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"Kandel showed that when people learn something, the wiring in their brain changes. he demonstrated that acquiring even simple pieces of information involves the physical alteration of the structure of the neurons participating in the process. Taken broadly, these physical changes result in the functional organization and reorganization of the brain. This is astonishing. the brain is constantly learning things, so the brain is constantly rewiring itself." Given that this rewiring is taking place all the time it seems unlikely that any of this wiring would turn out to be close to being the same in any two brains and this has in fact proved to be the case even with identical twins who experience the same environment. Medina says: "Even identical twins do not have identical brain wiring. Consider this thought experiment: Suppose two adult male twins rent the Halle Berry movie Catwoman... Even though they are in the same room sitting on the same couch, the twins see the movie from slightly different angles. We find that their brains are encoding visual memories of the video differently, in part because it is impossible to to observe the video from the same spot. ...One of the twins earlier in the day read a magazine story about panned action movies, a picture of Berry figuring prominently on the cover. While watching the video, this twin's brain is simultaneously accessing memories of the magazine. We observe that his brain is busy comparing and contrasting comments from the text with the movie and is accessing whether he agrees with them. The other twin has not seen the magazine so his brain is not doing this. Even though the difference may seem subtle, the two brain are creating different memories of the same movie. ...Not even identical twins having identical experiences possess brains that wire themselves exactly the same way. And you can trace the whole thing to experience. ...Given these data, does it make any sense to have school systems that expect every brain to learn like every other? The multiple intelligences movement. Howard Gardner is a professor of cognition and education and has a theory of multiple types of intelligence. But following from the idea that every brain being wired differently any neuroscientist would insist that there not just nine categories of intelligence but are probably billions of types of intelligence. Be that as it may Gardner's influence in education has to be seen as a positive force in making some allowances for students to learn in different ways.
The problem with these three brains is that they developed to do one thing, and are now being used to do something else. Not only that, but what one is trying to accomplish, the others are often at odds with, and are trying to accomplish something else. Far from being a finely tuned instrument designed to do exactly what it should, the human brain is a massive kludge at cross purposes with its own other parts. Thus symbolic reasoning may direct us to go one way but our emotions may be directing us to do something else. Sometimes our senses tell us one thing but reasoning tells us something else. It would be nice to have conscious control over the primitive brain's housekeeping functions, but we do not. Despite the fact that our brain is faulty and misfires it still gave us a huge advantage that was not available to any other creature on earth. After we were forced from the trees to the Savannah when climate swings disrupted our food supply, radically new skills were required in order for us to survive. There were many new problems to solve. Many creature could not solve such problems and died off. Fortunately for us, going from four legs to two to walk on the Savannah freed up energy for us to develop complex brains. These newly evolved brains were better able to solve new problems as they arose, and those with the more primitive brains couldn't compete. Humans became the most adept creatures at surviving by developing a brain that could adapt to change itself.
"When the team tested older mice raised in the enriched environment for ten months in the second half of their lives, there was a five fold increase in the the number of neurons in the hippocampus. These mice were better at tests of learning, exploration movement and other measures of mouse intelligence than those raised in unenriched conditions. They developed new neurons, though not quite as quickly as younger mice, proving that long-term enrichment had an immense effect on promoting neurogenesis in an aging brain." Many people picked up on the fact the most effective contributor to increased proliferation of new neurons was the running wheel. They pointed out that this was exercise and that perhaps exercise was the factor that induced the neuron proliferation. But n his book "The Brain that Changes Itself" Doidge explains that Gage himself had other ideas: "Gage's theory is that in a natural setting, long-term fast walking would take the animal into a new and different environment that would require new learning, sparking what he calls 'anticipatory proliferation.' 'If we lived in this room only,' he told me, 'and this was our entire experience, we would not need neurogenesis. We would know everything about this environment and could function with all the basic knowledge we have.' This theory that novel environments may trigger neurogenesis, is consistent with Merzenich's discovery that in order to keep the brain fit, we must learn something new, rather than simply replaying already mastered skills. But as we have said, there is a second way to increase the number of neurons in the hippocampus: by extending the life of neurons that are already there. Studying mice the team found that learning how to use the other toys, balls, and tubes didn't make new neurons, but it did but it did cause the new neurons in the area to live longer. Elizabeth Gould also found that learning, even in a nonenriched environment, enhances survival of stem cells. thus physical exercise and learning work in complementary ways: the first to make new stem cells, the second to prolong their survival." In his book "The Brain that Changes Itself" Norman Doidge has the following to say about Merzenich: "Merzenich thinks our neglect of intensive learning as we age leads the systems in the brain that modulate, regulate and control plasticity to waist away." Learning was found to have an application for helping people avoid Alzheimer's disease. For instance, studying a musical instrument or learning a new dance, (activities that require concentration) appeared to be to be particularly effective in warding off Alzheimer's disease. It was found that the most effective method of improving brain function was learning new things and particularly new skills. This approach has been shown to be successful in the work of Michael Merzenich and others. Doidge continues: "As Merzenich's work has shown, however, a condition often confused with Alzheimer's disease, and much more common - age related memory loss, a typical decline in memory that occurs in advanced years - seems almost certainly reversible with the right mental exercises." [These are mental exercises involving learning new skills that Merzenich provides through his work at Fast Forward.] In her book "Train Your Mind Change Your Brain" Sharon