We learn from our mistakes, right? Well, maybe not as much as we learn from our successes, according to a new study.
The research, done on monkeys, suggests that the brain neurons involved in learning may process information more effectively after a success than after a failure, which in turn leads to an improvement in behavior.
The study looked at neural changes in the monkeys' brains as they learned a specific task. The animals were shown pictures every few seconds and had to look either left or right depending on the image they saw. They learned by trial-and-error which image was associated with looking in a particular direction, and they were rewarded if they chose correctly.
The researchers monitored neurons in the monkey's prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia — two areas of the brain thought to be involved in learning. They found that neurons in these brain areas are indeed important for learning — they "keep track of recent successes and failures," said Earl K. Miller, a researcher at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
But what surprised the researchers was that these neurons actually became more "finely tuned" after a correct response than after an incorrect response, meaning that the neurons were able to better distinguish between the two different associations that the monkey was learning.
"The neurons in these areas improve their tuning, they learn better when the animal had a recent success, versus when the animal had a failure," Miller said. "When the animal had a failure, there was virtually no change in neural processing, the neurons didn’t improve at all."
In practical terms, after a success the monkeys were more likely to get an answer correct on the next trial, indicating a link between the improved neuron activity and the animal's behavior.
