Brain Research Applied to Learning

1

• Brain Research Applied to Learning
• March 12, 2004
• Presented by
• Ben Gonzalez, Amy Himelright, Ginny Lindquist,
  Denise Lucht, Diana Matter, Niki Mott, Amy
  Pleasant, Cynda Zavaskis

2
Stuff Brains Are Made Of

• The brain consists of
• 8 protein
• 10 fat
• 72 water
• If ironed out, the brain would be a 2 ½ square
  foot sheet of soft, fibrous, electrical and
  chemical activity.

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Energy Usage

• The brain accounts for only 2 of total body
  weight.
• It uses 20 of the bodys oxygen supply
  depleting 1 ½ pints of blood per minute.
• It uses up to 30 of the total energy produced by
  the body.

4
High and Low Energy Times

• Circadian rhythms peaks every 90-110 minutes,
  low energy 45 minutes later.
• Verbal and spatial skills especially vulnerable.
• Sleep/awake patterns. Natural shift during teens.

5
Left Hemisphere vs. Right Hemisphere

• Left Hemisphere
• The Intellect

• Right Hemisphere
• The Imagination

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Each hemisphere is specialized for a different
cognitive style and treats time differently

• Left Hemisphere
• Analytic
• Sequential

• Right Hemisphere
• Holistic intuitive
• Simultaneous

7
Under Construction

• Between the ears, its a construction site
• Birth 100-200 billion brain cells
• Age 5 brain reaches 95 of adult volume
• Age 12 construction is mostly finished
• Puberty neuronal growth spurt
• Age 20 connections in corpus collosum are
  complete

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Brain Growth
New Growth (learning) still occurs even after our
brain construct is in place. It occurs by
dendrite development branching well used neurons.
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Brain Growth

• As you read this your brain is using thousands of
  its 100,000,000,000 neurons.
• While that sounds like a lot of neurons, it is
  only about 20 of what you started out with.
• The brain prunes neurons that do not get used,
  and by adolescence our brain construct is in
  place.

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Brain Growth

• Dendrite branching occurs primarily during sleep,
  so it is essential that growing children and
  adolescents learn. . . . And then sleep on it!

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Sleeps Impact on the Brain

• The brain needs deep physiological rest to
  perform at its best. The REM period (the dream
  state) is the most critical. Being deprived of
  sleep impairs learning and thinking. Students
  living with the following are at a much higher
  risk for having sleep deprivation
• Abusive or highly stressed families
• Areas of high crime or poverty
• Those impacted by trauma

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The Results of Sleep Deprivation

• Learners who are not getting enough sleep may
  perform well on short quizzes requiring rote
  memorization.
• However, may not do well on extended performance
  testing requiring stamina, creativity, and
  high-level problem solving.

• Sleep deprivation contributed to three major
  accidents in recent times
• Three Mile Island
• Challenger Explosion
• Chernobyl

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Sleep Tonight/ Remember Tomorrow

• Missing as little as two hours of sleep may
  significantly impair a persons ability to
  remember information the next day.
• There appears to be a direct correlation between
  how complex the material is and how important
  sleep is to learning it. Bob Stickgold at Harvard
  University (1997)

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• Cleaning the Desktop
• Sleep allows the brain time to unlearn
• By eliminating unnecessary information (usually
  during sleep time), the brain becomes more
  efficient.
• Sleep gives the brain time to rearrange circuits,
  clean out unimportant mental debris, and process
  emotional events. (Freeman 1995)

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Classroom Applications

• Discuss the importance of sleep with students.
• Allow students down time during the day for
  optimal performance.
• Give students the opportunity to move, stretch,
  drink some water, or change their focus
  periodically.

