The brain is without doubt our most fascinating organ. Parents, educators, and society as a whole have a tremendous power to shape the wrinkly universe inside each child’s head, and, with it, the kind of person he or she will turn out to be. We owe it to our children to help them grow the best brains possible.
—Lise Eliot, What is Going in There?

■ Parents and educators are among the most voracious consumers of the latest research about the brain, searching for strategies to enhance learning and brain development. They are finding a wealth of new answers. Discoveries from the field of neuroscience are reported in the media almost daily. Twenty Nobel prizes have been awarded to neuroscientists during the past 26 years, as they open windows into the workings of the human brain.
__ Though we often say that we learn “in school,” learning actually takes place in the brain. It happens anywhere, anytime we encode an experience as a memory. Our cerebral universe never stops moving and changing as long as we are alive. Learning impacts how the brain is built in its developmental stages, and the ways in which it changes over a lifetime [see Chart 1: Neuroplasticity]. UCLA neuroscientist Dr. Robert Jacobs found that college graduates create up to 40% more brain connections than those with only high school diplomas or less. Other researchers have concluded that those additional connections can protect our brains from Alzheimer’s disease by making it easier for an impaired brain to re-wire itself.

What is Neuroplasticity?

Although we cannot regenerate limbs, we can re-invent our brains (and thereby ourselves) through neuroplasticity. Early theories depicted the human brain as a “machine,” which could not physically change its makeup. Today, we know that our brains undergo daily renovations to adapt to our ever-changing world.
__ By the 20th century, genetics was widely accepted as the basis of human characteristics, displacing John Locke’s 17th-century notion of the tabula rasa, which suggested that the mind started as a blank slate from which our competencies, including intelligence and personality, were developed. Locke and others argued that the environment indelibly etched its signature on each individual. The resulting “nature vs. nurture” binary dispute is collapsing today under the weight of a mounting body of evidence. Yes, we enter the world with some brain physiology already set, but each brain is reshaped into its own unique configuration.
__ Open architecture is a computer science term used to describe processing systems that can adapt to changes in user requirements. Similarly, in neuroscience, brain plasticity refers to the ability of the brain to modify its structures and neural mechanisms. Changes in brain function occur as the brain re-wires itself in response to new demands placed on it by the external environment. Our malleable brains help us thrive by crafting environmentally appropriate survival strategies. Brain plasticity underlies the brain’s extraordinary capacity to learn, unlearn and relearn.

How is the brain organized?

A significant part of neural processing is the coding of sensory stimulation. Information enters the brain in the form of sensation, auditory  and visual information. All incoming stimuli, with the exception of data sent through the olfactory system, are first channeled through the thalamus—the “waiting room,” where sensory information is sent before going to the cerebral cortex where it is disaggregated into its constituent parts. Each element—color, motion, lines, angles or texture—is sent to a specialized region of the cerebral cortex for processing. The brain compares the new information to aspects of earlier experiences that are already stored in permanent memory. If a match is found, an appropriate response is performed. Our response time to familiar stimuli grows faster as those reactions become hard-wired.
__ Examining the brain at the macro level, the cerebral cortex is composed of four large lobes, each of which can be subdivided into as many as 200 functional areas. Damage to a particular cortical area can disrupt or destroy any given competency. With today’s brain-mapping techniques, we can predict precisely which capacities will be diminished or lost through damage due to disease, stroke, injury or disuse.
__ Without your brain’s high degree of variability, what would make you any different from the next person? There is a unique cytoarchitecture, representing the special cellular organization and the precise connections inside each human brain. Neural pathways connect the brain stem, cerebellum, and subcortical structures (including the limbic system) to specific areas of the cortex, which are rearranged by the minute to reflect our most recent experiences. Since nature only allows us one chance to make a fatal blunder, our neural circuits constantly update our version of the world, which we find full of opportunities to pursue and dangers to avoid. Developing efficient pathways is vital to our survival.
__ From a micro perspective, the brain is made up of neurons and glial cells. There are over 150 different kinds of neurons [see Chart 2: Neurons], making them the most diverse cell type in the entire human body. The work of each neuron is to carry out the input-processing-output framework of our experiences. Twenty percent of our neurons are inhibitory in function: ➞ p.70
__ Their job is to suppress network activation to stop a particular response or behavior. (ADHD arises from an inability to stop a response to one stimulus and choose to respond in a more appropriate manner instead. While this is often referred to as an attention deficit, it is more accurately an executive function deficit.)
__ Glial cells serve as “nannies” to the neurons. They transport nutrients and oxygen to them and remove debris from them, keeping neurons healthy and alive. Each human brain has over 100 billion neurons: the brain’s “gray matter,” which is composed of neuron cell bodies. Glial cells, however, far outnumber neurons; there are 10 to 50 times more “nannies” than neurons in the human brain.
Neuroscientists are fond of saying, “Neurons that fire together, wire together” and “Neurons not in sync, do not link.” Dendrites form tree-like extensions that put a neuron in touch with as many as 200,000 of its neighbors, resulting in what we call new thinking and learning. When the brain learns, new dendrites grow. Early brain theorists believed that with each new memory, a new neuron grew. Today, we know that newly learned information is encoded as new dendrites sprout to connect neurons to specific sites, producing a new pathway that represents the experience.
__ In order for us to move, feel and think, neurons relay messages to one another, using both electricity and chemistry. Once incoming stimuli reach a threshold point, a 270 mph electrical impulse “fires” down the axon. Once the electrical impulse reaches the end of the axon, a tiny pocket of chemicals bursts, sending neurotransmitters (the “chemical couriers”) across the synapse, the microscopic space between neurons. As neurotransmitters cross the synaptic gap they lock into receptor sites on the postsynaptic neuron and convey their chemical message only if their molecular properties fit the precise configuration of the receptor sites on the postsynaptic neuron. Over one quadrillion (1,000 trillion, or 1015) synaptic connections can be established inside the human brain.
__ To optimize message transmission, myelin, a fatty substance, coats the long axonal region of a neuron, speeding up signaling and insulating the axon from extraneous electrical or chemical impulses. A breakdown in myelin exposes the axon to misdirected electrical impulses. When diverted to unintended neurons, extraneous impulses can have devastating mental and physical consequences. Multiple sclerosis is caused by progressive degeneration of myelin.
__ Different regions of the brain become heavily myelinated during pre-programmed sensitive periods, which opens up windows of opportunity for developing specific skills or competencies. After a region is myelinated, a performance permanence sets in. Language-learning is one example. Every brain begins life with the capacity to learn any of the 6,000 languages spoken on Earth. When a child consistently hears the regular sounds (phonemes) in a given language, neural connections are created in the auditory cortex. The “window” for language-learning closes with the onset of puberty. Afterward, learning a new language will be more difficult and will typically be accompanied by a noticable accent.

Pruning the garden of the brain

Synaptic proliferation is the prenatal overproduction of synapses that gives a young brain its incredible adaptability. We are born with many more connections than our adult brains will use. This neural insurance policy guarantees that infants born in San Francisco, Shanghai or Soweto can flourish with equal ease. In the first two decades of life, the human brain “prunes” away connections in a dynamic self-reorganization that operates by the use-it-or-lose-it principle.
__ There is an old story about a man who walked from his farmhouse to his barn every day. After following the same path day in and day out, it wore into a groove. Eventually, the old man could walk to the barn blindfolded, since the deep channel would steer him directly where he was going. Neural pathways in the brain follow a similar pattern: They are strengthened with repeated use, while neglected networks become unreliable and eventually are pruned away.
__ Pruning helps the brain protect itself from devoting precious resources to useless networks and inefficient over-wiring. Apoptosis, programmed cell death, eliminates unneeded neurons, just as roads that are seldom traveled fall into disrepair and eventually are closed down for good. Unused skills suffer a similar fate: what we call “forgetting.” (While memory failures are generally due to degraded neural networks, accelerated memory loss is associated with stress, aging or acute brain damage.) Decreased use of skills reduces the nourishment of their networks, diminishing memory and performance.
__ In the absence of nearby land, some tadpoles will arrest the natural process of metamorphosis into frogs, because environmental conditions suggest that such a change is by no means beneficial to survival. Instead, those tadpoles remain swimmers. It is an apt metaphor for the developing brain.
__ Mother Nature offers a trade-off: instinct or flexibility. Those species whose behavior is dominated by instinct—e.g. reptiles, fish, amphibians, and insects—have brains that leave little room for neuroplasticity but are highly efficient. As a result, they are less adaptable. Human brains, on the other hand, were shaped by evolutionary pressures that rewarded adaptability. One example of our flexibility is the way our brains accommodate stimuli in multiple patterns and formats, but still accept them as the same object [see Chart 3: The Letter A].

