Over the last decade, scientists made two key discoveries that reframed our understanding of the adult brain’s potential to benefit from lifelong environmental enrichment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plastic; it can generate new neurons in response to physical activity and new experiences. Second, they confirmed the importance of social connectedness to late-life cognitive, psychological, and physical health. The integration of these findings with our understanding of individuals’ developmental needs throughout life underscores the importance of the “social brain.” The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is particularly integral to navigating complex social behaviors and hierarchies over the life course.

In this article, I will briefly articulate how the above findings inform the design of a social health-promotion program, the Experience Corps, which leverages seniors’ accumulated experiences and social knowledge while promoting continued social, mental, and physical health into the third age, when a person’s life goals are increasingly directed to legacy building. Experience Corps harnesses the time and wisdom of one the world’s largest natural growing resources—aging adults—to promote academic achievement and literacy in our developing natural resources—children—during a critical period in child development. In so doing, older volunteers instill a readiness to learn that may alter the child’s trajectory for educational and occupational attainment, as well as lifelong health. At the same time, preliminary evidence suggests that the senior volunteers experience measurable improvements in their cognitive and brain health.

The Developing Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex is the brain’s planning, or executive, center. It integrates past and present information to predict the future and to select the best course of action. Executive processes generally involve the initiation, planning, coordination, and sequencing of actions toward a goal. While we take these skills for granted, the brain requires considerable resources to navigate unpredictable environments and to integrate the multiple streams of information that each of us calculates hundreds of times per day. We often must flexibly and quickly update plans and priorities and inhibit distracting or irrelevant information in the environment and in memory that may direct attention away from a goal.

The PFC is evolutionarily the newest and largest region of the brain, and its growth over the millennia corresponds to the increasing importance of social behavior to human survival. Over time, collaboration and negotiation became at least as important to our survival as agility. PFC maturation is not complete until one’s early 20s,1 presumably because the ability to integrate multiple streams of information requires the maturation of physical, linguistic, and emotional sensory networks.2 The PFC’s extended developmental window involves maturation of networks that control attention steadily from childhood to adulthood, allowing us to filter multiple streams of information more efficiently.3, 4 For evidence, we have only to look at the decisions that adolescents make; teens are often enamored with living in the moment and considering the consequences later. With age and experience, these priorities reverse and thoughts of consequences prevail over the moment.

During the PFC’s developmental window, the brain may be particularly vulnerable to insult.5–8 Early-life brain imaging and cognitive testing studies show that lower socioeconomic status (SES) in children, as measured by family income, is associated with developmental lags in language and executive function and their associated brain structures, like the PFC. We do not yet know if these maturational lags make the brain more vulnerable to the effects of additional insults that accumulate with age, nor do we know how modifiable or reversible these imprints are in a fully developed adult brain.

In addition, we do not yet know whether socioeconomic deprivation in early life leaves a lasting imprint on the developing brain. We have established that birth to age two is a critical period of rapid brain growth and development, and head growth is 75 percent complete by age two.9 From age two to seven, language typically develops rapidly through spoken and then written expression. As such, there are critical windows of brain and language development that, when nurtured among children of all socioeconomic backgrounds, may lead to long-lasting effects on school success, occupational opportunities, and cognitive and psychological health throughout life, thus reducing economically related health disparities.

The late-developing PFC appears to be more vulnerable than other brain regions. With increasing age come increasing difficulties in executive control. Through longitudinal observation, we have found that components of executive function decline earlier than memory in older community-dwelling adults, and intervention targeting these components may delay and mitigate memory decline that leads to dementia.10 Consistent with this finding, studies of the aging human brain show that loss of brain volume is greater in the PFC than in posterior areas of the cortex.11–15

Healthy aging is not defined simply as the avoidance and management of chronic diseases. Healthy behaviors, including physical activity, social supports and engagement, and cognitive activity, remain important to overall health and prevention of cognitive decline and disability as people age—even into the oldest ages.16, 17 However, it has proven difficult to motivate older adults to participate in health-behavior change programs, especially for sustained periods of time.18 According to developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, the third act of life represents an opportunity to use a lifetime of accumulated knowledge—the kind of knowledge that is not easily memorized from books, classroom lectures, or online searches—to find purpose.19 This type of knowledge comes from decades of interpreting and understanding unpredictable social behaviors in order to predict and shape future rewards—not one’s own future, but that of succeeding generations through the legacy of transfer. I will outline here a rationale for valuing these abilities and, in so doing, identify a vehicle by which to maintain cognitive, physical, and social activity throughout life to buffer the effects of age and disease on the mind and body.

