Your Brain and Learning

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Your Brain and Learning
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Before We Get Underway

• WHAT DO YOU THINK?
• Can your brain grow new cells?
• Does what you eat and drink affect your brain?
• Does stress affect learning?
• Does exercise help me learn?
• Can I study effectively with TV and music on?

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Our Brains

• All parts of the brain participate
• with each other, while each has
• its own function
• There is natural pruning or neural
• pruning that occurs when parts are not used
• LEARNING IS A DELICATE, BUT IS A POWERFUL
  DIALOGUE BETWEEN GENETICS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
  Robert Sylwester, A Celebration of Neurons

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Brains Complexity

• Cellular level - three pints of liquid, three
  pounds of mass, tens of billions of nerve cells
  (or neurons
• Brain cells - 30 thousand neurons (300,000 glial
  cells) fit into the space of a pinhead.

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Parts of the Brain

• Brainstem (survival )
• Cerebellum ( autonomic nervous system)
• Limbic system (emotion)
• Cortex ( reason/logic)

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• Frontal lobe - Cortex
• Creativity - Judgment - Optimism - Context
• Planning - Problem solving - Pattern making
• Upper temporal lobe - Wernickes Area
• Comprehension - Relevancy - Link to past
  (experience) - Hearing - Memory - Meaning
• Lower frontal lobe - Cortex
• Speaking/language - Brocas area
• Occipital lobe - Spatial order
• Visual processing - Patterns - Discovery
• Parietal lobe
• Motor - Primary Sensory Area - Insights -
  Language functions
• Cerebellum
• Motor/motion - Novelty learning - cognition -
  balance - posture

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Movement and joint positions
Motor cortex
Somatosensory cortex
Sensory associative cortex
Pars opercularis
Visual associative cortex
Brocas area
Grammar and word production
Visual cortex
Primary Auditory cortex
Cerebellum
Wernickes area
Language and Thought
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Fig. 49-17
Max
Hearing words
Seeing words
Min
Generating words
Speaking words
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Pineal gland
mid brain
cerebellum
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Limbic System
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Neurons

• Connect to other neurons to muscles or glands
• Send and receive chemical information (messages)
  for behaviors
• Can be a millimeter in length or as long as a
  meter

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How the Brain Determines Whats Important

• Emotion and attention are the PRINCIPAL processes
  of the brain
• Primary emotions - innate responses
• Assemble life-saving behaviors quickly
• Secondary emotions - also innate reactions
• Enjoyment, pleasure
• Students need to talk about their emotions
• Games, cooperative learning, field trips,
  interactive projects, use of humor
• Limit emotional stress

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Twelve Basic Principles Related to Learning

1. Brain is a parallel processor
2. Learning engages the entire physiology
3. Learning is developmental
4. Each brain is unique
5. Every brain perceives and creates parts and
   wholes simultaneously
6. Learning always involves conscious and
   unconscious processes

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1. The search for meaning is innate
2. Emotions are critical to learning
3. Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited
   by threat
4. The search for meaning occurs through patterning
5. We can organize memory in different ways
6. The brain is a social brain

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The Brain is a Parallel Processor

• Both hemispheres work together
• Many functions occur simultaneously
• Edelman(1994) found when more neurons in the
  brain were firing at the same time, learning,
  meaning, and retention were greater for the
  learner.

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Learning Engages the Entire Physiology

• Food, water, and nutrition are critical
  components of thinking.
• We are holistic learners - the body and mind
  interact

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Learning is Developmental

• Depending upon the topic some students can think
  abstractly, while others have a limited
  background and are still thinking on a concrete
  level.
• Building the necessary neural connections by
  exposure, repetition, and practice is important
  to the student.

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Each Brain is Unique

• We are products of genetics and experience
• The brain works better when facts and skills are
  embedded in real experiences

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Learning Environment
How the physical environment is organized makes a
difference.
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Learning Environment

• Finding a good place to study
• Quite
• Free of interruptions
• Prepared with supplies/organized

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Knowing Your Learning Styles

• Auditory
• Visual
• Kinesthetic

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Tips for Auditory Learners
Relate most effectively to the spoken word Often
information in the written form will have little
meaning until it has been heard

• Use tapes for reading and class lectures
• Sit where you can hear well (front and center)
• After you have read something, summarize it and
  recite it back to yourself
• Learn by participating in discussions
• Find a friend/classmate who will tell you what
  they learned from the textbook readings

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Tips for Visual Learners
Relate best to written information, notes,
diagrams and pictures

• Look at all study materials (charts, maps,
  movies, notes and flash cards)
• Take good notes, after class fill in sentences
  and compare notes with other students
• Write out everything for frequent and quick
  visual review
• Practice visualizing or picture words, concepts
  and even spelling in your head
• Color Code to organize
• Ask for written directions