Begley also speaks about Merzenich's work as follows: "In a study Merzenich presented in late 2005, he had elderly volunteers, sixty-one to ninety-four years old, undergo eight weeks of computer based training to improve the brains ability to discern the sounds of speech. ...'The majority improved ten or more years of neurocognitive status.' says Merzenich. ...He foresees a day when the discoveries of neuroplasticity will usher in 'a brain-fitness culture,' reflecting 'an understanding that you need to exercise your brain as you exercise your body. ...Older adults are frequently told that, to keep their mind sharp, they need to to stimulate it with activities such as crossword puzzles and reading. But such activities done repeatedly become second nature, demanding less attention than new skills do. As Merzenich and colleagues point out, animal studies have shown 'that under optimal environmental conditions, almost every physical aspect of the brain can recover from age related losses.' New neurons can bloom; gray matter can become thicker. Neuroplasticity makes it possible." There have been many studies in related areas such as those related below in the new scientist. Please note that all the conditions mentioned below, as helping prevent mental deterioration in old age, are all conditions that are likely to involve continuing extensive new learning. "Study after study has shown that intelligence, good education, literacy and high status jobs all seem to protect people from mental ravages of old age and provide some some resistance to the symptoms, if not the brain shrinkage, of dementia." New Scientist, 03/06/06 "When you exercise, you increase blood flow across the tissues of your body. This is because exercise stimulates the blood vessels to create a powerful, flow regulating molecule called nitric oxide. As the flow improves, the body makes new blood vessels, which penetrate deeper and deeper into the tissues of the body. This allows more access to the bloodstream's goods and services, which include food distribution and waste disposal. [The main function of oxygen in the blood is to act like an efficient electron-absorbing sponge.] [The oxygen rich air you inhale keeps the food you eat from killing you.] The more you exercise, the more tissues you can feed and the more toxic waste you can remove. this happens all over the body. this is why exercise improves the performance of most human functions... The same happens in the human brain. Imaging studies have shown that exercise literally increases blood volume in a region of the brain called the dentate gyrus. That's a big deal. The dentate gyrus is a vital constituent of the hippocampus, a region deeply involved in memory formation This blood-flow increase, which may be the result of new capillaries, allows more brain cells greater access to the blood's food and haz-mat teams. Another brain-specific effect of exercise is recently has become clear... At the molecular level, early studies indicate that exercise also stimulates one of the brain's most powerful growth factors, BDNF. this stands for Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor, and it aids in the development of healthy tissue. BDNF exerts a a fertilizer-like growth effect on certain neurons in the brain. The protein keeps existing neurons young and healthy, rendering them much more willing to connect with another. It also encourages neurogenesis, the formation of new cells in the brain. The cells most sensitive to this are in the hippocampus, inside the very regions deeply involved in human cognition.
"Thirty years ago, a scientist by the name of Michael Posner derive a theory of attention that remains popular today. ...Posner hypothesized that we pay attention to things because of the existence of three separable but fully integrated systems in the brain. ...In Posner's model, the brains first system functions much like the two-part job of a museum security officer: surveillance and alert. He called it the Alerting or Arousal Network. It monitors the sensory environment for any unusual activities. This is the general level of attention our brains are paying to the world, a condition termed Intrinsic Alertness. After the alarm, we orient ourselves to the attending stimulus, activating a second network. We may turn our heads toward the stimulus, perk up our ears, perhaps move toward (or away) from something. ...The purpose is to gain more information about the stimulus, allowing the brain to decide what to do. Posner termed this the Orienting Network. The third system, the Executive Network, controls the 'oh my gosh what should I do now' behaviors. These include setting priorities, planning on the fly, controlling impulses, weighing the consequences of our actions, or shifting attention." Our emotions can hijack our attention. When strong emotions are involved we do not have control of our attention. We involuntarily attend to the stimulus or the event. Learning is made easier by emotional content because we automatically attend to it. When we are in a learning situation we may wish to maintain our attention on what ever is being presented in the lesson. We can force our attention on some event in this way but research has found our ability to do this tends to quickly fade after about ten minutes. This can be brought back if some emotional element is injected into the lesson such as a surprise or humor making available another ten minutes. Interest is inextricably linked to attention and can help us maintain our attention beyond the usual ten minutes. Interest and importance can cause the initial attention to be stronger and last longer. We are continually taking in masses of information through our senses but most of it we are never aware of because we are not paying attention to it. We rely on Posner's alerting network to uncover anything interesting or important so we can be aware of it.
"Why do our bodies need to go through all this trouble? The answer is very simple. Without a flexible, immediately available, highly regulated stress response, we would die. Remember, the brain is the world's most sophisticated survival organ. All of its many complexities are built toward a mildly erotic singularly selfish goal: to live long enough to thrust our genes on the next generation. Our reactions of stress serve the live-long-enough part of that goal. Stress helps us manage the threats that could keep us from procreating. ...Most survival issues we faced in our first few million years did not take hours or even a minute, to settle. The saber-toothed tiger either ate us or we ran away from it - or a lucky few might stab it, but the whole thing was over in under a minute. Consequently, our stress responses were shaped to solve problems ha lasted not for years, but for seconds. They were primarily designed to get our muscles moving us as quickly as possible, usually of harms way. You can see the importance of this immediate action by observing people who cannot mount a thorough and sudden stress response. If you had Addison's disease, for example you would be unable to to raise your blood pressure in response to severe stress, such as being attacked by a mountain lion. Your blood pressure would drop catastrophically, probably putting you into a state of debilitating shock. You would become limp, then you would become