Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Chapter 7 focuses on “raising intellectual abilities,” or “The brain’s ability to change itself throughout life and people’s abilities to influence those changes” (164-165).

The authors discuss neuroscience—science pertaining to the physical brain. They stress the brain’s plasticity, or its ability to “[reorganize] itself with each new task” and change over time (166). They also describe early neural development (some of which still requires further research) to demonstrate how the brain wires itself for a lifetime of mutability and growth.

The authors provide a basis for what nerve cells in the brain (neurons) look like (they have branches called axons, which act as transmitters and extend from one side of a cell body while dendrites—receptors—grow from others) and how they communicate with each other (by sending signals via connections called synapses). They explain that neural cell bodies constitute most of the brain’s “grey matter,” while wiring constructed from axons constitutes “white matter” (169). Both types of matter are the subject of ongoing research.

The chapter details “the brain’s enduring mutability” (171). For example, the brain learns to consolidate cognitive and motor sequences into a reflexive “single unit […] without requiring a series of conscious decisions” (171). Athletes make complex decisions about strategy in seconds; musicians play at a pace faster than conscious thought.