



If you want to get good at something, obviously you need to practice. But HOW you practice makes a huge difference how quickly you will learn. Thankfully, once you understand how neurons and myelin work, it'll make it pretty obvious how you should practice runs.



Feel free to correct me in places where I've messed up. This is basically a layman's understanding of neuroscience. I've done a lot of research on learning and how neurons work, but I'm by no means an expert.



HOW NEURONS WORK

Let's say you're playing Super Mario World. There's a jump coming up and you need to land on an enemy and bounce off. The light from your TV enters your eyes, a part of your brain called the visual cortex converts that light into a chemical signal called an action potential (think of it like electric signals), and that action potential travels through neurons in your brain, which are monitoring the locations of you and the level. When those neurons detect that it's the right time to jump, the signal travels down the neurons in your arm until it reaches motor neurons, which causes your finger muscles to contract when it gets a signal, which makes you press the button that makes Mario jump.





Here's a neuron.



Basically, your brain and nervous system is made up of a bunch of little cells called neurons, that are all packed together. This neuron recieves a signal from another neuron via those little blue branch things (dendrites) coming out of the blue and green part on the left. Then, this neuron sends that signal down the yellow part (the axon), which travels to other neurons. These signals travel really quickly between neurons and that's basically what causes muscles to contract and thinking to occur.



Let's say you suck at making this jump, and you want to get better. So you sit down and try to do it several times, and fail. Then you give up and try again tomorrow. You'll probably be no better, if not worse. Now let's say instead of continuing to fail making the jump, you slow down the game speed enough so that you can make the jump several times in a row without missing. Then you come back the next day and find it's easy, so you raise the speed. Eventually, you can do it perfectly at full speed.



Your ability or inability to improve was because of something called myelin. Myelin is something that cells in your brain wrap around axons, and it causes signals to travel more quickly down the axon. In the image I posted, the yellow stuff is actually myelin, and the thing inside the myelin is the axon. When a signal travels through a neuron enough times, your body basically gets told that it should wrap the axon with more myelin. It takes some time for the actual wrapping to occur. It doesn't happen within minutes. I don't know the exact times, but I do know that it can take hours for a significant amount to be wrapped around the axon. That's why, when you come back to something the next day, you may notice a huge improvement. It seems as if you got better overnight, and, in fact, you did.



So, to tie it in with the mario example: when you tried to practice the jump and kept missing, your body thought that it should start myelinating the "bad" neural pathway (the neurons that were firing/carrying a signal that caused you to miss the jump). That means that, when you come back to it the next day, you've basically gotten better at missing the jump, because now the bad pathway carries a signal much faster than the "good pathway" (the neurons you want to fire in order to make the jump). But, when you slowed it down, and made the jump, the good pathway got myelinated. So when you come back the next day, it's easier to make the jump at that speed because the good pathway carries the signal much faster. You notice this, consciously, in several ways: You are more aware of where you are, you can see more precisely where you need to jump, and you have a better innate feeling for when you need to jump.



Furthermore, as you play a game for the first time, just by visually seeing the game and recognizing objects on the screen and what they mean and what they do and how you move through the game, you will improve at the game because your visual processing gets faster and better at recognizing objects (believe it or not, your brain does not just see a cluster of pixels and instantly go "mushroom, collect it". Your neurons have to process that image before your brain "knows" what it is). That's why, in the first few days/weeks of learning a game, you notice big improvements. It's because you're just getting better at processing all of the visual information, even if you are still making mistakes in actually executing tecniques.





SO HOW SHOULD YOU PRACTICE?

First, you should minimize making mistakes. If you are making mistakes, you need to do two things:

1) Break the action down into smaller, easier segments. This is called "chunking".

2) Slow it down.

Do this until you can successfully complete the small segments or complete it at a low speed several times in succession, then try integrating the chunks together or speeding it up. But if you start making many mistakes, you should stop and move on; you'll be better at it when you come back tomorrow due to myelination.



Second, try to follow the following steps when you are actually trying to execute the action:

1) Pick the action you want to be able to perform (for example, "jump on this koopa's head")

2) Try to execute that action (for example, just play the level and try to land on his head)

3) Evaluate the gap between what you wanted to do and what you did. And what you need to do differently.THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP TO DO THAT MANY PEOPLE FORGET



Expanding on step 3, this is important because you need to figure out what, specifically, you need to do differently next time, so that you get closer to firing the correct neurons. So don't just attempt the jump, miss, and go "okay, guess I'll try again". Attempt the jump, miss, and make a specific observation on what you need to do differently, like "I need to jump when Mario reaches this point" or "I need to watch for when the enemy reaches this point on the screen". If you can't come up with a detailed, specific observation, you need to stop and figure that out by maybe observing someone better than you or asking them. And if you make more mistakes than successes, you need to chunk or slow it down and continue this process.