lunch. These days, our stresses are measured not in moments with mountain lions, but with hours, days, and sometimes months with hectic workplaces, screaming toddlers and money problems. And when moderate amounts of of hormone build up to large amounts, or when moderate of hormone hang around too long, they become quite harmful." Scientists call the state, that animals and humans reach when confronted with severe stress from which there is no escape, learned helplessness. All animals including humans if stressed for long periods without release tend to lose heart and learn that the only strategy worth attempting is to do nothing. They literally learn to be helpless. Once a person has learned to be helpless it becomes nearly impossible to learn anything else. In order to learn a person must first feel that he can learn. For more about this see Learning key 9 on choices. Chronic stress also has other unfortunate consequences all of which impair human ability to learn. John Medina continues: "Over the long term,...too much adrenaline stops regulating surges in your blood pressure. These unregulated surges create sandpaper like rough spots on the inside of your blood vessels. The spots turn into scars, which allow sticky substances in the blood to build up there, clogging your arteries. If it happens in the blood vessels in your heart you get a heart attack; in your brain, you get a stroke. Not surprisingly people who experience chronic stress have elevated risk of heart attacks and strokes. Stress also affects our immune response. At first, the stress response helps equip your white blood cells, sending them off to fight on the body's most vulnerable fronts, such as the skin. Acute stress can even make you respond better to a flu shot. But chronic stress reverses these effects, decreasing your number of heroic white-blood cell soldiers, stripping them of their weapons, even killing them outright. ...The hippocampus, that fortress of human memory, is studded with cortisol receptors like cloves in a ham. This makes it very responsive to stress signals. If stress is not too severe, the brain performs better. Its owner can solve problems more effectively and is more likely to retain information. There is an evolutionary reason for this. Life-threatening events are some of the most important experiences we can remember. they happen with lightening speed in the Savannah, and those who could commit those experiences to memory the fastest (and recall them accurately with equal speed) were more apt to survive than those that couldn't. Indeed research shows that memories of stressful experiences are formed almost instantaneously in the human brain, and they are recalled very quickly during times of crises. If stress is too severe or too prolonged, however, stress begins to harm learning. The influence can be devastating. You can see the effects of stress on learning in everyday life. Stressed people don't do math very well. They don't process language very efficiently. They have poorer memories, both short and long forms. Stressed people do not generalize or or adapt old pieces of information to new scenarios as well as non stressed individuals. They can't concentrate. In almost every way it can be tested chronic stress hurts our ability to learn. ...Specifically, stress hurts declarative memory (things you can declare) and executive function (the type of thinking that involves problem solving). Those of course, are the skills needed to excel in school and business."
We learn and remember best through pictures, not through written or spoken words. John Medina in his book "Brain Rules" has this to say: "When it comes to memory, researchers have known for more than 100 years that pictures and text follow very different rules. Put simply, the more visual the input becomes, the more likely it is to be recognized - and recalled. The phenomenon is so pervasive, it has been given its own name: the pictorial superiority effect, or PSE. Human PSE is truly Olympian. Test performed years ago showed that people could remember more than 2,500 pictures with at least 90 percent accuracy several days post exposure. even though subjects saw each picture for about 10 seconds. Accuracy rates a year later still hovered around 63 percent. In one paper - adorably titled 'Remember Dick and Jane?' - picture recognition information was reliably retrieved several decades later. Sprinkled throughout these experiments were comparisons with other forms of communication. The favorite target was usually text or oral presentations, and the result was 'picture demolishes them both.' It still does. Text and oral presentations are not just less efficient than pictures for retaining certain types of information; they are way less efficient. If information is presented orally, people remember about 10 percent, tested 72 hours after exposure. That goes up to 65 percent if you add a picture. The inefficiency of text has received particular attention. One of the reasons that text is less capable than pictures is that the brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures. Data clearly show that a word is unreadable unless the brain can separately identify simple features in the letters. Instead of words we see complex little art-museum masterpieces, with hundreds of features embedded in hundreds of letters. Like an art junkie, we linger at each feature, rigorously and independently verifying it before moving to the next... Perhaps, with hindsight, we could have predicted such inefficiency. Our evolutionary history was never dominated by text-filled billboards of Microsoft Word. It was dominated by leaf-filled trees and saber-toothed tigers. The reason vision means so much to us may be as simple as the fact that most of the major threats to our lives in the Savannah were apprehended visually. Ditto with most of our food supplies. Ditto with our perceptions of reproductive opportunity." Unfortunately most teaching is composed of presenting information through lecturing, writing on a board, or through reading assignments. John Medina continues: "Teachers should learn why pictures grab attention. Educators should know how pictures transfer information. There are things we know about how pictures grab attention that are rock solid. We pay lots of attention to color. We pay lots of attention to to orientation. We pay lots of attention to size. And we pay special attention if the object is in motion. Indeed most of the things that threatened in the Serengeti moved, and the brain has evolved unbelievably sophisticated trip-wires to detect it. We even have specialized regions to distinguish when our eyes are moving versus when the world is moving. These regions routinely shut down perceptions of eye movement in favor of the environmental movement. Teachers should use computer animations. Animation captures the importance not only of color and placement but also motion. With the advent of web-based graphics, the days when this knowledge was optional for educators are probably over. Fortunately, the basics are not hard to learn. With today's software, simple animations can be created by anybody who knows how to draw a square and a circle. Simple two-dimensional pictures are quite adequate; studies show that if the drawings are too complex or lifelike, they can distract from the transfer of information."