Early Brain Growth

Neurogenesis is the rapid production of brain cells in utero, when neurons are produced at the incredible rate of 250,000 to one million per minute. The rapid growth of the young brain system begins 18 days after fertilization. The brain develops quickly through first-hand experiences. Computer simulations and early-learning videos are no substitute for the real world. A mere picture of an orange short-changes the learner, who cannot directly experience its smell, texture, taste and mass. Learners create meaning from what they do in their world, not from exposure to its representations.
__ While genetics and prenatal influences may calibrate the brain at birth, it is largely dependent on subsequent experiences to determine its capacities and deficiencies. Author Joseph Epstein stated, “We are what we read.” Neuroscientists would assert, “We are what we experience.” Neural circuits are constantly reorganized and rerouted, based on the quantity, quality and timing of our experiences. This has profound implications for what we should do in every home and school.
__ The stimulation young children receive from early interactions determines how their brains develop in the crucial postnatal period, when experiences have a decisive impact on the brain’s architecture and later capabilities. Brain cells create connections each time we integrate something new. Whether we are learning to crawl or dance, these experiences create brain pathways that capture what we know and who we are.
__ In its early years, the brain goes on a connectivity binge. The immature brain quickly links hundreds of millions of neurons together, forming efficient brain circuits [see Chart 4: Neural Connections]. During these stages, children make learning look easy. By adding, removing, or changing the strength of the connections among neurons, linking cells together or eliminating brain cells from existing neural pathways, neuronal activations change, making specific new learning possible. The word specific must be underscored here. All learning must be specific and transferable if it is to have any currency.
__ Creating new neural pathways is physically exhausting. The infant brain requires near-constant feeding to keep up with the energy consumption necessary for early brain development. Infants tax their energies when they are learning how to walk, talk, think, speak and remember, along with familiarizing themselves with all of the people, places and objects in their environment. Toddlers must also learn the complexities of language, and must master critical cultural and socialization skills. All of these are the minimum challenges that must be successfully and simultaneously met for adaptation to the environment. Synaptic connectivity maxes out during the second year of life. At its peak level, each neuron averages 15,000 connections. That number occurs in the early years of child development, when a toddler’s brain consumes 225% of the energy of an adult brain.
__ Enrichment studies have shown that a caring environment aids learning and development. But neuroplasticity also has a darker side. Impoverished environmental conditions, prenatal substance exposure, sensory deprivation, emotional trauma and nutritional deficiencies can cause plasticity to play its unkind hand, wreaking havoc on the developing young brain. Long-term chronic stress (“toxic stress”) provokes the release of high levels of the hormone cortisol that can lead to permanent damage to hippocampal neurons, causing learning difficulties and memory impairments.
__ On the brighter side, the human brain responds favorably to emotional support, challenge and steady constructive—it need not always be positive—feedback by increasing the myelination and nourishment of neural pathways. Individuals who are blind at birth have highly resilient brains eager to compensate for any deficiency. With their acute hearing ability, some of the world’s best musicians have emerged among the blind. In the absence of appropriate stimulation, the brain reassigns underutilized areas for other, sometimes completely different, functions.

Learning

Failure is not an option is a popular educational mantra that was unwisely borrowed from the business world. It inaccurately reflects how the young human brain learns. Students who struggle in school often appear to be impervious to the best efforts of well-trained professionals. The notion of “rigor” becomes almost academic rigor mortis for them. In nearly all cases, each learning difficulty is indicative of a neurological underinvestment in the necessary brain wiring needed to be successful. When we point to a concept or skill that is not “developmentally appropriate,” the reference we are making is to brain development, not curriculum development.
__ With this backdrop, certain academic shortcomings are expected. However, these events foster frustrations when the child “doesn’t get it.” With time, maturation and the appropriate brain wiring, s/he will one day “get it.” When it comes to learning, failure is often a prerequisite. This is particularly true when learners lack related prior experiences, as the new information cannot merge with brain circuits that don’t exist yet. When there is nothing with which to integrate new knowledge, the building process must begin from scratch. The child is not “slow”; the process of brain-building is sometimes slow.

Expertise

In Outliers: The Story of Success, author Malcolm Gladwell hypothesizes that exceptional performances in any field have little to do with innate talent. He proposes the “10,000-Hour Rule”: devoting approximately 10,000 hours of time to a skill fosters a dendritic density representing competency in that area. Whether we are examining achievement in academics, professional careers, athletics or public speaking, practice makes permanent, not perfect, when it comes to the human brain.
__ Long years of continuous practice create the hard-wired neural pathways of proficiency and expertise. Complex interconnections among the pathways in the brain give an expert four distinct neurological advantages:
1. Highly used neural pathways are easily activated, because they are nearly always “on alert.”
2. Extensive hardwiring provides neural “shortcuts” to answers that their under-wired counterparts might find puzzling for hours, days, years or forever.
3. Their jam-packed cognitive tool chest serves as a repository of information, precluding the time-consuming data searches required by others.
4. Most importantly, cognitive resources are freed up to engage in ideational exploration and conceptual processing. The question asked about experts such as golfer Tiger Woods changes from “Is he any good?” to “Is he always that good?”

Experts routinely take the time to learn, unlearn and relearn relevant information related to their craft. For them, learning is not an informing experience, where they simply build networks to represent their new experiences; instead, their experience is transforming: Their brain circuits are rearranged in order to integrate new data.

The Future of the Brain

With each major advance in the human condition over the past 4.5 million years, our brain volume has increased to accommodate our behavioral improvisations. Is the human brain on the doorstep of another “brain spurt”? [See Chart 5: Brain Spurts]. Our evolutionary history would suggest that we may be. The remarkable world of technology will likely be accommodated by an even more remarkable brain plasticity.
__ As we come to the close of the first decade in the 21st Century, we recognize that we are living in a unique, historic time. Neuroplasticity is shaping today’s young brains for a future that is less like our recent past than any other time in human history. Technology is extending the range of human information processing, shattering the previous limitations of our sensory systems. Previously, the walls of time and place dictated the scope of the human experience. These barriers are falling rapidly.
__ If you are a parent, educator, or anyone charged with the responsibility of developing young minds, brain literacy is no longer optional. When you are asked by your former students, children or grandchildren, What did you do to help me when that new research on the brain suddenly became accessible to you?, hopefully, your answer will be, I did everything I could, based on everything we knew from every field in neuroscience at that time. [bw]

In the publication Forecasting Independent Education to 2025, the National Association of Independent Schools acknowledges the contributions of four educational researchers who “have been influential in reshaping the independent school classroom.” Those individuals are Howard Gardner, Daniel Goleman, Kenneth Wesson and Mel Levine. The author of Brain-considerate Strategies for Home and School, Kenneth Wesson’s work in the field of education, learning and the brain spans four decades. Wesson delivers keynote addresses on the neuroscience of learning for educational organizations and institutions throughout the United States and overseas. His audiences range from preschool and early-childhood specialists to college and university-level administrators and faculty members. His recent international audiences have included educators and chief administrative officers from North America, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. He has spoken to educators from six of the world’s seven continents and can be seen on PBS and other special programs on brain development. He can be contacted at kenawesson@aol.com

