Normal Brain Substance Abuse Begin with the Brain

Normal Brain Substance Abuse “Begin with the Brain in Mind” Donna Anderson and Tammy Reynolds

Teachers are…. . “THE BRAIN CHANGERS”

DAVID SOUSA http: //www 4. insinc. com/interactiveinnovation s 2007/davidsousa/player. html

David Sousa (Interactive Innovations, 2007) “WE’RE THE ONLY PROFESSION WHOSE JOB IT IS TO CHANGE THE HUMAN BRAIN EVERY DAY! THAT’S WHAT WE DO! SHORTEN IT: TEACHERS ARE BRAIN CHANGERS!!!!!”

GOALS Ø To become more “consumer literate” about brain research Ø To help students learn more effectively and joyfully understand neuroscience: adding the science of education to our already powerful knowledge of the art of education.

Judy Willis, “IGNITE”: 2006 “Never before have neuroscience and classroom instruction been so closely linked. Because advances in technology enable us to view the working brain as it learns, educators can now find evidencedbased neuroimaging and brain-mapping studies to determine the most effective ways to teach”

Neuroscience…. Brain Research Our students’ brains have been black boxes with their secrets locked inside. “A FOLKLORE PROFESSION” This lack of scientific knowledge has put us at the mercy of others (politicians, etc. ) who have sometimes made decisions that are unrelated to what we know is best for students.

WHAT’S IT GOING TO BE? ? ?

FOUNDATION? ? SCIENTIFICALLY-BASED THEORY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

What has research shown about teaching with the brain in mind….

Much research has: Ø confirmed what experienced educators have long known and used in their classrooms. What the research adds: Ø is an understanding of why certain strategies work so that we no longer have to operate intuitively but can articulate and explain the rationale for what we do. Therefore…. . Ø to make certain that brain research becomes a foundation rather than a fad, educators need to take a proactive stance.

Educators need to… 1. Become literate in the general structure and function of the brain. 2. Learn how to determine whether a study is valid or not. 3. Be cautious when making applications of research findings to the classroom. 4. Don’t ignore the research from other fields such as behavourial and cognitive psychology and educational research. 5. Begin to incorporate in our classrooms and schools what we have learned about the brain.

Neuroscience and the Classroom In her book, “A Student’s Brain”, Kathie Nunley outlines 4 key education principles linking neuroscience to education: 1. First, is the issue of attention. 2. Secondly, we have to move students to higher regions of the brain on day to day school activities and homework. 3. The third big issue is that we are now beginning to understand the power behind the lower parts of the brain including the spine and cerbellum. 4. The fourth issue has to do with the development and plasticity of the cortex.

ATTENTION “Before students can learn, something or someone, must capture their attention. ” The best ways to get attention is through l novelty l humour l surprise How long will you remember this commercial? ? ?

Getting attention can mean different things to different people….

l The brain is a novelty seeker (changes in environment; something new or different). It is always looking for stimuli. l Have to get the brain to pay attention to relevant stimuli. l System in the lower brain (RAS) filters stimuli and decides what to attend to and what to ignore based on: physical need, novelty and self-made choice.

Staying focused. . Relevance and Meaning l Staying focused depends on relevance and meaning. The brain is continually trying to make sense of its world and determine if information is meaningful. l To be meaningful students must care about the information or consider it important.

“Information is most likely to get stored if it makes sense and has meaning. ” David Sousa, 2006” Even if students understand what is being taught and complete assignments, if the information is not relevant and does not connect to their past experiences it is unlikely it will be sent to long-term storage for recall. To Make Information Meaningful We Must. . l Use past experiences to “hook” the new information on to OR l Create the experience with them

Emotions “Emotions, thinking and learning are all linked!” Emotions are learned in two distinct ways: 1. 2. Emotional climate of classroom. Emotions associated with the learning content. Emotions drive attention, create meaning, and have their own memory pathways. Emotions are not located in a single “emotional centre”, but are distributed throughout the brain.

Stimulating the limbic system. . Meaning, Emotions and Learning l. New But when students feel helpless and anxious… However, there must be some “Challenge” learning is lthe amygdala l. Must have mild to more likely to be becomes overactivated, moderate challenge to attended to and preventing new stimulate authentic remembered if it has information from curiosity and meaning to the passing through to engagement in student and contains memory circuits. lessons. an emotional “hook”. l. Information must get l. This will motivate l. An optimal level of through the amygdala students to work emotion is necessary to get to the toward greater for learning to take hippocampus so it can understanding and place. be sent to memory connection with the storage and reasoning material. parts of the brain.

In her book, “A Student’s Brain”, Kathie Nunley outlines 4 key education principles linking neuroscience to education: 2. Secondly, we have to move students to higher regions of the brain on day to day school activities and homework.