To continue reading this article by Michelle C. Carlson, Ph.D., published in Cerebrum, please click Here.

Courtesy of the University of California, Davis, Center for Neuroscience

What should everyone learn about the brain?

At the national level, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) describes what adults should know in its seminal work Science for All Americans.[1] AAAS also recommends learning goals for K-12 students in its Benchmarks for Science Literacy[2,3], and Atlas of Science Literacy[4,5], and the National Research Council (NRC) offers a similar set of goals in its National Science Education Standards.[6] States and school districts use the AAAS and NRC recommendations as a basis for the design of their own standards, which then inform the development of curriculum and assessment materials (those commercially developed as well as those developed with grant funds). In addition, the neuroscience community has developed its own set of core concepts that K-12 students and the general public should know about the brain and nervous system and has correlated those concepts to the national standards.[7]

Between the AAAS and NRC recommendations, there are some areas of broad consensus on what students should know. According to AAAS’s Benchmarks and Atlas, for example, students in the elementary to middle school grades should understand the following ideas:

• The brain enables human beings to think and sends messages to other body parts to help them work properly.
• The brain gets signals from all parts of the body telling it what is happening in each part. The brain also sends signals to parts of the body to influence what they do.
• Interactions among the senses, nerves, and brain make possible the learning that enables human beings to predict, analyze, and respond to changes in their environments.[8]

The National Research Council’s Standards offers very similar concepts in the following knowledge statements:

• Internal cues (such as hunger) and external cues (such as changes in the environment) influence the behavior of individual organisms. Humans and other organisms have senses that help them detect internal and external cues.
• All organisms must be able to obtain and use resources, grow, reproduce, and maintain stable internal conditions when living in a constantly changing external environment.
• Regulation of an organism’s internal environment involves sensing that environment and changing physiological activities to keep conditions within the range required to survive.[9]

For high school students, both the AAAS and the NRC learning goals include the role of the nervous system in the rapid transmission of information throughout the body through electrochemical signals. Some but not all of these ideas are also present in the most recent college– and career-readiness standards for science developed by the College Board.[10]

Beyond the basic but important concepts about the structure and function of the brain and the nervous system, only AAAS has specified any further knowledge in this area as essential to science literacy. For example, AAAS recommends that an understanding of mental health—including ideas about the mind/body relationship, factors that shape behavior, ways of coping with mental distress, and the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders—be considered foundational knowledge for all students. AAAS also includes learning as a topic that should be part of a common core of knowledge. Neither the NRC Standards nor the College Board Standards includes any of these additional brain-related concepts in its recommendations. None of the national standards documents specifies an understanding of the brain that is as detailed and extensive as the core concepts recommended by the Society for Neuroscience.

Although most states claim to have based their science standards on the AAAS Benchmarks and the NRC Standards, they are not bound by these national recommendations and often interpret them in very different ways so that there is little consistency in standards across the states. As a result, many states list the structure and function of human body systems as a broad topic in their standards, but only some—including Minnesota and North Carolina, for example—specify ideas about the nervous system; others, such as California and Texas, do not. Because of their strong influence on the content included in and excluded from science textbooks, which have been shown to play a central role in determining what is taught in the classroom, the state science standards are an extremely powerful leverage point for anyone seeking to change the content of the science curriculum.[11]

Brain scientists, like all members of the scientific community, have a key role to play in promoting a wider understanding of the concepts and skills that are important to their field and to science more generally. To help shape their state and local science standards, researchers and clinicians can volunteer to work with state boards of education to review new and revised science standards documents; they can also work with textbook selection committees to ensure that instructional materials are scientifically accurate and include the science content intended by their state standards. In addition, brain scientists can become effective advocates for high-quality science education for all students in their local communities.

Other models of engagement might also be useful. For example, as the issue of global climate change has become more urgent, earth and atmospheric scientists in federal agencies, universities, and non-governmental organizations have worked together to identify important information for students and adults to understand about climate and the impacts of and responses to climate change. Now that they have developed a framework that lays out the essential principles that all citizens should know about climate science,[12] federal agencies such as NOAA and NASA are funding efforts to develop effective ways to help a wide range of public audiences understand the science and engage in the relevant issues. Project 2061, AAAS’s science literacy initiative is leading one such effort. The project is identifying data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA that can be translated into classroom activities designed to help students understand a variety of weather and climate phenomena and the scientific principles that explain them. Similar efforts to identify phenomena-based learning experiences in the brain sciences—aligned to national and state standards and to the Neuroscience Core Concepts—could be the focus of productive collaborations between brain scientists and K-12 science educators and researchers.

