"There’s a reason adults don’t pick up Japanese or learn how to kite surf. It’s ridiculously hard. In stark contrast, young people can learn the most difficult things relatively easily. Polynomials, Chinese, skateboarding — no problem!"
Um, ask some teachers about how easy that is sometime. I'm sure you'd get an earful.
The biggest difference between adults and children is not neuroplasticity--the biggest difference is TIME.
Children can spend 4+ hours a day learning a language, playing guitar, drawing, etc. In one year, that's roughly 1,000 hours.
I would challenge you to find an adult who can commit 1,000 hours in a year into learning something completely new.
In addition, children have a much better reinforcement loop. A child who can say even a couple of words in a foreign language will get wonderful praise; an adult won't receive praise until he can practically get a PhD in the language. Musical instruments are similar--a child can bang out stuff and everybody thinks it's wonderful--one wrong note as an adult and everybody is a critic.
I suspect there is some neuroplasticity involved in language--certain sounds seem to be indistinguishable to non-native speakers after a certain age. However, I suspect that the neuroplasticity is dwarfed by simple time.
I see little value in futzing with drugging the brain until we normalize things like time.
As an adult, it's close to impossible for me to find an uninterrupted block of 4+ hours without risking problems at work or with some errands. And I'm not even married, and don't have children yet!.
A related thing is that kids don't worry. As a child, I could easily blow half a day - or half a week - playing with some new idea, because I knew I'll have more of free time next day, and the day after that, etc. As an adult, time is so precious that I often don't do something because I know I won't have enough time to finish it.
Sure, a lot of problems here could be solved if one was better at micromanaging[0] their own time. And maybe more assertive than I am; getting time to learn involves saying "fuck you" to a lot of people who desperately want your attention. But still, I think the primary reason adults learn much less than children is that they don't have time - and energy - after spending more than half of their waking day at work[1].
--
[0] - In the StarCraft sense. Using time well too often feels like fighting 2 vs 1, where your enemies have already taken half 3/4 of the map, your economy is barely functional, and the only chance of winning you have is to outmicro them.
[1] - Often closer to 2/3 if you factor in commute and meals.
My mother has been in college / school since I can remember, with brief periods of work in between. She is in her 50's now, has several degrees, but more to learn and master so she keeps on going. She is one of the few adults who has both the time, determination and opportunity to learn new subjects, study, do homework, put hours upon hours of time into learning - and consistently makes all A's.
So basically, I see the requirements of learning in later life as hard work, time, determination and opportunity - not brain plasticity.
> I suspect there is some neuroplasticity involved in language--certain sounds seem to be indistinguishable to non-native speakers after a certain age.
I suppose (just my personal not scientifically founded opinion) being able to distinguish foreign language phonemes is a skill akin to absolute pitch. If you acquire it early on you'll be able to apply it to whatever new language you encounter later in life. It'd be interesting to see if this also applies to phonemes that are formed in a manner entirely from the ones you're used to from your native language (like being able to grasp tonemes in Mandarin Chinese as a native English speaker).
Then again a lack in pronunciation skills in a particular foreign language also often is simply about utility: Using your own native set of phonemes to mimic foreign language phonemes most of the time will get you far enough to be reasonably understandable while adopting truly native-sounding phonetics means a lot of additional work with often little perceived benefit. I suppose the Pareto principle applies in that case.
Speaking from my experience: I've just recently started to work with a phoneticist to improve my English accent and those lessons opened a whole new world of how people speak to me. I've started to discern a ton of new sounds, hearing things I'd never been able to hear before (e.g. how æn is almost a diphthong in American English). I hadn't any special training earlier in my life (I'm 26 now), so I think an ability to discern phonemes in a foreign language can be acquired while being an adult at least in some cases.
You might disagree, but the scientific community disagrees with you.
A new brain allows a child to learn language much faster than an old brain. The poster isn't saying he can't learn new language, but it's more difficult.
I've been told that the window for accelersted language learning is much shorter than general high neuroplasticity, and that the best language-learners are adults that practice learning new languages over and over again.
I was surprised by this statement. As someone surrounded by really smart people of all age groups, specially the olds; I find it wrong. It could simply be personal belief thing instead of natural limit
I don't think you spend a lot of time around children they can pick up new things very quickly, but they are missing out on some basic skills. Playing an instrument is a mix of hand eye coordination which is hard for kids, and a new set of mental process which is easy. Adults have the opposite problem, they have plenty of hand dexterity but have a hard time without a background in music.