Now while there may actually be different genetic predispositions in men and women that may play a part in whether male or female brains turn out different or not, it is now known that this is not a full analysis of what happens. We now know that genes, far from being a template that will determine our qualities and abilities is far more like a control board that is operated by environmental influences. Genes have to be switched on, switched off, turned up, or turned down. Thus the differences between males and females like any kind of human difference may be diminished or exaggerated by environmental conditions. This is possible especially through the actions of other people and through our own actions in choosing those environmental conditions and placing ourselves in them. There are two social forces at work here widening or shrinking these differences between men and women. Firstly, there is imitation and conformity where we tend to act like our role models and we tend to want to be like others we see around us in order to fit in. Secondly, we tend to become what is expected of us. This is what sociologist Robert Merton calls a self fulfilling prophecy. People believe that men act this way and women act that way so that is how we act. Thus boys tend to try and act like men and girls tend to try and act like women. We are drawn to act more and more like our stereotype. We see the path through our lives as being easier and more enjoyable if we will just embrace our stereotype. So we do. In this way society and ourselves become complicit in deciding whether the brain differences of men and women are large or small, exist or do not exist. For instance, it has been shown in many often repeated experiments that women are significantly better at languages than men, but this may be because they practice speaking more. The more women practice talking the better their verbal skills become and the more the areas in their brains concerned with language tend to grow. Our brains are so plastic that it may be possible for men and women to develop very similar brains, given the right environment, despite staring off to have genetic predispositions to produce very different brains. In his book "Brain Rules" John Medina tells how his son's teacher managed to forestall a widening gender gap in his son's class: "My son's third-grade teacher began seeing a stereotype that worsened as the year progressed. The girls were excelling in the language arts and the boys were pulling ahead in math and science. This was only the third grade! The language-arts differences made some sense to her. But she knew there was no statistical support for the contention that men have a better aptitude for math and science than women. Why for heaven's sake was she presiding over a stereotype? The teacher guessed that part of the answer lay in the student's social participation during class. When the teacher asked a question of the class, who answered first turned out to be unbelievably important. In the language arts, the girls inevitably answered first. Other girls reacted with that participatory, 'me too' instinct. The reaction on the part of the boys was hierarchical. The girls usually knew the answers, the boys usually did not, and the males responded by doing what low-status males tend to do: They withdrew. A performance gap quickly emerged. In math and science, boys and girls were equally likely to answer a question first. But the boys used their familiar 'top each other' conversational styles when they participated, attempting to establish a hierarchy based on knowledge aptitude. This included drubbing anyone who didn't make the top, including the girls. Bewildered, the girls began withdrawing from participating in the subjects. Once again a performance gap emerged. The teacher called a of the girls and verified her observations. She then asked for a consensus about what they should do. The girls decided that they wanted to learn math and science separately from the boys. Previously a strong advocate for mixed gender classes, the teacher wondered aloud if that made any sense. yet if the girls started losing the math-and-science battle in the third grade, the teacher reasoned they were not likely to excel in the coming years. She obliged. It took only two weeks to close the performance gap." One experiment does not provide much in the way of good science. It does however, point out a direction to be investigated. It may well be that we can do much to prevent the widening of mental differences between males and females if we so wish.
The pleasure is greatest when the likelihood of getting a reward or achieving a goal is most shaky. It is now thought that this means that the pleasure is not the result of a reward or achievement but rather the result of a learning possibility. It is now thought that the function of pleasure is to focus attention on such possibilities so that learning takes place. Pleasure then occurs not in response to a reward or an achievement, but in response to weak anticipation of a reward or achievement. Why weak anticipation and not strong anticipation? It is simple. When anticipation is strong learning has already taken place, we know something will happen. As soon as we know something in this way the brain no longer has to draw our attention to it. We already know it. When we are not sure, we only have a hunch or a weak conjecture, so our brain lets us know we have to take notice of what happens so we can learn. In his paper " Dopamine Neurons Respond" Wolfram Schultz put it like this: "Dopamine neurons respond to primary rewards only when the reward occurs unpredictably. ...By contrast, a fully predicted reward does not elicit a response in dopamine neurons." The reason for our brains to focus our attention like this is so that we will have a predisposition to learn acting in our brains continually throughout our lives. Unfortunately this mechanism can malfunction in several ways. The most obvious way it can malfunction is drugs. Certain drugs can cause the system to flood with dopamine. When this happens our brain is tricked. A part of the brain has the illusion it is learning something, when it is not. It tries to correct this malfunction by reducing the amount of dopamine in response to the drug. This response is what we know as addiction where ever increasing amounts of the drug are needed to get the same pleasure. Gamboling also fools this pleasure mechanism. The gambler sees endless possible patterns which he uses to anticipate a reward, and the uncertainty of the reward causes the brain to flood itself with dopamine to focus attention. Unfortunately the patterns in gambling are an illusion where we are fooled by randomness. Again we learn nothing, and we lose money while we do it, but we do get the pleasure of uncertainty or hope. When the pleasure mechanism works well. When the pleasure mechanism is working well, it enables us to have a predisposition to know things, not just when they are needed to get us out of a jam like when a saber tooth is running us down, but in advance. Having a large store of knowledge allows two very important brain functions to effectively give us this advantage. We can preprocess the knowledge into plans and scenarios for dealing with possible problems before the occur, and we can also process the knowledge on the fly more easily solving problems as they occur. In this way we may avoid the saber tooth all together, or deal with him quickly and effectively when he appears.