Editor’s note: in this article for Cerebrum magazine, reprinted here with permission, Dr. Jo Ellen Roseman and Mary Koppal from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) discuss how brain science fits into national classroom curricula. While recommendations published by AAAS, the National Research Council, the Society for Neuroscience, and the College Board all include standards relating to the brain, what students actually learn in the classroom varies greatly from state to state.

Jo Ellen Roseman, Ph.D., is director of Project 2061 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and oversees its programs and activities aimed at improving education in science, mathematics, and technology for all students. Dr. Roseman joined Project 2061 with the release of Science for All Americans in 1989 and has been involved in the development, testing, and dissemination of its subsequent tools, including Benchmarks for Science Literacy, Resources for Science Literacy: Professional Development, Atlas of Science Literacy and its current effort to design assessments of science literacy. Dr. Roseman is the principal investigator for the Center for Curriculum Materials in Science, funded through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Center for Learning and Teaching program, and principal investigator for a curriculum development project funded by the U.S. Department of Education and focused on middle and high school chemistry and biology.

Mary Koppal is the communications director for Project 2061 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is responsible for the project’s publishing and outreach programs. Previously, Koppal was the publisher for the National Academy of Sciences’ Issues in Science and Technology, where she began her work as the associate publisher/circulation manager. From 1987 to 1994, she was responsible for the overall business and administrative operation of this award-winning national science and technology policy journal. Koppal also served as marketing director for the National Academy Press, which published trade, scholarly, and professional titles in all areas of science, technology, health, and public policy.

Further reading

• Promoting Brain-Science Literacy in the K-12 Classroom

Online Resources

• Genes to Cognition Online: Allows students to explore topics in neuroscience in a dynamic and fluid way.
• Brainy Kids: This Dana Foundation Web site provides resources and activities ranging from virtual dissections to interactive games.
• Test My Brain: Researchers recruit participants via this Web site, allowing students to participate in and learn about actual neuroscience studies.
• University of Illinois Visual Cognition Lab: This site provides videos of classic neuroscience studies on topics like inattentional blindness.
• Brain Hat Template: Educators can use this hat to aid students in learning the different parts and functions of the brain.
• Neuroscience for Kids: This site has many great resources, including recordings of action potentials.
• The Whole Brain Atlas: This site associated with Harvard Medical allows students to manipulate brain scans.
• The Scientist and Scientific American: These magazines have interesting articles on current topics in neuroscience for classroom use with older students.

Article References

1. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science for All Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

2. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Benchmarks for Science Literacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

3. American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Benchmarks Online” (2009), http://www.project2061.org/publications/bsl/online/index.php (accessed August 2010).

4. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Atlas of Science Literacy: Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Author, 2001).

5. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Atlas of Science Literacy: Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Author, 2007).

6. National Research Council, National Science Education Standards (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996).

7. Society for Neuroscience, “Neuroscience Core Concepts: The Essential Principles of Neuroscience” (2007), http://www.sfn.org/skins/main/pdf/core_concepts/core_concepts.pdf (accessed August 2010).

8. See notes 2 and 3.

9. See note 6.

10. The College Board, “Science: College Board Standards for College Success” (2009), http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/cbscs-science-standards-2009.pdf (accessed August 2010).

11. I. R. Weiss, J. D. Pasley, P. S. Smith, E. R. Banilower, and D. J. Heck, Looking Inside the Classroom: A Study of K — 12 Mathematics and Science Education in the United States (Chapel Hill, NC: Horizon Research, Inc, 2003).

12. U.S. Global Change Research Program, “Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences” (March 2009), http://www.climate.noaa.gov/education/pdfs/ClimateLiteracyPoster-8.5x11-March09FinalLR.pdf (accessed August 2010).

Neuroscience is at a historic turning point. Today, a full decade after the “Decade of the Brain,” a continuous stream of advances is shattering long-held notions about how the human brain works and what happens when it doesn’t. These advances are also reshaping the landscapes of other fields, from psychology to economics, education and the law.

Until the Decade of the Brain, scientists believed that, once development was over, the adult brain underwent very few changes. This perception contributed to polarizing perspectives on whether genetics or environment determines a person’s temperament and personality, aptitudes, and vulnerability to mental disorders. But during the past two decades, neuroscientists have steadily built the case that the human brain, even when fully mature, is far more plastic—changing and malleable—than we originally thought.1 It turns out that the brain (at all ages) is highly responsive to environmental stimuli and that connections between neurons are dynamic and can rapidly change within minutes of stimulation.

