Memories of significant learning experiences—like the first time a driver gets a speeding ticket—are sharp, compared to the recollection of everyday events—like what someone ate for dinner two weeks ago. That’s because the human brain is primed to learn from helpful associations.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have identified specific neural connections that are especially sensitive to this process of learning about causality. The discovery, while seemingly intuitive, could have widespread implications for understanding how humans learn and inform new ways to address learning challenges.
“If you look out the window and see dark clouds, you know that it’s going to rain and that you’ll need an umbrella,” said Eunsol Park, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, a joint program between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.