> I don't think you spend a lot of time around children they can pick up new things very quickly, but they are missing out on some basic skills.
Ah, now this is something dear to my heart.
Adults and children learn DIFFERENTLY. THAT I agree with.
My personal bane for this was learning Japanese Kanji. Why in the world are we learning them in this stupid order?
Because that's the order they are taught in Japanese schools.
Except, I'm an adult. I'm not limited in my conception like a child is. I don't need to you stick to "concrete" vocabulary because I can't conceive of things like "self", "ward", or "length" (examples of low stroke count kanji taught in later grades).
As an adult, learning kanji by either stroke count or radical (reinforces the patterns and chunks of the kanji) or by frequency of use (reinforces actual usage), is going to get me significantly better results. However, all the textbooks are written to learn kanji in school order.
I am not talking about throwing a ball. Learning to make a lowercase "e" takes ~0.1 cm presison which is just well outside what you need for most things. Now shure people can learn to write or thread a needle as an adult, but generally people learn how to stabilize their hands well before adulthood which is a major issue for kids.
Wow, did you read the article or just the first sentence and only came here to post your pseudo scientific thoughts?
I'm no neuroscientist but I just had a child and read up on brain development. Your assumption that main difference is time is not only wrong but dangerous. I was going to cite you some research but the article does a pretty good job in going into detail why it's not just time. Yes, if you spend enough time or something you can eventually catch up but you have it backwards. Neuroplasticity dwarfs time. If your assumption is all about time, then the feral children the article talks about would be able to acquire language. I'm sure they have plenty of time and teachers after being found in the wild!
I seriously hope if you have kids or plan to have kids, you do not assume they can catch up later on and that you give them to proper learning environment when they are young. Otherwise your child may be closer to those feral children.
> I was going to cite you some research but the article does a pretty good job in going into detail why it's not just time.
No, it doesn't. It cites a single, very small, non-replicated study about, specifically, perfect pitch on an equal tempered scale (we'll get back to this in a minute). We know that detailed sound discrimination is one of the very specific things that closes off with neuroplasticity. We also know that it closes off REALLY early--much earlier than adolescence.
I would also suggest that you need to treat neuro studies with HUGE heaping servings of skepticism. Neuro is one of the worst offenders in the non-replicability crisis. In addition, the fMRI software bugs have invalidated a lot of neuro research.
Finally, with respect to testing "perfect pitch", AN EQUAL TEMPERED SCALE IS FAR FROM PERFECT. "Western" music converged on a 12-note, equal tempered scale where each note is slightly "wrong". Why would discriminating such an artificial construct have ANY relation to a biological system? Many cultures have very different musical scales, perhaps one of those scales is "easier to learn" as an adult.
And I won't even get into whether "perfect pitch" is actually a help or hindrance to a musician.
> I seriously hope if you have kids or plan to have kids, you do not assume they can catch up later on and that you give them to proper learning environment when they are young.
WTF? How did you make the leap from "the problem with adult learning is that adults don't have time" to "children should be deprived of a learning environment"? There seems to be a step missing.
Please read what people ACTUALLY wrote and not what you THINK they wrote.
>Why are you so vehemently disagreeing with someone else's anecdotal experience?
Because it was communicated while dissing on the article and the research results, as if personal experience trumps everything and those people that say otherwise are just lazy.
>His opinion is wrong because you read something and just had a baby?
No, but your comment is wrong because you put words in the other guy's month that he didn't say to manipulate people's perception of his argument.
He doesn't say the other guy is wrong "because he read something and just had a baby".
That is, he doesn't say: "You're wrong because I read War And Peace and also just had a baby, so I'm right".
He says that the other guy is wrong because his anecdotal opinion doesn't agree with what brain development books say.
So, (a) he only mentions the fact that he had a baby as an aside, to just convey us his motivation behind "reading up on brain development", and (b) he is not just saying he "read something", he's saying he read books about brain development.
You can dispute whether he did or not, or come up with other books on brain development that say otherwise, but your framing of what he said is in bad faith.
>You can dispute whether he did or not, or come up with other books on brain development that say otherwise, but your framing of what he said is in bad faith.
I quoted exactly what was said, which mentions what kind of book was read... so I don't find the "framing" in "bad faith" as you put it, at all.
Don't you have anything to say about the substance of the article, or original post?
> Why are you so vehemently disagreeing with someone else's anecdotal experience?
