You learn the best if you build on prior knowledge. For people in education and for cognitive psychologists this isn’t anything new, it is actually prior knowledge. Still new research links this insight to the working of the brain. A specific part of the brain appears to be involved in this process: the medial prefrontal cortex. These findings further enhance our understanding of the brain mechanisms that underlie effective learning. A researcher added a tip for secondary school students taking their final exams: “If you don’t immediately know the answer to a question, you could first try recalling what you already know about that topic. This might help you to come up with the right answer after all.”

From the press release:

Neuroscientist Marlieke van Kesteren tested two groups of students who had just started on their second-year of biology or pedagogy studies. While an MRI scanner was registering their brain activity, the students learned short sentences containing new information that expanded on their own or the other study program. The following day, the students were tested on the information they had learned. As expected, they had retained the information that was related to their own program better than the unrelated information.

In practice

During the successful retention of related information, a different part of the brain was active than when unrelated information was memorized. ‘The brain area we found, the medial prefrontal cortex, probably linked new information directly to prior knowledge’, Van Kesteren said. ‘In previous studies this brain area came to the fore as well, but only during simple tests. We have specifically shown that this area also plays a role in the neural basis of learning in educational practice.’

Link to study results

To her amazement, Van Kesteren also discovered that the activity in the medial prefrontal cortex corresponded with how well students performed in their second year, compared with the first. So is it possible to predict a student’s future academic success by placing him or her in a scanner? ‘No, certainly not, the links we found were not strong enough’, Van Kesteren explained. ‘We’re mostly talking here about differences of not more than 10%. What’s more, we can’t tell from a simple correlation like this what the chief reason is, and whether a whole lot of other factors are playing a role. But if we know exactly how our brain uses prior knowledge, we could try to address that knowledge more selectively before we start learning new information. For example, you could consider how the new information is related to what you already know.’

Van Kesteren added a tip for secondary school students taking their final exams: ‘If you don’t immediately know the answer to a question, you could first try recalling what you already know about that topic. This might help you to come up with the right answer after all.’

Abstract of the research:

The acquisition and retention of conceptual knowledge is more effective in well-structured curricula that provide an optimal conceptual framework for learning new material. However, the neural mechanisms by which preexisting conceptual schemas facilitate learning are not yet well understood despite their fundamental importance. A preexisting schema has been shown to enhance memory by influencing the balance between activity within the medial-temporal lobe and the medial pFC during mnemonic processes such as encoding, consolidation, and retrieval. Specifically, correctly encoding and retrieving information that is related to preexisting schemas appears rather related to medial prefrontal processing, whereas information unrelated or inconsistent with preexisting schemas rather relates to enhanced medial temporal processing and enhanced interaction between these structures. To further investigate interactions between these regions during conceptual encoding in a real-world university setting, we probed human brain activity and connectivity using fMRI during educationally relevant conceptual encoding carefully embedded within two course programs. Early second-year undergraduate biology and education students were scanned while encoding new facts that were either related or unrelated to the preexisting conceptual knowledge they had acquired during their first year of study. Subsequently, they were tested on their knowledge of these facts 24 hr later. Memory scores were better for course-related information, and this enhancement was associated with larger medial-prefrontal, but smaller medial-temporal subsequent memory effects. These activity differences went along with decreased functional interactions between these regions. Furthermore, schema-related medial-prefrontal subsequent memory effects measured during this experiment were found to be predictive of second-year course performance. These results, obtained in a real-world university setting, reveal brain mechanisms underlying acquisition of new knowledge that can be integrated into preexisting conceptual schemas and may indicate how relevant this process is for study success.