Watch This Video And Discover Why We Feel Good When Learning New Things

In Iceland if somebody is very wise you say that person is “vitur”. It means they have a lot of “vit” or “sense”. And the opposite of that, when someone is not wise at all they are “vitleysingur”. It means that person does not have any “vit”, essentially they are “witless”.

A recent study showed that learning new words activates the same region that is active when you do pleasurable activities like eating cake or seeing your favorite band perform. We hope you find “vitleysingur” mind-blowing. In the study researchers gave participants two tasks: one was learning new words and the other was a gambling task. FMRI scan showed that the ventral stratum, the kay area involved in reward and motivation was active in both tasks. It sorts of makes sense because communicating with people gives us pleasure.

Research shows that through human evolution we were motivated to acquire linguistic skills and learn new language because it is tied to this reward system.

We describe things as mind-blowing all the time, but what does it actually mean? The emotional aspect to learning new languages is extremely important because we need emotion to engage our learning cycle. Research shows that we are learning best when we are in a state of relaxed awareness, not too aroused or totally disengaged. Learning comes best when you are in this mood and you experience awe and curiosity. When we learn new cool bits of information we activate that same reward region of our brain as when we learn new words. You feel good because you have learned something cool and you want to learn more.

Curiosity is contagious and it is sort of addictive as well. Learning new words activates the reward area of our brain and, perhaps, learning surprising new bits, or “vits” of information does too.