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The Key to Learning: Take Lots of Breaks
Your brain needs to rest if you’re trying to stuff new things in there
Next time you’re trying to learn a new skill, take a break. In fact, take lots of breaks. New research finds that the brain can use rest periods to recall and replay the task, improving performance. The finding builds on other studies showing that your brain needs some downtime when you try to stuff it with new information or skills.
In the new study, scientists mapped the brain activity of 33 right-handed volunteers while they repeatedly typed a string of five numbers with their left hands. They were asked to type it as many times as they could for 10 seconds, then take a 10-second break, then repeat. The brain scans revealed that during the breaks, many of the people were running the process in their heads, in some cases up to 20 times faster than the actual typing.
Wakeful rest replay, scientists call it.
Those who most frequently replayed the task in their minds improved their actual typing speeds the most. The effect tailed off after about the 11th session, by which time the challenge was no longer so new, and performance gains slowed.
“During the early part of the learning curve we saw that wakeful rest replay was compressed in time, frequent, and a…
