Automaticity in the Brain

The human brain loves to make its job easier, especially when handling large amounts of information and numbers. There was a student that wanted to test his mental abilities, he selected the number nine hundred ninety nine and multiplied it by itself ten times and came up with the correct thirty digit number. How does someone keep track of so many numbers and multiplications without overwhelming his or her brain? The answer is that the brain has the ability to automatically perform calculations to make its job easier, in the case of the student he was able to do this because he had practiced for several years in order to perfect this ability.

The ability to recall correct results automatically is a process that the brain develops called automaticity. This ability can be learned by repeating processes that will achieve that correct result. This is important for students falling behind in academics because it will allow them to develop a stronger learning ability. In order to fully understand the significance of the brains ability of automaticity, this paper will bring to light three areas for clarification. First, the paper will discuss how automaticity relates to the brain. Next, the paper will highlight different methods of developing automaticity. And finally, this paper will show the importance of the brain learning automaticity.

The relation of automaticity and the brain can be seen by performing tasks and examining brain activity before and after automaticity training. Before the training of automaticity, the sections of the brain used when performing serial reaction time (SRT) tasks are an activation of a wide network of frontal and striatal regions, as well as parietal lobe (Poldrack et al. 2005). After the training of a...

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Rivera, S. M, Reiss, A. L, Eckert, M. A, & Menon, V (2005). Developmental changes in mental arithmetic: Evidence for increased functional specialization in the left inferior parietal cortex. Cerebral Cortex,15(11), 1779-1790. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi055

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