures into their brains, although that may be useful, but rather to demonstrate that our brains rely on association and in explaining some of the known biology that supports this associativity, such as Hebbian synaptic plasticity (see figure above). By gaining this understanding students will appreciate that there are specific constraints on how they learn that can be used to their advantage and also to show, perhaps, that they have the capacity to learn more than they thought possible.
We aim to introduce students to concepts of associativity, such as those to that are harnessed effectively in a wide range of mnemonic devices. Mnemonic devices are used widely by students to memorise facts and figures, for instance by medical students who are striving to remember the names of all the cranial nerves ('oh, oh, oh to touch and feel very good velvet, such heaven'). They are also the foundation for the memory expertise used by comedians and card tricksters. If you ever have to deliver a highly pressured speech without cue cards (as many of us do in our professional and personal lives) you might find these mnemonic devices a powerful tool. You could use the famous roman room strategy (see figure below) in which you imagine the placement of a sequence of points you want to say in locations around a room that is highly familiar to you. For instance, you might place the opening line on a mirror, the next on the pillow of your bed, the next in an armchair and the next on your desk etc. Then you could expand to other rooms, perhaps moving through the house you grew up in from bedroom, to bathroom to kitchen, to dining room etc. In this way multiple sequences of things you want to say can be learned and stitched together into an entire wedding speech, enormously aiding you in remembering the correct order when you are under the pressure of doing the speech while nervous. This mnemonic device, which actually predates the romans and was known to be used by the ancient greeks, takes advantage of specific properties of our memory. Principal among these is associativity, which dominates much of our learning. The formation of associations between two or more stimuli, which dominate how our brains learn about scenes and objects, or stimuli and outcomes, which underlies how our brains learn about causal relationships, or actions and outcomes, which is the foundation for how our brain acquires skills. In this specific mnemonic system, there is the added factor of navigating through space, which takes advantage of our predisposition to remember routes through our environment. Where numbers are concerned, you might employ a different type of mnemonic, such as using symbols with physical resemblance to represent numbers, for instance a swan for number 2, a sailboat for number 4 and Laurel and Hardy for number 10. If you needed to remember a string of numbers, you could create a narrative sequence in which these animals, objects and characters interact, for instance a swan jumping onto a sailboat and saving Laurel and Hardy from drowning. True memory experts will forge these different mnemonic devices together, as shown in the schematic below, to create an even more powerful system. The purpose of teaching students this early on in their time at university is not primarily to arm them with new ways to cram facts and figures into their brains, although that may be useful, but rather to demonstrate that our brains rely on association and in explaining some of the known biology that supports this associativity, such as Hebbian synaptic plasticity (see figure above). By gaining this understanding students will appreciate that there are specific constraints on how they learn that can be used to their advantage and also to show, perhaps, that they have the capacity to learn more than they thought possible.
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This picture depicts a mash-up of two very famous and powerful mnemonic devices - the roman room and symbols to create a narrative sequence of numbers - which demonstrate the power of associativity that has been harnessed by memory experts over centuries.
Spacing revision for deeper learning and memory
Students will already be well aware that last-minute revision for exams is not advisable. However, like all humans, they will still very likely fall into the trap of leaving their revision to the last minute as a matter of convenience. They may well hold on to that crammed information for long enough to do quite well in exams and rationalise that the strategy has worked for them so far. Last minute revision can get you by and, if you are lucky, result in reasonable short-term success, but it is not a strategy that promotes depth of learning or long-term memory storage that turns you into an expert professional. By explaining some of what we know about memory consolidation and its requirements for protein synthesis and replay during sleep, the benefits of spaced repetition training when compared to the massed training that we engage in with our last-minute revision will become greatly reinforced. It is particularly important for students to realise that spaced repetition not only promotes deeper and longer lasting memory, but it actually reduces the amount of time that you need to invest in learning. Thus, students can learn more effectively and create more time off from study by adhering to a spaced learning schedule.
Students will already be well aware that last-minute revision for exams is not advisable. However, like all humans, they will still very likely fall into the trap of leaving their revision to the last minute as a matter of convenience. They may well hold on to that crammed information for long enough to do quite well in exams and rationalise that the strategy has worked for them so far. Last minute revision can get you by and, if you are lucky, result in reasonable short-term success, but it is not a strategy that promotes depth of learning or long-term memory storage that turns you into an expert professional. By explaining some of what we know about memory consolidation and its requirements for protein synthesis and replay during sleep, the benefits of spaced repetition training when compared to the massed training that we engage in with our last-minute revision will become greatly reinforced. It is particularly important for students to realise that spaced repetition not only promotes deeper and longer lasting memory, but it actually reduces the amount of time that you need to invest in learning. Thus, students can learn more effectively and create more time off from study by adhering to a spaced learning schedule.
