Lifelong learning keeps your brain healthy

Understanding your brain to help you Learn new skills

Learning new skills at any age

Your brain is primarily composed of about 85 billion neurons, which is more than the number of stars you can see with the naked eye in the night sky. A neuron is a cell that acts as a messenger, sending information in the form of nerve impulses (like electrical signals) to other neurons.

For example, when you are writing, some neurons in your brain send the “move fingers” message to other neurons and this message then travels through the nerves (like cables) to your fingers. The electrical signals that are communicated from one neuron to another are therefore what allow you to do everything you do: write, think, see, jump, talk, compute, and so on.

Each neuron can be connected with up to 10,000 other neurons, leading to a large number of connections in your brain, which looks like a very dense spider web.

Everything you learn goes first to your short-term memory, and some of it transfers later to long-term storage in your brain. Sleep is often important to transferring something from short to long term memory, which is why memory loss can occur with sleep deprivation. Because of how memories have to travel across many synapses and neurons, degradation often occurs that can render memories incomplete once they are transferred.

Learning something new is often exciting for the learner. According to Oprah.com, novel experiences cause a rush of dopamine, which not only makes learning seem exciting but also makes you want to repeat the experience. Dopamine is also involved in experiences like love, addictive behaviors, and attention deficit disorder, among many other things.

Myelin makes the signals in our neurons move faster, and when you learn new things, especially at older ages, it helps more myelin get onto our nerve axons so that our brain is more connected and feels like it works faster better. Myelin works especially well when a new experience is repeated multiple times, like when we practice something or repeat it every day or every few days.

The Neuroscience of Learning

A British research study showed that being bored (which occurs when you don’t learn new things very often) can be dangerous to your health. People in the study who reported being bored over a long period had heart disease rates more than twice as high as those who did not report boredom.

Not having new experiences and learning new things will slow your brain down and make it less responsive. Adult learning is good for your health and has been shown to slow the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s and dementia, as well as just prevent general slowing of your mental faculties.

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