Professor Patricia Kuhl’s research reveals that, in her own words, “the early brain is born to learn, ready to learn — with certain conditions, kids can soar.” Her pioneering work in the field of early education includes being the first in the world to use magnetoencephalography (MEG), a completely safe and non-invasive form of brain imagining, to study how young children learn.

Patricia’s work shows that early learning experiences shape children’s thinking skills, school performance, health, and behavior. Even at six months old, certain measures can predict how well a child will read at age five.

Infants learn effortlessly, but early childhood education tends to build machinery in the brain that promotes expertise — making us less open to new ideas as we age. If we could better understand the social and contextual ways children learn, we could uncover what motivates us to learn and stay open to ideas at all ages.

Most of all, Patricia talks about learning as an interactive experience. Look at language: infants crack the speech code by gleaning statistical patterns from experience. They compute frequency distributions of sounds, use transitional probabilities between syllables, and infer cause-effect relationships to the physical world.

As a result, Patricia sees the brain like a muscle learners can build through experience, encouraging educators to challenge any emphasis on innate skills. She’s particularly focused on second language learning and has created software called SparkLing that trains teachers to become certified bilingual instructors.

Patricia is also co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS), an interdisciplinary center dedicated to deepening our understanding of how people learn. I-LABS works closely with organizations and governments to share research findings, and help bring research and practice closer together.