Why is learning stuff harder as you get older?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2021
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you taken classes to learn a new sport or musical instrument or a language? It’s hard work! Why is it that as children we effortlessly absorb new skills and we don’t as adults? That’s what 50-something listener Gary Grief wondered about playing guitar. Do you need to play more frequently as an adult to attain the same level of expertise? Does the 10,000-hours theory still apply? Presenter and budding tabla-player Anand Jagatia embarks on a musical journey to discover what neuroscience can tell us about muscle memory and learning. Do musicians and sportsmen share the same challenges? By understanding what’s happening in the brain, can we learn how to learn better? With tabla-teacher Satvinder Sehmbey, neuroscientist Dr Jessica Grahn, viola-player Dr Molly Gebrian and sports scientist Prof Yannis Pitsiladis. Presented by Anand Jagatia Produced by Dom Byrne for the BBC World Service
[Image: Adult and Child learning Piano. Credit: Getty Images]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to Crowd Science from the BBC World Service. We're the show that answers |
| 0:40.3 | your science questions. I'm Annan Jagatier and this is me having a music lesson with |
| 0:46.0 | my long-suffering teacher sat Vindasembe. |
| 0:48.8 | Okay, good. All right. I want you to go ahead and... |
| 0:54.8 | Like many people in lockdown, I decided to take up an instrument, in my case the Dublin, |
| 0:59.8 | an Indian classical percussion instrument that I first began playing when I was just 10 years old. |
| 1:05.5 | And after a pretty long gap I've started learning again. |
| 1:09.6 | And it's hard. |
| 1:11.0 | But I'm not the only one who's Hard. is now 52 and he's going through a similar ordeal with the guitar. |
| 1:25.0 | So when did you first start learning the guitar? |
| 1:28.0 | I got a guitar for my 21st birthday about a hundred years ago that was. I had a period of 20 years maybe |
| 1:37.3 | where I'd play very nearly every day and I was in a band and I would busk and all kinds of |
| 1:42.1 | stuff like that. |
| 1:43.0 | Yeah. Do you find that some of the stuff that you learn way back then, |
| 1:47.0 | is it stuck in your head? Can you sort of, you know, does it kind of come back |
| 1:50.0 | when you try and play that stuff now? |
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