Neuroplasticity is modulated in part by genetic factors and in part by dynamic, epigenetic changes that influence the expression of genes without changing the DNA sequence. Epigenetic processes are of particular clinical interest because their external triggers (such as early parental care, diet, drug abuse and stress) can affect a person’s vulnerability to many diseases, including psychiatric disorders. In addition, in contrast to genetic sequence differences, epigenetic alterations are potentially reversible, and thus amenable to public health policy interventions.

It also has become increasingly clear that the human brain is particularly sensitive to social stimuli, which likely has accelerated the rate of human brain evolution. Humans have evolved a complex neuronal circuitry in large areas in the brain to process complex social information (such as predicting others’ reactions and emotions) and to respond appropriately. New research has revealed that social stimuli (such as parenting style and early-life stress) can epigenetically modify the expression of genes that influence brain morphology and function including the sensitivity of an individual to stressful stimuli.2 In the future, this knowledge will enable us to tailor personalized prevention interventions that are based on information on how genetics and epigenetics affect brain function and behavior. For example, a recent study showed that a prevention intervention based on improving parenting style reduced the risk for substance use disorders only in adolescents with a particular variant of a gene that recycles the chemical serotonin back into the neurons, which is a variant that results in greater sensitivity to social adversity.3

In the coming decade, insights about what underlies neuroplasticity, combined with technological advances that allow us to “see” with greater precision the human brain in action, are bound to revolutionize the way we view learning and the methods we use to educate young people. New research will also show us how to help people overcome or compensate for many of the deficits associated with drug abuse, addiction and other mental disorders.4

For example, scientists are using imaging technologies in neurofeedback programs that train people to voluntarily recalibrate their neural activity in specific areas of the brain, allowing them to gain unprecedented control over, for example, pain perception5 or emotional processing.6 During drug addiction treatment, this approach could greatly reduce the risk of relapse by enabling a patient to control the powerful cravings triggered by a host of cues (e.g., people, things, places) that have become tightly linked, in the brain of the user, to the drug experience.

Other promising advances stem from ongoing research and development of direct communication pathways between a brain and external computer devices, the so called brain-computer interfaces (BCI). In a recent study, one version of BCI appeared to help paralyzed stroke victims regain some movement control.7 In the next decade, forms of BCI might help people with a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions that have proved resistant to traditional treatments. For example, early evidence suggests that BCI training could benefit patients with epilepsy or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that is unresponsive to drugs.8

As we build on these rapid advances in neuroscience research, we must keep a watchful eye on their vast social and political implications. For example, neurologists have started to uncover the molecular components and neural circuitry that underlie the learning process.9 We also are learning how to use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive method to modulate the activity within a neural circuit, more effectively.10 Should we use this knowledge to better educate young people and teach new skills to seniors, or should we use these tools only to treat people with neuropsychiatric disorders? As we begin to understand how parenting styles affect the development and function of the brain, how far should we go to protect children from the long-term and deleterious effects of bad parenting?

Recent progress in brain research and associated fields has been impressive, and we are sure to witness further acceleration in the pace of neuroscientific discovery in the next couple of decades. Indeed, we are entering a new era in which our technologies are beginning to affect our lives in profound ways. We are bound to recast our relationship with our brains and, in the process, to redraw the boundaries of human evolution.

(Note: references are available below)

Nora D. Volkow, M.D., became director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in May 2003. Her work has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a disease of the human brain. As a research psychiatrist and scientist, Dr. Volkow pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate the toxic effects of drugs and their addictive properties. She also has made important contributions to the neurobiology of obesity, ADHD, and the behavioral changes that occur with aging. Article is republished with permission from the Dana Foundation.

‘A Decade after The Decade of the Brain’ series, at Cerebrum

Thursday, Feb. 18: Nora D. Volkow, M.D., National Institute on Drug Abuse

Friday, Feb. 19: Thomas R. Insel, M.D., National Institute of Mental Health

Monday, Feb. 22: Story Landis, Ph.D., National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Tuesday, Feb. 23: Kenneth R. Warren, Ph.D., National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Wednesday, Feb. 24: Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D., National Eye Institute

Thursday, Feb. 25: James F. Battey Jr., M.D., Ph.D., National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Friday, Feb. 26: Richard J. Hodes, M.D., National Institute on Aging

References

1.  A. Holtmaat and K. Svoboda, “Experience-Dependent Structural Synaptic Plasticity in the Mammalian Brain,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, no. 9 (2009): 647–658; M. Butz, F. Worgotter, and A. van Ooyen, “Activity-Dependent Structural Plasticity,” Brain Research Reviews 60, no. 2 (2009): 287–305.

