How to speed up learning threefold
Flashing a bright shape in time with a person’s brainwaves can speed up learning threefold, Cambridge University has found.
Researchers discovered that priming the brain with its own frequency for less than two seconds radically improves performance.
The technique could be used to help children with learning difficulties, older people, or professionals who need to learn vast amounts of information quickly, they believe.
Dr Elizabeth Michael, a research associate in Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, 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.
‘Entrainment’ boosts focus and concentration
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 given a visual identification task - detecting targets on a cluttered background.
Some volunteers received pulses matching the peak of their alpha brainwaves, some the trough, while others got rhythms that were either random or at the wrong rate - a little faster or slower.
The team measured how quickly each individual improved and found those whose brainwaves were synched to the trough were 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 co-author Prof Victoria Leong, from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Cambridge’s Department of Paediatrics.
When participants returned the next day to complete another round of tasks, those who learned much faster under entrainment had maintained their higher performance level.
Method may replicate how children learn
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, gaze and gesture that are naturally exchanged during interactions between parents and babies,” added Prof Leong.
“When adults speak to young children they adopt child-directed speech - a slow and exaggerated form of speaking.
“This study suggests that child-directed speech may be a spontaneous way of rate-matching and entraining the slower brainwaves of children to support learning.”
Prof Zoe Kourtzi, of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, a senior author of the study, suggested that brainwave rhythms could be used to boost learning in children who are suffering from attention problems.
It could also be useful when people are 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 Cerebral Cortex.
