1-6 Focused Versus Diffuse – Furthering Your Understanding

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En provenance du cours de McMaster University

Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential

2474 notes

McMaster University

Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential

2474 notes

Mindshift is designed to help boost your career and life in today’s fast-paced learning environment. Whatever your age or stage, Mindshift teaches you essentials such as how to get the most out of online learning and MOOCs, how to seek out and work with mentors, the secrets to avoiding career ruts (and catastrophes) and general ruts in life, and insights such as the value of selective ignorance over general competence. We’ll provide practical insights from science about how to learn and change effectively even in maturity, and we’ll build on what you already know to take your life’s learning in fantastic new directions. This course is designed to show you how to look at what you’re learning, and your place in what’s unfolding in the society around you, so you can be what you want to be, given the real world constraints that life puts on us all. You’ll see that by using certain mental tools and insights, you can learn and do more—far more—than you might have ever dreamed! This course can be taken independent of, concurrent with, or subsequent to, its companion course, Learning How to Learn. (Mindshift is more career focused, and Learning How to Learn is more learning focused.)

À partir de la leçon

Change IS possible

In today's world, change is the only constant. This means that whatever stage you are in life, you need to keep yourself open and able to change. How can you do this? In three ways: Learn more about your hidden capabilities and assets. Learn more about learning effectively. Learn about matching your assets with the opportunities that face you. In this week, we'll dive into these three important areas!

1-1 Introduction – About Mindshift6:08

1-2 The Value of Being a Slow Learner4:02

1-3 From Passive to Active7:59

1-4 The Value of Your Past6:44

1-5 Mastery Learning6:52

1-6 Focused Versus Diffuse – Furthering Your Understanding6:13

1-7 Should You Listen to Music When You're Studying?1:25

1-8 Learning Something Hard? The Coffee Shop Trick5:51

1-9 Your environment affects who you are6:05

1-10 The Changing World – Matching Aspirations with Opportunity6:03

1-11 Natural Passions, Career Choice, and Gender4:21

1-12 Week 1 Wrap Up2:46

Optional Bonus Video: Nelson Dellis Memory Tips #16:25

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dr. Barbara Oakley
Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University
Professor of Engineering, Industrial & Systems Engineering, Oakland University
Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Computational Neurobiology Laboratory

[MUSIC]

In our previous MOOC, Learning How to Learn,

we described the two very different modes of operation of the brain,

focused and diffuse. Focused, if you'll remember, is when you're concentrating.

Diffuse is when you're not thinking about anything at all in particular.

We used a pinball machine metaphor to explain these two different modes.

In the focused mode, the rubber bumpers of the brain were closer together,

while in the diffuse mode, they were farther apart.

Your thoughts could bounce further, by analogy, this is why when you're focusing

hard on a problem, you sometimes get stuck within the tight spaces of the bumpers.

And you can't see another, better way to approach the problem.

We also described the importance of developing a library of neural chunks.

Well practiced, mental patterns, that you can easily draw into your mind.

This is all part of the process of gaining expertise in a subject.

Metaphors and analogies can make learning super simple.

Remember, these metaphors and

analogies often just serve to give us a sense of key ideas.

Whenever we've reached the limits of an analogy for helping us to understand

something, we can always just throw that analogy away and pick up a new one.

Of course, there's often many different analogies that we can use to explain any

concept.

So let's review, while having a little fun by describing the focus and

diffuse modes using some different analogies.

It turns out that your brain puts its energy, for the most part,

into either the focused mode or the diffuse mode.

It can't be in both modes at same time, not unless you're ingesting

certain forms of mushrooms and we're certainly not suggesting you do that.

Focused mode is what happens when you concentrate,

it turns on virtually instantly.

Diffuse mode, on the other hand, is when you're not concentrating on anything.

Instead, it's when your thoughts are moving randomly,

like when you're sitting on a bus, standing in a shower or going for a walk.

Diffuse mode kind of sneaks up on you,

you're often not aware of having fallen into the diffuse mode.

So, let's look a little more closely at what's going on in the focused versus

the diffuse modes.

Here's a top scale view looking down onto your brain,

you can see the little ears right here, and the nose is on the top.

And we know that the brain is kind of like a set of networks,

this is the focused mode network.

Look how small those little meshes are,

these are sometimes called task positive networks.

Because different parts of the networks are activated

depending on what task you're working on.

Multiplication say, versus conjugating a verb in Spanish or kicking a soccer ball.

What we call the diffuse mode is like a different set of networks,

with much bigger meshes.

Diffuse mode is actually a catchall term that we use to signify

any of the neural resting states.

The most prominent resting state, incidentally,

is called the default mode network.

The thing about the diffuse mode, is that it helps us to make these intuitive leaps,

connections between new ideas you didn't realize were connected.

The diffuse mode has another purpose as well, it's the mode we fall into

when we're trying to consolidate and understand new information.

We'll get to that in just a minute, the diffuse mode only turns on

when you aren't thinking about anything in particular.

So you can't just concentrate and turn it on like you can with the focused mode.

But the relaxed, diffuse mode, is the mode that often does that background processing

that helps us solve difficult problems and understand difficult concepts.

This is why, when you're concentrating intently on something, and

you find yourself getting really frustrated, the best thing you can do is

often to get your concentration off what you're trying to understand.

Getting your attention off the topic helps open up the very different

diffuse mode networks, and lets your brain find new paths for

thinking about what you're trying to understand.

Then, when you later return to focusing,

you'll find yourself in a better place, mentally.

The problem or the concept will suddenly start to make sense.

Incidentally, the habit of writing down a problem that you're trying to solve before

going to bed will help you calm your mind and

let your nighttime brain think of a solution.

There's actually another, very different way, to think about focused and

diffuse modes and that's using something called an excavator.

When you focus on something,

your mind is in receiving mode, information is pouring in.

When you're in diffuse mode, on the other hand, your brain is turning around, so

to speak, and placing that new information in other parts of your brain.

Organizing and making sense of the new material,

you can only be in one mode at the same time.

The inputting focused mode or the organizing, diffuse mode,

where the brain is consolidating that information.

This is why it's really important to take little study breaks, and

give yourself time where you're not focusing on the material at hand.

The little break is what helps the brain consolidate the new information so

it can later think more creatively about it.

Go ahead, take a little break now, try to move around a little while you do it.

You'll be surprised at how much it refreshes you.

[MUSIC]

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