
Differences between expert and novice brains in mice: study - known
https://www.cshl.edu/the-difference-between-an-experts-brain-and-a-novices/
======
melvinroest
I wrote a literature review about this [1] in 2015 I think. I mostly look at
support from fMRI studies in Shogi players (Japanese chess). While it was a
school assignment, I took it very seriously as I knew the review itself would
have very serious implications on my personal life.

Summary:

Main question: how can one develop an effective intuition?

The development of an effective intuition relies on: a high validity
environment, a high amount of practice and a high interoceptive awareness. The
first two elements account for intuitive answers being right. The third
element accounts for the gut feeling being felt by the person. As a result the
brain changes, and integrates certain brain areas more into the default mode
network. The idea that if one has high activation in a brain area a lot, then
the structure will be changed.

High validity environment: rules are easily understandable and deterministic
(think chess), or you have _a lot_ of practice moments (think poker).
Understanding psychological patients would be an example of a low validity
environment.

[1]
[https://melvinroest.github.io/articles/intuition.pdf](https://melvinroest.github.io/articles/intuition.pdf)

~~~
SubiculumCode
_" As a result the brain changes, and integrates certain brain areas more into
the default mode network. The idea that if one has high activation in a brain
area a lot, then the structure will be changed."_

In your review you cite cross-sectional research, not a longitudinal, within-
subject effect of change with study/practice/learning. Therefore your
conclusions should not be about change, but on group differences. Those
difference might have arisen from the training, or pre-existed in those
individuals that were more prone to study/practice/learn/meditate.

Post-Note: Sorry. As a developmental neuroscientist, you hit on a pet-peeve.
Cheers.

~~~
melvinroest
Fair enough, in group differences it's tough to be certain about causality.
It's interesting that my teacher never gave this as feedback. Well, that just
shows that when it comes to HN, people simply care more about science (as my
teacher was a neuroscience researcher).

Personally, I do think the brain is plastic in this sense though. I haven't
looked deep enough into it to be a 100% certain. Nevertheless, from all the
research summaries I read, I gather that whenever a skill is practiced in a
focused manner for 1 to 2 hours, neural plasticity occurs.

I wish there was a literature review around this idea. But I got the feeling
that 4 years ago the literature was mostly on clinical patients. Normal people
and neural plasticity seems to be researched less well.

------
balabaster
An expert having learned a magnitude more has magnitudes more experience than
a novice. This education and experience has taught him (or equally her) how
much there is left to learn and how little we really know. In our field, we
have learned humility... no, not really learned, so much as have had it beaten
into us so harshly that there's no ignoring it. It becomes a part of us.

Conversely, this lack of experience and humility and the bubbling exuberance
and over abundance of confidence that comes with inexperience tempts people to
walk a path that someone with more experience dare never venture. It's these
paths that help move us forward into the unknown.

Our confidence comes from different places. An expert's from the confidence
that they know their place in the world. They've learned their reality,
they've learned to build tools to deal with and capitalize on that reality.
Their experience has taught them how to survive and, if they're lucky,
prosper. While a novice's confidence is often borne out of idealism, hope,
arrogance, ego and sheer audacity.

There is not only room for this in the world but, I believe, a need for it.
That we _need_ each other for humanity to move forward.

~~~
bigred100
Not sure about the top part. I know several programmers, mathematicians, etc.
who think they are geniuses and other fields are trivial.

~~~
balabaster
Some people I guess never grow out of their ego... perhaps it's my naivete,
but I'd like to think they're the exception rather than the rule.

~~~
nomel
What comes first, the limited perspective or the ego?

------
jedberg
So basically pruning the neural network makes it faster. Isn’t this
effectively what we are doing since birth? As babies we just have a bunch of
semi-random connections, and then we prune away as we learn.

And in AI it’s basically the same. The fewer number of hidden nodes in your
neural network the better, as long as there are enough nodes to accomplish the
task.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Except the mind is creating new neural connections throughout life. The idea
that neuroplasticity is a baby's only phenomenon is a common myth. In fact, we
can see new connections being formed whenever new skills and memories are
formed in the elderly, and everyone has the capacity to make new connections
at any time. Sure, the RATE of those connections being made is lower over
time, we are constantly decelerating in our ability to add new skills.

~~~
jedberg
Making new connections doesn't preclude pruning old ones (or pruning new ones
for that matter). And in fact the brain is doing both all the time.

I just didn't think it was relevant to this discussion to go deeply into the
details of neurogenesis.

------
slowhand09
A really good book on this is "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactoring
Your Wetware" by Andy Hunt (of the Pragmatic Programmer series of books). I
particularly like the explanation of the Dreyfus model of skill progression:
Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient, and Expert.

~~~
hinkley
I've heard some very vague grumblings about the Dreyfus model but never worked
up the motivation to actually dig into them.

But the first thing I noticed is that here's a guy writing a paper about skill
progression and he hasn't encapsulated the act of writing a paper about skill
progression as a progression of its own.

I suspect it's more like Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient,
Expert, Artist, Philosopher.

------
plasma
I like the four stages of competence
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence))
which reads:

1\. Unconscious incompetence The individual does not understand or know how to
do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the
usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence,
and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length
of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the
stimulus to learn.[5]

2\. Conscious incompetence Though the individual does not understand or know
how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new
skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the
learning process at this stage.

3\. Conscious competence The individual understands or knows how to do
something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires
concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious
involvement in executing the new skill.[5]

4\. Unconscious competence The individual has had so much practice with a
skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a
result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The
individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it
was learned.

