Apprendre ! : Les talents du cerveau, le défi des machines

Paperback, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

153.15

Genres

Publication

Editions Odile Jacob (2018)

Language

French

Original language

French

Description

"In today's technological society, with an unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips, learning plays a more central role than ever. In How We Learn, Stanislas Dehaene decodes its biological mechanisms, delving into the neuronal, synaptic, and molecular processes taking place in the brain. He explains why youth is such a sensitive period, during which brain plasticity is maximal, but also assures us that our abilities continue into adulthood, and that we can enhance our learning and memory at any age. We can all 'learn to learn' by taking maximal advantage of the four pillars of the brain's learning algorithm: attention, active engagement, error feedback, and consolidation. The human brain is an extraordinary machine. Its ability to process information and adapt to circumstances by reprogramming itself is unparalleled, and it remains the best source of inspiration for recent developments in artificial intelligence. The exciting advancements in A.I. of the last twenty years reveal just as much about our remarkable abilities as they do about the potential of machines. How We Learn finds the boundary of computer science, neurobiology, and cognitive psychology to explain how learning really works and how to make the best use of the brain's learning algorithms, in our schools and universities as well as in everyday life"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member jillrhudy

"How We Learn" ought to be a text studied for a degree in education, and would be great for new parents as well.. Dehaene draws conclusions from the latest brain studies done on infants and children and argues that education requires more one-on-one interaction between the instructor and the

student (or parent and child) and less lecturing--and no grades! Frequent testing and consistent error feedback are essential for learning to take hold but grades are simply demoralizing.

I particularly found the organization of the book helpful. I learned about the neurological function of sleep in memory retention, what is true and false about brain plasticity, the grim realities of trauma and addiction, the affect of music education, the benefit of bilingualism from an early age, and the enormous potential of the small child's mind. In fact, I'll never look at small children or even tiny babies in the same way again after reading this book. When I go to bed, I'm also going to make it a habit to dwell on the positive aspects of the day, or something neat I have learned during the day, just before I go to sleep, in order to maximize the chances that my brain will hold onto it better. Adults can't learn as easily as children, but we can still learn quite a bit with the right techniques.

Machine learning, on the other hand, has a long way to go. As the author points out, some human person must input massive amounts of data in order to get AI to do a few things. We're the opposite: with a few pieces of data, we can do massive numbers of things.

I received an advanced readers copy from the publisher and was encouraged to submit an honest review.

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LibraryThing member jlford3

Very interesting. Many of the studies he refers to are also used in similar books like Make It Stick and Why We Sleep. This isn't a bad thing; it's helpful for remembering because it spaces out learning (as all these texts advocate).

LibraryThing member steve02476

Maybe 3.5 stars. Interesting stuff about how the learning process works within the brain, with some contrast/compare of computer learning algorithms. Some suggestions about how schools should restructure educational techniques in light of knowledge about how learning works.

I felt disappointed that

there was very little discussion about how what is learned is actually encoded in the brain for future retrieval. The simple fact is that scientists just don’t know how this works, but I would have loved to hear some intelligent informed speculation. Not sure if this is the cautious scientist sticking to scientific facts, or if the mysteries of how knowledge is stored is still so unfathomable that it’s just not worth speculating about. But I guess I expect that a book about how the mind learns would addressthis situation, if at least to say that nobody has any real idea how information is encoded in the brain.

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