Neurons Firing

Yeehah! My grant proposal to attend this Friday’s and Saturday’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain workshop has been funded by my school. This will be my third DRSB workshop, having attended the Five Day Intensive Drawing Class back in August 2005, and the one day Sketching Class in February 2007. This time I’m taking the Two Day Intensive Advanced Drawing Class.

Enough about the class titles! It’s all about the brain and the hand and the eye, about getting in the flow and letting yourself go. It’s about initially trying something different and then trying to get better at it. It’s about getting out of your comfort zone. It’s about tickling the brain and getting other neuron’s firing. It’s about stimulating creativity. It’s about having fun doing something different.

Can you tell I’m excited!

My previous post provided a primer in cellular learning as a beginning to understanding how the teen brain develops. As part of this process Frances Jensen describes:

The Paradox of the Teen Brain

Cell (neuronal) based learning is at its height in the teen brain
but
the network coordination is not fully connected up yet.

What does this mean? Essentially, teenagers – who, Jensen stressed, are not small adults – have superior learning skills to adults but their prefrontal cortex is still developing. As a result, then tend to have difficulty with impulse control and are not the best at making informed decisions.

As the brain develops, it matures from back to front, so the prefrontal cortex is the last to develop, becoming fully developed around age twenty-four. This explains why teenagers do not always act in what adults would consider a rational manner. Jensen also explained that the “excitation system peaks in early childhood, which is also when many affective disorders begin, while the inhibitory system continues to develop into adulthood.”

Long term potentiation, described in my previous post, peaks two to three years earlier with girls (ages 10 to 14) than with boys (ages 12 to 17). Thus, “adolescent synaptic plasticity is “way better” than adults.” Because LTP is widely influenced by the environment, teenagers may be wired for optimal learning but also have the highest susceptibility to negative influences.

If you recall from the previous post, LTP is why repetition works. Imagine a fertile brain, still developing, and highly attuned to learning. Now expose this brain to drugs or alcohol or addiction or sleep deprivation or stress or multitasking. The teen brain is primed to learn and not primed to make informed decisions. With repetitive exposure to these negative influences, the teen brain learns to want continued exposure to these influences. Jensen states it succinctly: the “Adolescent brain responds too robustly to addiction, much more so than the adult brain.”

Jensen touched on some of the specifics of these negative influences. For instance, marijuana negatively impacts the sending and receiving of neuronal signals. “The effects may linger for days, so if you get high on Saturday this may impact your test taking four days later.” (I’ll bet that’s a surprise to any teenage readers!)

She shared a story about stress: Consider a mouse in a cage, with a cat hovering just outside the cage, and imagine the stress level of the mouse. Now simply replace the mouse with a student in a classroom, and replace the cat with either a teacher or a parent, and imagine the stress level of the student. Perhaps it will not surprise you to learn that high levels of stress in adolescence can cause depression later on in adulthood.

Lastly, Jensen talked about chronic sleep deprivation. According to her, two days of deprivation can lead to no LTP taking place; that means no real learning being consolidated over night. The simple solution is to get to sleep early and be sure to get sufficient amounts of sleep. Reviewing information at night, just before falling asleep, leads to sleep-induced replay which facilitates LTP. I have read about this many times and, while not testing it out in terms of preparing for a test, have done my own experiment for remembering. Instead of writing myself a note before bed, I have repeated to myself out loud what I want to remember in the morning. And guess what, in the morning I have remembered my message to myself from the night before.

At the National Institute for Health site you can view a time lapse movie of consolidated brain MRI scans showing 15 years of normal brain development from ages 5 through 20.

“Red indicates more gray matter, blue less gray matter. Gray matter wanes in a back-to-front wave as the brain matures and neural connections are pruned. Areas performing more basic functions mature earlier; areas for higher order functions mature later. The prefrontal cortex, which handles reasoning and other “executive” functions, emerged late in evolution and is among the last to mature. Studies in twins are showing that development of such late-maturing areas is less influenced by heredity than areas that mature earlier.”

