Current Biology: Why children learn more efficiently than adults

Studies have shown that children may acquire new knowledge and skills
faster than adults.
If you've ever thought your elementary school kids were "smarter" than you, or at least faster than you at learning new skills and knowledge, a new study published in the journal Current Biology confirms that you're right
.
According to the new study, there are differences in brain messenger GABA between children and adults, which may explain why children seem to be more capable of learning and remembering new information
.

Takeo Watanabe of Brown University said: "Our findings suggest that primary school-age children can learn more than adults in a given amount of time, which makes them learn more
efficiently.
"

According to the study, GABA levels in children increased rapidly during visual training and continued to increase
even after the training ended.
Conversely, GABA concentrations in adults remained constant
during training.
These findings suggest that children's brains are more responsive to training, allowing them to consolidate new knowledge
quickly and effectively.

"People often think that children learn more efficiently than adults, although scientific support for this hypothesis is weak at best, and, if true, the neuronal mechanisms responsible for more efficient learning in children are unclear
," Watanabe said.

The GABA difference is an obvious place
to look for answers.
While previous studies have existed, the researchers noted that GABA in children had only been measured at one time point
.
Nor is time measured in terms of learning that has any special significance
.

So they started the new study to observe changes
in GABA levels before, during, and after study.
They also want to see what is different
between children and adults.

Using behavioral and state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques, the study examined visual learning
in elementary school-age children and adults.
The study found that visual learning triggered an increase in GABA in children's visual cortex, an
area of the brain that processes visual information.
After the training, the increase in GABA also lasted for a few minutes
.

The results they saw were markedly different
in adults who received the same visual training.
In adults, there are no changes
in GABA.

The findings predict that training on the new program will rapidly increase the concentration of GABA in children and quickly stabilize learning
.
Further experiments confirmed this
.

Sebastian M.
Frank of the University of Regensburg in Germany said: "In subsequent behavioral experiments, we found that children did stabilize new learning faster than adults, which is consistent with
the common view that children's learning ability is better than that of adults.
" Therefore, our findings suggest that GABA is a key factor
in improving children's learning efficiency.
”

They say the findings suggest that children may acquire new knowledge and skills
faster than adults.
It should further encourage teachers and parents to give children plenty of opportunities to learn new skills, whether it's learning multiplication tables or riding a bike
.

The findings may also change neuroscientists' conception
of brain maturity in children.

Frank said: "Our results suggest that although inhibitory failure has been observed in other domains such as cognitive control or attention, children show efficient inhibition GABA processing
.
This means that GABA processing involving different aspects of cognitive function may mature
at different rates.
”

Watanabe added: "Although children's brains are not yet fully mature and many of their behavioural and cognitive functions are not as effective as adults, in general, children do not perform better
at these abilities than adults.
Conversely, at least in some areas, such as visual learning, children are better capable than adults
.
”

They say the difference in maturity rates between brain regions and function should be examined
in detail in future studies.
They also wanted to explore how GABA reacts to other types of learning, such as reading and writing
.

References: "Efficient learning in children with rapid GABA boosting during and after training" by Sebastian M.
Frank, Markus Becker, Andrea Qi, Patricia Geiger, Ulrike I.
Frank, Luke A.
Rosedahl, Wilhelm M.
Malloni, Yuka Sasaki, Mark W.
Greenlee and Takeo Watanabe, 15 November 2022, Current Biology.