Higher levels of Thinking There is a critical difference between difficulty and complexity. : Complexity …is the thought processes the brain uses to deal with information. Difficulty …is the amount of effort the learner must expend within a level of complexity

Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy Creating: Can student create new product or point of view? Evaluating: Can the student justify a stand or decision? Analysing: Can the student distinguish between the different parts? Understanding: Can the student explain ideas or concepts? Remembering: Can the student recall or remember the information?

Higher Order Thinking Increases Understanding and Retention “David Sousa; How the Brain Learns: 2006” Our ability to learn, remember, and recall is dependent largely on the number of connections between neurons. PET scans show that elaborative rehearsal, involving higher-order thinking skills, engages the brain’s frontal lobe. This helps ALL learners make connections between past and new learning, create new pathways, strengthen existing pathways, and increase the likelihood that the new learning will be consolidated and stored for future retrieval.

When trying to challenge students, classroom teachers are more likely to increase difficulty rather than complexity as the challenge mode. l With guidance and practice, slower learners can regularly reach the higher levels of Bloom’s revised taxonomy. l

In her book, “A Student’s Brain”, Kathie Nunley outlines 4 key education principles linking neuroscience to education: 3. The third big issue is that we are now beginning to understand the power behind the spinal cord and lower parts of the brain, especially the cerebellum.

Cerebellum • Cerebellum, or little brain, contains more neurons than all of the rest of the brain put together. • Cerebellum coordinates movement and is important in the performance and timing of complex motor tasks (swinging golf club, smooth a dancer’s steps). • It may also store the memory of automated movements (tying shoes, typing) which improves performance as a sequence of movement can be made with greater speed, greater accuracy and less effort. • It is also known to be involved in the mental rehearsal of motor tasks which can also improve performance and make it more skilled.

“The brain can only do one thing at a time!” The mind can only pay conscious attention to one thought at a time. You can only do two things at once if one of them is automatic.

The role of the lower parts of the brain and spinal cord have been underestimated! Routine Tasks The spinal cord and lower parts of the brain can perform these skills automatically, without conscious attention to detail. This allows the consious part of the brain the freedom to attend to other mental activities. l Walking and talking l Driving a car and thinking l Reading and comprehending

Classroom Implications l Students engagement when reading l Reading Comprehension l Learning to read l Reading Programs l Variations in Development l Mindless School Work “If the child is not attending to the task no learning is taking place!”

In her book, “A Student’s Brain”, Kathie Nunley outlines 4 key education principles linking neuroscience to education: 4. The fourth issue has to do with the development and plasticity of the cortex.

Brain Plasticity “Neuroplasticity is simply the ability of the brain to change as a result of daily learning. ” David Sousa, 2006

Memory Teachers with a greater understanding of the types of memory and how they are form can select strategies that are more likely to improve the retention and retrieval of learning. Learning and retention are different. We can learn something for just a few minutes and then lose it forever. Learning How our brain acquires new information and skills. Memory Retention How and where our brain stores learned information and skills. Process where-by long-term memory preserves a learning in a way that it can locate, identify, and retrieve it accurately.

Retention This process is affected by many factors including: l l l the degree of student focus the length and type of rehearsal that occurred the critical attributes that may have been identified the students’ learning style the inescapable influence of prior learnings.

Rehearsal Initial Rehearsal l l This happens when the information first enters working memory If the learner cannot attach sense or meaning, and if there is no time for further processing then the information will likely be lost. Secondary Rehearsal l Allows the learner to review the information, to make sense of it, to elaborate on the details, and to assign value and relevance, thus significantly increasing the chance of it going into long-term memory.

l Rote rehearsal: not complex; learner needs to remember and store information exactly as it entered into working memory (memorize a poem) l Elaborative Rehearsal; more complex thinking; used when it is important to associate the new learnings with prior learnings to detect relationships; reprocesses information several times to make connections to previous learnings and assign meaning (interpret message of poem).

The goal of learning is not just to acquire knowledge, but to be able to use that knowledge in a variety of different settings. l l When deciding on how to use rehearsal in a lesson, teachers need to consider the time available as well as the type of rehearsal appropriate for the specific learning objective. Remember, rehearsal will only contribute, but does not guarantee transfer to long-term memory. However, there almost no long-term retention without rehearsal.

Memory “The real key to teaching is trying to help students put things into their memory system and then hopefully retrieve them out again. ” “LEARNING IS MEMORY” Step One: SENSES: you need to see it, touch it, smell it, hear it, or taste it. ATTENTION: If you are not attending to the task, it’s not going to be processed by the brain and its memory. Step Two: Short Term Memory or Working Memory Short term memory is very, very short, lasting only for about 20 seconds. After this it goes into long term memory or is lost forever. Step Three: Long Term Memory (Procedural Memory and Declarative Memory) Your brain labels the information and puts it in a category (in the hippocampus) If you have no category, it can’t be stored. Once stored in a category the brain will begin its natural process of crossreferencing the new items to previous items in other categories. Basically, the hippocampus memorizes while the cortex learns.