You'll find that it takes a lot of willpower to force yourself to follow this method, but you'll also find that you learn more effectively. Due to how draining this can be, you might not want to practice for longer than an hour or two, otherwise you'll probably start being lazy (not chunking, not evaluating what you did wrong), and start making mistakes more than successes.



As for how you might specifically do this for speedrunning, definitely being able to slow the game down or load up a save for a specific point in the game is useful. If you are having trouble on something that you can't slow down, try finding a way to isolate the technique you need to perform or break the technique into multiple, smaller actions, and practice them individually. You might even benefit from finding a different area of the game that offers a similar but easier way to perform the action. I know it's pretty vague, but I hope that gives at least a starting point for discussion.



Now, how to use neuroscience to PERFORM optimally is a topic for a different post...Just be aware that there are lots of factors that can influence your ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks (like something as simple as not getting enough sleep or being hungry).



So, any questions about this? Do you find this useful? What sort of tricks do you all use to practice speedrunning?

Science has learned a LOT about how people learn, and I haven't seen a lot of discussion on how to optimize practice to ensure you make as much progress as possible in as short of a time as possible so I figured I'd start that discussion.If you want to get good at something, obviously you need to practice. But HOW you practice makes a huge difference how quickly you will learn. Thankfully, once you understand how neurons and myelin work, it'll make it pretty obvious how you should practice runs.Feel free to correct me in places where I've messed up. This is basically a layman's understanding of neuroscience. I've done a lot of research on learning and how neurons work, but I'm by no means an expert.Let's say you're playing Super Mario World. There's a jump coming up and you need to land on an enemy and bounce off. The light from your TV enters your eyes, a part of your brain called the visual cortex converts that light into a chemical signal called an action potential (think of it like electric signals), and that action potential travels through neurons in your brain, which are monitoring the locations of you and the level. When those neurons detect that it's the right time to jump, the signal travels down the neurons in your arm until it reaches motor neurons, which causes your finger muscles to contract when it gets a signal, which makes you press the button that makes Mario jump.Here's a neuron.Basically, your brain and nervous system is made up of a bunch of little cells called neurons, that are all packed together. This neuron recieves a signal from another neuron via those little blue branch things (dendrites) coming out of the blue and green part on the left. Then, this neuron sends that signal down the yellow part (the axon), which travels to other neurons. These signals travel really quickly between neurons and that's basically what causes muscles to contract and thinking to occur.Let's say you suck at making this jump, and you want to get better. So you sit down and try to do it several times, and fail. Then you give up and try again tomorrow. You'll probably be no better, if not worse. Now let's say instead of continuing to fail making the jump, you slow down the game speed enough so that you can make the jump several times in a row without missing. Then you come back the next day and find it's easy, so you raise the speed. Eventually, you can do it perfectly at full speed.Your ability or inability to improve was because of something called myelin. Myelin is something that cells in your brain wrap around axons, and it causes signals to travel more quickly down the axon. In the image I posted, the yellow stuff is actually myelin, and the thing inside the myelin is the axon. When a signal travels through a neuron enough times, your body basically gets told that it should wrap the axon with more myelin. It takes some time for the actual wrapping to occur. It doesn't happen within minutes. I don't know the exact times, but I do know that it can take hours for a significant amount to be wrapped around the axon. That's why, when you come back to something the next day, you may notice a huge improvement. It seems as if you got better overnight, and, in fact, you did.So, to tie it in with