#083 What your brain likes: learn effectively, learn with pleasure

So I am not a biologist nor neurologist nor anyone who specializes in this field of neuroscience. And I try to present everything in a very simple language as I would like to have it explained to myself. A stimulus to create this podcast were books that I read, where my students' experiences with learning, where some of my experiences with learning, where some experiments that I read about. And if you want to dig deeper into the topic and read about some experiments and learn more scientific data, I highly recommend it to you, of course. Just, you know, just do it. So, without any further ado, let's see how everything works.

Also the way the teacher describes concepts, so basically in a very encouraging, fascinating and not dull way, may result in a better understanding among students. I believe everyone can recall at least one teacher who could explain the ideas in a way students could either get it quite fast or simply enjoy the topics that were discussed. It is scientifically proven that laughter facilitates learning, and when we learn with a positive stimulus, we can memorize faster. Laughter also increases curiosity. Imagine learning something being given jokes or ridiculous examples. Wouldn't you feel tempted to learn more? And what if it's a taboo topic or a shocking example?

Our brains love that. This way our brains will immediately create a new neuronal connection and some associations with a given concept if the example evoked a lot of emotions. And there is more to that. Once a connection like that has been created, we need just a tiny stimulus, such as a word or a phrase, which will trigger a cascade of memories. And I can illustrate you with an example. Of course, it never happened, it's just an example, yeah? Just imagine, imagine me explaining to you past perfect tense.