Learning Speeds and Styles: Is Your Mind a Hiker or a Race Car Driver?
What's the best way to learn something new? Embrace your inner imposter, and don't worry about speed—here's why.
Barbara Oakley, PhD, is a professor of engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Her research involves bioengineering with an emphasis on neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Alongside legendary neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, Dr. Oakley teaches two massive open online courses (MOOCs), 'Learning How to Learn,' the world's most popular course, and 'Mindshift,' the companion course to her most recent book of the same title.
Barbara Oakley: When you’re learning something new your tendency is to think, “I’m an imposter. I’m just kind of a fake. I’m not nearly as good as all these other people who are very far ahead of me in working on whatever you're trying to get started working on.”
And this is one of the best, best traits you could have. Embrace your inner imposter. Because what the imposter syndrome does, that feeling that you’re a fake and you’re not as good as everyone else is, it allows you to open your beginner’s mind, so you start looking at things with a more open and receptive way.
Because well, part of it is you’re really unsure of yourself and so you’re really paying attention and really listening. People who approach a new discipline with, you know, “I’m just really confident, I can do this” which is often the message we hear from society—“You should be confident about yourself and your skills,” and so forth.
It can close you off to sort of correcting your mistakes and being humble and approaching things almost from a lower perspective or a lower start than you might think you have to start at, just because if you start really low, really humble you really get the background that you need in order to excel and achieve at whatever you want to excel and achieve at.
When it comes to learning something it almost seems like there’s two types of learners. One of them is what I might term a race car learner. They’ve got these race car brains. They get there really fast.
And the other is more like a hiker. A hiker gets to the finish line but much, much more slowly. Think about it this way: You know it’s depressing if you’re a slow thinker to look at these fast thinkers, race car brains and realize they can get anywhere much more quickly than you.
But think about what a hiker experiences as opposed to the race car driver. The race car driver moves really fast, gets to the finish line. Everything’s a blur.
The hiker can reach out, they can touch the leaves on the trees. They can see the little rabbit trails. The can smell the air, hear the birds. Completely different experience, and in some ways far richer and deeper.
So it can help you sometimes if you’re a slow thinker and you think “Oh, there’s nothing in it for me. I’m not as fast as these other people.” You can sometimes see things that those really, really fast thinkers miss just because you’re looking more deeply.
There are two things we typically consider to be points against us in life: feeling out of our league, and being slow learners. Here, however, Professor Barbara Oakley turns convention on its head to show how they're really assets to your education. If you're about to start a new skill or job and feel the onset of imposter syndrome—are you the least qualified person in the room? Did you 'fake' your way into this opportunity?—embrace it; Oakley contests that seeing the world with a beginner's mind actually opens you up to learning. Overconfidence can make us blind to our mistakes, so humility is a tool in itself. And as for being a slow learner, Oakley uses the analogy of a race car driver and a hiker to describe two distinct learning styles. Both these types reach the finish line or the mountain peak, but one takes the time to look more closely at details and learn a lesson more deeply, while all the other might see is a blur. Barbara Oakley's most recent book is Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, and you can find the Mindshift course here.
To boost your self-esteem, write about chapters of your life
If you're lacking confidence and feel like you could benefit from an ego boost, try writing your life story.
In truth, so much of what happens to us in life is random – we are pawns at the mercy of Lady Luck. To take ownership of our experiences and exert a feeling of control over our future, we tell stories about ourselves that weave meaning and continuity into our personal identity.
Yale scientists restore brain function to 32 clinically dead pigs
Researchers hope the technology will further our understanding of the brain, but lawmakers may not be ready for the ethical challenges.
- Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine successfully restored some functions to pig brains that had been dead for hours.
- They hope the technology will advance our understanding of the brain, potentially developing new treatments for debilitating diseases and disorders.
- The research raises many ethical questions and puts to the test our current understanding of death.
The image of an undead brain coming back to live again is the stuff of science fiction. Not just any science fiction, specifically B-grade sci fi. What instantly springs to mind is the black-and-white horrors of films like Fiend Without a Face. Bad acting. Plastic monstrosities. Visible strings. And a spinal cord that, for some reason, is also a tentacle?
But like any good science fiction, it's only a matter of time before some manner of it seeps into our reality. This week's Nature published the findings of researchers who managed to restore function to pigs' brains that were clinically dead. At least, what we once thought of as dead.