"This fuel consists of a clear, high octane, unquenchable need to know. Babies are born with a deep desire to understand the world around them and an incessant curiosity that compels them to aggressively explore it. This need for explanation is so powerfully stitched into their experience that some scientists describe it as a drive just as hunger and thirst and sex are drives. Babies seem preoccupied by the physical properties of objects. babies younger than a year old will systematically analyze an object with every sensory weapon at their disposal. they will feel it, kick it, try to tear it apart, stick it in their ear, stick it in their mouth, give it to you so you can stick it in your mouth. They appear to be intensely gathering information about the properties of the object. Babies methodically do experiments on the objects to see what else they will do. ...Hypothesis testing like that is the way all babies gather information. They use a series of increasingly self-corrected ides to figure out how the world works. They actively test their environment, much as a scientist would: Make sensory observation, form a hypothesis about what is going on, design an experiment capable of testing the hypothesis, and then draw conclusions from the findings. For little ones, discovery brings joy. Like an addictive drug, exploration creates the need for more discovery so more joy can be experienced. it is a straight-up reward system that, if allowed to flourish, will continue into the school years. As children get older, they find that learning not only brings them joy, but it also brings them mastery. Expertise in specific subjects breeds confidence to take intellectual risks [sometimes with the right mindset]. If these kids don't end up in the emergency room, they may end up with a Nobel Prize. I believe it is possible to break this cycle, anesthetizing both the process and the child. By first grade, for example children learn that education means an A. They begin to understand that they can acquire knowledge not because it is interesting, but because it can get them something. Fascination can become secondary to 'What do I need to know to get the grade?' But I also believe the curiosity instinct is so powerful that some people overcome society's message to go to sleep intellectually and they flourish anyway. My grandfather was one of those people. He was born in 1892 and lived to be 101 years old. He spoke eight languages, went through several fortunes, and remained in his own house (mowing his own lawn) until the age of 100, lively as a firecracker to the end. At a party celebrating his centenary, he took me aside. 'You know Juanito,' he said clearing his throat, 'sixty-six years separate the Wright brothers' airplane from Neil Armstrong and the moon.' He shook his head, marveling. 'I was born with the horse and buggy. I die with the space shuttle. What kind of thing is that?' His eyes twinkled. 'I live the good life!' He died a year later. John Medina also explains that the human brain of an adult is capable of experiencing the same joy that young children get from learning and thus humans can experience this joy throughout their lives. Humans can do this because our brains, while not being as plastic as a baby's, are nevertheless capable of massive new growth throughout the human lifetime. John Medina says: "Researchers have now shown that some regions of the adult brain stay as malleable as a baby's brain, so we can grow new connections, strengthen existing connections, and even create new neurons, allowing all of us to be lifelong learners." The proof of this was brought home to Medina when he worked as a post-doc at the University of Washington. He explains as follows: In 1992, Edmond Fischer shared with Edwin Krebs he Prize in Physiology or Medicine. I had the good fortune to be familiar with both their work and their offices. They were just down the hall from mine. By the time I arrived, they were already in their mid-70. The first thing I noticed upon meeting them was that they were not retired. Not physically an no mentally. Long after thy had earned the right to be put out to scientific pasture, both had powerful, productive laboratories in full swing. Every day I would see them walking down the hall, oblivious to others, chatting about some new finding, swapping each other's journals, listening intently to each other's ideas. Sometimes they would have someone else along, grilling them and in turn being grilled about some experimental result. They were creative like artists, wise as Solomon, lively as children They had lost nothing."
"I remember when I was 3 years old, obtaining a sudden interest in dinosaurs. I had no idea that my mother had been waiting for it. That very day, the house began its transformation into all things Jurassic. And Triassic. And Cretaceous. Pictures of dinosaurs would go up on the wall. I would begin to find books about dinosaurs strewn on the floor and sofas. Mom would even couch dinner as 'dinosaur food,' and we would spend hours laughing our heads off trying to make dinosaur sounds. And then suddenly, I would lose interest in dinosaurs, because some friend at school acquired an interest in spaceships and rockets and galaxies. Extraordinarily, my mother was waiting. Just as quickly as my whim changed, the house would begin its transformation from big dinosaurs to Big Bang. The reptilian poster came down, and in their places, planets would begin to hang from the walls. I would find little pictures of satellites in the bathroom. Mom even got 'space coins' from bags of potato chips, and I eventually gathered all of them in a collectors book. This happened over and over again in my childhood. I got an interest in Greek mythology, and she transformed the house into Mount Olympus. My interests careened into geometry, and the house became Euclidean, then cubist. Rocks, airplanes. By the time I was 8 or 9 I was creating my own house transformations. One day, around age 14, I declared to my mother that I was an atheist. She was a devoutly religious person, and I thought this announcement would would crush her. Instead, she said something like 'That's nice, dear,' as if I had just declared I no longer liked nachos. The next day, she sat me down by the kitchen table, a wrapped package in her lap. She said calmly, 'So I hear you are now an atheist. Is that true?' I nodded yes, and she smiled. She placed the package in my hands. 'The man's name is Friedrich Nietzsche, and the book is called "Twilight of the Idols," she said. 'If you are going to be an atheist, be the best one out there. Bon appetit!' I was stunned. But I understood the message. Curiosity itself was the most important thing. And what I was interested in mattered. I have never been able to turn of this fire hose of curiosity."
Another way this cooperation is made possible is by our facility for mind reading or being able to put ourselves in the bodies of others and feel what they feel. Our brains have a much larger capacity than other animals for both, empathy and predicting the actions of others. Yet another way humans have an advantage over other creatures is our large brain's ability to prepare motor plans in advance which can be used instantly to solve problems and get us out of trouble as it occurs. Scientists are discovering new things about the changeability of the brain all the time, and one of the newest and most exciting discoveries to emerge recently is the discovery of mirror neurons. Giacomo Rizzolatti working with his team of neuroscientists in Parma Italy were first to notice these unusual neurons. Basically mirror neurons are neurons that become electrically active both when a subject is performing an action and when the subject is seeing the same action performed. Rizzolatti and his team were experimenting with macaque monkeys. They had implanted electrodes into the motor areas of they monkey's brains and connected these to computers so the could see and hear the discharge of motor neurons during grasping exercises. Between these exercises while the monkey was still, one of the team, Vittorio Gallese, was moving about the room. He reached out to grasp something and heard a burst of activity from the computer as if the monkey was grasping something. But the monkey, when he looked, was quite still.
Many studies such as those by Fredric Ullen, Torkel Klingberg and jesus Pujol have shown an unmistakable increase in in white matter in response to the learning of any complex skill. It would appear that not only does myelin wrap, make a nerve impulse much less susceptible to distortion and faster, but also allows for a much finer control.
However, myelin wraps it does not unwrap. Thus actions as determined by nerve impulses can be adjusted a little as more and more myelin wraps around but you are always building on what is already there. Piaget and Maslow were right. Wiping an action out and relearning it from the beginning is very difficult to try and do. Old habits die hard.