■ Since she was a child, “Francine,” a 35-year-old lawyer, knew that she craved sunshine but she never knew why. She was a fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde who realized that sun exposure could be dangerous and promote melanomas. But there was never enough light in the winter for her, and it made her feel out of sorts.
She and her family lived in New York City. Sometimes in the winter she’d be able to take a vacation in Florida or the Caribbean. To escape the heat every summer, her parents rented a house on Long Island. She loved going there with her two brothers, and she’d try to spend every weekend at the house with her parents.
Last winter was brutal for her. It was dark and dreary, with a lot of rain and snow. Francine was confined to the city without any vacations. She retreated into herself. To make matters worse, her workload was so heavy she had to endure 12-hour weekdays and work on the weekend as well. By December she found she could not wake up in the morning. She had to drag herself out of bed and force herself into the shower. When she had a weekend off, she slept it away. She found she could never get enough sleep even if she stayed in bed 15 hours.
Francine also craved carbohydrates. She ate more bread and pasta than ever before and wound up gaining 10 pounds. Not only was this extra weight burdensome, she also had no energy and couldn’t concentrate on her work. She withdrew from her friends and family and tried to struggle through the days. She didn’t want to admit it, but she felt downright depressed.
When April arrived, she celebrated spring by sitting out in the sun every day at lunch time. After one week, she felt so much better. The sunshine she craved was back. She was able to wake up in the morning and feel refreshed after six to seven hours of sleep. Her appetite decreased back to normal. Instead of a lot of starches, she started eating salads and fresh fruits. Her concentration returned, and she churned out one brief after another, as she had in the past. She was happy to feel re-energized. Her parents opened up their summer house in May, and Francine went there every weekend. Before long she’d lost the extra 10 pounds. She socialized with friends again, and even found a summer romance.
Her new boyfriend, Howard, a psychologist, told her she probably had seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. He explained that if she had depression in the winter which relented in the spring and summer, and “the depression had lasted for two years with no non-seasonal major depressive episodes during that period,” then she had SAD.
About 1.5 to 9% of adults in the United States experience SAD, although it is not listed as a unique mood disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV); nor will it be listed in DSM-V, because psychiatrists are not fully convinced of its existence. Instead it is listed as a “seasonal pattern specifier” under mood disorders.
SAD is related to light. The pineal gland in the brain produces melatonin in the dark, which helps people sleep. However, in some individuals, too much melatonin is produced, and it can lead to depression and SAD. SAD sufferers may also have low serotonin levels—antidepressants that replenish serotonin have been shown to help eliminate depression in SAD patients. Seasonal Affective Disorder is caused by a disturbance in the normal circadian rhythm of the body. Light entering our eyes regulates the rhythm. Nowadays, our natural rhythms are thrown off anyway, because we are subject to so much artificial light.
In primitive times, human beings were synchronized with sunrise and sunset. We rose at sunrise and went to bed at sunset. In modern times, we keep our own schedules, which often have nothing to do with natural patterns of light and dark. In the past, winter was a time when many human beings would basically hibernate like other animals. There was less food available in the winter, so hibernation was appropriate. Depression, oversleeping and overeating would be useful to hibernators. Perhaps people with SAD allowed our species to survive better, so their genes were passed on.
Many people with SAD use light boxes that produce 10,000 lux to tide them over through dark winters. (The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved light boxes to treat SAD, because the clinical trials did not definitely prove that light boxes work.) Since light leads to less melatonin and less depression, another treatment for SAD is to take frequent trips to sunny climes like Florida or Mexico.
Francine, who was allergic to many medicines, was glad she didn’t have to resort to antidepressants to return to normal. On the advice of her boyfriend, she bought a light box to prepare for the following winter. In the meantime, she went out to enjoy the sunshine. [bw]

■ Do you love doing crossword puzzles or playing sudoku because you think it keeps your mind sharp? Well, think again. “Most of those things don’t have a measurable impact—if it makes people happy to play them that’s good, but it doesn’t make them smarter,” says Steven Aldrich, president and CEO of Posit Science (positscience.com), a developer of brain-fitness software.
Studies show that the brains of heavy users of crossword puzzles decline at the same rate as light users of crossword puzzles. “Crossword puzzles are doing very similar things again and again—you are recalling things you already know,” says Aldrich. “It’s not a guard against healthy aging.” Neither are computer games like Bejeweled or Nintendo’s Brain Age, or even reading a book, he says. “The brain stays healthy by doing new and novel things, constantly pushed harder and harder.”
Aldrich should know. While there are many companies in the burgeoning brain-fitness industry, Posit Science is one of the few with clinical research behind its products. Founded in 2003 by Jeffrey Zimman and Michael Merzenich, a neuroscience professor at the University of California, San Francisco, the venture capital–funded private company has, together with grants from the National Institutes of Health, invested at least $50 million in their software products, tested by tens of thousands of people and helped by a scientific advisory board of more than 40 scientists. Now, more than 100,000 people use their products, including health and car insurance companies.
Posit Science, whose tagline reads “Think faster, focus better, remember more,” is aimed at the baby boomer market—people aged 50 to 65—which, in the United States, totals some 80 million people. They offer three brain-game programs (all on the computer, since studies show that most people today have access to a computer): InSight, a program to improve visual processing and memory; DriveSharp, a product designed to improve driving safety by speeding up visual processing; and the Brain Fitness Program, exercises for auditory processing and memory.
These programs, ranging in price from $89 to $395, can be practiced like a regular body workout, for 20 minutes a day, three times a week for 10 weeks, in order to see results. The games seem simple—accessible for any computer novice—with basic designs, and both vocal and written instructions. For example in “Jewel Diver” in the Insight program, a number of increasing jewels are shown to you and then hidden inside fish floating in the water. You must keep track of which fish are hiding the jewels and then identify them. This measures “divided attention”—and in real life, the program explains, it might help you monitor four or five children at a time. Another game, “Bird Safari,” flashes a bird in the center of the screen and then asks you to identify it from another group of birds flashed in a circle around the periphery, measuring visual precision as well as memory. All the games give you an initial baseline assessment and a goal. The programs also give you a program grid monitoring your total hours and progress.

If It’s Not Broken…

But before investigating how brain improvement works, maybe the first question should be why we need to improve our minds. Is this another American quest to defy time, to be the best at something that might be left well-enough alone to nature? Why on earth do we need to send our brains to the gym?
“The brain is an organ that thrives on challenge,” says Aldrich. When we are younger, we go to school, learn new subjects, play new sports, develop new talents like music and dance. “But as we transition to adulthood,” he says, “for better or for worse, we start using that information we’ve accumulated over time, and we are not learning new things.”
From your late 20s to your late 50s, you lose half your ability in every cognitive function except vocabulary, unless you do something about it. After age 50, you start to see a 10% decline. With life expectancies rising and people retiring earlier than they did 20 years ago, people want to enjoy their golden years. Baby boomers—overachievers in everything—were the first generation to get college degrees, and now they want to keep vibrant as they age, Aldrich explains. “Just like we now know that we should constantly be exercising our bodies, we should also be challenging our brains,” he says, using the industry’s habit of comparing brain fitness to physical fitness. “We need brain fitness to keep the quality of life we expect, because we don’t challenge the brain enough in our daily lives.”
Most people don’t notice their brain problems at first because they usually use context to fill in what they missed, drawing on life experience to “fill in the blanks,” Posit Science experts say. But as we age, these “blanks” get too big to fill in—and you might be left with a blank look when trying to remember someone’s name, the title of a song or an event that was once on the tip of your tongue.
Posit Science games harness the brain’s inherent plasticity—its ongoing remodeling throughout life—and direct it in ways that enhance overall performance. Effective brain games, Aldrich says, focus on speed, accuracy and recording. That’s because after age 30, memory, thinking and focus tend to slow down.
1. Speed: Our brains slow down, but the speed of information coming in from the senses—sights and sounds happening in our lives—does not. Over time, the brain begins to miss details, making it more difficult to react to and remember what we see and hear. So the brain needs to be pushed to a point where it’s working hard. “You can miss the beginning or end of a word, and that can be debilitating,” says Aldrich. “And as we age, our vision processes at a slower rate.”
2. Accuracy: The brain’s neural pathways often get fuzzier, or even distorted, as we age—memories can become less clear and more difficult to process in higher cognitive functions. It doesn’t matter how fast your brain is processing if you can’t recognize what you see and hear, like the difference between the sounds bo and go, or how you recognize that that shape on the corner is a child, not a fire hydrant.
3. Recording: With each passing decade, our brains produce fewer neuromodulators—brain chemicals that determine what information is important to record and process. This deficit hinders the brain’s ability to record new information—its ability to learn and remember. Memory games improve the brain’s function.

the “Bird Safari” game measures visual precision as well as memory.

I Once Was a 98-Pound Weakling…

In today’s tech-savvy world, where everyone is hyper-connected through iPods, BlackBerrys, computers and video-game consoles, one might assume that kids today are getting smarter. The modern world is “a double-edged sword,” Aldrich explains. On the one hand, we can find information quickly—via Google or GPS navigators, for example—but, on the other hand, “it removes the challenge of everyday life to improve brain performance.” Constant connectivity can also hurt our focus and attention. “There’s a tremendous temptation to be distracted,” says Aldrich. “Task-switching is very detrimental to having great thoughts or building new things.” Distracted driving, for example, is bad driving. In the end, he says, brain improvement in the modern world depends on how you use technology. (That being said, Posit Science is developing an iPod app.)
All this promise of brain fitness and brain improvement are well and good, but what kind of benefits do they have in the real world? What does it mean to lose or improve your brain function?
Posit Science clinical studies have shown that after completing their Brain Fitness Program, participants show auditory-processing speeds increased by 131%, and memory improved by the equivalent of 10 years. The DriveSharp program participants have their risk of a crash cut by 50% and reduce unsafe driving maneuvers by 36%; and 87% of participants in the InSight program for visual processing and memory showed an increased rate of visual processing, reducing the risk of tripping and falling and improving the ability to maintain independence by keeping up with the demands of daily living—such as counting change or finding a phone number.
For people like 86-year-old Edward Manck from Bedford, Virginia, the Brain Fitness Program helped him relearn the saxophone—he’d stopped after he graduated high school. “When you play a song, you try to read two or three bars ahead so you can finger properly,” says Manck. “After using the program, I noticed that I started to do that again.” Manck isn’t stopping with the sax. “I’ve always wanted to play the piano, so now I’ve picked that up, too,” he says.
For others with trauma and brain injury, brain games can be a matter of survival. Steven Schultz, for example, was hit by a roadside bomb while serving in Iraq and couldn’t see, hear or laugh the way he once did. After using the program, he increased his attention span, increased his vision and was able to respond to people immediately, instead of after 30 or 40 seconds.
“It was just so valuable that Steven was attending to his brain injury,” says his mother, Debbie. “Pushing his attention span past that three-minute threshold was just so important.”
Skier Dave Demko, a 57-year-old from Pennsylvania, learned to compete against people half his age, despite a 20-year hiatus from the sport. After training and working with Posit Science programs, he ranked in the top 15 of 16-to-25-year-olds. He realized that the younger skiers were simply not making wasted movements, and his only challenge was not physical—it was mental.
“If your brain is working faster, your reactions are going to be better, and your confidence is maximized,” he says. “You have to stay on the fastest line or you’re going to get smoked.”