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A schematic timeline of massed versus clumped and spaced learning during a week. The Spaced weekly schedule is a far more effective way to rehearse information to promote deep, long-lasting but also more efficient learning.
Expertise and Schemas
If you are sitting in a departmental research seminar you may well observe that the Professors are simply listening to the speaker while the students are often scribbling notes throughout. This different approach to taking in information as an audience member is not a reflection of intellegence, but rather of expertise. Because the Professors are already experts in the subject area that the research seminar focuses on, they already have a framework, or schema, which they can fit the new knowledge into. That schema is less developed for PhD students, who are becoming world experts, and for first-year undergraduate students it will barely be in place at all. It is for this reason that I often observe undergraduates frantically transcribing what I am saying during lectures. I believe that it is highly beneficial for students to understand that they will find it easer to learn more deeply as their degree progresses because they will start to develop schemas, and by illustrating what we understand about the biology of this process it will also enhance their understanding of how different regions of the brain can work as a system to facilitate deep and long-lasting learning. It will also put more emphasis on thinking broadly to develop big picture understanding, as it is this approach that creates useful schemas that can accelerate and deepen learning. Moreover, by emphasizing the power of building a big picture framework, we can also explain to students why it is important to invest so much time in the first year of their degrees focusing on foundational knowledge. It is also important for students to challenge themselves to take notes in a more effective way, by attending to what the lecturer is saying for an extended period before synopsising what has been said in that section of a lecture. Humans are only capable of attending to one thing at once, so listening and writing at the same time is detrimental to both activities.
If you are sitting in a departmental research seminar you may well observe that the Professors are simply listening to the speaker while the students are often scribbling notes throughout. This different approach to taking in information as an audience member is not a reflection of intellegence, but rather of expertise. Because the Professors are already experts in the subject area that the research seminar focuses on, they already have a framework, or schema, which they can fit the new knowledge into. That schema is less developed for PhD students, who are becoming world experts, and for first-year undergraduate students it will barely be in place at all. It is for this reason that I often observe undergraduates frantically transcribing what I am saying during lectures. I believe that it is highly beneficial for students to understand that they will find it easer to learn more deeply as their degree progresses because they will start to develop schemas, and by illustrating what we understand about the biology of this process it will also enhance their understanding of how different regions of the brain can work as a system to facilitate deep and long-lasting learning. It will also put more emphasis on thinking broadly to develop big picture understanding, as it is this approach that creates useful schemas that can accelerate and deepen learning. Moreover, by emphasizing the power of building a big picture framework, we can also explain to students why it is important to invest so much time in the first year of their degrees focusing on foundational knowledge. It is also important for students to challenge themselves to take notes in a more effective way, by attending to what the lecturer is saying for an extended period before synopsising what has been said in that section of a lecture. Humans are only capable of attending to one thing at once, so listening and writing at the same time is detrimental to both activities.
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A schematic depicting how schemas may accelerate learning. Cortical Hebbian assemblies are more co-active due to influence from higher order schemas, thereby promoting the activity-dependent Hebbian plasticity that binds them together.
Sleep and stress
The general undergraduate experience has a tendency to limit sleep, partly due to opportunities for enjoyment and partly due to the workload. By explaining the ways in which we believe that sleep participates in learning and memory consolidation, we can at least emphasize to students that sleep matters and it should be prioritised. In explaining how sleep participates in memory consolidation we can also explain other key concepts such as systems-level consolidation. Moreover, we can also make the key point that sleep is critically important, but what it is really for and what goes on in sleep remain somewhat of a mystery. There are many things that we do not know about the brain, including having a really commanding knowledge of how it learns and remembers, but sleep is perhaps the greatest mystery of all. One of the reasons why young people may not sleep as much as their developing and learning brain deserves, particularly when they start at university, is that they become stressed by workload and expectations. Recent high impact research has suggested that formative sessions on the benefits and importance of acute stress can allow undergraduates to develop a completely different relationship with stress once they understand that it is a key part of success. Chronic stress can be harmful, but acute stress is a natural biological response to challenges, and your undergraduate degree, just as at many other times throughout your life, will provide moments of great challenge. It is during these periods that you learn the most and it can be highly beneficial to embrace that acute stress and use it to motivate work.