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Tips Kinesthetic Learners
Relate best to information received thorough
movement or when physical activity is involved

• Learn skills by imitation and practice
• Trace words as you are saying them
• Facts that must be learned should be written
  several times
• Taking and keeping good lecture notes will be
  very important
• Make good study sheets
• Take frequent breaks in study periods
• Use a computer to reinforce learning (sense of
  touch)
• Memorize or drill while walking or exercising

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• Useful record
• Of important points for future use
• Of where the information comes from

• B. Helps writing
• Helps ideas flow
• Helps planning- you can see what info you have
• Assists in organization- you can rearrange and
  renumber notes in a new way
• Helps you get started

Why Take Notes

• E. Helps exam revision
• Material is well-organized
• More info is already in memory

• C. Helps understanding
• If you focus on selecting info to note
• If you think through where everything fits

• D. Helps memory
• Summing things up briefly helps long-term memory
• The act of writing helps motor memory
• Pattern notes can be more memorable visually

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Listen to case studies ID complementary examples
Only make notes on the impt. points
Have file for each module to keep your notes
organized in
Highlight references made by the lecturer and
follow them up.
Taking Notes in lectures presentations
Develop your own shorthand
Note all words you dont understand and follow
them up.
Write up your notes after the lecture if they are
messy or incomplete
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The Search for Meaning Is Innate

• Each person seeks to make sense out of what
  he/she sees or hears
• Capitalize on this quality!
• Present ideas, experiences that may NOT follow
  what one expects
• Speculate Question
• Experiment Hypothesize

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Learning is Enhanced by Challenge Inhibited by
Threat

• The brains priority is always survival - at the
  expense of higher order thinking
• Stress should be kept to a manageable level
• Provide opportunities to grow and to make
  changes
• Have high, but reasonable expectations

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Stress Learning
The stress-brain loop
? Attention ? Perception ? Short-term memory ?
Learning ? Word finding
Cellular changes in the hippocampus
Increases glucocorticoids

• Chronic Stress
• Inadequate sleep
• Poor nutrition
• Emotional distress

Decreased regulation of cortisol
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Brain Organizes Memory In Different Ways

• Retrieval often depends upon how the information
  was stored.
• Relevancy is one key to both storage and
  retrieval

• Provide and get examples
• Connect to what students know, what they are
  interested in
• Make learning meaningful

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Memory

• When objects and events are registered by several
  senses, they can be stored in several
  interrelated memory networks.
• This type of memory becomes more accessible and
  powerful.
• Conversation helps us link ideas/thoughts to our
  own related memories. Students need time for this
  to happen!!
• Storytelling - Conversations
• Debates - Role playing
• Simulations - Songs
• Games - Films

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Learning Memory
Stimulus
Sensory organs
perception
Sensory Memory (millisecond-1)
 
attention
Short-Term Memory Working Memory (lt 1 minute)
forgetting
repetition
Long-Term Memory ( days, months, years)
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Learning Memory

• Sensory Memory
• A sensory memory exists for each sensory channel
  
• iconic memory for visual stimuli
• echoic memory for aural stimuli
• haptic memory for touch
• Information ?sensory memory? short-term memory by
  attention, thereby filtering the stimuli to only
  those which are of interest at a given time.

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Learning Memory

• Short-term Memory
• acts as a scratch-pad for temporary recall of the
  information under process
• can contain at any one time seven, plus or minus
  two, "chunks" of information
• lasts around twenty seconds.

QUIZ NEXT SLIDE
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Short-term Memory Quiz (30 sec)
brainflagtrialpartnerhouselifechair
eggsdrawingrockapplefocusmissionfavorice
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Learning Memory

• Long-term Memory
• intended for storage of information over a long
  time.
• Short-term?long-term (rehearsal)
• Little decay
• Storage
• Deletion- decay and interference
• Retrieval-recall and recognition

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Learning Memory

• Long-term Memory
• Why we forget
• fading (trace decay) over time
• interference (overlaying new information over the
  old)
• lack of retrieval cues.

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Techniques to Help Memory

• Encoding in Long-term Memory
• Organizing
• Practicing
• Spacing
• Making meaning
• Emotionally engaging

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Techniques to Help Memory

• Define the gist - OVERVIEW
• Sequence events
• Plot out pictorially the information
• Tell the information to others in own words -
  TALK
• Peer teaching/tutoring
• Amplify by giving examples
• Use multiple parts of the brain (emotional,
  factual, physical)
• Auditory, Visual, Kinesthetic, Talk
• Combine
• Use color effectively
• Yellow and orange as attention-getters

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The Brain is a Social Brain

• The brain develops better in concert with others
• When students have to talk to others about
  information, they retain the information longer
  and more efficiently!

• Make use of small groups, discussions, teams,
  pairings, and question and answer situations.