The study of the brain at rest is a new exploration methodology that is revealing interesting facts about how the brain works when active. An innovative neurocognitive study conducted by researchers of the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Universitat Jaume I and the Center for Brain and Cognition at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra shows that the individual variability that exists in brain connections affects people’s learning ability and, in turn, the learning process produces a change in brain networks associated with the trained areas. The study has been published in the prestigious scientific journal Journal of Neuroscience.

Research outcomes conclude that the learning capacity of the human brain can be predicted by studying the initial spontaneous functional connectivity of the brain, in other words, the connection or synchronization of the activity between two or more areas of the brain at rest. “How is configured your brain before you start doing a task can give information to know how much you will learn, and this information is essential from the point of view of psychology. It provides us with a predictive element of how you respond to a learning task”, stresses César Ávila, professor in the Department of Basic Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology of the Universitat Jaume I.

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UCC+i UJI. July 2013