Emily McDonald explains how the brain learns through prediction error: when your internal model doesn't match reality, the brain flags the gap and updates itself. She tests herself on material before learning it fully, deliberately getting answers wrong to expose gaps and trigger the brain to adjust and retain better.
The brain actually learns through something called prediction error. When we get something wrong, the brain goes, I was wrong. I need to update my model. And the only way we get things wrong, the only way we know if we're wrong, is if we actually make the attempt. And I actually used to apply this intuitively back when I was in school and I would be studying for an exam. I would actually test myself on the information before I had even really studied. Not because I thought I knew it all. I knew I didn't. But it was the best way to know exactly what I didn't know and also to kind of trigger my brain, right? Because getting it wrong triggers your brain to update the model. This is prediction error. Your brain's prediction was wrong. Your brain goes, oop, we made an error. Let's update the prediction. And your brain learns really, really well through that process.
