Even more connectivity might be gained by writing while riding a bicycle, or being chased by a lion while typing out your thesus. If brain connectivity is the goal, any increase in complication should work. Texting while driving probably increases brain connectivity. That doesnt mean it should be encouraged.
> shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning.
They found activity in desirable parts of the brain. Being chased by a lion would trigger panic responses and parts of your brain would be shut down. So no, any increase in complication will not work. I certainly doubt texting while driving will work to improve connectivity in the parts of your brain required for safe driving.
Texting while driving is actually a desirable skill for military pilots. They specifically look for people who can drive a vehicle while holding a conversation and monitoring several screens. Being chased by a lion would certainly focus the parts of the brain covering perception, balance and coordination. And learning to control one's panic responce is essential cognitive development imho. My point is that essentially any complex activity is a learning experience, a time of increased brain activity.
The article and study is not about learning though, it is specifically about memory. I doubt anyone would claim that learning to drive was best done by taking notes at a lecture (texting or otherwise), as it is about training reflexes and habits, essentially so you can do it without thinking. Because thinking is slow. But maybe the best way to to learn Latin irregular verbs is to scream them out while being chased by a lion; that would require further study.
Somewhat related, I recall a study on how we find it easier to perform complex mechanical tasks while moving our tongues or sticking them out. Which seems to be how our brains use of language gets tied to physical activity when we need to really concentrate and engage higher thought. I can grasp how writing could well improve memory formation, forcing us to codify thought into language, engaging those parts of the brain that use language for reasoning. But interesting if typing does it worse.
> I certainly doubt texting while driving will work to improve connectivity in the parts of your brain required for safe driving.
Well the more you do it, the better you'd get at it. The problem isn't that doing it makes you unsafe, it's that most people are not actually capable of doing it safely and we don't necessarily want people to risk other peoples' lives learning how to do it better.
There's value in thinking about the topic you're trying to learn, while you're learning it. When I was in college, I handwrote my notes, then I switched to typing, then I switched to no notes. Just paid close attention in lecture and thought about the topic during any pauses in talking. Worked wonders.
Part of this relied on the professors distributing lecture slides afterwards, which they always did. Helped jog my memory later and remind me of what to study for the final.
I tried handwriting notes several times in my math classes. It did not work well. I am not a fast or neat writer, so it was always a desperate struggle to keep up. Many professors preferred not to distribute any notes or slides, and loved to lecture on the board at lightning speed (writing and erasing at least a dozen boards worth of material in 50 minutes). When I switched to typing my notes in LaTeX (using vim) it made all the difference. I could actually keep up with the professor and think about what they were saying without getting hopelessly behind on the proof.
The strategy of only writing down the important details that everyone advocates does not work very well in math. I can't know what the important details are until days or even weeks after the lecture, when I've had enough time to digest and work through the material while completing the assigned problems. Of course, this is much more true at the beginning of a course (when I've had no prior exposure to the topic) than it is at the end.
I took math LaTeX notes in Vim too. Once I got past the learning curve, it was much faster than writing just because of the ability to copy-paste a proof line. It was even an ok form of scratch space for solving problems, though pencil+paper was usually best. But I didn't take enough math classes to really see if it'd help, and in comp sci classes it didn't.
I was a math major and I just kept using LaTeX + vim for my whole degree. I got better and better at it and used snippets as well as wrote my own TeX macros to save tons of time.
I went back and forth between pencil and paper and LaTeX for assignment work. For some courses the proofs were fairly short so it was easy enough to work on paper. For others, the proofs could get several pages long and small mistakes could lead to lots of erasing. It doesn't take very much erasing/rewriting to annoy me enough to switch over to LaTeX. I can't think of a bigger waste of time than erasing and/or rewriting half a page of material because of some mistake.
Would be interesting if someone made a hardware device to be placed in classrooms which took periodic photos of the board and transcribed it into searchable text using an LLM.
I have taken photos of the board and I've seen lots of classmates do it as well. I had one prof who absolutely forbid any photos in class, even if they were just of the notes on the board. I saw one student defy him and take photos anyway. After class he sprinted over to that student and demanded to see his ID, which he photographed and then left.
The poor student followed him all the way out of the room and down the hall, begging not to be reported to the associate dean's office!
There is definitely a quality balance to be had between taking notes and understanding, particularly true if you know you aren't going to go back and put in the proper time to study the notes you made afterward. For an extreme example I had a calculus class where your notes were graded but if you wanted an A you pretty much had to write the entire book section set by hand. It resulted in one of the worst retention rates I had of any class because it was a mad dash to write everything down to get the A and then you had to go back and spend time trying to think about what you just wrote. On the other hand in another calculus class notes weren't graded and I ended up with basically 1 sheet (front/back) with a few notes on things I didn't get 100% or wanted to remind myself of later and then spent 10 minutes outside of class reviewing those to great success.
as a neuroscientist (who hasn't read the paper but approaches such work with general skepticisms), this is a reasonable take and an important point. Too often, trivial points are elevated to pseudo-profundity.
