How Learning New Skills Rewire Your Brain (2024)

FAQs

How Learning New Skills Rewire Your Brain? ›

The connections between neurones in the brain are very plastic, meaning that they can change a lot. By practicing a new skill, you start creating new connections and pathways in your brain. If we keep practicing, these connections will become stronger, which leads to improved performance in the skill.

The brain is made up of billions of neurons that communicate with one another through these connections called synapses. When we learn new information or skills, these connections between neurons become stronger, and new connections are formed. This is because the brain releases chemicals called neurotransmitters.

The ability of learning how to solve one kind of problem makes it easier to solve others that are similar. In order to learn, we need to create and strengthen the neural pathways in our brain. By continuing to practice a new skill, these pathways are strengthened.

In this way, much learning in the brain involves changing the connections between neurons, particularly reinforcing those pathways or circuits of interconnected neurons that are used frequently and fire together.

Everything that you experience leaves its mark on your brain. When you learn something new, the neurons involved in the learning episode grow new projections and form new connections. Your brain may even produce new neurons. Physical exercise can induce similar changes, as can taking antidepressants.

That firing strengthens connections between brain cells. If we do something only once, synaptic pathways can fade away. But if we practice and learn something deeply, the synaptic activity will form lasting networks in the brain. Indeed, learning rewires the brain.

When you learn new things, these tiny connections in the brain actually multiply and get stronger. The more that you challenge your mind to learn, the more your brain cells grow. Then, things that you once found very hard or even impossible to do—like speaking a foreign language or doing algebra—seem to become easy.

Learning keeps your mind engaged and body active. It helps you get new and knowledge-based perspectives on the world around you. It helps you gain new experiences, trains your brain to handle a wide range of challenges, and keeps your neural pathways active.

As the brain matures, more and more fibers grow and the brain becomes increasingly interconnected. These interconnected networks of neurons are very important to the formation of memories and the connection of new learning to previous learning. As neural networks form, the child learns both academically and socially.

What happens when you learn new information? ›

When you learn something new, two things happen: First, neurons immediately pass electrical signals along new routes in your brain. Then, over time, this leads to changes in the physical structure of cells and their connections in the brain.