Can Your Brain Lift Weights?

What will the future hold for brain fitness? Will brains go the way of the body—with a Jane Fonda–like character who leads the fitness revolution, and brain “gyms,” “fitness classes” and “personal trainers” popping up around the country?
Well, that’s already started to happen, with community centers offering “mind and body” classes, and places like vibrantBrains, in San Francisco. A “health club for your brain,” vibrantBrains was founded in 2003 by Lisa Schoonerman and Jan Zivic. Zivic had recovered from a traumatic brain injury and her doctor told her that her rehab would not have been as successful if she hadn’t been as mentally active. “Think about it—if you’re physically fit and you go skiing and you break your leg, your rehab process will be more rapid than if you’re not physically fit,” Schoonerman says. “It’s important for the brain to keep active and nimble and keep the connection and neurons strong so you can be at the top of your game in the moment, and to develop cognitive reserves which are protective if something happens as we age.”
One of the only storefront “brain gyms,” vibrantBrains offers some Posit Science programs, as well as memory tests from UCLA, speaker series, and reading improvement for teens. Schoonerman estimates they have helped close to 1,000 people over the years, including a woman in her 60s who met her husband after taking a class because she felt “confident and less shy with people she thought were smart and interesting,” Schoonerman says. An amateur-ranked tennis player who went through a program said she became competitive with people 20 years her junior because she “could process the moves more quickly.” A musician in his late 20s who had suffered a brain injury used their program and recovered his ability to play music.
Although most of their clients are older, some younger people are coming in to become more mentally and athletically competitive, and others are coming in to sharpen their brains before heading back to school or into the workplace.
Staffed by three people, vibrantBrains is considering opening more branches. For Schoonerman, 42, it’s been very rewarding. “When we started doing research on this, I wasn’t 40 yet—I’m not old enough to have serious memory issues, but I felt like I slowed down.” Now, after working at vibrantBrains and doing the programs they offer, she feels much better. “I feel like I’m back,” she says. [bw]

THE MATRIX (1999)

• The Wachowski brothers’ first Matrix (there were two less satisfying sequels) challenged reality and our place in it. Keanu Reeves, previously known for his roles in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the surfer cult hit Point Break, plays a computer programmer who is searching for answers to the meaning of life. He believes there is more than the world around him—and he’s right. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers him a chance to find the true reality—as opposed to a computer program run by aliens that has created a manufactured reality that almost everyone else experiences while their bodies remain captive for alien food. The Matrix is a movie about freeing one’s mind and using its power to do everything from bend a spoon to dodge bullets in slow motion (also a film-making feat). Although The Matrix itself drew inspiration from everything from the Bible to The Terminator, it set the standard for “mind over matter” films for years to come.

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (1999)

• This is a movie about getting into your head—literally. Through a hole in an old building, the strangest thing is discovered: a portal to actor John Malkovich’s brain. Did you ever want to be a movie star? Well, now you can. Did you ever want to be dumped at the New Jersey Turnpike after you were done? Well, you don’t have a choice. Scripted by Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich is a take on what it really means to see through someone else’s eyes and what it means to be an average person.
It also challenges the audience to consider what happens when you mess with the mind. For example, what if John Malkovich were to go through the portal and be in his own brain? He’d find a world where everyone looked like him (even women) and said the word Malkovich in different tones to mean different things. For Cameron Diaz’s character, it means a chance to consider her very sexuality, not just the power of celebrity. Being in a man’s brain, she suddenly finds women very appealing—and possibly always did.
Technology today would probably allow some experiences like those portrayed in Being John Malkovich. But the question is what are the ethical implications of controlling another’s mind? Should it be done at all?
As John Malkovich elegantly reminds a captor in the film: “It’s my head!”

A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001)

• Imagine if the very source of your being was betraying you. Such is the problem of John Nash (Russell Crowe), the Nobel Prize winner who invented economic game theory. He sees incredible mathematical patterns, many of them real, some not. As he ages, the latter grow in number, leaving him paralyzed to stop his mind from possibly destroying his marriage and his career. The film shows us his college roommate, a young girl and a government agent who convinces Nash to help him crack codes using his unusual gift for numbers.
The twist is that Nash is schizophrenic, and some of the characters, like some of his theories, are not real—not reality, but real to Nash. The brilliance of Ron Howard’s film is that the director show us Nash’s “reality” and helps us understand that the schizophrenic doesn’t choose his reality—what they see is as real to them as what we experience in our own lives. “We’re not just seeing how his brain works on a mathematical level, but we’re also seeing his delusions and accepting them as real,” said Bob Strauss, former film critic for the Los Angeles Daily News. “I don’t think I walked away knowing anything about his medical condition but they showed a very tricky and difficult condition in a good narrative way.”
The movie brought this mind condition to the forefront of society, but the real John Nash, who has overcome his mental illness but says his son has inherited it, told New Scientist magazine in 2004: “There’s a lot of choice in this, I think. I know this is not the standard point of view. The standard doctrine is that we are supposed to be non-stigmatic in terms of these people: They are constitutionally, necessarily, schizophrenic. But I think there is an element of choice. A person doesn’t pass into insanity when their situations are good. If their personal life is successful, people don’t become insane. When they’re not so happy, when things aren’t so good, then they may become clinically depressed, and then maybe schizophrenic. Wealthy people are less likely to become schizophrenic than people who are not wealthy.”

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

• One of the greatest aspects of the mind is its ability to remember. But what if your memory was your greatest source of pain? That’s the premise of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the normally comedic Jim Carrey finds himself doing anything but laughing. Heartbroken, he decides to rid of himself of all memories of the girl he loved through a brain alteration—then midway through the operation suddenly realizes he doesn’t want to. His brain starts to fight back, showing him desperately holding on to memories from his past. The film, scripted by Charlie Kaufman, explores what we’d do if we only had the technology.
Although in 2004 it sounded absurd to erase memories, today, only six years later, scientists are doing similar experiments on rats. In an age where we can erase the appearance of aging or fat instantly with plastic surgery, can memory erasure be far behind?
Let Eternal Sunshine serve as a warning for us, so we should consider the memories we hated and whether we’d miss them when they’re gone—or if we really hated them so much in the first place.

AVATAR (2009)

• Avatar tells the story of a physically challenged man who gets a second chance to be a soldier through his avatar—a computer’s representation of a person or his/her alter ago. (Ideas explored in films such as The Matrix and Surrogates, where humans live through their surrogate robots.)
Director James Cameron challenges what the cerebral future might hold, selling the (not new) idea that avatars are the true channels for another sort of being. In Avatar, watching the main character walking, it is believable. You seem to even feel it. “It’s a film of imagination,” movie reviewer Leonard Klady says. “It’s stunning to watch and takes you into a world that you haven’t been to before…. The avatar is clearly translated to the audience, where you understood cleanly how the character was able to achieve his physical accomplishments.”
Cameron also revitalized 3D technology. His special effects were mesmerizing for some, dizzying for others.

“A good portion of our vision works like it’s in a true 3D world even though it can be actually two-dimensional, like when you see a painting,” says Dr. Mike Lenhardt, a California-based optometrist. The difference between two eyes is somewhere between between 55 millimeters and 75 millimeters, he said, and that difference in perspective has your brain comparing, to get a depth judgment. “These 3D movies show two different images, and they often maximize the stereopsis to force the depth on people.”
But some can’t tolerate 3D. “Some people have problems with 3D because they have problems with polarized light, and a majority of 3D works through polarized light,” Lenhardt says. “It can also be because the brain sometimes suppresses images, and 3D might change the visual system enough to where it can’t; what it can’t ignore it can find bothersome.”

