#1286 Why can young people learn more easily than old people?

Why can young people learn more easily that old people? Young people can learn more easily than old people because they have greater neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brains ability to increase, change, and reorder connections.

When we learn something new, our brain has to store the information somewhere. I thought that when we learned something new, our brain grew new neurons and the number of neurons slowly increased over time. However, this isn’t what happens when we learn. Our brain does grow new neurons to replace neurons that are damaged, but this is a general process and not connected to learning. When we learn, the brain strengthens connections between neurons, or weakens connections between neurons, depending on the path that is necessary.

Everything that happens in the brain goes across the neurons. Neurons have two ends. One end is called the axon and the other end is called the dendrite. The axon of one neuron is close to the dendrite of the next neuron, but they don’t touch. Electrical signals come from one neuron, down to the axon, where they cause neurotransmitters to be released into the gap, which is called a synapse. The neurotransmitters cross the gap, and attach to receptors on the dendrite of the next neuron, and an electrical signal is triggered again. By doing this, signals can shoot across the brain. It takes about 0.5 milliseconds for a signal to pass from one neuron to the next.

So, how do we learn? One neuron isn’t limited to transmitting a signal to only one other neuron. A neuron can send a signal to thousands of other neurons, depending on the type of signal and the purpose of the signal. There are 86 billion neurons in the brain, which is a staggeringly large number of possible networks and connections. When we learn something for the first time, one neuron will send a signal across a new path to a new neuron. That neuron will find a new path as well, and so on. The first time we learn something, it doesn’t stick very easily because this path is new for the neurons in our brain. However, if something is reinforced, for example, if we use what we have learned a lot, then the neurons use the same path a lot and the connections become stronger. The stronger connections mean the neurons can access it easily. Then, if we find something that we learned is wrong, the path of neurons will change to reflect the new information, and then that will be entrenched. Then, when we don’t use something for a very long time, the path through the neurons will slowly weaken to the point where the brain no longer knows how to retrieve the information. When that happens, it is forgotten. Not all of the neurons in the brain are there for learning, obviously. Different parts of the brains have different responsibilities. But the same thing applies to things like smell. The more you smell a scent or see a colored object, the stronger those paths will become and the easier it will be for you to smell or see it in the future.

So, why can younger people learn more easily than older people. It appears to come down to two reasons. The first is something called neuroplasticity. Plasticity is a measure of how flexible something is, such as rubber. If something has high plasticity, it is very flexible and if it has low plasticity, it is very rigid. The brains of young people have high plasticity and they can very quickly make new pathways and alter the pathways that are already there. Brains are thought to be the most plastic up to the age of five and then they slowly lose plasticity from then onwards. That doesn’t mean the brains of adults are not plastic and they can’t learn things. It just means they are not quite as fast and it takes a little more work. The main reason for this is that the brain is set up to grow very quickly. It needs to deal with and sort out a huge amount of information once kids are born and it has to mature rapidly. Once we are older, there is less of a rush to deal with everything and our neuroplasticity decreases.

The second reason is that young people have a rapid increase in a neurotransmitter called GABA. The role of GABA is to stabilize neurons so they can be used again. As an adult, when we learn new information, our neurons need time to process the information and reset themselves. You can’t learn something and then very quickly learn something else. The neurons are still hot. Our GABA concentrations are not high enough. However, kids can. The neurotransmitter GABA in kids is very low, much lower than adults, but when young people learn something it shoots up and it keeps increasing, far past the levels that adults have. The concentrations increase to rapidly stabilize the neurons and allow the young person’s brain to learn something else straightaway. And this is why young people can learn faster than older people. This is what I learned today.

Try these:

Sources

https://www.livescience.com/why-are-kids-such-fast-learners

https://www.brown.edu/news/2022-11-15/children-learning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s1/introduction.html

https://trainingindustry.com/articles/content-development/how-the-brain-learns