What does all of this mean in terms of teenage brains and their education? As Jensen summarized:

• Teenagers have exceptional skill for cellular learning (better than an adult, not as good as a young child).
• Connectivity is a work in progress (better than a young child, not as good as an adult).
• There is a paradoxical state in the teen brain (impulsive, enhanced susceptibility to environmental effects).
• Schools and teachers should take genetic differences and school hours into consideration (girls develop two years sooner than boys, and all teens tend to have circadian rhythms that have them most alert and awake by ten o’clock in the morning).

As a teacher of teenagers and a mother of two sons, one who is currently a teenager, I was primed for Frances Jensen’s session The Paradox of Learning in the Teen Brain: Unique Vulnerabilities and Strengths. Jensen is a doctor at Harvard’s Children’s Hospital and is on a mission to share current research on teen brains with those who would most benefit from the information – teenagers, their parents, and their teachers.

Just this past Friday, I shared the bulk of her talk in a class I co-teach with an upper school colleague, Frontiers in Science. Once a week I give a talk on what’s new in technology, and volunteered to give a talk on what’s new in brain research. To best understand the paradox of the teen brain, it helps to first have a sense of how the brain learns.

Jensen provided a quick primer in cellular learning. Essentially, information in the form of a signal is received by a neuron via its dendrites, and then information in the form of a signal is fired through the neuron’s axon and out via its axon terminals. This communication between neurons happens across the synapse, which is the space between the neurons. Coating the axon is myelin, which protects the axon and assists with communication.

Not all brain cells fire; some send excitatory signals and some send inhibitory signals. According to Jensen, in order for learning to take place there needs to be:

• a synapse
• a patterned input
• enough excitation to induce a response
• and alterations in the activated cell that is long lasting and leads to long term potentiation (LTP)

What, exactly, is Long Term Potentiation? Potentiation refers to increased effectiveness or potency. In terms of LTP, it means the ability of information to retain its strength over time, in other words, for information to be remembered. To better understand what this means in terms of learning, consider that LTP (the following comes directly from Jensen)

• consists of a practice effect or memorization
• is why repetition works
• explains why multiple inputs into a cell enhances learning
• and is why multiple methods of teaching should be utilized (my addition)

With LTP the synapse gets altered to be larger, faster and newer, with more receptors.

In my next post I’ll share more of what Frances Jensen said about the teen brain, in particular how it differs from the child and adult brain. Meanwhile, feel free to check out Teen Brain’s Ability to Learn Can Have a Flip Side on The Dana Foundation site. The article shares a number of reports that lend

support to the idea that the remarkable adaptability of the adolescent brain can be a double-edged sword: The dramatic remodeling of the brain during adolescence holds tremendous opportunities for growth and learning but also appears to increase a teen’s vulnerability to the long-term effects of environmental influences such as stress and drug experimentation.

Another article on the topic of teen brains, Understanding the Temporary Insanity of Adolescence, appeared recently in The New York Times, and I suspect there will be more and more doctors deciding to specialize in this area of medicine, just as there are pediatricians and gerontologists who specialize by a general age range of patients.

If you read Doidge’s book, The Brain that Changes Itself, then you didn’t need to be at the Learning & the Brain conference session. And if you were at the session, then you should still read the book because Doidge shares intriguing stories and, in my opinion, is a far more captivating writer than he is a presenter.

Having blogged extensively about the people and issues described in Doidge’s book, rather than recoup it all again, I refer you to the tag cloud for a look at my past posts. If you are not a regular reader of this blog, my recommendation is to begin with the earliest post, which describes Plasticity and will be at the bottom of the page.

You will discover in your reading of either the book or my posts that “brain plasticity occurs in response to the environment, the task at hand, and our thoughts and imaginings”.