Movies on the Mind

Since the advent of film, movies have been fascinated with the mind, whether they’re featuring memory or madness, therapy or dreamland. Here are a few of our favorites:

Spellbound (1945) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck
In this psychological thriller, the head of a mental institution has amnesia and might have killed his predecessor.

Shock Corridor (1963) Written and directed by Samuel Fuller
A journalist commits himself to a mental asylum to uncover
a murder mystery—and win a Pulitzer prize.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966) Directed by François Truffaut, based on Ray Bradbury’s novel
Somewhere in the near future (now our past) of an anti-
intellectual America (our present?), a fireman starts to
question his existence.

The Trip (1967) Directed by Roger Corman, written by Jack Nicholson, starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hoppper
After a divorce from his cheating wife, a man takes LSD and takes a “trip” around Hollywood.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) Directed by Stanley
Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess’s novel
In another dystopian future, this time in Britain, a juvenile
delinquent undergoes an experimental treatment in prison.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) Directed
by Miloš Forman, starring Jack Nicholson
To avoid serving time in prison, a criminal transfers to a
mental hospital, where he challenges authority and incites other patients.

High Anxiety (1977) Written by, directed by and
starring Mel Brooks
A spoof of and homage to psychodrama thrillers.

Altered States (1980) Written by Paddy Chayefsky,
starring William Hurt
A Harvard professor of abnormal psychology uses himself
as a guinea pig in sensory deprivation experiments and
“devolves” into earlier life forms.

The Shining (1980) Directed by Stanley Kubrik, starring Jack Nicholson, based on Stephen King’s novel
A haunted hotel threatens to claim the mind of its winter
caretaker, a writer, husband and father.

The Man with Two Brains (1983) Directed by Carl
Reiner, starring Steve Martin
A comedy about transplanting the brain of someone you
love into someone’s body you love.

Dreamscape (1984) Directed by Joseph Ruben, starring
Dennis Quaid and Christopher Plummer
Psychics are manipulated by government operatives to kill the
president by entering his brain.

Total Recall (1990) Starring Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, based on a story by Philip K. Dick
A construction worker turns out to be a secret agent from Mars whose memory has been wiped.

Memento (2000) Directed by Christopher Nolan
A nonlinear psychological thriller where a man who has short-term amnesia uses notes and tattoos to find his wife’s killer.

The Machinist (2004) Starring Christian Bale and Jennifer
Jason Leigh
An insomniac becomes paranoid and eventually uncovers his
own hidden past.

I Heart Huckabees (2004) Directed by David O. Russell
A philosophical comedy where a detective couple is hired to help someone solve his existential issues.

Paranormal Activity (2007) Written and directed by Oren Peli
A horror film about a couple haunted in their sleep.

[bw]

But what do these plans do to our brains? As genetically modified, overly processed foods have become tastier than ever, Western eating habits, with American fast food infiltrating cities around the world, have taken a turn for the worse. Food not only affects our figures but our brains and mental wellness. Is it possible to find better eating habits that will allow our brains and bodies to become in sync with each other?

Here we examine five popular diets and analyze their effects on the body and brain.

VEGAN DIET
HISTORY: The term vegan was coined by Donald Watson in 1944, combining the first three and last two letters of vegetarian. (Watson called it “the beginning and end of vegetarian.”)

WHAT IS IT? The vegan diet consists of not consuming meat or animal-derived products, including poultry, seafood, meat, dairy, whey, casein, eggs, honey, beeswax and gelatin.

THE DIET TODAY: Although veganism has been around a long time (especially in places where animal products are not available), this diet has been popularized in the last 15 years with such books as The China Study (Benbella Books, 2004) and Skinny Bitch (Running Press, 2005), which have put this way of living on the map by claiming a diet free of meat and dairy can cure many chronic diseases that plague our Western culture. A vegan diet contains many complex carbohydrates, which can speed up your metabolism. High metabolism = weight loss.

YOUR BRAIN ON THIS DIET: Our brains tend to thrive on a plant-heavy diet. Dark green vegetables and fruits are extremely high in vitamins, iron, calcium and zinc. Leafy greens and fruits are chock-full of antioxidants, which fight off free radicals—unstable atoms, molecules and ions that can kill healthy brain cells. New studies have shown a diet rich in antioxidants can stave off Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The brain is more susceptible to damage when it’s not getting proper nutrients. Brain cells cannot repair or regenerate themselves once they have become weak or died.

CRITICS: A study at Oxford University in 2008 found that people on a meat-free diet are six times as likely to suffer brain shrinkage. Deficiency of vitamin B12 can cause inflammation of the nervous system.

CONCLUSION? If you’re going vegan—or vegetarian—be sure to take vitamin B12 and calcium to fortify your diet. A vegan diet also is ethical toward the treatment of animals and the environment.

RAW FOODISM OR RAWISM
HISTORY: Before we discovered fire, the original human diet consisted of raw fruits, nuts and plants. The raw-food diet was popular in the 1900s, and again in 1984 with Leslie and Susannah Kenton’s book, Raw Energy: Eat Your Way to Radiant Health (BCA/Century Publishing).

WHAT IS IT? The rawism diet today promotes uncooked and unprocessed foods (usually vegan, although some allow for raw meat and animal products). Raw foodists believe that the way to a healthy and balanced life is through fresh fruits, vegetables and the enzymes living within them, which aid in the digestion and absorption of food. According to this theory, enzymes are at their peak and tend to hold their nutritional value when they are not cooked above 100° Fahrenheit.

YOUR BRAIN ON THIS DIET: Most American diets are packed with preservatives, high in fats and low in complex carbohydrates—candy, white bread, prepackaged snacks and artificial sweeteners, often filled with high-fructose corn syrup and sulfuric acid. When a diet is too high in acidity, your mind tends to run slower. High acidic levels are to blame for many ailments such as headaches, depression and mental dullness.

THE CRITICS: Some say that plant enzymes, cooked or raw, are made useless by acids in the human stomach, and aren’t necessary for human digestion. Moreover, aside from raw veganism, many believe that meat should be cooked, milk should be pasteurized, and raw vegetables should be washed thoroughly to prevent food-borne illnesses.

CONCLUSION? No one will contest the ban on processed foods, white flour and white sugar. But leading this lifestyle is not for the faint of heart! Raw foodism requires tons of preparation; a food processor and a dehydrator will make your transition easier.

THE ATKINS DIET
HISTORY: The Atkins Nutritional Approach is a low-carbohydrate diet developed by Dr. Robert Atkins in 1963, inspired by a research paper by Gordon Azar and Walter Lyons Bloom published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Atkins published Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, the first of his many books, in 1972. The diet was so successful with weight management that millions have been following this low-carb craze ever since.

WHAT IS IT? The concept of this diet is relatively simple: Cut out all carbohydrates and eat an unlimited amount of protein and fat. Low-carb dairy such as butter and heavy cream are permitted, but high-carb dairy like yogurt and ice cream are not. Only low-carb vegetables are allowed; most fruits are not. Many root plants and beans are excluded because of their high carbohydrate count.

YOUR BRAIN ON THIS DIET: Carbohydrates provide the body with energy. Eliminating them will send the body into an abnormal state. With minimal fruit and vegetable intake, the body has trouble sustaining itself. Your body and brain might have to duke it out over this dilemma. The brain uses as much as 20% of all carbohydrates that you consume. Healthy brain function is the result of a well balanced diet. Complex carbohydrates, such as those found in whole grains, spinach and beans, provide time-released energy which keeps you going through the day. Your brain uses more sugar than any other organ in the body. Too much sugar is unhealthy, but low blood sugar can slow down brain function. You also will not be getting enough antioxidants, which protect the brain from disease.

CRITICS: Some studies have found that the diet also contributes to heart disease, kidney stones and more.

CONCLUSION? Although you will probably lose weight quickly with this diet, it should only be a short-term plan.

MACROBIOTIC
HISTORY: Macrobiotic, from the Greek macro (long or large) and bios (life), was formalized and popularized by George Ohsawa in the 1960s, based on his recovery from tuberculosis, in 1911, using a diet recommended by Dr. Sagen Ishizuka and others. Ohsawa and his disciples spread this diet around the world. Ohsawa believed that all food is governed by yin and yang forces. An imbalance, or too much yin and not enough yang, can cause stress and disharmony to the body.

WHAT IS IT? The diet is based on whole grains and locally grown produce, as consuming imported foods is said to bring sickness to the body. Followers of this lifestyle believe that whole grains such as brown rice, rye, spelt and barley are the perfect balance of yin and yang. No white or refined sugars or leavened baked goods. Nightshade vegetables — peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, spinach, potatoes, beets and avocados — are used sparingly (if at all).

