What is productive confusion?

A 2012 study from the University of Notre Dame, University of Memphis, and University of Munich found that confused learners can learn more effectively than leaners who are spoon fed new information.

Many people, when confused, give up. But confused learners who take the effort and time to clarify ideas, learn and remember more effectively.

The key is that learners are productively confused, not hopelessly confused. The information must not deliberately be presented in a way that would never ever make sense.

People who want to learn must accept the challenge offered by confusion, must be willing to risk failure, and also be able to manage negative emotion.

What is Interleaving?

Interleaving is a learning style whereby you mix-up practising or learning different skills in the same session.

Studies show that mixing up learning can increase performance compared to practising the same thing over and over again.

This probably works better because of forcing the mind to work harder when learning.

What are 10 effects of sleep deprivation?

This is based on a research subject who stayed awake for 11 days without the use of coffee or any medication.  Sleep deprivation is often used as a torture technique. Here's why.

1) Tired brains have to work harder to pump energy into the prefrontal cortex.

2) Simple tasks like dialing a phone number become impossible because of short term memory loss.

3) Long term memory becomes impaired because the brains integrates/stores  memory as experience while sleeping.

4) A tired brain can't focus or keep attention on any one thing; a tired brain is a scattered brain.

5) A tired brain can't plan or make decisions.

6) Automatic systems (habits) become repetitive which is fine if your habits are all good ones, not so good if you are trying to quit smoking or eating junk food.

7) A sleep deprived person takes more risks because a tired brain does not remember consequences or make easy decisions (see # 5)

8) When mice were studied with prolonged sleep deprivation, it showed that they had lost up to 25% of their brain cells.

9) Sleep deprivation can cuase aggression, paranoia, hallucination, mania.

10) Driving while sleep deprived is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated; this is why professional drivers (bus drivers, etc) are banned from working if they have untreated sleep apnea).

Why is change so difficult?

This has to do with basic brain physiology. When learning something new we use our "working memory" which requires much energy to function and fatigues easily as it has limited cognitive resources.  Because the "working memory" can easily get overwhelmed, it pushes repetitive  activity into the basal ganglia (or automatic pilot parts of the brain). Once this happens we have a new habit, we can do the new activity without thinking. This frees up cognitive resources for the "working memory" part of the brain.

Forging new brain circuits, as in learning something new, is exhausting. It's like walking through a huge snow bank, rather than
taking the already shovelled trail. We have to go slower, pay more attention, and put in much more effort. Consequently, some people give up learning new things.