The general undergraduate experience has a tendency to limit sleep, partly due to opportunities for enjoyment and partly due to the workload. By explaining the ways in which we believe that sleep participates in learning and memory consolidation, we can at least emphasize to students that sleep matters and it should be prioritised. In explaining how sleep participates in memory consolidation we can also explain other key concepts such as systems-level consolidation. Moreover, we can also make the key point that sleep is critically important, but what it is really for and what goes on in sleep remain somewhat of a mystery. There are many things that we do not know about the brain, including having a really commanding knowledge of how it learns and remembers, but sleep is perhaps the greatest mystery of all. One of the reasons why young people may not sleep as much as their developing and learning brain deserves, particularly when they start at university, is that they become stressed by workload and expectations. Recent high impact research has suggested that formative sessions on the benefits and importance of acute stress can allow undergraduates to develop a completely different relationship with stress once they understand that it is a key part of success. Chronic stress can be harmful, but acute stress is a natural biological response to challenges, and your undergraduate degree, just as at many other times throughout your life, will provide moments of great challenge. It is during these periods that you learn the most and it can be highly beneficial to embrace that acute stress and use it to motivate work.
Outsourcing our memory to the internet and AI
I am now old enough to be able to look back and say that I started my career by reading research papers directly from hardcopy journals in the university library. Sometimes, I would photocopy them to take away and read in the lab or at home, but it was fairly typical to read a paper once and try to lock the contents of that paper into my memory. When I wrote my PhD thesis and my first research papers, I was synthesising their findings together and writing critcally about them as a foundation for my own findings, largely from memory. The world of work has now changed dramatically and I use the internet all the time. I sit at a computer in my office and write grant applications and primary research papers with all of the literature available at my fingertips. This change in the way in which we acquire knowledge has had a notable inmpact on memory because I can effectively outsource a lot of my memory to the internet. The brain is extremely good at allocating energy and resources to where they are needed most and if there is a safety net of the paper always being made available at the click of the button, we never remember it as well as we would with the jeopardy of nevery being able to see it again. Synthesis, and therefore critical thinking, is made harder by this outsourcing because I hold less of the knowledge in one memory system - my brain - at once. Interestingly, the advent of Artifical Intelligence (AI) is creating systems that synthesise for us. Superficially, they may also critically evaluate for us, although AI makes many mistakes in this regard. Nevertheless, there is also now pressure to outsource synthesis and critical thinking, as well as memory. By teaching students about the neuroscience of attention, demonstrating that we learn more deeply when we maximise attention, and that this memory in turn allows us to synthesise and critically appraise more effectively, students are motivated to find strategies to eliminate barriers to attention. These might include limiting the use of devices that provide instant access to the internet, like phones and laptops, or ensuring in-person attendance in lectures and seminars, or perhaps to reading papers in the library. At the same time, it is critical that we do not have a luddite attitude towards inevitable technological progress. Students need also to learn how to maximise the benefits of the internet and AI.
I am now old enough to be able to look back and say that I started my career by reading research papers directly from hardcopy journals in the university library. Sometimes, I would photocopy them to take away and read in the lab or at home, but it was fairly typical to read a paper once and try to lock the contents of that paper into my memory. When I wrote my PhD thesis and my first research papers, I was synthesising their findings together and writing critcally about them as a foundation for my own findings, largely from memory. The world of work has now changed dramatically and I use the internet all the time. I sit at a computer in my office and write grant applications and primary research papers with all of the literature available at my fingertips. This change in the way in which we acquire knowledge has had a notable inmpact on memory because I can effectively outsource a lot of my memory to the internet. The brain is extremely good at allocating energy and resources to where they are needed most and if there is a safety net of the paper always being made available at the click of the button, we never remember it as well as we would with the jeopardy of nevery being able to see it again. Synthesis, and therefore critical thinking, is made harder by this outsourcing because I hold less of the knowledge in one memory system - my brain - at once. Interestingly, the advent of Artifical Intelligence (AI) is creating systems that synthesise for us. Superficially, they may also critically evaluate for us, although AI makes many mistakes in this regard. Nevertheless, there is also now pressure to outsource synthesis and critical thinking, as well as memory. By teaching students about the neuroscience of attention, demonstrating that we learn more deeply when we maximise attention, and that this memory in turn allows us to synthesise and critically appraise more effectively, students are motivated to find strategies to eliminate barriers to attention. These might include limiting the use of devices that provide instant access to the internet, like phones and laptops, or ensuring in-person attendance in lectures and seminars, or perhaps to reading papers in the library. At the same time, it is critical that we do not have a luddite attitude towards inevitable technological progress. Students need also to learn how to maximise the benefits of the internet and AI.