A macrobiotic diet will consist of eating 50–60% whole grains, 30% locally grown fruits and vegetables, and 5–10% soup, soy, beans and sea vegetables.
There are a few key guidelines which also must be adhered to when following this diet:
• Ohsawa believed that food should be chewed 30 to 50 times per mouthful for it to be properly digested.
• Stop eating when full.
• Cook according to the season.

YOUR BRAIN ON THIS DIET: While fiber does not directly affect the brain, its nutrients do. Foods high in fiber will allow the absorption of nutrients that improve overall mood, memory and attention span. When you eat soluble fiber, you take longer to chew, which sends a message to the brain that you are full.

CRITICS: Some have said that the macrobiotic diet can bring about malnutrition, but many believe it is a healthful way of life.

THE BLOOD TYPE DIET
HISTORY: Dr. Peter D’Adamo, a naturopath, founded the diet in 1996 with his book Eat Right 4 Your Type. “Blood is life itself,” D’Adamo writes. “Blood is magical. Blood is mystical.” Blood type is “the key that unlocks the door to the mysteries of health, disease, longevity, physical vitality, and emotional strength.”

WHAT IS IT? Dietary recommendations are broken down by blood groups: A, B, AB and O.  (Positive or negative Rh factors are irrelevant.) D’Adamo claims certain lectins (sugar-binding proteins) can harm various blood types.
• Blood Type O (“the hunter”) should have a high-protein diet and avoid whole wheat completely. O’s are more prone to a sluggish thyroid, weight gain and hyperactivity.
• Blood Type A (“the cultivator”) should not eat any red meat and would benefit from a leafy green vegetarian diet. Type A’s tends to have a more sensitive immune system and should try to avoid smoking.
• Blood Type B (“the nomad”) thrives when consuming meat and dairy products because they have strong digestive abilities, but they are more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases.
• Blood Type AB (“the enigma”) is a hybrid between A and B types. It is suggested that people with this mix should eat fish and stay away from cured meat, since it is linked to cancer. AB tends to have low levels in stomach acids, which can create an overgrowth of certain bacterias.

YOUR BRAIN ON THIS DIET: This diet can be plant- or meat-based, depending on your blood type, so it’s difficult to assess its effects on the brain.

CRITICS: The consensus among most scientists, doctors and nutritionists is that the Blood Type Diet is unsupported by scientific evidence. bw

■ Ah, blueberries: the refreshing taste of summer. What could be more gratifying than popping them into your mouth one by one, their ripe, sweet and sour goodness being crushed between your teeth, leaving a faint bluish tint on your pucker?

But there’s much more to the little berry than you’re probably aware of. Most people know that blueberries are an antioxidant—an anti-cancer, anti-aging and disease-fighting element. But what’s not always known is that, according to the USDA and Tufts University, eating this fruit daily will most likely reverse age-related brain decline, as well as age-related loss of balance, and improve short-term memory loss.

Here’s how: Highly reactive forms of oxygen called free radicals create chemical reactions that damage brain cells. Tiny nutrients from food help the oxygen in your brain fight free radicals. Antioxidants are your first line of defense against free radicals. To counteract these radical oxidants, the brain needs an ample supply of antioxidants.

Hence, blueberries.

There is no shortage of what you can do with the little darlings: Eat them straight off the bush or as a frozen treat. Try them in a smoothie or in yogurt. Have one cup daily, and blue your brains out! bw

■ American students continue to fall behind their counterparts in the rest of the industrialized world in mathematics and science, according to the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Our high school reading and writing scores produce similar downward trending data. What can we do? How do we produce the best minds during a child’s elementary and secondary school years? That is the new window that parents, educators and policy-makers should be looking through to create a 21st-century-based school model.

A quarter of a century ago, the influential national report A Nation at Risk argued that lengthening the school day would expand a student’s knowledge base, improving his/her achievement scores. The contemporary financial climate may preclude extending the school day, but we can extend a child’s learning throughout the calendar year.

University of California neuroanatomist Dr. Marian Diamond, a pioneer in brain-based learning, has shown that neural pathways that represent specific knowledge or skills begin to diminish—they are pruned away—after only four days of non-use. Should we be surprised by the massive amount of re-teaching necessary in September following nearly three months of academic neglect?

Whether kids’ summertimes will be spent at home, in a summer-school setting, community center or library, there are a number of strategies parents, educators and the local community can employ throughout the summer season so that September will not be a cognitive wasteland, where educators spend their time playing catch-up to reacquaint students with an academic setting.

In school: Prepare students for fall in the summer!
Students should spend the last week of the school year with a teacher from the next grade level. Teachers would introduce the books students will have in the coming year, along with some of the key concepts and skills they will learn.

Student-teacher relationships could be initiated, particularly since this teacher may be the one whose classroom they will be sitting in come fall. Student learning would get a head start on the teaching and learning standards for the next year. Information would be sent home to parents, describing precisely how they can prepare their child over the summer months for greater success in the subsequent school year. Not only can students sharpen and maintain the skills learned from the previous year, which may serve as the building blocks for new learning, but the anticipatory pre-learning experience prepares the brain for making new pathways for learning by creating new neural connections.

In the libraries and school districts: Open your doors!
Districts and local libraries should collaborate to provide weekly refresher and skill-maintenance classes in reading, writing, mathematics and science; the usually predictable “summer drop-off” in skills proficiency could be substantially reduced if not completely eliminated. Brain connections that support academic skills become “hard-wired” with repeated usage. With HD videos, DVDs and virtual reality, when children walk past the wide library doors, even wider doors to boundless knowledge open as if by magic! They can take journeys back in time, travel inside the human body, go anywhere around our world, beneath the oceans and beyond our skies. “Dittos don’t build dendrites,” says educator Susan Kovalik, one of the leaders in the brain-based learning movement; active involvement does.

Today’s well-equipped libraries can generate the most memorable of all summer experiences when we shift our preoccupation away from the three Rs and toward the nearly infinite number of print and electronic media products and resources available, which provide limitless opportunities for learning. They will expand cognitive development, if the materials offer the four I’s of learning:
• The Interactive
• The Informative (“knowledge is power”)
• The Interpersonal (face to face)
• The Inspirational (and affirming)

For parents and teachers: Encourage helpfulness with the Helping Hand
Parents should find a highly visible location where they can post a giant poster of a handprint. (See Chart 1: A Helping Hand Aids the Growing Mind.) When one child helps another one learn, encourage the second child to write the name of his/her helper on the handprint along with a short sentence on how and/or why his efforts were helpful and worth public acknowledgment.

Once your children or students begin to appreciate the many supportive “people resources” around them, and how we can assist one another along the path of learning, you will find the following:
1. Students will actively pursue more opportunities to help one another, because human beings are first and foremost highly social beings.
2. Children will immediately look for their names on the handprint and read about their supportive contributions.
3. The self-esteem of less popular and/or frequently isolated students blossoms when they are sought out by their peers.
4. Bullying decreases, because it has been devalued.
5. Children begin to appreciate that teaching and helping are everyone’s responsibility, and not the exclusive property of a parent or teacher.

In March 2009, a Tennessee teacher learned of this “Helping Hand” strategy and deployed it in her junior high school science classroom. She reported an almost instantaneous increase in cooperation, involvement, patience, compassion and learning demonstrated by her students, which rejuvenated her passion for teaching enough to withdraw her request for an early retirement.

Rather than playing referee for the summer, parents should post a Helping Hand chart in a prominent place in the home, reminding children that supporting one another is a vital family value.

For parents: Boost vocabulary!
According to linguistics experts, the average child understands about 8,000 vocabulary words when he/she enters kindergarten, although many students begin school well below this figure. But students should exit high school with a working knowledge of more than 87,000 words. That’s 79,000 words in the balance! Students must learn 6,076 words per year, which translates into 34 words every one of the 178 days of the school year. (See Chart 2: Vocabulary Development.)

If we take advantage of the 8 1/2-week summer vacation as prime time for further vocabulary development, we can reduce this Herculean task by 30%.

Cultivating a robust vocabulary is a prominent key to academic success in listening, speaking, reading and writing. The brain establishes vast networks of dendrites, the branch-like extensions connecting neurons in the brain that interconnect our competencies in listening, speaking, writing, drawing and reading. Have kids:
• Talk about what they’ve read
• Write about what they’ve listened to
• Draw pictures of what they read
• Listen to others describe what they have read
• Read aloud what they have written

Providing these multiple exposures to meaningful vocabulary and firsthand formal uses of language builds dendrites and synapses that support what was learned but also serve as pathways for new, related learning. Dendrites are the neurophysiological access routes by which cognitive connections are later made.

Word-immersion activities benefit all children, particularly those who, unsurprisingly, are at the lower end of the achievement continuum. One of the best ways to teach “phonics” and phonemic awareness is to present students with a wealth of rich and regular opportunities to write new words before, during and after those words are read. When students practice writing the words slowly and reading them slowly, they began to reinforce the connections between the sounds produced by the letters and syllables. Writing activities cultivate a better understanding of both spelling and phonics.

