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How does practice makes perfect?

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, pages 10–11 (2004)Cite this article

Studies of nonhuman animals have taught us a great deal about how the brain changes during learning. An imaging study in this issue investigates how behavioral strategies interact with brain activation in humans during learning of a working memory task.

What happens when we learn? One possibility is that we acquire greater skill at applying our initial strategy to the problem at hand, making it more efficient. Another possibility is that we acquire a new, more efficient strategy. In this issue, Olesen, Westerberg and Klingberg1 investigate the brain mechanisms that accompany learning a simple task. They find a set of brain regions that increase activation with practice and another set of regions that decrease activation. These results may bear on which of the two learning possibilities occurs in this case.

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Figure 1: Working memory task in which participants were shown a series of 4 × 4 matrices, each with a single cell marked in red.

Debbie Maizels

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  1. the Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 E. University, Ann Arbor, 48109-1109, Michigan, USA

    John Jonides

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Jonides, J. How does practice makes perfect?. Nat Neurosci 7, 10–11 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0104-10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0104-10

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