Life long flexibility, learning, the brain and a better world. So what does all this new knowledge about the brain tell us? It tells us that a lot of people's guesses about human nature and learning were correct. Freud was right when he guessed that what happens to us in childhood is important. Montessori was right when she guessed the environment of the child was the key to effective development. The optimists were right when they guessed that we can overcome disabilities by hard work and belief. It shows that the people who think we are prisoners or hostages of fate or of our genes were wrong. Our brains are ours to command and shape. It tells us that we are masters of our own destinies. It tells us that we can become stronger, more intelligent and that we can overcome our own disabilities, but only if we are willing make a great effort. We should not be surprised that this does not come easily. It also tells us not to be lazy. The first rule of life is that 'what you don't use you will lose' and it follows that what you use well will improve. Life is meant to be lived and our miraculous brains are meant to be used. It may be fortuitous that we are now living in a world, that through 'the world wide web', provides more challenge for mental activity than ever before. While we are still living in a world where there are still many temptations of the 'read only' world of one way (passive) entertainment, we are learning there is now hope. The internet has ushered in a new form of 'read and write', two way (interactive) entertainment and learning. Clearly our brains are better fitted for this form of entertainment and learning. This will make us more intelligent, intelligent longer, healthier, happier, better and more fulfilled people. We should be warned, however, that the human brain thrives best on a lot of oxygen, which it can only obtain through the exercise of our bodies, and this should not be neglected while we sit in front of our monitors. |
Neuroscience
the scientific study of the brain.
Neuroscience
is a new science. Previously the brain was studied by neurologists who
are basically doctors of medicine who specialize in the brain. When non
medical scientists started to study the brain to understand how it
functions, instead of how to treat people who have brain disorders,
neuroscience and neuroscientists came into being. 
Brain Rules.
Brain rules are a way of simplifying some the complex functioning of
our brains. This way of attempting to distill what we know
about the brain and how it relates to learning was inspired by By John
Medina's idea of brain rules as presented in his book of the same name.
Here, this site attempts to cover a similar range of information. In
doing this, this site tries to answer two slightly different but
connected questions. "What can be done to optimize the brain's
functioning?" & "How do various parts of the brain function
when optimized for learning and what conditions have positive and
negative value for that functioning?"
Brain wiring and
learning.
In his book 
Evolve & survive. 
Like every other part of us,
our brains have evolved over time. Our brain can in fact be divided
into three structures corresponding with different periods in our
evolution. 
The lizard brain.
Our ancestors, before we were humans, once had only what is called a
"lizard brain". This brain pretty much only deals with automatic or
housekeeping functions like breathing, keeping us balanced, keeping our
heart beating at the rate needed for whatever we are doing, reacting to
stimuli and refining our movement. This is basically what is called the
brain stem which includes the small brain like structure at the back of
the brain, the cerebellum. Any fairly complex creatures including
lizards have a brain similar to this. We humans also have this lizard
type brain, but on top of it is perched a far more complex structure.
The mammalian brain.
As we evolved into more intelligent creatures, more brain features were
added giving us the brain of a mammal like a cat's. These new features
of the brain deal with long term memory, emotions, refined processing
of sensory information and more complicated understanding. Creatures
with this type of brain are far more intelligent, better informed, have
better memories and are guided by emotions. Humans have this collection
of structures as well as the lizard brain, but unlike most mammals they
have something extra on top of this. 
The human brain. Above
the mammalian brain there is a thin layer of jell-o known as the
cortex, the third and most powerful, "human" brain. This brain is
concerned with even better long term memory and even more complex
processing. And a special new section expanded in the front of the
brain called the prefrontal lobes is concerned with inhibiting
emotional responses so a more logical processing can override. This
logical processing called symbolic reasoning is a uniquely human talent.
Brain
fitness, novel learning & the prevention of brain deterioration.
In his book
Exercise and brain fitness. 
Neuroscientists
have also discovered the brain was also capable of being helped by any
kind of intense activity such as exercise. Good exercise, it was found,
sent more oxygen to the brain and stimulated the sensory and motor
cortexes. John Medina, in his book 
Attention.
Neuroscience and social
psychology have shown that what goes into both short-term memory and
long-term memory, and our ability to recall it, is completely dependent
on our attending to it. These sciences have established that very
little in the way of information gets through to our brains if we do
not pay attention to it. John Medina, in his book 
Sleeping and Dreaming turn out to be of major
importance to learning. They are so important that this section grew so
large as to require a separtate page, which can be accessed by clicking 
Stress.
Like sleep, stress
seems to be deeply tangled in the learning experience. Firstly we know
that any experience that is associated with a highly emotional state
will make that experience more memorable. We have strong persistent
memories of things that make us angry and afraid. At school teachers
try to take advantage of this by making students afraid so they will
remember. As will become clear from the research results explained
below this strategy if continued for any length of time will become
highly counter productive. These strong emotions like anger and fear
activate the fight or flight orienting system which floods the body and
brain with strong chemicals. Initially the body is flooded with
adrenaline which causes your pulse to race and your blood pressure to
rise and releases energy to muscles ready to perform any action
quickly. Your body prepares to go into overdrive, it is stressed. There
is however another hormone at work in this situation. This chemical is
called cortisol. This hormone's function is to return the body to a
normal state lowering the pulse, restoring blood pressure to normal and
calming and relaxing the muscles. In his book 
Vision.
We do not see with
our eyes we see with our brains. Because vision is by far our
most dominant sense, taking up half of our brain's resources what we
see often influences what is perceived through any of the other senses.
We tend to taste what we see, smell what we see, hear what we see and
even feel what we see. Even our balance organs will provide
misinformation if we see the world the wrong way. Food tends to taste
better when it looks appetizing. Wine smells sweeter when it is a
beautiful deep rich red color. We are used to thinking of what we see
as being completely reliable as though our eyes work like a camera
recording exactly what is there. We say, "Seeing is believing."
