The Unexpected Boosts Learning Abilities

University of Pennsylvania (UP) researchers have just recently released a new paper, saying that the unexpected is the actual trigger of human learning, in that people can acquire new information or new behavioral patterns if the results of their actions are not those they have foreseen. The main focus of the research has been to find out how humans analyze and then acquire new types of behavior that they themselves didn't develop until a certain trigger came along. Responsible for this human trait, the scientists say, are neurons in the substantia nigra (SN), located in the basal ganglia.

“This is the first study to directly record neural activity underlying this learning process in humans, confirming the hypothesized role of the basal ganglia, which includes the SN, in models of reinforcement including learning, addiction and other disorders involving reward-seeking behavior. By responding to unexpected financial rewards, these cells encode information that seems to help participants maximize reward in the probabilistic learning task,” UP School of Medicine neurosurgery postdoctoral fellow Kareem Zaghloul, who is also the lead author of the new paper, says.

The research has been published in this week's issue of the prestigious journal Science and details how learning in humans is “modulated” by the differences that occur between the expected results of an action and the real ones. “Learning, previously studied in animal models, seems to occur when dopaminergic neurons, which drive a larger basal ganglia circuit, are activated in response to unexpected rewards and depressed after the unexpected omission of reward,” PU School of Arts and Sciences professor of psychology Michael J. Kahana, the senior author of the study, adds.

“Put simply, a lucky win seems to be retained better than a probable loss. Similar to an economic theory, where efficient markets respond to unexpected events and expected events have no effect, we found that the dopaminergic system of the human brain seems to be wired in a similar rational manner – tuned to learn whenever anything unexpected happens but not when things are predictable,” he pinpoints.

“This new way to measure dopaminergic neuron activity has helped us gain a greater understanding of fundamental cognitive activity,” Penn Medicine Center for Functional and Restorative Neurosurgery director Gordon Baltuch, who is also an associate professor of neurosurgery at Penn, concludes.