References
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Non-standard reference format
Most texts at SuperMemo Guru are richly referenced. Some of my claims I consider too obvious to back them up with references. If you disagree, and see references missing, please write. Some of the models and terminology are mine. If this is not clearly emphasized, please let me know.
Instead of using standard references, I use a system that I consider superior. Each reference is a separate page with a link, or a reference to a research paper, book, or even a YouTube clip. Instead of minimally useful and hardly readable reference details in a standard format, I provide only those details that matter for the context. For example, a reputable author, or a date that is important (e.g. due to recency or due to ancientness).
Most importantly, I provide the most quintessential quotes from referenced papers. This way, you can often limit your reading to just a few sentences of the core idea. Check the links below. Unlike your standard references, they are all somewhat readable on their own.
Many of my references disagree with my point of view, which I explain in the accompanying commentary
Neuroscience
Brain development
- Neurogenesis assists pattern separation in the hippocampus
- Stress reduces neurogenesis
- Dual-process model of white-matter development
Pleasure of learning
- Brain centers involved in valuation of anticipated outcomes: nucleus accumbens and VTA
- Opioid receptors form a gradient along a processing hierarchy
- Opioid receptors are involved in the pleasure of learning
- Opioid rewards may depend on dopamine signals
- Dopamine may modulate plasticity in learning
- Neural circuits involved in liking and wanting
- Orbitofrontal cortex as the supreme reward processor
- Value-encoding neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex
- Thrill of music may be attenuated with opioid antagonists
- Amygdala may be involved in rewarding novel input
Learn drive
- Curiosity improves learning
- Impact of syncopation on the pleasure of music
- Competitive feedback loops in binary decision making at neuronal level
Neocortex
- Critical period is based on neural Darwinism
- Sensory deprivation leads to crossmodal neuroplasticity
- Social brain hypothesis
- Mindfulness increases cortical thickness
- Axonal-dendritic overlap favors coherence and creativity
Stress
- Learning acceleration via stress
- Learned helplessness increases the risk of addictions
- Behavioral effects of maternal separation and early weaning
- Stress inoculation may improve resilience later in life
- Bullying changes the brain
- Chronic, acute and intermittent stress exposure
Addictions
Memory
Dendritic spines
- Dendritic spine stabilization corresponds with long-term memories
- Dendritic spine turnover is high early in development
- AMPA receptors stabilize the dendritic branch
- Stabilization of dendritic spines leads to shrinkage of inactive spines
Concept cells
- Hippocampal concept neurons in semantic and episodic memory
- Concept cells in the medial temporal lobe
Childhood amnesia
- Infantile amnesia caused by neurogenesis
- Linear increase in memory retention
- How autobiographical memories fade in time
- Can childhood memories be retrieved?
- Schooling contributes to childhood amnesia
Aging
Spaced repetition
- Two components of memory stability
- Spaced learning favors survival of neurons
- Herbert Simon predicted two component model of memory
- Spaced repetition formula
Other
Neural networks
- Hawkins: Neurons are pattern detectors
- Exponential forgetting via interference in a Hopfield network
- Dendritic arbors undergo branching followed by stabilization
- Neurite guidance and pruning sculpt the brain architecture
Creativity
- Darwin intuitively followed the natural creativity cycle
- Best students intuitively follow the natural creativity cycle
- Robinson: Schools kill creativity
- Creativity: Asset or Burden?
- Creativity: abundant but suppressed!
- Coincidence of ADHD and creativity
Intelligence
- Taleb: IQ is a pseudoscientific swindle
- Evolution of attitudes towards precocity
- Steve Wozniak: How to raise a genius
- Smart people are more happy
Self-directed learning
- Early Academic Training Retards Intellectual Development
- Gray: Self-education carries a high cost in time
- Greenberg: How schools vitiate the concept of life-long learning
- Curiosity has bad connotations
- Experts do not understand Khan Academy
- Books don't work
- It is hard to research discovery learning
Students
- I wish I had dropped out
- Gray: School is prison
- I became so depressed that I stopped going to school
Teachers
- Creativity: Asset or Burden?
- Alfie Kohn: Teachers need extraordinary patience
- Spaced repetition does not work in a classroom
Schools
- Prince Ea: What is school for?
