Reward-Motivation Memory Formation = Gagnes First Event...sort of.

I was cruising the BrainBasedBusiness blog lately reading their take on the new research on the brain not being made for repetition. That's a blog post in and of itself, however while at the Neuron web page, another link caught my eye...Reward-Motivated Learning: Mesolimbic Activation Precedes Memory Formation.

I remember the first post I made after discovering BBB...(remember the hippo pic?)

Well, the hippocampus is at it again:

"These findings demonstrate that brain activation preceding stimulus encoding can predict declarative memory formation. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that reward motivation promotes memory formation via dopamine release in the hippocampus prior to learning."

So maybe we shouldn't throw Gagne's 9 events out the window just yet. Its clear that a motivated learner makes for a better learner...but now we have proof we can take to management that maybe we should pay our employees to sit through our courses...ya know...for increased ROI!

And of course there is always the possibility that I totally misundestood many of the $.50 words used in the research summary...In which case...

Never mind!