Learning new things doesn't hurt your brain!

Krishna: Learning new things hurts your brain? In what way?

I try to learn new things all through the day. I read 70–80 scientific research papers every day. Reading research papers is not easy. It is the toughest thing to do mentally. But still my brain doesn’t hurt me!

In fact I feel extremely happy to learn so many new things each day.

Each and every time we learn something new our brain forms new connections and neurons and makes existing neural pathways change. New circuits are formed in the brain because of this exercise. You will have lots of knowledge power to analyse and comprehend clearly and correctly anything you come across and your task becomes easy after this data base storage. Everything you learn goes first to your short term memory, and some of it transfers later to long term storage in your brain. Sleep is often important to transferring something from short to long term memory.

You can creatively connect this knowledge to the problems you face and solve them easily. Without knowledge data base your perceptions and problem solving become shoddy and difficult.

Learning something new is often exciting for the learner. Novel experiences cause a rush of dopamine, which not only makes learning seem exciting but also makes you want to repeat the experience.

Not having new experiences and learning new things will slow your brain down and make it less responsive. Adult learning is good for your health and has been shown to slow the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s and dementia, as well as just preventing general slowing of your mental faculties.

I think why you think learning new things hurt is because of your lack of interest in the subject or in the learning process itself. If you are really interested in what you are doing you don’t feel this way.

It can be challenging and demanding for the brain to process and store new information for some because of these reasons:

*If your priorities lie somewhere else, you don't feel like learning things that don't attract your attention. If you are interested in art, you think science is difficult and boring. You also think as science is difficult it hurts your brain while learning it.