Saturday, April 2, 2011

Learning From Success

Contrary to popular beliefs, we learn more from our triumphs than from our failures, according to new research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scientists have shown that the brain responds to success at the level of individual brain cells, but the neurons show virtually no response to failures.

They found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, two brain areas known to be involved in learning, keep track of recent successes and failures for many seconds, long enough for it to play a role in guiding the learning the next time an opportunity to learn comes up.

Another key finding is that neural processing in the brain improves after a recent success and doesn't improve much after a recent failure.

Read the article about the study here.

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