本课程将介绍各领域专家所使用的学习方法，他们包括艺术家、文学家、数学家、科学家、运动员和很多其他领域专家。我们将学习如何使用两种不同的大脑模式，以及大脑如何封装（“chunks”）信息。我们还将介绍能力错觉（illusions of learning），记忆技巧，对付拖延症的方法，以及研究表明能帮助我们掌握困难科目的方法。
无论您在所学领域是专家还是菜鸟，您都可以使用这些方法，改变自己的思维模式，重塑自己的人生。如果您是所学领域的专家，通过学习大脑认知的底层知识，您可以进一步提高自己的学习能力，您将了解反直觉的考试技巧和见解，从而能够更高效地完成作业和习题。如果您在学习中遇到困难，系统有效的学习技巧将帮助您将走上正轨。无论您希望学习什么内容，这门课程都可以作为您的指南。
Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Professor of Engineering, Industrial & Systems Engineering, Oakland University
Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies Computational Neurobiology Laboratory
Hong Chee Joo
[SOUND] In this video, we're going to answer the question.
What is a chunk?
When you first look at a brand new concept it sometimes
doesn't make much sense, as shown by the jumbled puzzle pieces here.
Chunking is the mental leap that helps
you unite bits of information together through meaning.
The new logical whole makes the chunk easier to remember, and also makes
it easier to fit the chunk into the larger picture of what you're learning.
Just memorizing a fact without understanding
or context doesn't help you understand what's
really going on or how the concept
fits together with other concepts you're learning.
Notice there are no interlocking puzzle edges on the
puzzle piece to help you fit it to other pieces.
We talked earlier about working memory and how
those four slots of working memory appear to
hang out in the part of your brain
right behind your forehead known as the prefrontal cortex.
When you're focusing your attention on something
it's almost as if you have an octopus.
The octopus of attention that slips it's tentacles
through those four slots of working memory when necessary
to help you make connections to information that
you might have in various parts of your brain.
Remember, this is different from the random connections of the diffuse mode.
Focusing your attention to connect parts of the brain to tie
together ideas is an important part of the focused mode of learning.
It is also often what helps get you started in creating a chunk.
Interestingly when you're stressed your attentional octopus begins to
lose the ability to make some of those connections.
This is why your brain doesn't seem to
work right when you're angry, stressed, or afraid.
Chunks are pieces of information, neuroscientifically speaking,
through bound together through meaning or use.
You can take the letters P-O and P and bind them
together into one conceptual easy to remember chunk, the word pop.
[SOUND] It's like converting a, a cumbersome computer file into a ZIP file.
Underneath that single pop chunk is a symphony of neurons
that have learned to sing in tune with one another.
The complex neural activity that ties
together our simplifying abstract chunks of thought.
Whether those thoughts pertain to acronyms, ideas, or concepts are
the basis of much of the science, literature, and art.
Let's say you want to learn how to speak Spanish.
If you're a child hanging around a Spanish
speaking household, learning Spanish is as natural as breathing.
Your mother says, mama.
And you say, mama, right back to her.
Your neurons fire and wire together in a shimmering mental loop cementing
the relationship in your mind between the sound mama and your mother's smiling face.
That scintillating neural loop is one memory trace, which
is connected of course to many other related memory traces.
The best programs for learning language, such as those of
the Defense Language Institute where I learned Russian, incorporate structured
practice that includes repetition and rote focus mode learning of
the language along with more diffuse-like free speech with native speakers.
The goal is to embed the basic words and patterns so you can speak
as freely and creatively in your new
language as you do in your native language.
As it turns out one of the
first steps towards gaining expertise in academic topics
is to create conceptual chunks, mental leaps
that unite scattered bits of information through meaning.
The concept of neural chunks also applies to sports, music,
dance, really just about anything that humans can get good at.
Basically, a chunk means a network of neurons that are used to firing together
so you can think a thought or perform an action smoothly and effectively.
Focused practice and repetition, the creation of
strong memory traces, helps you to create chunks.
The path to expertise is built little by
little, small chunks can become larger, and all of
the expertise serves to underpin more creative interpretations
as you gradually become a master of the material.
In other words, as you'll see later,
practice and repetition in building chunks aren't
all you need to become a truly creative master of the material you're learning.
Chunking helps your brain run more efficiently.
Once you chunk an idea, a concept, or an action,
you don't know need to remember all the little underlying details.
You've got the main idea, the chunk, and that's enough.
It's like getting dressed in the morning.
You just think one simple thought like, I'll
get dressed, but it's amazing when you realize
the complex swirl of underlying activities that take
place with that one, simple chunk of thought.
Next, we'll talk about how you can form a chunk.
I'm Barbara Oakley.
Thanks for learning how to learn.
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Dr. Barbara OakleyRamón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University
Dr. Terrence SejnowskiFrancis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Hong Chee Joo
