How to learn things automatically
December 12, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica
Automatic neurofeedback learning (credit: Boston University)
OK, this one’s right out of The Matrix and The Manchurian Candidate.
Imagine watching a computer screen while lying down in a brain imaging machine and automatically learning how to play the guitar or lay up hoops like Shaq O’Neal, or even how to recuperate from a disease — without any conscious knowledge.
Researchers at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan used decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce visual cortex activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.
“Adult early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning,” said lead author and BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe, director of BU’s Visual Science Laboratory.
Neuroscientists have previously found that pictures gradually build up inside a person’s brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas. The brain then fills in greater detail to make a red ball appear as a red ball, for example. Researchers studied the early visual areas for their ability to cause improvements in visual performance and learning.
“However, none of these studies directly addressed the question of whether early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning,” said Watanabe. So they used decoded fMRI neurofeedback to induce a particular activation pattern in targeted early visual areas that corresponded to a pattern evoked by a specific visual feature in a brain region of interest. The researchers found that repetitions of the activation pattern caused long-lasting visual performance improvement on that visual feature — without the subject’s active involvement. The method could be used for improving memory or motor (muscle) skills, the researchers suggest.
But that’s where is gets a bit scary. “In theory, hypnosis or a type of automated learning is a potential outcome,” said Kawato. “However, in this study we confirmed the validity of our method only in visual perceptual learning. So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future. At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way.”
Uh, ya think?
Ref.: Kazuhisa Shibata et al., Perceptual Learning Incepted by Decoded fMRI Neurofeedback Without Stimulus Presentation, Science, 2011 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1212003]
InterLife project (credit: ESRC)
Are virtual worlds better than the real world for learning?
Here another one that weirds me out just a little. It uses virtual worlds to help students learn.
Academics at Glasgow University and elsewhere have developed 3D virtual worlds to act as informal communities that allow students to learn by interacting in shared learning activities, such as film making and photography.
“We demonstrated that you can plan activities with kids and get them working in 3D worlds with commitment, energy and emotional involvement, over a significant period of time,” project lead researcher Professor Victor Lally said.
OK, but those are things sound like fun to do. Why do they need avatars and elaborate virtual worlds — just give me a video cam and some software and get the hell out of my way! These kids are sitting there in from of monitors vegging out watching virtual worlds instead of shooting Occupy Edinburgh for YouTube.
My guess is that this is really intended as a tool to teach stuff that students have no interest in. In other words: more effective compulsory government-controlled education.
“It’s a highly engaging medium that could have a major impact in extending education and training beyond geographical locations. 3-D worlds seem to do this in a much more powerful way than many other social tools currently available on the Internet,” Lally insisted. “When appropriately configured, this virtual environment can offer safe spaces to experience new learning opportunities that seemed unfeasible only 15 years ago.”
“You can now create multiple science simulations of field trip locations, for example, using 3-D world ‘hyper-grids’ that allow participants to ‘teleport’ between a range of experiments or activities. This enables the students to share their learning through recording their activities, presenting graphs about their results, and use voting technologies to judge attitudes and opinions from others. It can offer new possibilities for designing exciting and engaging learning spaces. This kind of 3D technology could be used to simulate training environments, retail contexts, and interview situations.”
A mobile app is also in development. The research is part of the Inter-Life project in Scotland, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
OK, maybe I was wrong. For some subjects (think: math, science), hanging out in (and building) virtual worlds is a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around listening to some boring teacher drone on and on. What do you think?
Comments (4)
by Gurdiac
As a professional trainer in Earth Sciences I would use this kind of approach all the time. Yes you could go and take pictures of the cliffs in North East England, but I need the students to see Book Cliffs in Utah, so use a virtual environment. At the moment I encourage students to use Google Maps to tour parts of the world they would never ever get to.
The key thing with kids is they don’t know what they don’t know, and they need their eyes opened up to the possibilities, and their curiosity tweaked. A virtual world is a great way to bombard them with possibilities.
This kind of approach works well with the Flipped Classroom as well. The kids can get the “teaching” from the virtual reality game, then spend the time solving problems and doing practical stuff during the limited Face-to-Face time with the teacher.
by asiwel
Honestly, maybe I am getting old, but this part of an otherwise interesting article just hit me the wrong way: “My guess is that this is really intended as a tool to teach stuff that students have no interest in. In other words: more effective compulsory government-controlled education.”
Duh, do you really think so? It is one thing to try new ways of making important things worth learning “more interesting” or “relevant.” It is quite another to posit that children know what is worth learning and what isn’t and that somehow their “interest” is important in formulating curricula. Parents don’t ask kids if they are interested in learning to walk or babysit or do chores; they tell them to do these things and to do them properly (i.e., learn how). Professors don’t ask students what is important to know or learn; they challenge those students’ preconceptions (which are often parochial). Employers simply pay for services from people who know something or can do something they need.
It is a vastly greater ego trip to imagine the government has some interest in you and your “compulsory” government education. It certainly does have an interest in public education. In America, that is to produce good adult citizens who are well-informed and relatively law-abiding and self-productive. The cost of the free public education some students just simply “waste” is enormous.. to us and to them. The curriculum is only very modestly “controlled” and that is a constant political issue among adult citizens (not their children). But most educators are very good people who try as hard as they can to teach their skills and disciplines .. and morals too. This is NOT a conspiracy or some major government propaganda machine.
by Mind.matriX
” In America, that is to produce good adult citizens who are well-informed and relatively law-abiding and self-productive.”
If those are the government’s intentions, it’s certainly not doing a very good job at it. You seem to be very biased toward government mandated education (yes, it is “compulsory”, as in you will go to jail if you don’t send your kids to school). I agree that it’s highly unlikely to be a conspiracy, apparently that’s the author’s writing style, but the government isn’t as perfect as you think it is.
by starone
This is a facinating topic… thanks for the post. I have been thinking about it since The Lawnmower Man, though interestingly, when I decided to start studying Neuroscience to help me design better GUIs back in my engineering days, the topic never served to direct my later reading in the research.
Thinking about it now I started to consider the evolutionary purpose of dreaming. Like the motor skill acquisition driven neuronal pruning after birth, and the analogous event in the prefrontal cortext at the onset of puberty, I wonder if dreams are the manifestation of a similar process on a smaller scale with only changes in plasticity rather than larger collateral rearrangement. Also, during dream sleep, if I remember correctly, the motor efferents are inhibited.
It just seems like, when considering these things along with the function of the mirror neuron system, that learning from visual memory, real or induced is feasible.
It may have increadible potential, but also, as you noted, it could be very dangerous. Something, perhpas, we should keep an eye on…