Let’s start with this statement by Ingrid Fadelli, writing online at MedicalXpress: “Past research has consistently highlighted the crucial role of dopamine neurons in reward learning.” * Yep. You accomplish something, you get a reward, you feel good. Makes you want to learn more.
So, it seems that dopamine plays a role in successful efforts to learn. That makes sense to me. But I have my own little learning trick, one that I used to tell university students—and my children. It’s simple: Learn as though you had to teach.
Now, who among us hasn’t heard the expression, “I understand it, but I can’t explain it”? I certainly heard that sentence multiple times over a four-decade career in academia. And my response? “No, if you can’t explain it, you really don’t know it.”
I hear you; I hear you. Yes, one can understand, for example, Love without being able to explain it. Certainly, no one wants to get trapped by the question “Why do you love me?” So, I guess my “No, if you can’t explain it, you really don’t know it” runs up against a limitation imposed by the intangibles of human affection and maybe by the other human emotions and by the whys of quantum activity. But if I take those indefinables out of the equation, then what I often said to students applies. If you cannot explain a topic, you really don’t know it. And that is why I always advised students—and my children—to study as though they had to teach. The mind works differently when it has to organize for other minds.
How did I come by my little learning secret? After the obligatory years on the student-side of the teacher’s desk, I found myself on the teacher’s side. That experience changed my perspective on learning immediately. Suddenly, I was confronted with the necessity of verbalizing whatever I had learned, of organizing it in such a way that others could either understand or come close to understanding as I understood. Imagine the ineffectiveness of a teacher who says, “I understand this, but I can’t explain it.” What in the mind of such a teacher is the purpose of teaching?
So, sure. Get your dopamine thrill in learning through some reward system, which, according to the researchers, is better rare than frequent. But know that you’ll flood your brain with dopamine every time you realize how you can clearly convey a topic to another. And the next time you hear someone say, “I know it, but I can’t explain it,” express your doubt. Just don’t expect anyone to definitively answer the question “Why do you love me?”
*Fadelli, Ingrid. Researchers find that rare rewards amplify dopamine responses during learning. Medicalxpress.com. 2 April 2021. Online at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-rare-rewards-amplify-dopamine-responses.html Accessed April 3, 2021. Fadelli summarizes Rothenhoefer, K.M., Hong, T., Alikaya, A. et al. Rare rewards amplify dopamine responses. Nat. Neurosci 24, 465-469 (2021. Https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-021-00807-7.
So, it seems that dopamine plays a role in successful efforts to learn. That makes sense to me. But I have my own little learning trick, one that I used to tell university students—and my children. It’s simple: Learn as though you had to teach.
Now, who among us hasn’t heard the expression, “I understand it, but I can’t explain it”? I certainly heard that sentence multiple times over a four-decade career in academia. And my response? “No, if you can’t explain it, you really don’t know it.”
I hear you; I hear you. Yes, one can understand, for example, Love without being able to explain it. Certainly, no one wants to get trapped by the question “Why do you love me?” So, I guess my “No, if you can’t explain it, you really don’t know it” runs up against a limitation imposed by the intangibles of human affection and maybe by the other human emotions and by the whys of quantum activity. But if I take those indefinables out of the equation, then what I often said to students applies. If you cannot explain a topic, you really don’t know it. And that is why I always advised students—and my children—to study as though they had to teach. The mind works differently when it has to organize for other minds.
How did I come by my little learning secret? After the obligatory years on the student-side of the teacher’s desk, I found myself on the teacher’s side. That experience changed my perspective on learning immediately. Suddenly, I was confronted with the necessity of verbalizing whatever I had learned, of organizing it in such a way that others could either understand or come close to understanding as I understood. Imagine the ineffectiveness of a teacher who says, “I understand this, but I can’t explain it.” What in the mind of such a teacher is the purpose of teaching?
So, sure. Get your dopamine thrill in learning through some reward system, which, according to the researchers, is better rare than frequent. But know that you’ll flood your brain with dopamine every time you realize how you can clearly convey a topic to another. And the next time you hear someone say, “I know it, but I can’t explain it,” express your doubt. Just don’t expect anyone to definitively answer the question “Why do you love me?”
*Fadelli, Ingrid. Researchers find that rare rewards amplify dopamine responses during learning. Medicalxpress.com. 2 April 2021. Online at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-rare-rewards-amplify-dopamine-responses.html Accessed April 3, 2021. Fadelli summarizes Rothenhoefer, K.M., Hong, T., Alikaya, A. et al. Rare rewards amplify dopamine responses. Nat. Neurosci 24, 465-469 (2021. Https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-021-00807-7.
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