Types of Memory MEMORY SHORT TERM MEMORY Working Memory LONG TERM MEMORY DECLARATIVE MEMORY (consciously processes facts and events) EPISODIC MEMORY PROCEDURAL MEMORY (Unconscious processing of skills; motor (riding a bike) and cognitive (reading)) SEMANTIC MEMORY (Knowledge of events in personal history to which (store intentionally learned information we have conscious access; Generally complete control) No control)

Implications for Teaching… 1. In classrooms we spend most of our time trying to teach to semantic memory. Can be frustrating because you have no control and because sometimes students refuse to learn and remember. How much easier if we could teach to episodic memory (hands on or experiential learning). Students would learn and remember whether they wanted to or not. Now the learning is in the teacher’s control. 2. ADD: A HOOK TO AN EMOTIONAL COMPONENT AND IT WILL BE SET FOR LIFE!!! (Flashbulb memories: episodic with an emotional attachment)

Teaching Method 3. Retention varies with teaching method

4. Primacy-Recency Effect During a learning episode, we remember best that which comes first, second best that which comes last, and least that which is in the middle. 5. CHUNKING There are 3 limits to our power of reasoning and thinking: our limited attention span, working memory and long term memory. Chunking is an effective way of enlarging working memories capacity and for helping the learner make associations that establish meaning.

Neuroscience and Learning: The Brain Connection “Nothing entertains the brain more than the study of the human brain. ” Kathie F. Nunley

WHAT’S NEXT ? ? ? 1. Look at structure and function of the brain 2. Classroom implications 3. Teaching children about their brain

Structure and Function of the Brain

NEURONS “FIRING” THE NERVE 1. Senses stimulate nerve cells 2. Electrical charge 3. Electrical charge moves down axon 4. Some neurons covered with myelin sheath (faster and more efficient) 5. Electricity must “tag” next neuron 7. “Tagging” is done in a chemical fashion. 8. Neurotransmitters are released into the synapse. 9. Neurotransmitters excite or inhibit next neuron 10. Some artificial neurotransmitter caffeine)

Myelination l l There are millions of neurons, which form the electrical connections that let us think. These cells send their signals through axons, some of which can reach a length of up to a meter in humans. Wrapped around many of the axons are cells which form myelin sheaths, composed mainly of fat. These sheaths serve to insulate the axon, letting its signal travel about 100 times faster than in an unmyelinated axon.

Grey and White Matter l l l l Grey matter (top 6 layers of cortex) is mostly made up of neurons and synapses. The amount of grey matter reaches a peak early in childhood (before the age of 5), then declines until puberty when it increases again, and then starts a consistent, gradual decline into late adulthood. Early fluctuations in grey matter are believed to partly reflect the overproduction and subsequent elimination (or pruning) of synapses (dendrites). By age 2 years of age, about 40 000 new synapses are being formed every second White matter (areas of brain and spinal cord) is made up of axons covered by a fatty white-looking substance called myelin, which insulates the axons and facilitates the conduction of electrical impulses. White matter increases consistently during the course of childhood and into adulthood, when it appears to taper off. This increase in white matter is believed to reflect the gradual myelination of axons.

Myelination l l Myelinization is the key to learning windows Myelination is the major cause of the increase in a child's brain size. At birth, the infant brain weighs 300 -350 grams (2/3 to ¾ pound). In the first four years of life, the brain increases to 80% of the adult weight of 1200 -1500 grams (2. 6 - 3. 3 pounds).

Plasticity of Learning and Memory l l It was once believed that as we aged, the brain’s networks became fixed. In the past two decades, however, an enormous amount of research has revealed that the brain never stops changing and adjusting. Learning, as defined by Tortora and Grabowski (1996), is “the ability to acquire new knowledge or skills through instruction or experience. Memory is the process by which that knowledge is retained over time.

LEARNING l l l The capacity of the brain to change with learning is plasticity. So how does the brain change with learning? According to Durbach (2000), there appear to be at least two types of modifications that occur in the brain with learning: A change in the internal structure of the neurons, the most notable being in the area of synapses. 2. An increase in the number of synapses (more dendrites) between neurons. 1.

Dendrite Growing/Pruning GROWING DENDRITES PRUNING DENDRITES

Dendrites OUR JOB IS TO GROW DENDRITES!!!!! • Growing dendrites (size and numbers) physically increases the weight of our brain. • New growth forms on neurons that are frequently used. • Introducing and reviewing information to the brain in several ways creates more dendrite pathways and synaptic connections. • The more they are used the stronger they become. • The more complex the skills required in occupations, the more dendrites are found on neurons.

