Natural Brain State is Primed to Learn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Study

STUDYING for an exam? Begin by thinking your way into a learning state. Until now, neuroscientists have focused on identifying parts of the brain that are active during learning. "But no one has looked at the preparedness state," says John Gabrieli at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The idea is to identify before the event whether the brain is prepared to be a learner." Gabrieli and his colleagues used functional MRI scanning to monitor the naturally fluctuating brain activity of 20 volunteers and investigate whether the brain enters such a learning state. While in the scanner, each person was presented with 250 images, one at a time, and asked to memorise them. The volunteers were shown the images again 2 hours later - mixed in with 250 new ones - and asked to remember which they had seen before.