Unfortunately this is quite wrong and our eyes are simply not 100
percent trustworthy. The reason why this is so, is that the visual
analysis our brains perform has many steps. The retina assembles
photons into little movie-like streams of information. These streams on
entering the brain are analyzed and information is broken up into
various discrete types of conceptual data and sent to various brain
areas for various types of processing. For instance motion is perceived
quire separately from color and outlines, shadows and depth are all
processed separately and then recombined.
Gender. 
Male and female brains are different, but the
question is why? What appears to be significant statistical differences
between male and female brains may not be inevitably determined, but
rather may be well within our ability to control. The X chromosome that
males have one of and females have two of - though one acts as a backup
- is a cognitive "hot spot," carrying an unusually large percentage of
genes involved in brain manufacture. Woman are genetically more
complex, because the active X chromosomes in their cells are a mix of
Mom's and Dad's. Men's X chromosomes all come from Mom, and their Y
chromosome carries less than 100 genes compared with about 1,500 for
the X chromosome. Men's and women's brains are different structurally
and biochemically - men have a bigger amygdala and produce serotonin
faster, for example - but we don't know if those
differences have significance. Men and women respond
differently to acute stress: Women activate the left hemisphere's
amygdala and remember the emotional details. Men use the right amygdala
and get the gist. Men tend to be more hierarchically competitive, to
establish a pecking order, while women tend to fall into the me too
type of competition to establish inclusion. 
Exploration as a way of
being prepared. 
The human brain is large with cognitive
abilities that give humans tremendous advantage over all the other
animals. What are those advantages and how do they develop? The main
way humans have an advantage over other animals is by being prepared in
advance for any situation that might come up. Our large brains have
both a capacity to hold vast amounts of information and an amazing
capacity to process that information quickly into solutions to any
problem that might occur.
The pleasure mechanism.
Learning and the pleasure mechanisms in the brain are deeply entangled.
We now know that the neurotransmitter dopamine seems to be the main
source of what we call pleasure. But dopamine does not act in the
simple manner that it was once thought it. Dopamine does not simply
flood the system in response to a reward or the achievement of a goal.
If it did the amount of dopamine would be proportional to the reward or
the achievement of that goal each time it was obtained. This is not the
case. Dopamine is far greater in our system when we are learning
something and greatest when we are just beginning to learn something.
Dopamine is greatest in our systems when we first notice the
possibility of a pattern emerging where we might get a reward or we
might achieve a goal.
Curiosity and the aggressive
desire to explore.
Our brains manage
this tremendous feat of collecting information in advance of the need
for it, by means of curiosity and the predisposition to explore our
environment and learn about it. This is a direct outcome of the brain's
pleasure mechanism. We are not the only animals that are curious, but
our bigger more efficient brains allow us to make better use of it. In
his book 
The right stuff learning
environment. It is plain that we all start out with this
motivating joy of learning and that some of us seem to retain it into
old age. Most of us however seem to lose this joy of learning and it
seems likely that the environment in which we dwell could be improved
so this does not happen. There are many ways people could go about
improving the environment so that this joy could be kept alive. Most of
these ways involve others providing time and resources to encourage
interest when it occurs and exposing young people to new ideas and in a
ways that make it interesting. John Medina's description of his early
learning environment is a perfect example of what can be done. He says:
Mirror neurons.
Another way in which we have an advantage over other animals is our
ability to cooperate. One way this cooperation is accomplished is by
out brains capacity to communicate, which in turn depends on our
ability to develop a complex verbal language that makes such
communication possible. Complex language in turn depends on our brain's
great ability for both object recognition and its ability for symbol
recognition and manipulation. 
Mirroring People. In
his book 
The functions of mirror neurons. It seems likely from the
experiments done on mirror neurons so far, and as reported by Marco
Iacoboni, that mirror neurons have several functions: 
The development of
mirror neurons. Some ability to mimic rudimentary manual and
facial gestures were shown by Andrew Meltzoff to exist in newborn
babies just after birth and thus could be said to be inborn or
instinctual. Clearly then some mirror neurons must exist for this
function at birth. However experimentation has shown that most mirror
neurons come into existence through seeing some action performed and
trying to imitate it. Mutual imitation of parent and child, it would
seem, is what enables mirror neurons to form. When the action has been
learned new mirror neurons have been formed. These mirror neurons are
the ones that simulate the new action. Thus clearly learning any skills
must involve the forming of new mirror neurons. In all probability, the
formation of new mirror neurons may be a part of any kind of learning.
The functions of mirror neurons confirm that the actions people perform
have much more to do with what we perceive others doing, than what we
are told or told to do. Our brains simply function that way.
Myelin wrap.
Another line of research in neuroscience concerns the study of white
matter in the brain. In the brain, white matter is composed of bundles
of myelinated nerve
cell processes (or axons). These connect various gray matter areas (the
locations of nerve
cell bodies) of the brain to each other, and carry nerve impulses
between neurons.
These connecting nerve fibers or axons are wrapped in a dense fat
called myelin which prevents the electrical impulses leaking out of
those axons. This wrapping takes place in two different ways. In the
brain and the spinal cord this wrapping is carried out by cells called
oligodendrocytes that extend tentacle like arms to wrap several axons
and give those axons a bumpy unsmooth appearance. In the nerve fibers
that spread out to every part of our bodies whole cells called schwann
cells wrap themselves completely around the axons in sections that give
the appearance of sausages. Although the study of myelin is in its
infancy some of the new theories about the function of myelin are very
much concerned with learning and tend to corroborate and explain much
of the work sited above.