- Gray: Coercive school system will collapse soon
- Schools provide a babysitting service
- Schools do not tolerate diversity
- Gray about Willingham
- Robinson: Schools kill creativity
- Michalko: Schools kill creativity
- Bill Gates: Teaching is hard
- Wieman: Lectures make no sense
- John Bennett: Problem with math instruction
- John Taylor Gatto: I refuse to hurt children
- Curiosity is not a priority
- Factory model of education
- Kevin Kruse: School serves mindless cramming
- Alfie Kohn: Praise is a short-term motivator
- Pondiscio: Less testing, more trust, more knowledge
- Spock: Grading is an abomination
- Spanish kids strike against homework
- Scott Kim: Math can read like a novel
- Accuracy in reading is costly
- Most rigorous research proves the value of schooling (not)
College
- Thiel on competition for degrees
- Thiel on power law
- Gray on unschoolers at college
- Dropouts build billion dollar companies
Homeschooling
- Parents do not homeschool because education is not top priority
- Homeschooling socialization is a non-issue
- Medlin: Excellent social skills in homeschooled children
- Modernization kills fundamentalism
- Holt: On value of schools
- History of homeschooling in Poland
- Ama Mazama: Black families use homeschooling as a shield against racism
Unschooling
- Tyson: to get kids into science, get out of their way
- Early math instruction may backfire
- Stevens: Robotization of schooling
- Gray: What genius minds think of schooling?
Childhood
- Infantile amnesia caused by neurogenesis
- Homo habilis: the emergence of childhood
- Hunter-gatherer childhood
- Childcare predicts socioemotional problems
- Suggate: early reading is not essential
- Girls develop semantic fluency earlier than boys
Daycare
- Raymond Moore: On early institutionalization
- Freedom and love do not breed narcissists
- Nordic ideas on compulsory daycare
- Chronic otitis media and language development
- Otitis media in daycare
- Moms feel guilty about daycare
Sleep
- Sleep leads to creativity, discovery, and invention
- Alcohol may disrupt deep sleep
- Czeisler on Ritalin
- Risks of co-sleeping
- Fragmenting sleep disrupts the testosterone rhythm
Mental health
Psychiatry
Addiction
- Drug addictions share common pathways with natural reward
- School stress increases vulnerability to addiction
- Homeschoolers are at less risk of addictions
- Scholars warn of gaming disorder overdiagnosis
- Videogames and TV tend to saturate
- Dramatic increase in drug deaths in Sweden
Alzheimer's
- Network overload may lead to Alzheimer's
- Excellent students may be at risk of bipolar disorder
- Literacy helps prevent Alzheimer's
- Depression in highly educated patients increases mortality of Alzheimer's
- Brain models confirm vulnerability of hub regions to Alzheimer's pathology
- Alzheimer's is rare in black Africans
ADHD
- Coincidence of ADHD and creativity
- Kindergarten may contribute to ADHD
- Ritalin will backfire
- Sleep is better than Ritalin
- Fidgeting may improve cognitive performance
- DSM-V relaxes maladaptive criteria of ADHD
- On ADHD over or under-diagnosis
- ADHD rates vary wildly from state to state in the US
- International Consensus Statement on ADHD
Depression
- Susan Engel: Learning is anti-depressant
- Attributes of a happy person
- Incremental increase in depression
Stress
Dyslexia
- Gray: Mechanics of educational dyslexia
- Dyslexia may result in gray matter differences
- Bilingual boy with dyslexia in English only
Socialization
- Harris: Parental influence is on the decline
- Fukuyama: Future society will self-organize along emerging social norms
- Moore: Socialization myth
- Gray: Solution to bullying
- Gray: Informal sports favor socialization
- Alfie Kohn: Praise sparks fake generosity
- The case for competition
- Seymour Papert: Socialization myth
- Authoritative parenting leads to better social and academic outcomes
- Islam: political radicals in favor of democracy
Science
Information science
Economics
- Voucher system: promising solutions
- Voucher system validated via lottery
- Good hearts, brains, and money are not enough for school reform
- Voucher system benefits public schools
Politics
- Children’s Freedom: A Human Rights Perspective
- Positive social change that will come with the end of compulsory schooling
- Carl Bereiter: Must we educate
- Bill Gates saved over 100 million children
- Education as a human right
- Freedom undermines public schools
- Bill Maher does not like children
- Nordic Council of Ministers: Make adult education mandatory
- Quarter of German population has migrant roots
- Quarter of Swedish population has migrant roots
- Why Spotify might leave Sweden
- German innovation is in decline
- No Child Left Behind Act is working
SuperMemo
- Attaching the name "spaced repetition" to SuperMemo
- Pawel Wimmer: Praising SuperMemo. Ex Occidente lux
- Will Thalheimer: Doubts about expanding rehearsal
- Karpicke: Expanding retrieval schedules produced mixed results
- Michael Nielsen re-discovers incremental reading with Anki
Tabloid
Reference list
For more texts on memory, learning, sleep, creativity, and problem solving, see Super Memory Guru