Failure is not a successful mother

One study found that the ability of neurons to process information is hardly improved after animals make mistakes.

Many people believe that the adage " Failure is a successful mother " is only true when we analyze the causes of failure in an objective and wise way to draw lessons. Scientifically, American scientists have proved that only a few types of failures can lead us to success.

Experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology monitor neuronal activity in the frontal and basal lobe in monkey brains. These are the two regions that are thought to be involved in the learning process of the brain. The team wanted to know how neuronal activity changes after animals learn a certain skill . They let monkeys see pictures with fruits on the right or left. After seeing a picture, the experts instructed the monkey to turn his head to the side corresponding to the position of the fruit in the image. If the fruit is on the right of the image and the monkey turns its head to the right, they will be rewarded.

(Artwork: Softpedia)

The team found that the accuracy in monkey judgment increased markedly over time. But what surprised them more was that neurons processed information better and coordinated more smoothly after the monkeys judged correctly. That fact shows that neurons can distinguish two situations that the monkey faces.

" When a monkey does not choose the right side of the fruit, the level of coordination between neurons does not change. But every time they succeed, their correct guessing capacity increases again the next time ," Earl K. Miller, a member of the research team, said.

Many previous studies have shown that the extremely short number of active cells (taking place in parts of a second) occur in the animal's brain as they learn new skills . But scientists do not understand the role of these short-term neurological activities on animal behavior. Research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that neurological signals associated with learning may take several seconds. That time is long enough for neurons to receive feedback from the outside environment and draw on the experience next time.

Miller and colleagues' research results help people explain why people sometimes repeat mistakes. However, it contradicts many previous studies whereby people learn more knowledge from failure, not success.

' There are many kinds of mistakes. When you say that you learn from failure, you need to understand what kind of failure it is. Some mistakes help us become more mature, but many failures recur many times despite our efforts. We think that the nature of failure determines whether you can achieve success from mistakes. Thus, only certain types of failures can lead us to success , 'Miller concludes.