How to study for an exam: 10 neuroscience tricks to memorize better

neurodidactics It aims to promote learning by enhancing our natural desire to know and stimulating our characteristic willingness to learn.

The resources that we describe below have in common to seek an improvement in learning based on current knowledge about brain functioning. They can be of great help to students who have the challenge of studying the selectivity agenda.

1. Set affordable challenges at all times

Study and generally learn easily it can be a stressful job.

That way happens when the demands of the task far exceed the resources that we have to deal with them. In these circumstances we are invaded by the sensation of lack of control, of feeling overwhelmed, and discouragement spreads. When the opposite happens we get bored.

Hence the importance of finding a subtle balance between these two variables and programming tasks that involve affordable challenges, goals that we can achieve.

2. Get excited while you study

It is currently scientifically proven that emotions They play a decisive role in memory formation.

Feelings can foster learning to the extent that they intensify the activity of networks of neurons and reinforce the connections between them.

While mere knowing is often soon erased, the information to which an emotional stamp has been printed are deeply and lastingly engraved in the memory and are also found more available.

We can try turning an insipid equation into a little intrigue movie whose outcome we want to know.

3. If it doesn’t work, change your technique

Learning something new costs much less than reorienting an established neural network.

In fact, things that have been learned well, whether correct or incorrect, are no longer erased, in what is caricatured as “the curse of knowledge”. For this reason, rather than insisting on correcting errors, it is of interest Invest in alternative correct learning.

4. Multisensory memorization

The more varied the ways in which information is transmitted, the better it will be remembered. Hence, we learn more easily the more senses are involved.

By using various sensory channels the perceived information is associated with each other, being archived at the same time in different territoriess of the brain, that is, in a larger portion of it.

For example, to learn the countries of Africawe can go repeating them out loud while we are visualizing them on the map and we leave pacing the room.

5. Enjoy your achievements

After finding the solution to a problem or understanding a new piece of knowledge, we experience a feeling of satisfactionmediated by increased levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to experience of pleasure and rewards for success.

dopamine too provokes desire for more, generating a virtuous circle of the type: task-success-dopamine-task…

“Everything that produces contentment when it comes to learning reinforces the memory”, said Jan Amos Comenius, one of the founders of didactics, already in the 17th century.

6. Use metaphors as allies

sometimes we come across concepts that due to their complexity or abstraction resist our understanding.

In these cases, metaphors can be an excellent help due to their ability to turn the issue into something meaningful and familiar and consequently much easier to retain and retrieve in memory of.

7. If you don’t understand, change the strategy

Sometimes We may not understand information when it is presented to us in a certain way. manner. In these cases, persistently insisting or throwing in the towel thinking that we are not capable of assimilating it can be a counterproductive attitude.

Rather than becoming impatient or despairing, it is better toon the contrary, look for alternative ways to approach herdiscovering new points of view and aspects not considered, finding different ways to explain it.

8. Find the utility

What is this going to do for me? is one of the most common questions among schoolchildren when they are asked to assimilate certain types of information.

Do not find utility neither application to what we are learning is highly demotivatingand more in ages and in a time when the search for short-term rewards wins by a landslide over long-term rewards.

It is much easier to learn information if we are able to make sense of it.. Hence the importance of connecting knowledge with our personal experience.

9. Use the brain in different ways

Using the brain in unusual ways can stimulate the formation of neural connections. For this purpose we can, for example, brush our teeth with the non-dominant hand, get dressed with our eyes closed, change position at the table, hang the clock on the wall upside down, walk in the dark…

The brain is motivated by changes: the unknown excites the neural networks. Hence, fluid and varied environments arouse curiosity, almost automatically favoring learning.

For full brain development, it is very important to wealth of stimuli and positive emotions. And let’s remember that learning is a self-propelled process: the more you know about something, the faster you progress on that issue.

9. Stimulate your curiosity

Curiosity is the gateway to knowledge, it is a desire to know more that entails an attitude of openness, adventure, discovery and exploration, which makes us more receptive to new information.

In addition, it can be used as a clue to discover our abilities and talents, since in most cases we are more interested in what we are best at or learn more easily.

10. Exploit your strengths

Traditionally we have witnessed the tendency to discover weak points of people and strive and work to improve themtrying make up for its shortcomings.

But today there are already those who dare to break with this secular dynamic and commitment to identify strengthswhat one is best at, and build learning on them, applying them as much as possible in the different tasks.