~~~
ravenstine
> 4\. Unconscious competence

This can end up being an uncomfortable position when people ask you to explain
exactly why you made a decision, and even though you probably could explain it
with some effort, it's difficult because you made your choice based on
experience-derived intuition. Being at the conscious competence stage may
actually require less work in general, unless one gets to work with other
unconscious competent people.

~~~
koonsolo
I have this a bit with the Object Oriented Programming principles.

The code structure just needs to feel right. It's hard to throw principles at
it to show which structure is better. To me it always feels like there are so
many aspects to take into account, that cannot just be expressed by priciples.

Some code feels right, and some doesn't. Sometimes extending code "falls into
place" and confirms that your previous reasoning was the right one. And other
times it just remains a complex mess ;).

~~~
Swizec
This is why language tests like TOEFL and IELTS have 2 levels of mastery
_above_ native language speaker.

When you're a native English speaker, you're in the unconscious mastery phase
for the most part. Things feel right or wrong.

The 2 levels above are being able to _explain why_. That's when you're at the
"able to teach English" level.

I think the same applies to code. You can be very very good at something, but
_true_ mastery is being able to impart that knowledge on others as well.

~~~
klank
> You can be very very good at something, but true mastery is being able to
> impart that knowledge on others as well.

Is that true though? How do we know that the ability to teach is not a unique
skill in and of itself rather than just an extension of one's "mastery"?

Anecdotally, I've engaged with "masters" of various fields as different as
blacksmithing to theoretical physics. Of these "masters", I've encountered
good teachers and bad. But I've not personally felt any correlation between
their mastery of the subject (i.e. their ability to produce results in the
area) vs. their ability to teach the area.

~~~
Swenrekcah
I think it makes sense, because if you know the right choice wihout being able
to explain why, you also can’t easily realise if this case is in fact an
exception to the usual case from your experience.

~~~
klank
> because if you know the right choice wihout being able to explain why

But teaching isn't simply being able to explain why something is the way it
is. It's more than that.

I could explain to you why planets move the way they do by using the language
of tensor fields built up out of tensor products mapping vectors to their
duals. It would be a thoroughly accurate definition of why we see the movement
we see but it would not necessarily be a good way to teach. Particularly if
the recipient of the teaching wasn't familiar with the formalism of general
relativity.

It's this aspect, that teaching is more than simply understanding that makes
me think it potentially could be orthogonal to mastery of a subject.

------
beauzero
When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.'
But God answered, 'That knowledge is for me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me
the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well George, that's more nearly
your size.' And he told me. -George Washington Carver

~~~
balfirevic
The joke's on God. To truly get to the mystery of the peanut you have to go
through the mystery of the universe!

~~~
SubiculumCode
This is pretty close to truth. And if all laws of physics at at work within
the peanut, then all laws of the universe would be unlocked. Quite clever.

------
iRobbery
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a
very narrow field.”

― Niels Bohr

~~~
avip
_an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until
finally he knows everything about nothing_.

But more seriously from Suzuki:

 _the beginner 's mind has many possibilities, the expert's mind has few_.

From the wonderful book "Zen mind, beginner's mind"

~~~
epoch_100
Important note for those unfamiliar with Suzuki: this quote is usually
understood to be praising the beginner's mind, which is full of possibilities
and without prejudice,[0] and pointing out the weakness of the expert's mind.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin)

------
alwaysanagenda
For a laymen like myself, I fail to see how this is anything more than
additional evidence for Pavlovian response. Are you an "expert" when you learn
that a specific pattern of actions results in a reward? That's all that's
going on here -- lick the correct water spout according to the pattern of
flashing lights, get a reward.

How about an MRI of a newbie in flight school and an MRI of a seasoned pilot.
What does that show in terms of neural development and associated pathways?
What does the newbie's brain look like after extensive training? Can you
measure neural pathways over many years and see how they grow or change?

------
daenz
I'm not an expert in ML or mice intelligence, but it sounds like some of the
concepts have a mapping in ML. The author describes a faster decision making
process happening in advance of the actual decision. This sounds like the
development of a LSTM, where the contextual inputs leading up to a decision
are encoded in the network. The author also describes an inhibitory network.
This reminds me of a GAN, where the adversarial network is discriminating on
whether or not the decision will be a good one based on its knowledge.

------
CodeSheikh
So let me get this, if too many neurons firing then it means it is a novice's
brain and less neurons firing (targeted firing) means an expert, is that
right?

~~~
gsaga
When given a problem, an expert might be able to solve it by recalling the
solution to another problem he solved earlier, while a novice has to actually
solve the problem.

------
hyperpallium
"In the novice's mind there are mang possibilities; in the expert's mind there
are few."

~~~
SamBam
That's absolutely the case for a novice chess player vs expert.

A novice will see so many pieces. So many possibilities. They have no idea how
to choose between them. And there are so many, they'll fail to see an
excellent move, or that one of their pieces is about to be killed.

An expert sees far fewer moves, and so is able to look much further ahead.

------
throwawaylolx
Maybe the title should indicate this is about an "expert" mouse.

~~~
vilhelm_s
I'm imagining Splinter from ninja turtles.

~~~
pvg
Splinter is a rat, though. For expert mice, you probably can't beat these
guys:

[https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Mice](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Mice)

------
tictoc
Is the rat aware he's being used for a scientific experiment for human
entertainment and a stepping stone to the mass enslavement of other species?