Faster
clearer more accurate. For instance it is now fairly well
accepted that the wrapping of nerve fibers in myelin speeds up the
electrical impulses traveling along them and by as much as 100 times.
The more myelin that wraps around the fiber the faster it goes. Myelin
also decreases the wait between nerve impulses by a factor of 30. These
two improvements in processing result in an increase in processing
power by as much as 3000 times. Dr. Douglas Fields of the National
Institute of Health in Bethesda Maryland uncovered the mechanism that
causes myelin to wrap around nerve fibers which he describes in a 2006
paper in the journal Neuron. It appears that the supporter cells
(oligodendrocytes and schwann cells) sense nerve firing and respond by
wrapping myelin around the fiber that fires. The more neurons or nerve
fibers fire, the more myelin wraps around it, the faster the signal
travels.
Impulse speed is skill.
A single action may involve many neurons and nerve fibers that need to
fire at just the right time, in the right sequence. Two impulses from
different fibers for instance, may need to reach a particular neuron at
approximately the same time for it to fire in turn and thus set up a
sequence. By varying the amount of myelin that wraps around each fiber
control of how fast an impulse may travel and thus determine when it
will arrive at another neuron. In this way a correct sequence my be
obtained by varying the amount of myelin wrapping each fiber. Also an
action in a skill may be varied until you get it right and thereafter
only occasionally practiced and always with an eye to improving it.
Varying actions in this way causes minute changes in the amount of
myelin wrapping various fibers, which likewise is a response to those
fibers firing. This in turn causes the fibers to fire more correctly at
the right time in the right sequence. Thus the action gradually moves
toward being performed perfectly or correctly. Nerve firings grow
myelin, myelin controls impulse speed, and impulse speed is skill. 
Age matters for myelin.
Myelin grows more extensively at particular periods in a person's life.
As child development progresses myelin wrapping seems to come in waves
and appears in particular parts of the brain. This may be in response
to genetic triggers or it may be simply in response to to new types of
learning which would not have been possible without other learning
having taken place first. For instance a baby cannot learn to walk
until it can stand up. Also morality cannot even be conceived of until
the idea of cause and effect is understood. In average adults, from the
age of about 50, myelin begins to deteriorate faster than it is
created. This of course depends on the amount of learning being done by
persons over the age of 50. Keeping the mind sufficiently active may
enable the brain to replace myelin as fast or faster than it
deteriorates.
Brain Rules. John
Medina, at the end of each chapter in his book, tries to compress the
information in that chapter into a few clear statements or rules. Below
this site has included all those statements of Medina's 12 rules and
included a few others that may be equally as important. Not all the the
information relating to those rules is featured above on this page but
all such information may be reached by clicking on the heading for each
rule.
Learning.
Learning is not one of Medina's rules but it is perhaps the most
important condition for healthy and optimized brain functioning. The
brain's main function is to learn. 
Exercise. [This is a Medina
rule. Our brains are optimized
for learning when we have just moved, when we are moving and when we
are preparing to move.] John Medina says: Exercise boosts brain power. 
Survival. [This is a Medina rule. The
brain is not perfect it's a kludge. We evolved out of creatures that
did
not need sophisticated brains and our brains are still similar to
theirs in many ways. Most of the sophistication of the brain is
additional and compensatory.] John Medina says:
Wiring. [This is a Medina rule. Each
brain is unique. It's content, structure and connection are all
unique.] John Medina says: Every brain is wired differently.
Short-term-memory. [This is a Medina
rule. Short term memory requires elaboration to keep it connected and
repetition to keep it active.] John Medina says: Repeat to remember.
Long-term-memory. [This is a Medina
rule. Long term memory requires the information should be elaborated as
extensively as possible. Medina says repetition helps us store long
term memories. But repetition never truly occurs exactly the same way
each time we go over information. It is most probably the elaboration
that occurs while we are going over information, that fixes it in out
memories, rather than the repetition itself.] John Medina says:
Sleep. [This is a Medina rule. The
brain does not need rest but it does need sleep.] John Medina says:
Sleep well think well.
Stress. [This is a Medina rule. Stress
is a response to threat. While helpful to learning if it occurs very
occasionally is actually damaging to learning if it is maintained for
long periods of time or every time something is learned.] John Medina
says: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
Sensory Integration. [This is a Medina
rule. If we wish to learn more effectively we should,] John Medina
says: Stimulate more of the senses at the same time.
Vision. [This is a Medina rule. They
say 'seeing is believing' and even though that is not always true] John
Medina says: Vision trumps all other senses.
Gender. [This is a Medina rule.] John
Medina says: Male and female brains are different but the question is
why. What appears to be significant statistical differences between
male and female brains may not be inevitably determined, but rather may
be well within our ability to control.
Exploration. [This is a Medina rule.
Wanting to know why, how, where, when, and who is the news and also the
way we question, investigate and explore knowledge.] John Medina says:
We are powerful and natural explorers.
Hard wiring. Hard wiring is not one of
Medina's rules. While we are developing inside our mothers bodies,
wiring is being laid down in our brains. This is done partly in
response to our genetic predispositions and partly due to environmental
conditions. This process continues after birth and throughout our
childhoods. The earlier this wiring is laid down the more difficult it
is to change later. 
Imitation. Mirror
neurons seem to lay down first attempts at creating motor plans for
observed actions so those actions can be imitated. These are not
perfect representations, but rather have to be developed to a more
perfect form through trial and error. However, once formed they can be
simulated in the mind ready to put into action.
Plasticity.
Although neuron growth is strongest during our youth up to about 17 or
18 years of age, the brain nevertheless continues to grow throughout
our lives.
Needs Interest Method Reality Keys How to Help Creative Genius Future What is Wrong Theories Plus
Karl Popper Self Control Body Control Knowing Maria Montessori Brain Plasticity Memory