GROWING DENDRITES HOW AND WHEN Actual branching of the nerve cells occurs primarily at night during sleep or more specifically, during various times of our sleep cycle. Sleeping after learning grows twice as many neural dendrites as learning the material did. The bulk of hard wiring takes place during sleep. Children who are sleep deprived after learning new information are unable to process and use the information as well as children who are not sleep deprived.

FIVE RULES OF THE BRAIN 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Dendrites grow only from what is already there. Dendrites grow for what is practiced. Dendrites grow from stimulating experiences. Emotions affect learning. Use it or lose it!

Dendrite Pruning

Developmental Plasticity/Synaptic Pruning Ineffective or weak connections are "pruned" in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant the desired shape. l It is plasticity that enables the process of developing and pruning connections, allowing the brain to adapt itself to its environment. l

The orange dots represent the multiple synapses on a single neuron. • The extent of synaptic interconnectivity as we age determines our functional ability to use our brains • In spite of losing neurons as we age, the density of interconnectivity makes up for the loss • This depends on continuous new learning & environmental enrichment

During Adolescence… The density of synapses declines during adolescence due to selective pruning of redundant or unused connections. l Synapse formation continues despite ongoing pruning l

Enriched Environments l Children who are exposed to a rich and varied education early in life develop a great capacity for learning throughout life. l Real learning, not just rote exercise, can have a dramatic influence on the physical structure of the brain.

Into Adulthood… The brain continuously remodels itselfeven into adulthood. l Synapses (dendrite growth) continue to be formed in the brain. l Lifelong enrichment experiences are important for continued dendrite growth and healthy functioning brains. l

TEACHERS ARE…. How can we help students learn more effectively and joyfully…apply the science of teaching to the art of teaching. For example….

3 Key Elements 1. LESS STRESS! 2. DO THE REAL THING! 3. USE IT OR LOSE IT!

LESS STRESS l l l Stress, confusion and perceived threat can minimize the brain’s capabilities Create a safe and secure climate and healthy physical environment Promote personal relationships and social skills

DO THE REAL THING! l l l Multi-sensory experiences promote brain growth and connections Provide enriched environments for learning Hook new ideas to prior understanding and personal experiences

USE IT OR LOSE IT! Multiple opportunities to actively process new learning in a variety of ways assures long term retention l Differentiate instruction, provide choices, vary grouping and honour multiple intelligences l Orchestrate opportunities to apply new learning in real-world settings l

REFLECTION Any activity through which the brain recalls a concept, skill, or process. Reflection activities will prompt the brain to restimulate the new connections among neurons, which helps strengthen them.

The Brain is ‘Pattern Seeking” The brain seeks to make order out of chaos. l Use mindmap formats l Use graphics l Create daily agendas l Set goals l Review at the end of the day

The Brain Needs Adequate Time FLOW theory is an optimal experience when people report feelings of deep concentration and enjoyment…a state of concentration that is so completely focused it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity. l l l It occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing We must be able to concentrate on what we are doing The task has clear goals Immediate feedback is provided The experience is an enjoyable one that allows us to exercise a sense of control over our actions The sense of time is altered: hours pass by in what seems like minutes

Executive Functions l l l Refers to the conscious control of what we think and do. Get the image of a CEO in the head. An executive is someone who decides upon a course of action, issues commands by virtue of rank in a hierarchy, and ensures that the commands are implemented. Executive functions include identifying problems, making decisions, planning, staying focused on a task, adapting flexibly to changing situations, controlling impulses, and regulating emotions and behaviours. Ask, “How do I identify and organize steps for completing an independent project? Why is this information related to that? How do I start this project/assignment? When do I self-check my progress in order to evaluate how much I have left to do? These questions help us manage ourselves as learners, developing awareness of our knowledge as well as lack of knowledge, and knowing how to accomplish various goals by using executive or metacognitive skills.

DAVID SOUSA http: //www 4. insinc. com/interactiveinnovation s 2007/davidsousa/player. html

David Sousa “There is so much we are beginning to learn about the brain. I firmly believe the most important person in the equation is the classroom teacher. THE QUALITY OF LEARNING RARELY EXCEEDS THE QUALITY OF TEACHING. Quality is measured by the degree to which the teacher can select those strategies that help most kids succeed. Those decisions come essentially from our knowledge base and if our knowledge is back in the 60’s…there’s a different student coming to our schools today and rather than beating our chests and saying, “My god, these kids are different” let’s find out what is the nature of that difference. They want to interact with their learning so lets allow that to happen. Lets understand more about neuroscience so we can be the best brain changers. ”