When the brain is prepared to learn: Enhancing human learning using real-time fMRI

Article history: Received 18 February 2011 Revised 20 July 2011 Accepted 22 July 2011 Available online 29 July 2011 The rate of learning ormemory formation varies over time for any individual, partly due tomoment-to-moment fluctuation of brain state. Functional neuroimaging has revealed the neural correlates of learning and memory, but here we asked if neuroimaging can causally enhance human learning by detection of brain states that reveal when a person is prepared or not prepared to learn. The parahippocampal cortex (PHC) is essential for memory formation for scenes. Here, activation in PHCwasmonitored in real-time, and scene presentationswere triggered when participants entered “good” or “bad” brain states for learning of novel scenes. Subsequent recognition memory was more accurate for scenes presented in “good” than “bad” brain states. These findings show that neuroimaging can identify in real-time brain states that enhance or depress learning andmemory formation, and knowledge about such brain states may be useful for accelerating education and training. Further, the use of functional neuroimagingas a causal, rather thancorrelative, tool to study thehumanbrainmayopennew insights into the neural basis of human cognition.