As a teacher, I've been happy to share information about brain plasticity with my students. I talk to them about the fact that adults in fact can learn, and I love to share the stories of the London taxi drivers and the observed physical change that occurs in their brains when they study for and pass the test, ominously called The Knowledge, of all 25,000 London streets. I also talk to my students about ways that knowing about brain growth and plasticity can help us be more kind to ourselves. We talk about analogies of the brain being like a muscle, where you have to build up strength and endurance by practice, and how stopping practice causes atrophy. Through this understanding, we can be patient with ourselves as we struggle through new concepts, changing "this makes no sense to me; I must be because math isn't my thing" to "this is completely new to me, so it'll take some time for my brain to adapt to it." Also through this analogy of the brain to the body, we talk about fatigue associated with mental effort. So I ask my students to be patient with themselves if they are extra tired in the first few weeks of a school year, letting them know that it is an expected side effect of increased mental effort. [Side note: I just got distracted by this podcast about connections between mental and physical endurance... It's fascinating!]
Because of this awareness of brain plasticity and brain energy consumption, I was not particularly surprised when I experienced some of these side effects on my path to learn French. However, I was surprised by some of the ways in which they manifested (and the strength with which they manifested).
A little background: I started practicing French in June 2018, entirely through Duolingo. I don't remember exactly, but I believe I was practicing daily, with very little failure, up until the point where I started working with tutors in mid-September. I started with 3 tutors, meeting one of them twice per week and the others once per week. Needless to say, this completely changed the way I was learning. Rather than just following the routine provided by one app, I was introduced to new language learning supports, such as spaced repetition software, grammar support sites, and pronunciation support sites. So in the matter of days, my initial practice of spending about 30 minutes per day following prescribed routines turned into 3-4 and sometimes 8 hours per day practicing all sorts of new things, including flashcard studying, podcast listening, grammar researching, pronunciation practice, and also having live conversations in French.
I looked back on my timeline, and I can see that my first tutoring session was on 13 September. I remember around this time that I was tired. I was so tired, all of the time. I would wake up, have a morning tutoring session with my tutors in Columbia and France, then often I'd have a nap. I was certain it was from the effort of learning French. Then on 01 October, I emailed one of my tutors about what I later started to refer to as my "French headache."
It was the type of headache that stopped me from being able to function. In my memory it was less about pain, but like a balloon being blown up inside my perception field, squeezing up all of the space between the functional me and the tools I needed to access language. I was always closing my left eye, in response to the sensation. That Monday morning I had a tutoring session in which I couldn't grasp any French words or phrases, even the ones I knew. I thought it was just a regular ol' headache. However, my experience throughout the day told me otherwise. After I hung up the morning tutoring session, left eye closed, I took some aspirin and did some things in the kitchen. I had decided that I was going to take it easy and maybe watch a movie until the pain went away, but within minutes I was fine. Eager to get back to work, I opened up my computer and opened my flashcard software. Just a few flashcards in, my headache came back full force and I was once again one-eyed. I thought, hmm, that's odd. So I put the computer down and did something different. The headache went away again quickly. Still, I decided to give myself a rest, so I didn't practice any more that day. And I didn't have any more headache, until later I picked up a crossword puzzle. As I was searching my brain for words that matched clues, again I felt the pressure of that balloon squeezing my brain.
It's been a long time since I've had the same intensity of learning and practice in French, but occasionally I will still get my French headache, especially if I consume lots of French after several days (or weeks) of slacking off. In my mind, I equate it to the muscle fatigue of doing bicep curls to the point of exhaustion, and then not being able to lift a single book afterwards. Another thing that happened, all very related and I believe in the same time period, was that I got actual muscle fatigue in my mouth. The uptick of intensity of practice wore out all of the muscles in my mouth, as I was exercising those muscles differently for the French pronunciation. I remember my lips and my tongue being tired and feeling like useless lumps when I tried to speak. It was astounding! I think that if I didn't have the background mindset of thinking about brain growth and the related fatigue, then between the constant fatigue, headaches, blurred vision, loss of vocabulary and slurred speech I would have worried I was having symptoms of a serious health problem.
I don't expect that my students will experience this level of content-specific brain fatigue, mostly because I don't think they'll be putting as many hours into a single subject (I had the privilege of being on sabbatical). But I do think it's an experience worth sharing, to give students an awareness of some of the possible side effects of learning new things. For me, it was helpful to not worry myself about the symptoms I was feeling; but also it really excited me because it was evidence that my body was physically responding to the work that I was putting in. It was almost like I could feel my brain growing!
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