Using camps to teach science and mathematics
Our ancestors have always been fascinated by, and solved problems in  the context of, the natural world that impacts our daily lives.

Many students enter school enthralled by science, but that passionate flame is quickly doused when formal science education is reduced to read-about-science rather than treating science as a verb.

The research of Dr. Carol O’Donnell at George Washington University concluded that conceptual development in science is attained best when science content is delivered via hands-on and inquiry-based learning experiences. A significant portion of that learning success is attributable to the fact that seven of the nine Multiple Intelligences formulated by Howard Gardner of Harvard University are typically utilized during hands-on learning. (See Chart 3: Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.)

Summer science camps take advantage of our human evolutionary interest in the physical and biological world around us.

Project-based active learning, where students participate in science inquiry, quantifying what occurs during science investigations, drawing pictures of the relationships, writing about the experiences and participating in follow-up reading (reading aloud, reading alone, choral reading) allows students to merge goals of reading, writing, listening, speaking, science and mathematics. Educators have long separated these subjects and skills in the curriculum as if they were completely unrelated. Instead, these subjects and skills should all be taught together in meaningful and connected contexts. A child’s storytelling abilities were predictive of his/her mathematical abilities two years later, according to a 2004 article in the journal First Language. Children with high scores on mathematics tests also had correspondingly high scores on their storytelling abilities two years earlier.

Our human brain is massively interconnected to permit all of our competencies through:
• The association pathways, which link together areas of the cerebral cortex within the same hemisphere;
• The projection pathways, which project outwards from one area of the brain to more distant areas;
• The commissural pathways, which connect functional areas in one hemisphere of the brain with the identical “homotopic” (same-purposed) areas in the opposite hemisphere.

Ideally, learning should be all about maximizing these brain connections that produce what we call knowledge. In the book Consilience, Edward O. Wilson, the father of sociobiology, observed that everything in our universe is somehow connected. By softening the borders between subjects, skills and disciplines, and instead looking for ways in which they are tied together, students will benefit by navigating the academic world easier. Academic disciplines should not be thought of as areas of specialization but rather as topics for children that are in search of attention-grabbing, “ah-ha!” connections.

In 2008, Tacoma Public Schools started offering a 2 1/2-week Summer Science Camp, which capitalizes on these academic synergies. Unlike other summer school programs that start at the beginning of summer, the Tacoma project begins the month prior to the fall opening of school. Tara Edmonds, the school district’s elementary science facilitator, has reported significant growth in mathematics and science achievement scores for students who participate in Summer Science Camp.

Because the human brain craves stimulation, after brief periods of sensory deprivation we hallucinate in order to produce our own stimuli for the brain to process. For generations, parents have been led to believe that summer vacation is necessary for relaxation and recuperation from cognitive development (although by the second week of vacation, many children frequently complain that they’re bored). What is so physically or emotionally punishing about the school year that a three-month recovery period suddenly becomes mandatory? There is no research to date that confirms this notion.

The summer months frequently constitute the best time for giving children the highest quality and quantity of challenge, support and ongoing feedback.

Students compete with perhaps 30 others for the teacher’s attention in the classroom. Support and feedback are scarce commodities in a typical classroom, but young learners in particular need a steady diet of them for academic growth, concept development and skills mastery (see Chart 4). In addition to more challenge, support and feedback during the summer, the home and school should become places where the “S.A.I.L.” philosophy should be followed in an uncompromising fashion (see Chart 5).

Let them grow!
There is an old adage from Asia that says, “A man, who plants flowers, grows.” Planting a garden during the summer gives children one of the most intriguing experiences—witnessing the wonders of nature firsthand. In addition to having a unique opportunity to eat nutritional and healthful foods, the greatest returns on the time spent digging, planting the seeds and watering are:

(1) Children unknowingly develop better “number sense” when they:
a. plant seeds in rows;
b. count seedlings when they sprout;
c. gather and count the vegetables.

(2) Children learn to care for another living organism, which is one
of the most important skills they will learn in their entire lives.

Forward-thinking strategies like these eliminate the emotional numbness students feel from being academically blindsided when they are under-prepared at the onset of a new school year. These conditions frequently promote child and adolescent depression, resulting from overwhelming helplessness. Psychologists correlate this state of mind with the overproduction of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, making learning all the more difficult.

Hopefully, these strategies and other ideas presented will generate an epiphany during your child’s summer, and for his/her entire life, as well. Don’t forget, the chronologically-advanced brain (adults) can also use this prescription for a mentally healthy summer! bw

The Art of Choosing, by Sheena Iyengar

How much control do you have in your life? Have you ever refrained from doing something that you wanted to do because you didn’t have a choice? Do you spend more time than desired in the cereal aisle at the grocery store trying to decide?

In The Art of Choosing, Columbia University professor Sheena Iyengar thoroughly analyzes the concept of choice, something that she has been pondering since a very young age. As a Sikh immigrant from India, she was conscious of the different views toward choice while growing up in America. While her family and religion told her what to eat and whom to marry, her American friends lived lives abundant with choices, in comparison. Choice is associated with freedom, but only after understanding the “art” of choosing can one avoid manipulation from advertising, recognize cultural traps, and master coping with the choices that one must make or has made.

Iyengar presents stories and experiments showing that your own survival can depend on choice. Steven Callahan, captain of the Napoleon Solo, was lost at sea for 76 days. In his case, survival was a choice he made every day, instead of accepting any idea of “fate.” Being presented with more choices can actually delay the decision-making process, as shown in Iyengar’s jam experiment, where shoppers purchased more jams when the number of choices was reduced from 24 varieties to six.

Iyengar will leave the reader pondering how they view choice and open a door of reflection to how much control one has over destiny. “It’s when we tell the story of our lives in terms of choice, that it gives meaning to the things we do every day,” Iyengar writes.

The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told about Genetics, Talent and IQ Is Wrong, by David Shenk
(Doubleday, 2010)

Have you ever stopped yourself from doing something because you believed you were out of your league intellectually or physically? We’ve come a long way since Mendelian genetics and the notion that our genes directly determine our traits, that our environment has little, if any, influence on them. In The Genius in All of Us, David Shenk argues that the paradigm of innate talent is dead, and that genes are not the blueprints determining one’s fate. Instead, it is nature and nurture — what he calls “Genes x Environment” (GxE) — that determines a person’s future. Genes are actually influenced by one’s environment.

Our reliance on genes, natural talent and IQ as deciding factors of our abilities is very damaging to the individual and to society as a whole — adults rarely reach their full potential when in fact there could be an abundance of “genius” in our world, Shenk says. The key to genius is not in our genes, but in understanding our ability to influence and change our future. From learning an instrument to increasing your memory, you can change who you are and what you do, he says.

Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience, by Stephen S. Hall
(Knopf, 2010)

What factors (age, experience, aptitude, character) influence wisdom, and what role does our brain play? Author Stephen S. Hall bundles together the history of wisdom and ideas from philosophy and psychology formed over thousands of years up to recent discoveries made in neuroscience.

How does wisdom direct us in leading a meaningful life and knowing what to do in uncertain situations? According to Hall, “Wisdom as a process can serve as a guide to helping us make the best-possible decisions at junctures of great importance in our lives.” He presents erudite perspectives on the subject, from Socrates to Gandhi, and introduces eight pillars of wisdom.

Hall begins with his own experience on the morning of 9/11, questioning how wisely he initially handled this urgent situation. The need for wisdom seems to come at times of crisis in our lives, “before we think we need it.”

Wisdom is not just for the old, gray-haired man sitting in the secluded mountains; Hall reflects on its meaning in today’s world. The key to your personal development and accumulation of wisdom can be examined by the company you keep and your interactions with those around you. bw

1. Hydration

It can be hot in the summer. When it’s hot, we want to drink. Water. Lots of it. The brain loves water almost as much as it loves oxygen. That’s because the brain is 85% water—and you can hardly ever have too much of it. Water helps us learn better (even if it’s summer!), stay alert (for summer fun), feel energetic and healthy. Most importantly, drink before you’re thirsty, because thirst indicates you’re already slightly dehydrated. Drink eight to 10 glasses of water a day, throughout the day.

2. Exercise

When the sun is out early, we like to be up early too—and out of the house. It’s not hard to take long walks, bike rides or runs in the park when the weather is cooperating. That’s why in the summer we tend to get more exercise, which is not only good for the body but for the brain as well. Exercises such as walking increase blood circulation, and thus increase the oxygen and glucose that reach your brain. Exercise produces such chemicals as dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin, which help stabilize moods and prevent anxiety and depression. Exercise three to four days a week for at least 30 minutes.

