本课程将介绍各领域专家所使用的学习方法，他们包括艺术家、文学家、数学家、科学家、运动员和很多其他领域专家。我们将学习如何使用两种不同的大脑模式，以及大脑如何封装（“chunks”）信息。我们还将介绍能力错觉（illusions of learning），记忆技巧，对付拖延症的方法，以及研究表明能帮助我们掌握困难科目的方法。
无论您在所学领域是专家还是菜鸟，您都可以使用这些方法，改变自己的思维模式，重塑自己的人生。如果您是所学领域的专家，通过学习大脑认知的底层知识，您可以进一步提高自己的学习能力，您将了解反直觉的考试技巧和见解，从而能够更高效地完成作业和习题。如果您在学习中遇到困难，系统有效的学习技巧将帮助您将走上正轨。无论您希望学习什么内容，这门课程都可以作为您的指南。
Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Professor of Engineering, Industrial & Systems Engineering, Oakland University
Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies Computational Neurobiology Laboratory
Hong Chee Joo
What do you do when you just can't figure something out?
For zombies, it's pretty simple.
They can just keep bashing their brains against the wall.
But living brains are a lot more complex.
It turns out, though, that if you understand just a little bit of some of
the basics about how your brain works, you
can learn more easily and be less frustrated.
Researchers have found that we have two fundamentally different modes of thinking.
Here, I'll call them the Focused and the Diffuse modes.
We're familiar with focusing.
It's when you concentrate intently on something
you're trying to learn or to understand.
But we're not so familiar with diffuse thinking.
Turns out that this more relaxed thinking style
is related to a set of neural resting states.
We're going to use an analogy of the game
of pinball to help us understand these two thinking modes.
Incidentally, both metaphor and analogy are really
helpful when you're trying to learn something new.
If you remember, a pinball game works by,
you pull back on the plunger, release it, and
a ball goes boinking out, bouncing around on
the rubber bumpers, and that's how you get points.
So, here's your brain, with the ears right here, and the eyes looking upwards.
And we can lay that pinball machine right down inside it.
So, there you go.
There's the analogy for the focused mode.
The blue bumper bumpers here are placed very close to one another.
See this orange pattern here towards the top?
It represents a familiar thought pattern.
Maybe involving something simple like adding some numbers, or
more advanced ideas like literary
criticism or calculating electromagnetic flows.
You think a thought, boom, it takes off, moves smoothly along.
And then, as it's bouncing around on the bumpers, you're
able to figure out the problem you're trying to solve, or.
The concept you're trying to understand that's
related to something you're rather familiar with.
So look at how that thought moves smoothly
around on the fuzzy underlying orange neural pathway.
In some sense it's as if it's traveling along a familiar, nicely paved road.
But what if the problem you're working on needs new ideas or approaches?
Concepts you haven't thought of before.
That's symbolized here by this neural pattern
towards the bottom of the pinball machine area.
But if you haven't thought that thought before, you don't
even know how that pattern feels or where it is.
So how are you going to develop that new thought in the first place?
Not only do you not know where the pattern is or what the pattern looks like, but
see all the rubber bumpers that are blocking your
access whatever direction you do decide to move in?
To get to this new thought pattern, you need a different way of thinking.
And that's represented here, by the diffuse mode.
Look at how widely spaced the rubber bumpers are.
Thought takes off, look at how it moves widely, bounces around.
It could travel a long way before being interrupted by hitting a bumper.
In this diffuse mode of thinking, you can look
at things broadly from a very different, big-picture perspective.
You can make new neural connections traveling along new pathways.
You can't focus in as tightly as you often
need to, to finalize any kind of problem solving.
Or understand the finest aspects of a concept.
But you can at least get to the initial place
you need to be in to home in on a solution.
Now as far as neuroscientists know right now, you're either
in the focused mode or the diffuse mode of thinking.
It seems you can't be in both thinking modes at the same time.
It's kind of like a coin.
We can see either one side, or the other side of the coin.
But not both sides at the same time.
Being in one mode seems to limit your
access to the other mode's way of thinking.
In our next video we're going to see how some extraordinary
people access their diffuse ways of thinking to do great things.
Thanks for learning about learning, I'm Barbara Oakley.
Dr. Barbara OakleyRamón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University
Dr. Terrence SejnowskiFrancis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Hong Chee Joo
