• Question: Why do we learn?

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Elaine Cloutman-Green

      Elaine Cloutman-Green answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Learning is an important part of survival. If you didn’t learn you would be in a ‘baby’ state for the whole of your life which would make you vulnerable to predators and nature in general.

    • Photo: Zhiming Darren Tan

      Zhiming Darren Tan answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Personally, I learn because it’s wonderful to find out new things! It’s like exercise for the mind. And the body can learn too – muscle memory for sports.

    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Your brain is an amazing organ as even from birth it can help you breathe, eat, drink and a host of other complex things. But as Elane says, if there is no learning you’d stay in this 1 day old person state for the rest of you life, and would never survive.

      When we think about learning you and I probably first think about things we’ve learned about at school or elsewhere. But it’s a lot more fundamental than that. When animals first open their eyes they can’t see very well, and its the effect of opening your eyes that allows the neurons that go from the eye to the visual cortex (the vision part of the brain) to make the appropriate connectionsMATOMO_URL So even something as apparently basic as vision needs a brain to learn.

      *This is something to consider if we were to develop some kind of bionic eye for people that are blind from birth, as it would also need to be wired into the brain correctly, as the connecting neurons wouldn’t be there.

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