Washington:
Contrary to the popular belief that people learn from their mistakes, a new study claims the brain may not learn from failures.
According to the researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Success has a much greater influence on the brain than failures and it may not learn from negative experiences".
During the study, the team led by neuroscientist Earl Miller trained monkeys on a two-choice visual task and found that the animals' brains kept track of recent successes and failures, journal Scientific American reported.
"A correct answer had impressive effects: it improved neural processing and sent the monkeys' performance soaring in the next trial. But if a monkey made a mistake in one trial, even after mastering the task, it performed around chance level in the next trial in other words, it was thrown off by mistakes instead of learning from them," they said.
Earl believes the findings apply to many aspects of daily life in which failures are left unpunished but achievements are rewarded in one way or another such as when your teammates cheer your strikes at the bowling lane.
The pleasurable feeling that comes with the successes is brought about by a surge in the neurotransmitter dopamine.