And what took so long for plasticity to be acknowledged? Doidge says it is partially due to how the brain has been considered throughout history, which has been from a combination of natural and mechanical perspectives; to a lack of technology for adequately seeing changes as they happen in the brain; to poor prognosis, in the past, of those with brain dysfunctions, coupled with insufficient clinical evidence of recovery; and to the “plastic paradox” (see the third from last paragraph), whereby plasticity leads to rigidity, and therefore plasticity masks itself.

Doidge has done an admirable job of compiling in one place results of related research and development, and chronicling tales of perseverance. If you weren’t already in awe of your amazing brain, you will be after reading his book.

Instinctual optimism and resilient mindset. Those are the two concepts that Sam Goldstein introduced in his Learning & the Brain keynote Hardwired to Learn: Creating Schools That Nurture and Grow Developing Brains. From his site: “Sam Goldstein, Ph.D. is a doctoral level psychologist with areas of study in school psychology, child development and neuropsychology.”

Instinctual optimism is Goldstein’s reply to the question, How do kids know they can? They are intrinsically driven to learn. Furthermore, as a result of this instinctual optimism, kids know that whatever it is, they can do it, hence the resilient mindset. Think of babies and toddlers you have known – they are instinctually optimistic and resilient about learning to walk, for instance. They don’t tend to ask, and aren’t told they can’t; they just go ahead and do it, taking in stride the bumps and falling down.

Both of these concepts remind me of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk about creativity. Kids come to school eager, wide-eyed and filled with curiosity and creativity. (And Sir Ken says the schools proceed to educate the curiosity out of the kids.)

Goldstein went on to provide a little brain and gene background. He said that genes know in exactly which organisms they reside, and the “basic brain wiring plan is encoded in the genes.” That explains the nature part, but there is also a nurture portion, for although we may be genetically preprogrammed, brain development is also experience based.

At this point he posed three questions:

1. What is and is not intelligence?
2. How is intelligence different from knowledge?
3. How is intelligence different from achievement?

Given all of the above, Goldstein then talked about children and classrooms that nurture them. He felt strongly that it is “not our job to motivate kids, but to create an environment in which kids motivate themselves.” In creating such an environment, we need to consider (and all of the following are quotes)

• potential benefits and adversities of external rewards
• reinforcement of instinctual optimism
• providing opportunities for empathy and altruism (create community)
• providing competition in the absence of winning
• providing extrinsic reinforcers for effort and progress, and not for control [Behavior modification is for control, and Goldstein is not a big fan of this.]
• fostering opportunities for intrinsic control
• maximizing external consequences to control
• finding ways to enhance self-discipline
• setting limits in autonomous ways; helping kids learn to manage themselves instead of teachers managing them

Goldstein concluded by sharing two lists, of sorts: how to focus on student well being and describing the mindset of a resilient child. And he closed with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The secret of education lies in respecting the student.

Norman Doidge

Grand Ballroom – location for all Keynotes


Meeting of the emailers

Where I’d love to go!

Robert Kegan closed out his Learning & the Brain session with this Russian tale, told to him by his grandfather, and included in his book How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work. Kegan facilitated his interactive, collaborative workshop by taking us through the major exercise described in his book. The exercise might best be described as understanding our languages of commitment. More on that in weeks to come. For now, here is the tale.

It was winter and a woodcutter was walking through the woods, with plans to chop some wood to bring back home. Along the way he found a bird in the snow. The bird was cold and weak, and the woodcutter took heart, picked up the bird, placed it in his jacket, and continued into the woods.

Upon arriving at just the right spot for chopping some wood, the woodcutter realized he would have to put the bird down in order to do the chopping and carrying home of the wood. Wanting to keep the bird safe and warm, the woodcutter looked around for a place to put the bird. In the distance he spied some cow pies recently dropped by a passing herd. The woodcutter walked over to the warmest pile, dug out a nesting spot, and placed the bird within the surrounding warmth.  The woodcutter returned to his cutting area, cut down the wood he needed, then picked up the wood and carried it home.