> His opinion is wrong because you read something and just had a baby?
To be clear, what I am about to say is a response only to your post, not to the debate about the accuracy of the article.
Although it was supported by opinion and anecdotal experience, the main thrust of bsder's post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12670315) seemed to be that the article, not his or her opinion, was a matter of assumption:
> I hate these kinds of assumptions ...
and that his or her objection was a matter of fact:
> The biggest difference between adults and children is not neuroplasticity--the biggest difference is TIME.
This is why anti-vax is spreading. There's concrete science, and this article accurately reports it. Yet people disagree with decades of research because of some anecdotal experience. I can't believe I need to defend science vs opinion on HN...
Edit: I'm not against opinions and critical analysis of research. But you need to back it up with other research, not one off anecdotal evidence.
Valproate is unpleasant, and has a high incidence of side effects - I wouldn't be in a hurry to self-medicate to improve neuroplasticity.
The beneficial effects of Valproate are likely mediated by increases in VEGF, BDNF and GDNF. Cardiovascular exercise has also been shown to increase expression of all these genes. Exercise has also been linked to increased neurogenesis in the hippocampus and neocortex, and that has been backed up with demonstrations of improved memory and learning. It will also help you stay lean, make you feel better and extend your life somewhat.
If you read or watch TV/movies, just start doing it on a treadmill, elliptical or exercise bike at a leisurely pace, instead of sitting around. An hour or two a day of relaxing exercise really does make a world of difference.
Perhaps I fell well outside of the normal patient in this case but I've been taking a small-ish dose (500mg/day) for about two years for treatment of Migraine. As my previous comment states, I make it a point not to read the side-effects (that's my wife's "job") and haven't noticed anything unpleasant about the medication other than it reducing my anxiety and making drinking alcohol less enjoyable.
Perhaps my dose is particularly low. For the first couple of months I was at 1000mg/day and asked to have it reduced because the stark difference in going from mild-moderately anxious to zero anxiety made me not feel particularly like myself (reducing anxiety also reduced excitement and the enjoyment that came with it, so I felt a little too "leveled out") but even at that dose it was very tolerable and I would have been fine if I had to go back up to it to manage my symptoms.
On the flip-side, I haven't suddenly been able to learn a foreign language (something that I calculate would require a lot of neuroplasticity for me -- I've struggled to learn any language beyond English most of my life) and my pace of learning -- which is something I'm inherently passionate about -- doesn't seem to be any better than it was two years ago. So while I wouldn't agree with the assessment of it being unpleasant and having a high incidence of side effects in my particular, anecdotal, case, I also wouldn't recommend self-medicating with it in my particular, anecdotal, case, unless, of course, you have suffered from Migraine for a couple of decades and have problems with the common medications prescribed for treatment.
It's an interesting drug. When I started taking it, there was no information on WebMD/drugs.com indicating that it could be used for the prevention of Migraine. Forum posts throughout the interwebs abounded with anecdotal tales of people being surprised by the sudden elimination of symptoms. I, like them, was prescribed the medicine for a different purpose (though, in my case, I didn't have the disease it was prescribed for), but after seeing an expensive headache specialist that I had already had an appointment on the books for (made six months prior), I was told that he sometimes prescribes it for that purpose and it "either works or it doesn't" in his experience. It was a hit for me. And as of a search a few months ago, the more mainstream sites indicate that it is sometimes prescribed for Migraine. That it might have other benefits is great as far as I'm concerned, especially since I think I pay a little over a dollar for a 1-month supply.
Just a thought: some times, when you start to feel the side effects, it's too late to correct them, specially if it's organ failure. Please read the side effects.
This is interesting - I just posted a comment about being prescribed Depakote to handle Migraine (which has completely eliminated my bi-weekly attacks for the last two years).
I haven't paid particular attention to this kind of effect (and now that I know about it, I am certainly able to fall into placebo). Frankly, I haven't noticed any side effects from the medicine[0] other than a minor one of no longer enjoying the effects of alcohol -- though I was never a heavy drinker, I haven't drank at all since I started taking it because the relaxing, positive effects of a glass of wine are no longer present.
[0] I've stuck to a rule about side-effects for medicines like this. My wife reads them thoroughly and I explain anything "different" that I might be feeling when taking the drug and allow her to make the judgement call as to whether or not I need to call the doctor/pharmacist. Because these medicines have such a huge list of side-effects, I'd find myself expecting to get one or more of them so much that I'd manufacturer them in nocebo effect style.
