Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from

Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn how your

brain replays the things you've practiced at 20 times the speed,

and how scientists built an ultra-fast engine,

they say uses information as fuel.

Would satisfy some curiosity. When you're practicing a new skill, it's important to take breaks to give your body a rest.

But according to a new study, there's another benefit to breaks.

It turns out that during those breaks your brain does a fast forward

replay of your practice session and harnessing that fact could help people learn

skills more quickly. So memory is a huge part of learning something new. I mean

after all studying and practicing would be pointless if you couldn't remember

what you learned. That new information first gets stored in your short-term memory, but it's only after it moves into your long-term memory that it really becomes useful later on.

That process of moving information from short-term to long-term memory is called memory

consolidation.

For a long time, research has shown that taking frequent breaks while practicing something

new speeds up memory consolidation and improves performance.

But researchers weren't sure how these quick breaks actually helped the brain solidify new skills.

So they set up an experiment. They had 30 participants sit in a brain scanning

device while they practice typing the numbers 41324 on a keyboard as fast and accurately as they could for 10 seconds.

Then they rested for 10 seconds.

Then they typed for 10 seconds.

You get the picture.

...