Meanwhile, the warmth of the cow pile was nourishing the bird, so much so that the bird regained its strength and started to sing a lovely song. Off in the distance a hungry wolf’s ears perked up upon hearing the bird’s song. The wolf set off in search of the source of the sound, and soon came upon the bird nesting in the cow pile. With one big gulp, the wolf had his meal and the bird’s song had stopped.

This Russian tale has three morals which, according to Kegan, is the standard for Russian tales.

Moral 1
The one who gets you into a pile of s**t is not necessarily your enemy.

Moral 2
The one who gets you out of a pile of s**t is not necessarily your friend.

Moral 3
If you wind up in a pile of s**t, don’t sing about it!

Ah, awake since 4:30 this morning, I write this post from the comfort of home, still percolating from the intellectual and emotional bubbling of being in Cambridge and attending the Learning & the Brain conference.

Being one who likes to sit near the action, yesterday afternoon I situated myself up close, front and center, to better tune in to the four keynotes. My neighbor to the left turned out to be a fascinating 68 year old woman who, back in 1985, was the founding President of a public charter boarding school – the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. A few years ago she stepped down from that position to focus on consulting and writing a book, and in the course of her work has traveled to Australia and Africa, among other places. I couldn’t help but be interested in hearing more of her story, and peppered her with questions that she kindly obliged me in answering. She epitomizes, for me, what it means to be a lifelong learner and an intellecutal entrepreneur. And then I realized, as Monday’s afternoon session was beginning, that this multi-faceted woman was Tuesday’s opening keynote speaker!

Stephanie Pace Marshall received a rousing reception from an audience of approxmiately 600 as she finished her hour talk Igniting and Nurturing Whole Minds – How Advances in the Learning Sciences Can Frame and Shape the Transformation of Learning and Schooling. While it may be a lengthy title for a talk, which was full of stories, not-so-subtle pokes at the current state of spending on school and family services, and NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Marshall left us wanting to hear more.

She talked about transforming schools rather than reforming them, and ardently urged us – the teachers in the audience – to politicize the discussion. She brought up A Private Universe, a movie that pointedly shows how basic concepts can be misunderstood and carried around with us until and unless someone sets us straight, yet teachers thought they had taught and students thought they had learned. You can download Marshall’s notes for her talk here. Among her closing thoughts:

We don’t have time for pessimism. Pessimissm only works in good times.

The second keynote of the morning was really not a talk but an interactive workshop with Robert Kegan, whose book, How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work, I read prior to the conference. The workshop, Understanding and Overturning the Immunity to Change: An Interactive, Experiential Presentation, was all that and more, because if any part of this entire conference was going to transform us, this was it!

Funny, engaging, and thought provoking, Kegan walked around the room making eye contact as he encouraged us in our exploration of what it is we are committed to and what we are doing that prevents us from realizing this committment. That was the easy part. Next we had to take this apart and get into the real nitty gritty of what stops us from doing that which we say we want to accomplish. This is psychology and brain science taken to the most personal level.

Kegan left us with a Russian tale complete with three morals, but you will have to wait till tomorrow for that tale, as this one has reached its end!

A most stimulating series of sessions today, beginning with Kenneth S. Kosik’s talk about The Adult Brain and Memory: How Learning Protects Against Alzheimer’s. Kosik is soft spoken with an impressive command of his information that he is able to share in layperson terms. As with Sam Goldstein yesterday, Kosik cautioned us to be skeptical of products touted to take advantage of the brain’s plasticity, as there is minimal data to support those claims. He presented an Alzheimer’s 101 class and, for the first time, I began to truly understand what is happening in my father’s brain. I took extensive notes that will be shared with my mom and brother, and when Kosik was finished, the words “compassionate scientist” were what first entered my mind to describe him.