Would you consider contributing to Erowid[0]? There are only a few articles on Depakote, and they don't seem to be focused on the direct effects of prescribed use.
Absolutely! I hate being an evangelist for a medication, but this stuff has dramatically changed my life and entirely for the positive, so I'll be sharing my experience and my notes (I kept a journal for the first 6 months of taking the medication -- subjectively logging a variety of emotional variables and a few objective physical ones -- I hate brain drugs, so I was being overly cautious).
After some reading [1] I found out that electrophilic ketones are better than valproic acid as histone deacetylase inhibitors. Maybe this is the source of the enhanced state-of-mind that people on a keto diet [2] report (me currently, reporting in).
Here's a nice double-bind: messing with your brain to become smarter when nobody knows exactly what the outcome will be, is a bad idea; yet, to understand this you need to not be dumb in the first place.
This is already addressed in the article, e.g. here:
There might, however, be a dark side to the story. There is
a good reason we were designed to have finite sensitive
periods. Takao Hensch, a Harvard neuroscientist, has
written that plasticity takes a lot of energy: It’s
exhausting to keep all your neural circuits in a dynamic
state. Restricting it may protect the brain.
and in the paragraphs thereafter (I don't want to quote them here in full).
I learnt a practical amount of a second language at 30. The first 3 or so months were super hard and I found that to even remember basic words I would have to repeat them about 10 times. But then I felt my brain changing and I could remember new words much more easily. About a year after that I picked up another language and this time my experience was that I could remember the words a fair amount quicker. So from personal experience - my brain just needed the stimuli for a prolonged period then it seemed to change
> It turns out that a few key molecules act to open and shut periods in brain development. One is called histone deacetylase, or HDAC; it makes DNA coil up tightly and stops the synthesis of proteins that promote plasticity — thereby closing off the learning period.
I presume this blocks only a few genes, so the coiling up is local (?) I can't imagine this blocking all genes.
My intuition tells me that neuroplasticity is largely driven by genetics. Outliers in this space are likely caused by mutations related to neurofibromatosis. I also imagine that there is a huge memory component in some of these variants (for example, a person who can learn quickly but also forgets quickly).
I stopped reading when they used a comically bad simile:
> Think of the brain’s sensitive periods as blown glass: The molten glass is very malleable, but you have a relatively brief time before it cools and becomes crystalline. Put it back into the furnace, and it can once again change shape.
(the definition of a glass is that it is noncrystalline).
Being able to waterstart, turn and stay upwind is akin to being able to order an evening meal in a foreign language.
That may be enough to say box ticked, I've learnt that, but in reality your not going to be throwing down megaloops or back mobes; that's ridiculously hard.
Not trying to knock you personally, fantastic that you've taken it up; Maybe I'm just bitter that after well over 10 years at this I still get shown up by the local kids :)
How much of that is about the difficulty of the skill and how much of that is the potential for injury? I disagree that learning those skills is harder with age, but healing is undeniably slower for older people, so you tend to become injury averse.
Out of interest, do you do other sports that are in some way similar? I picked up skiing way faster than friends (or so they say). But then I already do or have done a number of outdoor sports. (I think controlling your fear is a large part in learning "extreme" sports). I am crap at languages but I see other people who already speak a few languages pick them up far faster than me.
"There’s a reason adults don’t pick up Japanese or learn how to kite surf. It’s ridiculously hard. In stark contrast, young people can learn the most difficult things relatively easily. Polynomials, Chinese, skateboarding — no problem!"
Um, ask some teachers about how easy that is sometime. I'm sure you'd get an earful.
The biggest difference between adults and children is not neuroplasticity--the biggest difference is TIME.
Children can spend 4+ hours a day learning a language, playing guitar, drawing, etc. In one year, that's roughly 1,000 hours.
I would challenge you to find an adult who can commit 1,000 hours in a year into learning something completely new.
In addition, children have a much better reinforcement loop. A child who can say even a couple of words in a foreign language will get wonderful praise; an adult won't receive praise until he can practically get a PhD in the language. Musical instruments are similar--a child can bang out stuff and everybody thinks it's wonderful--one wrong note as an adult and everybody is a critic.
I suspect there is some neuroplasticity involved in language--certain sounds seem to be indistinguishable to non-native speakers after a certain age. However, I suspect that the neuroplasticity is dwarfed by simple time.
I see little value in futzing with drugging the brain until we normalize things like time.