The Brain, Learning, and Memory

Key: AWL to Study, Low-frequency Vocabulary

What is the connection between the brain, learning, and

memory?
 Learning and Memory
• Learning
 modification in behavior due to an increase in knowledge or
skills
• Memory
 ability to recall information
and experiences

How have the skills and knowledge you’ve acquired

modified your behavior?
 Learning and Memory Linked
• Learning relies on memory.
 Learning requires the storage and retrieval of information.
• Memory relies on learning.
 An individual’s established
knowledge base provides a
structure of past learning.
 Incoming data attaches to that
structure though association.

Explain how you have learned something by associating it

with what you already knew.
 Breakthroughs in Brain Research
• Use brain imagining techniques
 to clarify the process of
memory and learning.
 to provide educators and
students with academic
study skill strategies.

How do you think brain imaging techniques might clarify

the processes of learning and memory?
 Three Stages of Memory
• Sensory, short-term, and long-term memory
• Sensory memory
 visual, auditory, and olfactory information
 transfers to short-term memory
• Short-term memory
 stores seven single or chunked items for 30 seconds without
repetition
 solves problems through reasoning process (example:
organizing facts into a coherent essay)

What is the difference between sensory memory and

short-term memory?
 Long-term Memory
• The ability to transfer information from short- to long-
term memory is relevant to the learning process.
 People use attention, repetition, and association with past
learning to encode information.
 Neurologically, encoding
happens when information
is repeatedly processed
in the hippocampus.

How do you encode information into long-term memory?

 Critical Factor in Encoding
• Relationship of incoming data to pre-existing mental
frameworks
 The more associations made with established learning,
the better new information is retained.
• Memories are not stored in
a single location.
 They are complex neuronal
networks spread through the
brain’s entire surface.

What is the most important factor in the transfer of

information from short- to long-term memory?
Research-based Study Techniques
• Access background knowledge on a topic.
 This primes the brain to make associations.
• Pose mental questions while learning.
 Compare and contrast new information with your current
understanding.
• Classify and categorize.
 facilitates retention because it involves making connections
• Grasp overall concept to fit in details.
 Selectively highlight information.
 Take notes on main ideas.
 Outline and summarize.

Have you used these techniques?

 Retention
• Encoding does not ensure retention.
 80% of learning is forgotten within 48 hours.
• Need to activate storage and retrieval processes:
 Review: retrieval of information temporarily copies it into
working memory for further processing in hippocampus.
 REM sleep: memories are replayed
and reinforced in hippocampus.

Explain two ways to help the brain retain information.

 Ebbinghaus: Optimal Review
• Preliminary review
 new learning peaks after 10 minutes
• Subsequent study
 at one-day, one-week, one-month, and six-month intervals
 Permanent memory traces are stored where sensory inputs
first occurred.
 They are connected in neuronal networks.

How can what you’ve learned in this presentation help

you in your TOEFL study?