Book chapters
I am passionate about teaching and it is a substantial part of my job. In addition to my face to face teaching and all of the assessment attached to that teaching, I have also written several book chapters on the topics of learning and memory, including in well read textbooks like the Cognitive Neurosciences (Sixth Edition; Eds. Poeppel, Gazzaniga and Mangun) and the Hippocampus Book (Second Edition; Eds. Morris, Amaral, Bliss, Duff and O'Keefe). While these chapters do not receive the citations that my primary research papers do, I believe that they are important contributions and I hope that they can serve as an entry point for students and other scientists to the key concepts relating to synaptic plasticity, learning and memory and habituation and novelty detection.
I am passionate about teaching and it is a substantial part of my job. In addition to my face to face teaching and all of the assessment attached to that teaching, I have also written several book chapters on the topics of learning and memory, including in well read textbooks like the Cognitive Neurosciences (Sixth Edition; Eds. Poeppel, Gazzaniga and Mangun) and the Hippocampus Book (Second Edition; Eds. Morris, Amaral, Bliss, Duff and O'Keefe). While these chapters do not receive the citations that my primary research papers do, I believe that they are important contributions and I hope that they can serve as an entry point for students and other scientists to the key concepts relating to synaptic plasticity, learning and memory and habituation and novelty detection.
Outreach
The laboratory is committed to outreach to communicate science to the wider public. Our outreach has come in multiple forms, including introducing our work to the public for 'Pint of Science' and a variety of visits to schools: As part of our 'Learning to Learn' mission, we have provided outreach sessions to a variety of secondary schools in the London area, as well as delivering sessions about careers in neuroscience. The laboratory has also participated in summer work experience weeks for A-level students in the KCL departments of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience (BCN), the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology (CDN) and the Wolfson Sensory, Pain and Regeneration Centre (SPaRC), which is now our home department. Finally, the laboratory has visited primary schools as part of the Wolfson SPaRC outreach to introduce younger students to the brain and how we study it. This outreach program is proving very successful, in large part due to the immense amount of work from the departmental team to introduce two brand new Comic Book Characters - Professor SPaRC and her dog Axon! (See picture below). The major contributors to this process have been lead editor Susan Duty, departmental tech and artist Chris Bottoms, and lead artist Rebecca Burgess, but many scientists in the department have now contributed to outreach sessions featuring these characters. The Cooke lab is currently working with Chris Bottoms on an edition of this comic book about learning and memory.
The laboratory is committed to outreach to communicate science to the wider public. Our outreach has come in multiple forms, including introducing our work to the public for 'Pint of Science' and a variety of visits to schools: As part of our 'Learning to Learn' mission, we have provided outreach sessions to a variety of secondary schools in the London area, as well as delivering sessions about careers in neuroscience. The laboratory has also participated in summer work experience weeks for A-level students in the KCL departments of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience (BCN), the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology (CDN) and the Wolfson Sensory, Pain and Regeneration Centre (SPaRC), which is now our home department. Finally, the laboratory has visited primary schools as part of the Wolfson SPaRC outreach to introduce younger students to the brain and how we study it. This outreach program is proving very successful, in large part due to the immense amount of work from the departmental team to introduce two brand new Comic Book Characters - Professor SPaRC and her dog Axon! (See picture below). The major contributors to this process have been lead editor Susan Duty, departmental tech and artist Chris Bottoms, and lead artist Rebecca Burgess, but many scientists in the department have now contributed to outreach sessions featuring these characters. The Cooke lab is currently working with Chris Bottoms on an edition of this comic book about learning and memory.
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Here is the cover from edition #1 of the Professor SPaRC and Axon comic to introduce the brain and what we know about how it works to schoolchildren (editor Susan Duty, resident artist Chris Bottoms and lead artist Rebecca Burgess).