The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

by Norman Doidge

Understanding this tortoise-and-hare effect can help us understand what we must do to truly master new skills. After a brief period of practice, as when we cram for a test, it is relatively easy to improve because we are likely strengthening existing synaptic connections. But we quickly forget what we’ve crammed—because these are easy-come, easy-go neuronal connections and are rapidly reversed. Maintaining improvement and making a skill permanent require the slow steady work that probably forms new connections. If a learner thinks he is making no cumulative progress, or feels his mind is “like a sieve,” he needs to keep at the skill until he gets “the Monday effect,” which in Braille readers took six months. The Friday-Monday difference is probably why some people, the “tortoises,” who seem slow to pick up a skill, may nevertheless learn it better than their “hare” friends—the “quick studies” who won’t necessarily hold on to what they have learned without the sustained practice that solidifies the learning.