4 ms·

Scientists find how relaxed minds remember better

26 points by gibsonf1 17y ago

EliAndrewC 17y ago
Anecdotally this fits with my experiences on death march projects. I've often seen people learn a new programming language and/or set of libraries while on a tight deadline and getting yelled at for being behind schedule. Their knowledge retention is drastically worse than when they're on a more relaxed project. In my experience, someone who takes an unhurried week to do a small project in an unfamiliar environment will learn a lot more than someone forced to spend a month frantically trying to make a deadline in that same environment. An interesting corollary is that someone who really cares about their job may end up being less effective in the long run than someone who does. Specifically, someone who cares about making their insane deadlines and who gets stressed at the thought of looking bad will end up retaining less knowledge about the programming languages and libraries that they use. They'll also be more inclined to copy/paste code without really understanding it just to make their deadline, etc. Conversely, when someone who doesn't care much about their company's priorities is given a task, they can take a more relaxed attitude and learn much more. They might say, "Well I'm supposed to finish this C# program in 2 days, but if I take 1 extra day then I can learn how to use the .NET logging framework, figure out how to use delegates, and really understand how its threading model differs from pthreads." In the long run, this employee will probably be more effective than the ones who listen to their managers and try to finish everything now-now-NOW! And according to the OP, they'll probably retain what they learn much better as well, which definitely fits with my experiences.
Xurinos 17y ago
"The research team studied eight volunteers" -- Is that a large enough sample size to be drawing scientific conclusions?
- gregdetre 17y ago
  It looks like they were doing single-cell recording in humans. Almost certainly, these were epileptic patients being prepped for surgery, because that's almost the only time when scientists have access to data from invasive recording techniques. Ah, yes: "The subjects were nine patients who were evaluated for possible surgical treatment of epilepsy using implantation of depth electrodes." As a result, it's pretty typical to have small sample sizes like this. It's certainly possible to achieve statistical significance with this few subjects.
gregdetre 17y ago
The actual paper is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08860.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... I'm not convinced about the Reuters article's framing of things in terms of relaxedness - the paper doesn't seem to make any mention of emotional state. We don't fully understand what theta oscillations do, or why there are oscillations throughout the brain. We know they're more present during activities like navigation and learning, but there are other, slower oscillations that are usually more associated with meditation and states of relaxation than theta. This is an important finding though, because it throws more light on how oscillations relate to learning. Buzsaki's Rhythms of the Brain is a great though dense resource for learning about oscillations in the brain: http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/0195301064 http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/019530...

26 points by gibsonf1 17y ago

Anecdotally this fits with my experiences on death march projects. I've often seen people learn a new programming language and/or set of libraries while on a tight deadline and getting yelled at for being behind schedule. Their knowledge retention is drastically worse than when they're on a more relaxed project. In my experience, someone who takes an unhurried week to do a small project in an unfamiliar environment will learn a lot more than someone forced to spend a month frantically trying to make a deadline in that same environment. An interesting corollary is that someone who really cares about their job may end up being less effective in the long run than someone who does. Specifically, someone who cares about making their insane deadlines and who gets stressed at the thought of looking bad will end up retaining less knowledge about the programming languages and libraries that they use. They'll also be more inclined to copy/paste code without really understanding it just to make their deadline, etc. Conversely, when someone who doesn't care much about their company's priorities is given a task, they can take a more relaxed attitude and learn much more. They might say, "Well I'm supposed to finish this C# program in 2 days, but if I take 1 extra day then I can learn how to use the .NET logging framework, figure out how to use delegates, and really understand how its threading model differs from pthreads." In the long run, this employee will probably be more effective than the ones who listen to their managers and try to finish everything now-now-NOW! And according to the OP, they'll probably retain what they learn much better as well, which definitely fits with my experiences.

Xurinos 17y ago

"The research team studied eight volunteers" -- Is that a large enough sample size to be drawing scientific conclusions?

gregdetre 17y ago
It looks like they were doing single-cell recording in humans. Almost certainly, these were epileptic patients being prepped for surgery, because that's almost the only time when scientists have access to data from invasive recording techniques. Ah, yes: "The subjects were nine patients who were evaluated for possible surgical treatment of epilepsy using implantation of depth electrodes." As a result, it's pretty typical to have small sample sizes like this. It's certainly possible to achieve statistical significance with this few subjects.

gregdetre 17y ago

The actual paper is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08860.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... I'm not convinced about the Reuters article's framing of things in terms of relaxedness - the paper doesn't seem to make any mention of emotional state. We don't fully understand what theta oscillations do, or why there are oscillations throughout the brain. We know they're more present during activities like navigation and learning, but there are other, slower oscillations that are usually more associated with meditation and states of relaxation than theta. This is an important finding though, because it throws more light on how oscillations relate to learning. Buzsaki's Rhythms of the Brain is a great though dense resource for learning about oscillations in the brain: http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/0195301064 http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/019530...