Effortless pronunciation learning: a la The Matrix!

(Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, NSF)

Clip art: Clker

According to this ScienceDaily summary: " . . . it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise." That may be a bit over the top, but note this: "The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects' awareness of what was to be learned." The "skills" being enhanced in this research by basically implanting neural routines in the brain were essentially visual, such as ability to discriminate fine detail, but it looks impressive: "The result, say researchers, is a novel learning approach sufficient to cause long-lasting improvement in tasks that require visual performance." The extension to aural and tactile mapping is only a matter of time. In fact it is easy to see it working with the EHIEP vowel matrix.