the mario example: when you tried to practice the jump and kept missing, your body thought that it should start myelinating the "bad" neural pathway (the neurons that were firing/carrying a signal that caused you to miss the jump). That means that, when you come back to it the next day, you've basically gotten better at missing the jump, because now the bad pathway carries a signal much faster than the "good pathway" (the neurons you want to fire in order to make the jump). But, when you slowed it down, and made the jump, the good pathway got myelinated. So when you come back the next day, it's easier to make the jump at that speed because the good pathway carries the signal much faster. You notice this, consciously, in several ways: You are more aware of where you are, you can see more precisely where you need to jump, and you have a better innate feeling for when you need to jump.Furthermore, as you play a game for the first time, just by visually seeing the game and recognizing objects on the screen and what they mean and what they do and how you move through the game, you will improve at the game because your visual processing gets faster and better at recognizing objects (believe it or not, your brain does not just see a cluster of pixels and instantly go "mushroom, collect it". Your neurons have to process that image before your brain "knows" what it is). That's why, in the first few days/weeks of learning a game, you notice big improvements. It's because you're just getting better at processing all of the visual information, even if you are still making mistakes in actually executing tecniques.First, you should minimize making mistakes. If you are making mistakes, you need to do two things:1) Break the action down into smaller, easier segments. This is called "chunking".2) Slow it down.Do this until you can successfully complete the small segments or complete it at a low speed several times in succession, then try integrating the chunks together or speeding it up. But if you start making many mistakes, you should stop and move on; you'll be better at it when you come back tomorrow due to myelination.Second, try to follow the following steps when you are actually trying to execute the action:1) Pick the action you want to be able to perform (for example, "jump on this koopa's head")2) Try to execute that action (for example, just play the level and try to land on his head)3) Evaluate the gap between what you wanted to do and what you did. And what you need to do differently.Expanding on step 3, this is important because you need to figure out what, specifically, you need to do differently next time, so that you get closer to firing the correct neurons. So don't just attempt the jump, miss, and go "okay, guess I'll try again". Attempt the jump, miss, and make a specific observation on what you need to do differently, like "I need to jump when Mario reaches this point" or "I need to watch for when the enemy reaches this point on the screen". If you can't come up with a detailed, specific observation, you need to stop and figure that out by maybe observing someone better than you or asking them. And if you make more mistakes than successes, you need to chunk or slow it down and continue this process.You'll find that it takes a lot of willpower to force yourself to follow this method, but you'll also find that you learn more effectively. Due to how draining this can be, you might not want to practice for longer than an hour or two, otherwise you'll probably start being lazy (not chunking, not evaluating what you did wrong), and start making mistakes more than successes.As for how you might specifically do this for speedrunning, definitely being able to slow the game down or load up a save for a specific point in the game is useful. If you are having trouble on something that you can't slow down, try finding a way to isolate the technique you need to perform or break the technique into multiple, smaller actions, and practice them individually. You might even benefit from finding a different area of the game that offers a similar but easier way to perform the action. I know it's pretty vague, but I hope that gives at least a starting point for discussion.Now, how to use neuroscience to PERFORM optimally is a topic for a different post...Just be aware that there are lots of factors that can influence your ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks (like something as simple as not getting enough sleep or being hungry).So, any questions about this? Do you find this useful? What sort of tricks do you all use to practice speedrunning?

