Learning a New Skill? Chill Out and Let Your “Brain Practice”

What if the secret to learning faster wasn’t more practice, but less? Imagine your brain hard at work, not while you’re focused on a task, but during the moments you step away. In a twist that defies logic, scientists have discovered that taking short, intentional breaks might be the brain's most powerful tool for mastering new skills. What’s happening during those quiet pauses? As it turns out, your brain may be rehearsing your new moves 20 times faster than you can—on its own.

Key Takeaways

• Rest Boosts Learning: Short breaks during practice sessions dramatically enhance memory consolidation and performance, even more than sleep.

• Brain Replays Faster Than You Act: During rest, the brain replays practiced tasks up to 20 times faster than real-time execution.

• New Brain Pathways Revealed: Unexpected regions like the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are actively involved in procedural learning.

The Counterintuitive Secret to Faster Skill Building

We've all heard the phrase "practice makes perfect", and this is so true; sustained focus and effort are needed to learn any new skill.

But few realize that it's also important to allocate short rest periods within each practice session. In fact, strange as it may seem, the rest periods themselves are what supercharge our ability to learn and retain new memories.

Here’s the fascinating story and how it can help you master any new skill.

Ten years ago, researchers at the University of Illinois enrolled 84 people in a study on learning and performing a new skill.

Researchers divided the participants into four groups. Three of the groups performed a 50-minute repetitive computerized task in different ways without a break, while the fourth took two short breaks during the task.

Only the fourth group saw no drop in performance. But why?

Prolonged Attention Hinders Performance

It seems that prolonged attention to a single task hinders performance, while brief diversions from a task dramatically improve performance.

Lead researcher, professor Alejandro Lleras, was delighted, saying, "It was amazing that performance seemed to be unimpaired by time, while for the other groups performance was so clearly dropping off."

But what is happening in the brain to bring this about? That's what scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sought to find out.

Short Rest Periods Better Than Sleep

For their study, 33 volunteers sat under a highly sensitive scan called magnetoencephalography (MEG), which maps brain activity by measuring magnetic fields produced by the electrical activity of neurons.

All the participants were right-handed and were asked to type the five-digit test code “41234” with their left hands when they were shown it on a screen.

They had to type it out as many times as possible for ten seconds and then take a ten-second break. This cycle of alternating practice and rest sessions was repeated a total of 35 times.

The subjects' ability to type the code improved dramatically during the first ten cycles before leveling off.

“We wanted to explore the mechanisms behind memory strengthening seen during wakeful rest,” explained one of the study authors, Dr. Ethan Bush. “Several forms of memory appear to rely on the replaying of neural activity, so we decided to test this idea out for procedural skill learning.”

Dr. Bush and his team developed a computer program to assess brain activity. This is what they found...

Brain Practice is 20 Times Faster

Previous National Institutes of Health research demonstrated that the gains in brain activity mostly happened during the rest periods and not when the participants were typing. They also showed these gains were greater than after a night's sleep and correlated with a decrease in the size of brain waves called beta rhythms.

What Dr. Bush and his team discovered is that during the rest periods, the brain practices and replays over and over much faster versions of the typing activity.

When the volunteers were learning, they might be able to type the code five times during each ten seconds of practice. Yet during the ten-second rest period, the brain replays 25 repetitions of the sequence, a five-fold increase. But it gets even better because the brain is able to amplify these effects over time.

As the participants improve and can type the code ten times in ten seconds, brain activity also improves and is able to replay it 200 times, a twenty-fold increase.

Dr. Bush explained, saying, "It's as if the brain actively exploits these rest periods to amplify the effects of practice and rapidly consolidate the skill memory. And this appears to be the skill-binding mechanism that we were looking for."

Unexpected Brain Regions Involved

Dr. Bush and his team found that replay activity often occurred in the sensorimotor regions of the brain, which control movement. This was expected.

What was unexpected was the activity seen in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, as explained by another study author, Leonardo G. Cohen.

“We were a bit surprised by these last results.

"Traditionally, it was thought that the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex may not play such a substantive role in procedural memory. In contrast, our results suggest that these regions are rapidly chattering with the sensorimotor cortex when learning these types of skills.

"Overall, our results support the idea that manipulating replay activity during waking rest may be a powerful tool that researchers can use to help individuals learn new skills faster and possibly facilitate rehabilitation from stroke."

While there’s still much to uncover about how the brain works when learning new information, the message is clear: If you're learning a new skill, work hard at it, but take short breaks, and you’ll experience more rapid learning and a more powerful recall of your new skill. You’ll be a master in no time.

Summary

New research reveals that incorporating short breaks during practice significantly enhances skill learning. While performing a motor task, volunteers improved most not while practicing, but while resting. During these brief pauses, the brain replayed the activity up to 20 times faster, reinforcing the memory and skill more efficiently than even sleep. Scientists were also surprised to find that brain regions not traditionally linked to procedural memory, like the hippocampus, were heavily involved. These findings could have major implications for education, athletic training, and stroke rehabilitation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are rest periods important when learning a new skill?

Short breaks help the brain consolidate new information and replay the practiced task at accelerated speeds, enhancing learning and recall.

How fast does the brain replay tasks during rest?

The brain can replay the practiced sequence up to 20 times faster than it was originally performed.

Is this replay effect better than sleep for learning?

Yes, in the study, the improvements during short wakeful rest were greater than those seen after a night of sleep.

What brain areas are involved in this accelerated learning?

In addition to the sensorimotor cortex, the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex also showed unexpected activity during rest.

Can this technique help in recovery from conditions like stroke?

Researchers believe enhancing replay during rest could aid rehabilitation by strengthening motor learning pathways.