Every now and again, I get an email asking me what were some of the seminal articles or books I have read. One of the most important comes from Scientific American about how the brain learns on the molecular level. It's a critically important piece that exposes the process of learning - what happens when the brain encodes a short term piece of information into long term information.

It redefines our jobs. How do we present information, or have people use the information we present, to enable their brains to learn? How do we use the long term natural learning process?

The first thing the article points out is that learning - shunting from short term to longer term - is a relatively protected process. Forgetting is far easier than remembering. So what are the clues to the natural learning process, in which information is moved from short term to long memory. A state in which we claim that something has been "learned". How do we enable this process rather than disable it?

Any experiences you have had along thses lines would be something I'd love to hear about since it gets to the heart of what learning is all about.