Thread title: Science has learned a LOT about how people learn, and I haven't seen a lot of discussion on how to optimize practice to ensure you make as much progress as possible in as short of a time as possible so I figured I'd start that discussion. If you want to get good at something, obviously you need to practice. But HOW you practice makes a huge difference how quickly you will learn. Thankfully, once you understand how neurons and myelin work, it'll make it pretty obvious how you should practice runs. Feel free to correct me in places where I've messed up. This is basically a layman's understanding of neuroscience. I've done a lot of research on learning and how neurons work, but I'm by no means an expert. [b][u]HOW NEURONS WORK[/u][/b] Let's say you're playing Super Mario World. There's a jump coming up and you need to land on an enemy and bounce off. The light from your TV enters your eyes, a part of your brain called the visual cortex converts that light into a chemical signal called an action potential (think of it like electric signals), and that action potential travels through neurons in your brain, which are monitoring the locations of you and the level. When those neurons detect that it's the right time to jump, the signal travels down the neurons in your arm until it reaches motor neurons, which causes your finger muscles to contract when it gets a signal, which makes you press the button that makes Mario jump. [img]http://www.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/LilburnES/PromoteGA/biochemistry/images/AXON.gif[/img] Here's a neuron. Basically, your brain and nervous system is made up of a bunch of little cells called neurons, that are all packed together. This neuron recieves a signal from another neuron via those little blue branch things (dendrites) coming out of the blue and green part on the left. Then, this neuron sends that signal down the yellow part (the axon), which travels to other neurons. These signals travel really quickly between neurons and that's basically what causes muscles to contract and thinking to occur. Let's say you suck at making this jump, and you want to get better. So you sit down and try to do it several times, and fail. Then you give up and try again tomorrow. You'll probably be no better, if not worse. Now let's say instead of continuing to fail making the jump, you slow down the game speed enough so that you can make the jump several times in a row without missing. Then you come back the next day and find it's easy, so you raise the speed. Eventually, you can do it perfectly at full speed. Your ability or inability to improve was because of something called myelin. Myelin is something that cells in your brain wrap around axons, and it causes signals to travel more quickly down the axon. In the image I posted, the yellow stuff is actually myelin, and the thing inside the myelin is the axon. When a signal travels through a neuron enough times, your body basically gets told that it should wrap the axon with more myelin. It takes some time for the actual wrapping to occur. It doesn't happen within minutes. I don't know the exact times, but I do know that it can take hours for a significant amount to be wrapped around the axon. That's why, when you come back to something the next day, you may notice a huge improvement. It seems as if you got better overnight, and, in fact, you did. So, to tie it in with the mario example: when you tried to practice the jump and kept missing, your body thought that it should start myelinating the "bad" neural pathway (the neurons that were firing/carrying a signal that caused you to miss the jump). That means that, when you come back to it the next day, you've basically gotten better at missing the jump, because now the bad pathway carries a signal much faster than the "good pathway" (the neurons you want to fire in order to make the jump). But, when you slowed it down, and made the jump, the good pathway got myelinated. So when you come back the next day, it's easier to make the jump at that speed because the good pathway carries the signal much faster. You notice this, consciously, in several ways: You are more aware of where you are, you can see more precisely where you need to jump, and you have a better innate feeling for when you need to jump. Furthermore, as you play a game for the first time, just by visually seeing the game and recognizing objects on the screen and what they mean and what they do and how you move through the game, you will improve at the game because your visual processing gets faster and better at recognizing objects (believe it or not, your brain does not just see a cluster of pixels and instantly go "mushroom, collect it". Your neurons have to process that image before your brain "knows" what it is). That's why, in the first few days/weeks of learning a game, you notice big improvements. It's because you're just getting better at processing all of the visual information, even if you are still making mistakes in actually executing tecniques. [b][u]SO HOW SHOULD YOU PRACTICE?[/u][/b] First, you should minimize making mistakes. If you are making mistakes, you need to do two things: 1) Break the action down into smaller, easier segments. This is called "chunking". 2) Slow it down. Do this until you can successfully complete the small segments or complete it at a low speed several times in succession, then try integrating the chunks together or speeding it up. But if you start making many mistakes, you should stop and move on; you'll be better at it when you come back tomorrow due to myelination. Second, try to follow the following steps when you are actually trying to execute the action: 1) Pick the action you want to be able to perform (for example, "jump on this koopa's head") 2) Try to execute that action (for example, just play the level and try to land on his head) 3) Evaluate the gap between what you wanted to do and what you did. And what you need to do differently.[b]THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP TO DO THAT MANY PEOPLE FORGET[/b] Expanding on step 3, this is important because you need to figure out what, specifically, you need to do differently next time, so that you get closer to firing the correct neurons. So don't just attempt the jump, miss, and go "okay, guess I'll try again". Attempt the jump, miss, and make a specific observation on what you need to do differently, like "I need to jump when Mario reaches this point" or "I need to watch for when the enemy reaches this point on the screen". If you can't come up with a detailed, specific observation, you need to stop and figure that out by maybe observing someone better than you or asking them. And if you make more mistakes than successes, you need to chunk or slow it down and continue this process. You'll find that it takes a lot of willpower to force yourself to follow this method, but you'll also find that you learn more effectively. Due to how draining this can be, you might not want to practice for longer than an hour or two, otherwise you'll probably start being lazy (not chunking, not evaluating what you did wrong), and start making mistakes more than successes. As for how you might specifically do this for speedrunning, definitely being able to slow the game down or load up a save for a specific point in the game is useful. If you are having trouble on something that you can't slow down, try finding a way to isolate the technique you need to perform or break the technique into multiple, smaller actions, and practice them individually. You might even benefit from finding a different area of the game that offers a similar but easier way to perform the action. I know it's pretty vague, but I hope that gives at least a starting point for discussion. Now, how to use neuroscience to PERFORM optimally is a topic for a different post...Just be aware that there are lots of factors that can influence your ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks (like something as simple as not getting enough sleep or being hungry). So, any questions about this? Do you find this useful? What sort of tricks do you all use to practice speedrunning?