“Dezső Németh, team leader at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, talks about his current responsibilities as an Inserm Chair and tells us a little more about himself, implicit learning, and the cultural differences seen in his day-to-day research in the USA and Europe.”

“The idea that they have impaired judgement compared to other age groups is contradicted by a recent study contradicted by a recent study. Drunkenness, careless driving, unprotected sex… Young people seem to accumulate risky behaviour. (…)”

“Learning to program and re-programme automatic habits and behaviours is a major scientific challenge. Advances in brain plasticity research have broad implications for health sciences aimed at overcoming harmful behaviours, such as addictions and obsessive-compulsive behaviour. (…)”

“Is sleep necessary for consolidating learned information? Can a smoker’s brain be reprogrammed not to crave cigarettes? Guest on the Qubit podcast is Dezső Németh, a psychologist leading the Brain, Memory and Language Lab.”

“A professional tennis player already knows where the opponent’s serve will land the moment it’s tossed. Our brain is constantly learning, analyzing, and deciding, often without us being aware of it, and many of our abilities stem from this intuitive learning process. In our minds, instinctive and controlled systems responsible for conscious decisions constantly compete with each other, and most of the time, one can only strengthen at the expense of the other. Intuitions and hunches are not guided by mystical forces but rather by our brains continuously attempting to predict the future.”

“A specialist in implicit memory, Dezso Nemeth develops an approach where theoretical psychology meets experimentation. He thus unveils mechanisms that are essential to our cognition and by nature difficult to explain. (…)”

“Our brain is constantly learning. If we visit someone in the hospital every day, it learns the colors, smells, the extent of eye pupil dilation, the resonance of the voice, and many other things. It processes these every day, and if it detects a sudden change, such as a slight modulation in voice or pupil size, it sends a signal immediately. This isn’t conscious perception, but it still happens.”

“In such moments, the brain seeks changes and patterns in the environment and connects them with previous memories to recognize what needs to be done in this situation. Of course, all of this happens unconsciously,” explains Dezső Németh, the leader of the research group.”

“I would like to understand why people behave the way they do. It excites me that we behave in a certain way, but we don’t know exactly why. Is there free will, or is it the brain’s control?” – lightning portrait of a researcher who studies memory yet looks into the future.

“People with Tourette’s syndrome seem to have enhanced memory that could make them better at learning tasks unconsciously, such as speaking a second language or driving a car.”

Researchers at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CRNL) have recently carried out a study aimed at putting the known pieces of this puzzle together by reviewing past studies investigating the neural processes behind artistic cognition. Their paper, published by MIT Press in the journal Leonardo, provides valuable new insight about the role that competitive brain processes could play in artistic cognition.

“Hungarian researchers claim that children aged 8-15 with Tourette syndrome outperformed the typically developing control group in learning tasks. They investigated the characteristics of learning and memory processes in children undergoing treatment for Tourette syndrome. The experts focused their research on implicit, non-conscious learning, which is crucial for acquiring motor skills (such as sports), cognitive skills (language), and social skills.”

“…Children with Tourette Syndrome performed better in learning tasks than the typically developing control group. This is interesting because neurological developmental disorders were previously thought to only have negative consequences and symptoms, with performance improvement being very rarely observed.”

Dezso Nemeth, a psychologist at the University of Szeged in Hungary, suggests that while we sleep, short-term “working memories” are transferred from the hippocampus of the brain to the cortex, where they become more stable, long-term memories.

“A recent study in Nature suggests breaking ingrained habits is possible. Researchers from ELTE, MTA, and the University of Szeged found that the brain can adapt and form new habits, offering hope for change with implications for brain research and mental health treatment.”

“Eating so-called comfort foods with large amounts of fat and sugar has been shown to vastly improve people’s moods. A report in the Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science suggests that drawing pictures of unhealthy food can also have positive effects on mood.”

“So, we have our “good” habits and bad ones; we want to get rid of the latter while reinforcing and enhancing the former. This is what is terribly difficult, and the question is more about whether our ingrained habits can be overwritten. Researchers from ELTE, MTA, and the University of Szeged have made a groundbreaking contribution globally by examining and proving: yes, our habits can be overwritten, meaning our brains can be rewired.”

“Children living with autism show impairments in several cognitive functions. However, we have found a learning function that remains intact in autistic children. Based on this, development procedures and therapies can be devised,” says Németh, the leader of the  research group.”

“It’s good to have a sense of achievement in language learning because language learning can also be a great suffering. If you start learning a foreign language and don’t have any sense of achievement, you can end up hating it.”

“The research team from the University of Szeged, led by Dr. Dezső Németh, successfully supported interesting hypotheses with scientific evidence. The team investigated the role of cooperation between certain areas of the brain, age, and hypnosis in the process and success of learning.”

“… these latest studies suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorder can learn implicitly just as well as typically developing individuals, over short and longer periods of time.”