How Do We Learn?

We start learning from infancy. A baby must learn nearly all but the most elementary things. A baby's brain can be likened, in a way, to a road map that has been roughly "sketched out," having main outlines, but few interconnecting roads. The general mental organization has been inherited, but most other connections have to be made as the child takes in information from a world that is all new to him.
Researchers have suggested certain possibilities as to what the learning process involves. One is that learning, which involves memory, does not increase the number of cells in the brain, but stimulates the nerve fibers to grow extra branches, which communicate chemo-electrically with other nerve cells. Other changes may also be made, as discussed later. Exercise of the brain is therefore essential for mental growth. A brain neuron (nerve cell) has to be used. Otherwise it tends to "wither," much as an unused muscle does. Not that it completely dies so that it cannot be used at all, but a brain not exercised has a much harder time learning. It will remain immature, not developing the "connections" that it should.