Making Errors is the Gate to Neuroplasticity
How is your current working environment supporting error-making?
This post is inspired by the training “ The Neuroscience of Learning” from the NeuroMindfulness Institute.
It is about how making errors helps us learn better and faster and improve our neuroplasticity.
Expect & embrace errors
Provided they don’t compromise the safety, errors during learning are terrific because they increase activation of the neural circuits that increase alertness. It makes sense, right? Computational modeling data suggest that an error rate of ~15% may be optimal and can help determine how difficult we should make a task. Here you can find more steps on how to improve your learning protocol.
Science behind errors
Errors lead to the production of epinephrine, the stress/arousal neurochemical, and acetylcholine, the focus neurochemical. When we make many errors because we are still learning the skill, we tend to reach a point of frustration in which epinephrine and acetylcholine are high, which is the perfect cocktail to open neuroplasticity.
Once we reached that state, we have basically 2 choices:
1. We give up, and because neuroplasticity had been opened, we encode the habit of giving up when frustration hits.
2. The second choice is to keep pushing despite frustration since that is when you will benefit the most from your increased neuroplasticity.
When you get closer to the desired performance, your brain will produce dopamine, and that will signal your brain to consolidate this particular behavior, and eliminate the attempts that were not successful.
For motor skills, you don’t even have to think of what is the right movement coordination pattern that led to success. The unconscious mind sorts it out by itself. For more cognitive, emotional, or social skills, a good part of it is probably also unconscious, but it might make sense to put more thought into what worked and what did not.
Some questions to help you reflect:
Which beliefs do you have in regard of errors?
what did you learn about making errors in your family? how did this experience shape your beliefs about learning? how about your beliefs about yourself?
what did you learn about making errors at school? how did this experience shape your beliefs about learning? how about your beliefs about yourself?
how is your current working environment supporting error-making?
what is a small step you can take today to change (if needed) your belief about making mistakes?
if you have children or you are a mentor for children, what can you teach them about errors?
One-phrase summary:
Making errors in a safe environment helps to learn. Finding an environment to be able to learn while doing errors might be a challenge. It is up to us to create it ourselves or get help to make this happen.
Resources:
The Neuroscience of Learning - The NeuroMindfulness Institute
I am “cooking” a new on-demand training:
Facilitation - neuroscience behind - a 3h online session where I would explain some neuroscience principles I use in most of my workshops in order to create brain-based workshops that are universally applied independent of culture, industry, etc.