Molecular Pathways in the Brain May Reveal the Best Learning Strategies

A computer has modeled the most efficient form of learning, that is, if you're a sea slug running from a lobsters. Scientists hope it might eventually work for a human studying for a calculus mid-term.

High-school and college teachers always entreat their charges to forgo the cramming. Studying bit by bit over the course of a semester is the way to go. A study published online in Nature Neuroscience on December 25 not only appears to demonstrate the biological underpinnings of this pedagogical truism. It actually goes one step further to suggest a means of optimizing training intervals, an insight that could, in theory, translate into strategies for committing to memory the molecular structure of maitotoxin or a Chinese ideogram.