16
Power of Positive Thinking

• The single greatest influence on learners is the
  classroom climate. Learners in a positive,
  joyful environment are likely to experience
  enhanced learning, memory, and feelings of
  self-esteem. (Rosenthal and Jacobsen 1968)

• Research suggests that a positive learning
  climate promotes better problem-solvers and
  higher quality learning. In short, if we feel
  good, we learn better.
• Learning is dependent on the physiological,
  emotional, postural, and psychological state that
  your learners are in. Learning and teaching flow
  easily when the proper emotional state is
  established. (C. Levinthal 1988 and Robert
  Sylvester 1995)

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Laughter and Learning

• Laughing increases the white blood-cell activity.
• Laughter may boost the bodys production of
  neurotransmitters critical for alertness and
  memory. (William Fry, PhD. 1997)

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Classroom Applications

• Classrooms need to be positive environments.
• Teachers need to nurture a positive attitude in
  their students. Laughing should be mandatory
  for all.
• Introduce positive affirmations or humorous
  reminders in the classroom.
• Remember we are not wasting precious learning
  time by including movement, breathing exercises,
  and humor.

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Enriched Learning Environments

• New brain cells grow in an enriched environment.

• Five keys to enrichment
• Novelty
• Challenge
• Coherence
• Time
• Feedback

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• Providing an enriched learning environment at
  school helps compensate for a lack of support at
  home
• Interaction with other high-achieving peers,
  teachers, and mentors
• Development of strong belief in self

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Memory Pathways

• Semantic WHAT
• Procedural Motor HOW
• Episodic WHERE
• Reflexive WOW

22
Boredom and the Brain

• Boredom is debilitating.
• Studies involving adolescent rats showed they
  were especially devastated by boredom. A boring
  environment had a greater thinning effect on the
  brains cortex than an enriched environment had
  on the thickening of the cortex. (Marion Diamond,
  PhD. 1998)

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Stress Threat

• Learners in a state of high stress or threat -
• Experience reduced cognitive abilities
• Have weakened immune systems

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A brain under any type of perceived threat-

• Loses ability to correctly interpret subtle clues
  from the environment
• Reverts to familiar tried and true behaviors
• Loses some ability to index, store, and access
  information
• Becomes more automatic and limited in its
  responses

• Loses some ability to perceive relationships and
  patterns
• Less able to use higher order thinking skills
• Loses some long-term memory capacity
• Tends to overreact to stimuli in a phobic-like
  way

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Adolescent Brain

• The hypothalamus is part of the medulla oblongata
  that regulates basic needs (eat, fight/flight,
  sex). In adolescents, hormones, environment, and
  learning make this a hot spot leading to often
  times impulsive acting out. The hypothalamus
  supercedes the pre-frontal cortex which plays a
  role in making good, well thought-out decisions.
  While the hypothalamus is in over drive during
  adolescence, the pre-frontal cortex takes about
  20 years to fully develop. Thus your typical
  middle school classroom!

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Helping Adolescents Learn

• Keep them safe (physically and emotionally)
• Keep them fed!
• Keep them rested!
• Keep them INTERESTED!

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Classroom Applications

• Teachers must teach with multiple approaches to
  the subject matter to successfully accommodate
  all of their students.

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Boosting Learning

• http//www.help4teachers.com is a website
  dedicated to Layering Curriculum, thus making
  it interesting for the learner.

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Boosting Learning

• Tips for layering curriculum
• Present Assignment Options
• Require Oral Defense of Assignments
• Offer Lectures as an OPTION
• Design and Offer Hands-on Activities for all
  Concepts
• Tie Students Grades into the Complexity of the
  Thinking involved.

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Music With a Purpose

• Music can energize, relax, and increase
  productivity.
• Music can boost intelligence.
• Music can cause us to feel irritated and stressed.

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When to Use Music

• Background music.
• Brainstorming, problem solving.
• Celebrating successes.
• Opening, closing rituals.
• Transitions

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Making the Right Music Choices

• Relaxation 40-60 BPM
• Alert 60-70 BPM
• Active 70-120 BPM
• To avoid saturation, use music 30 or less of
  class time

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Using Aromas

• Smells affect the limbic area of the brain which
  is responsible for attention.
• Aromas that are useful for learning are lemon,
  cinnamon or peppermint.

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Using Color

• Colors create reactions and impact learners.
• Colors for optimum work environments include
  pastel blue, light green, aqua and some shades of
  yellow.

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Color Meanings

• Red urgent, important
• Blue factual, cold, impersonal
• Green soothing, relaxing, positive
• Orange playful, warm
• Black dominant, serious, cold

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Peripheral Stimuli

• The brain can register 36,000 images per hour!
• The brain devours pictures, movies and images.
• New research suggests that posters, pictures, and
  drawings are powerful influences on the brain.