At the very end of Kosik’s talk he mentioned a new technology of Connectomics, designed “to trace the fine wiring of the brain more accurately than ever before … could soon generate a complete wiring diagram–including every tiny fiber and miniscule connection–of a piece of brain.” If you have two minutes and thirty-three seconds, take a look at this 3-D reconstruction of a piece of rabbit retina

Following in this strand of adult brains and learning, Kathleen Taylor and Annaleee Lamoreaux, professors from Saint Mary’s College of Education in California, presented on Teaching With The Adult Brain in Mind. This was an interactive and lively session on adult development and adult learning, for which the slides and bibliography will be made available here.

The afternoon session consisted of four keynotes, three of them talks and one of them a movie, all focused on the topics of Brain Plasticity, Stress & Adverse Experiences. I was tickled to be seeing and hearing some of the people who have been mentioned in the literature. Bruce McEwen gave a jam-packed talk, interspersed with some humor and many well planned slides, on Stress and Neuroplasticity in Learning. Seth Pollak, perhaps one of the best grand ballroom presenters because he made eye contact and walked around, plus had superb slides consisting almost entirely of visual imagery, and told humorous and touching stories we could connect to, spoke about Developing Brains and At-risk Children.

The last two speakers had related topics. Elkhonon Goldberg gave a long talk (he had to skip portions in order to not exceed the time limit too greatly!) about Brain Plasticity and Cognitive Fitness. This was followed by the thirty minute documentary, A Change of Character, by Neal Goodman. Goodman’s movie covers the change in life of a patient who had damaged frontal lobes from a stroke and Elkhonon’s efforts to help restore the patient’s prior personality.

It is 9:45 at night and my brain is still raring to go, still processing the multitude of information taken in, and eager to further distill and discuss the ideas! However, I have a 7:15 breakfast date with my email colleague, so I am now going to work on winding down!

Two opening keynote sessions and two afternoon sessions about the teen brain = one very full day that began at 6 this morning.

Sam Goldstein kicked off the conference with his engaging talk: Hardwired to Learn: Creating Schools that Nurture and Grow Developing Brains. He was funny, entertaining, and thought provoking while telling stories and sharing visuals that contained more images and less text. He began his talk with a disclaimer, reminding us all to “Question the band wagon!” and think twice about information that is presented. Quoting Daniel Boorstin:

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.

The second keynote was given by Norman Doidge discussing his book, The Brain That Changes Itself. I had been especially looking forward to hearing him talk, having devoured his book with much appreciation. Well, live and learn. He is a far better author than presenter. Garr Reynolds would have been appalled to see Doidge’s presentation because Doidge read his slides which consisted, more often than not, of bulleted sentences!

Seventy-five minutes later, after lunch, I was raring to go for Frances Jensen and her session about The Paradox of Learning in the Teen Brain. This talk was the quick version of Teen Brain 101, a “short course for teens, their parents and teachers”, which Jensen designed with Harvard colleague David Urion. Their goal was to explain to teens and those who deal with them “fundamental insights that neuroscientists figured out years ago” but the information just never made it out to the public. Armed with complementary visuals (except for some of the charts) and a lively narrative, Jensen was stimulating and highly informative as she explained the science behind the functioning of the teen brain; she left me hungering for more.

Jeb Schenck wound up the day with his presentation on Teaching the Teen Brain: Connecting Memory, Emotions & Actions. Having heard Schenck’s name mentioned at various past confernces, and having read one of his books, I was eager to see him present. He did not disappoint, though I did not learn anything new, prompting me to double check that my choices for tomorrow’s morning sessions are based upon content and not speaker.

Topping the day was having meals with a delightful colleague who I had previously met by email as a result of her reading this blog. We’ve shared three meals together and have yet to run out of conversation! I also ran into an administrator with whom I had the pleasure of working for five years at the school prior to my current one. We spent a grand forty-five minutes catching up and pondering our futures. And now, I am so ready to fall sound asleep!