Washington: Contrary to the popular belief
that people learn from their mistakes, a new study claimed
the brain may not learn from failures.
According to the researchers at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, "Success has a much greater influence on the
brain than failures and it may not learn from negative
experiences".
During the study, the team led by neuroscientist Earl
Miller trained monkeys on a two-choice visual task and found
that the animals' brains kept track of recent successes and
failures, journal Scientific American reported.
"A correct answer had impressive effects: it improved
neural processing and sent the monkeys' performance soaring in
the next trial. But if a monkey made a mistake in one trial,
even after mastering the task, it performed around chance
level in the next trial—in other words, it was thrown off by
mistakes instead of learning from them," they said.
Earl believes the findings apply to many aspects of
daily life in which failures are left unpunished but
achievements are rewarded in one way or another— such as when
your team-mates cheer your strikes at the bowling lane.
The pleasurable feeling that comes with the successes
is brought about by a surge in the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, November 05, 2009, 18:05