Turn again to the neural components of learning to better understand how unconscious, implicit learning occurs in your brain. You actually have more connections between the neurons in your brain than there are stars in our galaxy. Explore how your brain does so, how it learns to predict rewards, and the role that dopamine plays in the learning process.

In this lecture, The Learning Brain switches gears from explicit to implicit learning, that is, learning that is unconscious and hard to verbalize. Discover non-associative learning, like learning to ignore a fan blowing in a room, as well as associative learning, such as conditioning, through which positive and negative reinforcement can shape behaviors over time.

Professor Polk wraps things up by discussing five strategies that can make you a better learner. These strategies draw on and integrate some of the key themes that have appeared throughout the rest of this Great Course. And, putting them into practice in your own life can help you to become the best learner you can be.

Take a fantastic voyage into your brain to uncover the physical mechanisms involved in forming explicit memories. The voyage begins in the hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped structure in each temporal lobe, where explicit learning begins. It continues out to the cerebral cortex - the grey matter on the outside of the brain - where memories become consolidated and integrated with other memories.

Several common learning disabilities are defined and explored. Learn about dyslexia, the most common learning disability, including its symptoms, the neural mechanisms that underlie it, and how difficulty in recognizing and manipulating phonemes - the set of basic sounds that get combined to form words - plays a large role.

Colour is fundamental to expressing who we are and our place in the world. From our most ancient cultures to our contemporary world, we use colour for cultural and spiritual self-expression. The development of new colours and new uses for colour is intimately linked to technological innovation, expanding trade, and the power of empires. In this episode we explore the worlds of anthropology, art, and science to discover how and why new colours and...

Several important components of working memory are covered here: the visuospatial sketchpad, which retains images from both recent perception and from long-term memory; the central executive, which decides which cognitive functions to perform and when to perform them; and the episodic buffer, which links information from other working memory components into integrated wholes.

Neil Postman The end of education using history of education, history of technology, and educational theory, Neil Postman paints a brilliantly challenging response to the modern crisis of education. He reveals how in popular culture and schooling alike, there has been an erosion of traditional American narratives which once gave a coherent sense of purpose to learning. He exposes the new narratives of 'economic utility', 'consumership', 'technology',...