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Post positive affirmations.
Use videos and multimedia presentations.
Use colorful, inspirational, posters.
Use more transparencies, pictures, and charts
when presenting lessons.
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Hydration

• Researchers believe that thinking,
  problem-solving and creative processes are slowed
  when the body is low on fluids.

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Classroom Applications

• Model drinking water during class.
• Talk about the importance about hydration and the
  brain.
• Allow students to have water in sports bottles at
  their desks.
• Allow students to leave class to get a drink.

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Exercise Activity

• Active learning increases blood flow in the body
  and brings more oxygen to the brain. It also
  triggers the release of endorphins.
• Activities learned with the body are more likely
  to be recalled and applied.

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Classroom Applications

• Include lots of stretch breaks.
• Have learners stand and do deep breathing
  exercises, neck rolls, etc.
• Review information using ball toss or musical
  chairs.

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Food for Thought

• MEMORY
• CARROT Activates the metabolism of the brain.
• PINEAPPLE Contains high amounts of vitamin C
  and manganese .
• AVOCADO For short term memory. It contains
  plenty of fatty acids.

• HAPPINESS
• RED PEPPER The aromatic substances activate the
  body to excrete endorphin.
• STRAWBERRY Abolishes the stress. The fiber
  contents give happiness.
• BANANA Supplies serotonin

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More Food for Thought

•  LEARNING
• CABBAGE Slows down the activity of the thyroid
  glands.
• LEMON Due to the vitamin C that it has, it
  makes one lively and increases the perceptive
  ability
• ATTENTION
• SHRIMP Supplies the body with the omega 3 fatty
  acids.
• ONION Dilutes the blood

• CREATIVITY
• GINGER The substances that it contains enable
  the brain to produce new idea.
• CUMIN The evaporating oils that it contains
  stimulate the nervous system for creative
  thinking.
•  
•  

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Brain Strategies for Learning a Foreign Language

• The best time to introduce your child to the
  sounds of different languages is before the age
  of two.
• The best time for the brain to learn foreign
  languages is between ages one and ten.

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Everything that we have discovered about the
brain in the last 20 years suggests that we need
more stimulus, more change, more movement, and
more perspectives in the classroom -Eric
Jensen, Super Teaching
46
The Latest in Brain Research

• And what it means for gifted identification and
  education

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Early Identification

• Measures of brain waves in babies 36 hours old
  successfully predicted reading abilities at age
  8.
• Children who detected and responded in a certain
  way to speech-like sounds were found
• later to have higher IQs.
• Researchers goal is to detect giftedness
• and/or learning disabilities by 1 month
• of age and develop appropriate interventions.
• Native language of family is not a factor in the
  newborn testing results.

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Possible Reasons for Giftedness

• Prenatal testosterone exposure
• Enhanced RH development
• Also connected with higher incidence of
  left-handedness.
• Higher incidence of immune disorders
• Allergies, asthma, depression, diabetes,
  chronic fatigue syndrome etc.

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Nature or Nurture?

• Brain wave measures at birth predicted at well
  above chance levels reading abilities at school
  age. So did activities in the home.
• Cognitive ability is one of the most heritable
  traits in neuroscience.
• Dr. George Betts replies, Yes.

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Some Differences in Gifted Brains

• Intelligent people use their brains more
  efficiently and thus use less brain energy.
• Have neural activity in several brain regions,
  all focused on task at hand.
• Better able to stay focused and keep new
  information in mind in the face of distraction.

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Left/Right Hemisphere Involvement

• Greater RH activity during cognitive processing
  may relate to math precocity.
• Ability to use both RH and LH at an early age may
  be linked to giftedness.
• Gifted adolescents were shown
• to have brain activity like that
• of college-age adults.

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Good News from Recent Brain Research

• Intelligence correlates to fewer auto accidents,
  better job performance, better health care
  results and longer life.
• ---The Science, January 2003

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Works Cited

• Brain Based LearningEric Jensen2000 The Brain
  Store Publishing San Diego, CA
• Brain Compatible StrategiesEric Jensen 1997
  Turning Point Publishing Del Mar, California
• Super Teaching Eric Jensen 1995. The Brain
  Store San Diego, CA

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