"There are words that are so familiar they obscure rather than illuminate the thing they mean, and 'learning' is such a word. It seems so ordinary, everyone does it. Actually it's more of a black box, which Dehaene cracks open to reveal the awesome secrets within."-The New York Times Book Review An illuminating dive into the latest science on our brain's remarkable learning abilities and the potential of the machines we program to imitate them The human brain is an extraordinary learning machine. Its ability to reprogram itself is unparalleled, and it remains the best source of inspiration for recent developments in artificial intelligence. But how do we learn? What innate biological foundations underlie our ability to acquire new information, and what principles modulate their efficiency? In How We Learn, Stanislas Dehaene finds the boundary of computer science, neurobiology, and cognitive psychology to explain how learning really works and how to make the best use of the brain's learning algorithms in our schools and universities, as well as in everyday life and at any age. Editorial Reviews Many of Dehaene's case studies will be familiar to readers of books about the mind and brain...yet there is value in bringing them together to explore all the facets of learning. His explanation of the basic machinery of the brain is an excellent primer. - The New York Times Book Review - Christine Kenneally 10/28/2019 Dehaene (Consciousness in the Brain), a professor of experimental psychology at the Collège de France, devotes this detailed, sometimes hard-going, but stimulating study to the science of learning. The first half largely concerns brain physiology, touching on, among other subjects, how learning can physically change the brain, such as by thickening the cortex. Dehaene also refutes the idea of the "blank slate" infant brain, noting that "even a baby... encodes the external world using abstract and systematic rules--an ability that eludes... conventional artificial neural networks." The book's second, less technical and more widely accessible half explores the "four pillars" of learning: attention, active engagement, error feedback, and consolidation of information (for which REM sleep is especially key) and discusses how enjoyment can assist learning--Dehaene notes that laughter seems to enhance curiosity and memory. While calling for more research into the field, he issues his most potentially controversial pronouncement, at least for neurodiversity advocates: "We all face similar hurdles in learning and the same teaching methods can surmount them." At times not an easy book to comprehend, it will nonetheless be a richly instructive one for educators, parents, and others interested in how to most effectively foster the pursuit of knowledge. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman, Inc. (Jan.) - Publishers Weekly 2019-10-08 Computers learn, but they will not hold a candle to humans for the foreseeable future, according to this expert overview of learning. Dehaene (Cognitive Psychology/Collège de France (Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, 2014, etc.) emphasizes that a fly can learn and that a newborn's brain contains a great deal of information thanks to several billion years of evolution. Unfortunately, he writes, "evolution adapts each organism to its ecological niche, but it does so at an appallingly slow rate." However, "the ability to learn...acts much faster; it can change behavior within the span of a few minutes, which is the very quintessence of learning." Never mind our opposable thumb, upright posture, fire, tools, or language; it is education that enabled humans to conquer the world. "We are not simply Homo Sapiens, but Homo docens--the species that teaches itself," writes the author. Short-term memory of a literate person is almost double that of someone who has never attended school. IQ (a supposedly fixed concept) increases several points for each additional year of education. In the first of the book's occasionally dense but mostly accessible sections, Dehaene defines learning as simply forming an internal model of the outside world. In the second, he describes how learning occurs. A computer leaves the assembly line as a blank slate, but a newborn's brain already possesses circuits enabling it to generate abstract formulas and the ability to choose wisely from those formulas according to their plausibility. The third section defines "four pillars of learning" that make our brain the most effective learning device. "Attention" carefully selects relevant signals. "Active engagement" (i.e., curiosity) generates hypotheses. "Error feedback" corrects the mental model when the world violates our expectations. Finally, "consolidation," which involves sleep as a key component, transfers knowledge to long-term memory, freeing neural circuits for further learning. The best educators, whether parents or teachers, follow these principles, and the author urges their general adoption. Dehaene's fourth insightful exploration of neuroscience will pay dividends for attentive readers. - Kirkus Reviews "There are words that are so familiar they obscure rather than illuminate the thing they mean, and 'learning' is such a word. It seems so ordinary, everyone does it. Actually it's more of a black box, which Dehaene cracks open to reveal the awesome secrets within . . . His explanation of the basic machinery of the brain is an excellent primer."--The New York Times Book Review "[An] expert overview of learning . . . Never mind our opposable thumb, upright posture, fire, tools, or language; it is education that enabled humans to conquer the world . . . Dehaene's fourth insightful exploration of neuroscience will pay dividends for attentive readers."-Kirkus Reviews "[Dehaene] rigorously examines our remarkable capacity for learning. The baby brain is especially awesome and not a 'blank slate' . . . Dehaene's portrait of the human brain is fascinating."-Booklist "A richly instructive [book] for educators, parents, and others interested in how to most effectively foster the pursuit of knowledge." -Publishers Weekly Praise for Reading in the Brain: "Splendid...Dehaene reveals how decades of low-tech experiments and high-tech brain-imaging studies have unwrapped the mystery of reading and revealed its component parts...A pleasure to read. [Dehaene] never oversimplifies; he takes the time to tell the whole story, and he tells it in a literate way."--The Wall Street Journal "Masterful...a delight to read and scientifically precise."--Nature Praise for Consciousness and the Brain: "Ambitious . . . Dehaene offers nothing less than a blueprint for brainsplaining one of the world's deepest mysteries. . . . [A] fantastic book."--The Washington Post "Dehaene is a maestro of the unconscious."--Scientific American Mind "Brilliant... Essential reading for those who want to experience the excitement of the search for the mind in the brain."--Nature - From the Publisher