How does your brain wave look during observational learning?

A change in behaviour or learning that occurs after one observes another person is called observational learning. It is a highly abbreviated process of learning, which cuts short a lot of time and energy that would have gone into learning, if humans only learned through trial and error. There are various changes in the brain that can be seen through various neuroimaging tools as this learning happens.

 The focus of this blog is to make you aware of some characteristic changes in the electrical activity of the brain as learning occurs. Electroencephalogram or commonly known as EEG is a neuroimaging tool that helps us 'see' the subtle changes in the activity of the brain as a person exhibits a behaviour. For example, various cognitive tasks prepared by psychologists can be seen in EEG as signature activities of specific areas. For example, a sharp positive surge in the EEG after 300 ms of stimulus presentation is called a P300 wave.

 Just like the P300 is an indicative of certain cognitive tasks, Observational learning too has been identified to have a signature brain wave activity associated with it. It is known as the alpha/mu wave desynchronization. Let's break this term, 'alpha/mu wave desynchronization' into two parts for simplicity of understanding. Alpha refers to the waveform typical of observation. An alpha wave has a frequency of 8-13 Hertz, which is to say it that the waveform oscillates about 8-13 times in a unit time, or in a second.

 Desynchronization is a term that can have it's own chapter for the sake of explanation, however, for the purpose of understanding desynchronization, we can refer to it as a sudden or gradual decline in a particular wave activity in a certain region i.e., disappearance of the wave activity from a region of the brain. This disappearance can act as a marker of a cognitive task being performed by brain.

 Bringing together the two terms, we understand that alpha/mu desynchronization is nothing but the disappearance of alpha activity of from certain regions of the brain whilst performing some cognitive activity. Alpha desynchronization has been linked to observational learning, time and time again. There is a sudden drop in the alpha rhythms as a human observes another perform some task. This is a highly oversimplified explanation obviously, because there are other questions to consider while studying observational learning. For example, what constitutes learning, or what's the difference between observation and mere imitation, or just the basic difference between memory and learning.

 This hasn't stopped neuroscientists from theorizing about the nature of Observational learning at all. In fact, EEG has helped us look at what makes observational learning true to its name. We now have newer proofs to validate observational learning as a clearly distinct form of learning, one that intertwines the various faculties of the brain and shows us how various regions of the brain come together to help us learn through observation.