3. Long Lazy Summer Evenings

When it’s cold and dark in the winter, we often head inside early and cuddle up on the couch to watch a movie. But when the sun stays out late, we do too. These longer stretches of time seem to stretch out our brains as well, as we take up projects we have been putting off, such as reading the classics, learning a new language or building that electric car we ordered in the mail. The brain creates new neurons (neurogenesis) when we learn and use our memory. Tackle a new summer project that challenges your brain.

4. Lighter Foods

Who wants to feel heavy in the summer? All those carbohydrates we packed away like bears in hibernation during the winter just slow us down in summer. That’s why people tend to eat smaller portions and lighter foods in the summer. A low-calorie diet has been shown to prolong life. In the summer, because we eat more healthy and light fruit and vegetables, the brain tends to get the proper balance of nutrients, including protein and sugar. Just beware of barbecues! Start your morning with a healthy yogurt fruit shake.

5. Friends

In the summer we tend to have more time for our families and friends. Socializing is more than just good fun. Research has shown that establishing and maintaining strong social networks and support groups is good for your health and happiness. For older people, having larger social networks can reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive impairment, according to the Journal of Public Health. Research also shows that deep conversation, more than superficial chitchat, provides more brain stimulation. Take time to share with family and friends. bw

It’s epilepsy, one of the oldest documented and misunderstood brain disorders in history. In 400 BC, Hippocrates recognized that epilepsy was a brain disorder, and “he refuted the ideas that seizures were a curse from the gods and that people with epilepsy held prophetic powers,” writes Dr. Orrin Devinsky in Epilepsy: Patient and Family Guide (Demos Health, 2008), the third edition of the definitive handbook for epilepsy. Witches—who were hunted down and killed—were often characterized by seizures, and by the 19th century, epilepsy was considered a contagious and psychiatric disorder. “In the early twentieth century, some U.S. states had laws forbidding people with epilepsy to marry or become parents, and some states permitted sterilization,” Devinsky writes. “We have come a long way.”

Parkinson’s disease has celebrity Michael J. Fox representing it (he is also afflicted), AIDS has Elton John, colon cancer has Terrence Howard (whose mother died from the disease), and breast cancer has those cute little pink ribbons and myriad celebrities touting the need for a cure. But epilepsy has few famous public advocates. “A lot of people have epilepsy and it’s not widely known,” says Dr. Scott Hirsch, primary neuropsychiatrist at the New York University Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. Compared to other diseases, epilepsy is “under-funded and under-researched and not as vocal,” says Hirsch, who is also a clinical assistant professor of neurology, psychiatry, and child and adolescent psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. “It’s important to have that for epilepsy.”

Epilepsy does have that advocate in Dr. Devinsky, the founder and director of the NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Center in New York, the largest epilepsy center in the United States, which has more than 2,500 referrals per year. Devinsky may not be a celebrity, but the professor of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine has published more than 250 articles and chapters in more than 20 books on everything from the origins of brain delusions to “Embarrassment as the Aura of a Complex Partial Seizure.” Devinsky has been named Best Doctor by numerous publications and organizations, and he co-founded Epilepsy.­com­ and the Epilepsy Therapy Project, as well as FACES (Finding a Cure for Epilepsy and Seizures), an organization that promotes research into new treatments.

“I thought I’d do more basic science,” Dr. Devinsky recalls, sitting behind his desk in a corner office on Manhattan’s East Side. When he attended Harvard Medical School in the early ’80s, he loved studying the brain but felt unsure about neurology because he thought that, with brain tumors, “you just gave them a diagnosis and sent them home.” But his mentor in medical school, Dr. Norman Geschwind, the father of modern behavioral neurology in America (as well as the creator of the term behavioral neurology), attracted Devinsky and countless others to the field. One of Geschwind’s areas of interest was epilepsy and how it worked; Devinksy decided to focus on that. “Epilepsy was a very attractive area,” he says. “It was one of the few areas of neurology [at the time] where you could do something for someone… You could help people.”

And help people he does, since founding the center in 1989, always searching for better and earlier diagnoses, better treatments and a better quality of life for his patients. One of his major accomplishments is bringing the disorder to the forefront of society—explaining the disorder, its causes, treatments like drugs, surgery and lifestyle changes.

“A seizure is a brief, excessive discharge of brain electrical activity that changes how a person feels, senses, thinks or behaves,” he writes. “During an epileptic seizure, the regulatory systems that maintain the normal balance between stimulation (excitation) and dampening (inhibition) of nerve cells break down. For example, there may be a loss of inhibitory activity or an overproduction of an excitory neurotransmitter that causes a group of neurotransmitters to fire excessively. These in turn may stimulate neighboring cells or cells with which they have strong connections. Ultimately, large populations are abnormally activated all at once (synchronously). That is, the electrical discharges of many cells become linked, creating a storm of activity.”

His websites, books and articles all answer common questions such as: “I had one seizure, will I get epilepsy?” (There’s a 50% chance.) “Does epilepsy cause mental illness?” (No, but there is a higher rate of anxiety and depression.) “Do seizures change the brain?” (Brief ones don’t, but grand mal ones lasting longer than 20 minutes do; memory problems often occur in either.) “If I have epilepsy will my children?” (Probably not.) And, “Is epilepsy a lifelong problem?” (No, most people need medication for a short time, and if a person is seizure-free for two to four years, they can often go off meds.)

No one knows exactly what causes epilepsy. Devinsky is one of 150 experts involved in the Epilepsy Phenome/Genome Project, a government-funded study to find genetic causes/influencers of epilepsy and genes affecting the response to treatment. The study involves 5,250 people. According to the project’s website, “The goals are to better understand what causes epilepsy, why some families have several people with epilepsy, and how we can better predict which anti-seizure medications (or no medication) will work best for an individual.”

“If people do know that there are two siblings or parents and children with epilepsy, we would be interested in talking to them,” Dr. Devinsky says.

Genetics is only a small part of epilepsy. “Anyone can get it from a car accident, a stroke, a tumor, Alzheimer’s, or an infection like meningitis,” the doctor explains. And while the important piece of the puzzle might be the source of the disorder—although many people believe there is causality where none exists, he says—just as important is controlling it and having a good quality of life. Quality of life could mean finding a new job, because seizures prevent a person from working in certain fields, such as operating heavy machinery or where driving is required.

Quality of life also extends far beyond the seizures: “The disorder continues to carry a significant stigma,” he says. Children can be insensitive to others with the disorder. Other children’s parents, teachers and others don’t understand the disorder, which is why Devinsky suggests people say they have a “seizure disorder” rather than “epilepsy,” although he recommends in his book that his patients get comfortable with their condition because, “People see you through your eyes. If you are afraid of epilepsy, they will be afraid of it. It is a neurological disorder; if you are comfortable talking about it, then almost everyone else will be.” Dr. Devinsky founded FACES to challenge the stigma and educate the public to improve people’s quality of lives.

Quality of life doesn’t only mean not having seizures but few or no side effects from anti-epileptic drugs (AED). “Do not accept troublesome side effects without finding out if they are avoidable,” Devinsky recommends. For example, “Sally” was just starting to speak, but when she was put on Topamax, an anti-epileptic drug, her speech was shut down. “On the lower dose it slowed down and became more effortful, and as we pushed it up she stopped speaking,” one of her parents says. Five days after they took her off the medication, she was speaking again. Side effects or not, parents must build their children’s self-esteem, and cultivate it in themselves.

In addition to AED, people with epilepsy can go on special diets, use alternative therapies like biofeedback and, if all that proves ineffective in controlling the disease, can consider surgery. Today, people whose seizures cannot be effectively controlled for one to two years are considered candidates. “In general, the patient should be treated with at least two single drugs or a combination of two or more drugs before surgery is considered,” Devinsky says. There are two main types of surgery: Lobotomies, which are resective surgeries, in which the part of the brain causing the seizures is removed; and the less common corpus callostomy, which is a disconnection “interrupting nerve pathways along which seizure impulses spread.”

Experimental trials are under way to test other solutions. “There is an explosion of scientific information on how the individual neurons work and how they communicate in normal and diseased conditions,” Devinsky writes. Solutions include early seizure detection like magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to discern biochemical changes in the brain, as well as using a device to sense a seizure’s onset and release medication directly to the troublesome brain area to prevent a seizure. “Right now, we’re focusing on treating epilepsy, but this device can eventually be of enormous benefit to patients with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and stroke victims,” he says. Other trials include using brain stimulation like biofeedback to prevent seizures, and transplantation of stem or fetal cells.

Ultimately, though, there is not one cure for epilepsy, since it’s a spectrum of disorders. But the vision is still the same, as Dr. Hirsch succinctly says: “Our goal to completely stop seizures in every patient. Completely.” bw