What's dead may never die, it seems
The researchers did not hail from House Greyjoy — "What is dead may never die" — but came largely from the Yale School of Medicine. They connected 32 pig brains to a system called BrainEx. BrainEx is an artificial perfusion system — that is, a system that takes over the functions normally regulated by the organ. The pigs had been killed four hours earlier at a U.S. Department of Agriculture slaughterhouse; their brains completely removed from the skulls.
BrainEx pumped an experiment solution into the brain that essentially mimic blood flow. It brought oxygen and nutrients to the tissues, giving brain cells the resources to begin many normal functions. The cells began consuming and metabolizing sugars. The brains' immune systems kicked in. Neuron samples could carry an electrical signal. Some brain cells even responded to drugs.
The researchers have managed to keep some brains alive for up to 36 hours, and currently do not know if BrainEx can have sustained the brains longer. "It is conceivable we are just preventing the inevitable, and the brain won't be able to recover," said Nenad Sestan, Yale neuroscientist and the lead researcher.
As a control, other brains received either a fake solution or no solution at all. None revived brain activity and deteriorated as normal.
The researchers hope the technology can enhance our ability to study the brain and its cellular functions. One of the main avenues of such studies would be brain disorders and diseases. This could point the way to developing new of treatments for the likes of brain injuries, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and neurodegenerative conditions.
"This is an extraordinary and very promising breakthrough for neuroscience. It immediately offers a much better model for studying the human brain, which is extraordinarily important, given the vast amount of human suffering from diseases of the mind [and] brain," Nita Farahany, the bioethicists at the Duke University School of Law who wrote the study's commentary, told National Geographic.
An ethical gray matter
Before anyone gets an Island of Dr. Moreau vibe, it's worth noting that the brains did not approach neural activity anywhere near consciousness.
The BrainEx solution contained chemicals that prevented neurons from firing. To be extra cautious, the researchers also monitored the brains for any such activity and were prepared to administer an anesthetic should they have seen signs of consciousness.
Even so, the research signals a massive debate to come regarding medical ethics and our definition of death.
Most countries define death, clinically speaking, as the irreversible loss of brain or circulatory function. This definition was already at odds with some folk- and value-centric understandings, but where do we go if it becomes possible to reverse clinical death with artificial perfusion?
"This is wild," Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times. "If ever there was an issue that merited big public deliberation on the ethics of science and medicine, this is one."
One possible consequence involves organ donations. Some European countries require emergency responders to use a process that preserves organs when they cannot resuscitate a person. They continue to pump blood throughout the body, but use a "thoracic aortic occlusion balloon" to prevent that blood from reaching the brain.
The system is already controversial because it raises concerns about what caused the patient's death. But what happens when brain death becomes readily reversible? Stuart Younger, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University, told Nature that if BrainEx were to become widely available, it could shrink the pool of eligible donors.
"There's a potential conflict here between the interests of potential donors — who might not even be donors — and people who are waiting for organs," he said.
It will be a while before such experiments go anywhere near human subjects. A more immediate ethical question relates to how such experiments harm animal subjects.
Ethical review boards evaluate research protocols and can reject any that causes undue pain, suffering, or distress. Since dead animals feel no pain, suffer no trauma, they are typically approved as subjects. But how do such boards make a judgement regarding the suffering of a "cellularly active" brain? The distress of a partially alive brain?
The dilemma is unprecedented.
Setting new boundaries
Another science fiction story that comes to mind when discussing this story is, of course, Frankenstein. As Farahany told National Geographic: "It is definitely has [sic] a good science-fiction element to it, and it is restoring cellular function where we previously thought impossible. But to have Frankenstein, you need some degree of consciousness, some 'there' there. [The researchers] did not recover any form of consciousness in this study, and it is still unclear if we ever could. But we are one step closer to that possibility."
She's right. The researchers undertook their research for the betterment of humanity, and we may one day reap some unimaginable medical benefits from it. The ethical questions, however, remain as unsettling as the stories they remind us of.
Ashes of cat named Pikachu to be launched into space
A space memorial company plans to launch the ashes of "Pikachu," a well-loved Tabby, into space.
- Steve Munt, Pikachu's owner, created a GoFundMe page to raise money for the mission.
- If all goes according to plan, Pikachu will be the second cat to enter space, the first being a French feline named Felicette.
- It might seem frivolous, but the cat-lovers commenting on Munt's GoFundMe page would likely disagree.
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