How much can training and practice change our brains?

It never ceases to amaze me, that so many otherwise intelligent and educated people use statistical data to make claims about individual cases, involving non-linear things. This includes making claims about the nature of learning. Most of the responses already posted here are a case in point.

Ironically, Jacob Bernoulli, in what many consider to be the first serious work on statistics (Ars Conjectandi, published in Basel in 1713, eight years after his death), warns against treating stochastic data as literal truths. Yet so much of what people claim to be scientific ignores there warnings, this despite these warnings being repeated, year after year, in introductory statistics classes.

Rants aside, a good portion of my life’s work centers on discovering the nature of learning. Hopefully, it is clear, this IS what the OP is asking about. “Changing the brain” is what learning is. And changing the brain means far more than being able to pass a conventional test.

It means what has been learned has changed the person’s very personality.

So what is the nature of learning?

Understanding this begins with separating “learning” into the two kinds of learning, temporary learning and permanent learning. Most of what schools and colleges teach falls into the temporary category. The proof? How many people, a year after they graduate college, could pass the tests they passed in school without yet again cramming the data back into their heads?

This idea equates to “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” when it comes to learning. Schools do not teach people, let alone admit to not knowing, the most important skill of all – how to learn – let alone how to test for learning. What they, and most educators, do is encourage people to use new and better ways to memorize things. And herein lies the key to it all – having a pragmatically scientific test for learning which results in completely accurate outcomes.

Fortunately, doing this is easy. “Effort” is the test.

Temporary learning requires effort to recall. Recalling permanent learning feels close to effortless. Examples of the temporary kind are ubiquitous. So no need to list them here. Oddly, we’ve all experienced examples of the permanent kind as well. Riding a bike being one. Recognizing cumulus clouds being another. Recognizing candle flames, a third.

Confused? Think about it. Picture yourself, age 5, lying on your back in a grassy field, looking up at a summer sky filled with clouds. Imagine an adult there with you telling you that the puffy clouds are called, “cumulus clouds.” Now go forward in time forty years. Will you ever forget which clouds are the cumulus clouds or need to make an effort to recognize them, let alone make an effort to remember that day? Likewise, once learned, can you ever forget what a candle flame or a human eye looks like?

How about the surprise we feel when, after forty years, we get on a bike and can close-to effortlessly ride? True learning, like this, is permanent because it emerges in the mind and body. Conversely, temporary learning, while serving us at times, cannot be called true learning. In truth, any efforts we make to repeatedly keep temporary learning alive actually prevents us from acquiring true learning.

Realize, what I’m calling “true learning” and permanent learning has been called by many other names. Epiphanies. Aha moments. The American psychologist, William James, called them “conversion experiences.” In my work, they are called “emergences.” Regardless of what we call them, none of these things occur because we train or practice them.

Beyond the initial exposures to thing, training and practice actually prevent these moments from happening.

Why is this true? Because the heart and soul of all true learning is being pleasantly surprised by something you see. Not something you necessarily understand, or even know the name for. But literally, something you feel surprised by seeing beauty in. This learning can involve learning about anything or anyone in our world. This includes seeing the beauty in new-born babies.

Indeed, anyone who has children knows this feeling all too well. Once seen, those little shiny, tiny, scrunchy faces live inside the visual parts of our brains for life. So, to answer the OP’s question, “How much does training and practice change our brains?” In truth, a lot, most of it painful. It makes us hate everything we try but fail to see the beauty in.

How much, actually? Sadly, most of what we get asked to learn in life. Fortunately, there is a better way to learn. To see it in action, just spend time doing what Piaget did. And what I spent decades doing. Hour after hour, just watch how babies and young children learn, paying special attention to what they were doing just before they get surprised. After all, they, not us, are the real experts when is comes to learning. Good thing, we were once like them. Doing this was in us all. At least, until we got forced to practice and train and eventually learned to hate learning.

There is hope for us. Watch babies.