2. I. C. Weaver, N. Cervoni, F. A. Champagne, A. C. D’Alessio, S. Sharma, J. R. Seckl, S. Dymov, M. Szyf, and M. J. Meaney, “Epigenetic Programming by Maternal Behavior,” Nature Neuroscience 7, no. 8 (2004): 847–854.

3. G. H. Brody, S. R. Beach, R. A. Philibert, Y. F. Chen, M. K. Lei, V. M. Murry, and A. C. Brown, “Parenting Moderates a Genetic Vulnerability Factor in Longitudinal Increases in Youths’ Substance Use,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 77, no. 1 (2009): 1–11.

4. N. D. Volkow, L. Chang, G. J. Wang, J. S. Fowler, D. Franceschi, M. Sedler, S. J. Gatley, E. Miller, R. Hitzemann, Y. S. Ding, and J. Logan, “Loss of Dopamine Transporters in Methamphetamine Abusers Recovers with Protracted Abstinence,” Journal of Neuroscience 21, no. 23 (2001): 9414–9418.

5. R. C. deCharms, F. Maeda, G. H. Glover, D. Ludlow, J. M. Pauly, D. Soneji, J. D. Gabrieli, and S. C. Mackey, “Control over Brain Activation and Pain Learned by Using Real-time Functional MRI,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102, no. 51 (2005): 18626–18631; S. J. Johnston, S. G. Boehm, D. Healy, R. Goebel, and D. E. Linden, “Neurofeedback: A Promising Tool for the Self-regulation of Emotion Networks,” Neuroimage 49, no. 1 (2009): 1066–1072.

6. S. Johnston, S. Boehm, D. Healy, R. Goebel, and D. Linden, “Neurofeedback: A promising tool for the self-regulation of emotion networks,” Neuroimage 49 (2009):1066–1072.

7. E. Buch, C. Weber, L. G. Cohen, C. Braun, M. A. Dimyan, T. Ard, J. Mellinger, A. Caria, S. Soekadar, A. Fourkas, and N. Birbaumer, “Think to Move: a Neuromagnetic Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) System for Chronic Stroke,” Stroke 39, no. 3 (2008): 910–917.

8. N. Birbaumer, A. Ramos Murguialday, C. Weber, and P. Montoya, “Neurofeedback and Brain-Computer Interface Clinical Applications,” International Review of Neurobiology 86 (2009): 107–117.

9. C. A. Miller, S. L. Campbell, and J. D. Sweatt, “DNA Methylation and Histone Acetylation Work in Concert to Regulate Memory Formation and Synaptic Plasticity,” Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 89, no. 4 (2008): 599–603.

10. C. A. Dockery, R. Hueckel-Weng, N. Birbaumer, and C. Plewnia, “Enhancement of Planning Ability by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation,” Journal of Neuroscience 29, no. 22 (2009): 7271–7277.

A separate study found that children who receive training to improve their focus and attention perform better not only on attention tasks but also on intelligence tests. Some researchers suggest that arts training might similarly affect a wide range of cognitive domains. Educators and neuroscientists gathered recently in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to discuss the increasingly detailed picture of how arts education changes the brain, and how to translate that research to education policy and the classroom. Many participants referred to the results of Dana Foundation-funded research by cognitive neuroscientists from seven leading universities over three years, released in 2008.

“Art must do something to the mind and brain. What is that? How would we be able to detect that? asked Barry Gordon, a behavioral neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, who spoke May 8 during the “Learning and the Brain” conference in Washington, D.C. “Art, I submit to you without absolute proof, can improve the power of our minds. However, this improvement is hard to detect.”

Study links music, brain changes

Among the scientists trying to detect such improvement, Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, a professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, presented research at the “Learning, Arts, and the Brain summit May 6 in Baltimore. Their work measured, for the first time, changes to the brain as a result of music training.

For four years, Winner and Schlaug followed children ages 9 to 11, some of whom received regular music instruction. Before training began, and then at regular intervals, the researchers tested for whether the training had affected “near transfer” domains skills closely related to those directly trained during music education, such as fine motor control in the fingers and music listening and discrimination skills. They also tested for any changes in “far transfer” domains such as language and reasoning abilities.

In initial results from data collected after 15 months, the researchers found that the students who received music instruction performed much better in the near transfer domains; the two groups of students had performed equally before instruction began. Winner and Schlaug also observed strengthened connections in musically relevant areas of the brain among students who had received the 15 months of training, compared with the nonmusic group. These changes correlated with the children’s behavioral improvements.

“This is the first study to show brain plasticity in young children as a function of instrumental music instruction, Schlaug said. “And this is correlated with the amount of practice.

Previous studies had shown that the brains of adult musicians have structural and functional differences from those of nonmusicians, but Winner and Schlaug’s investigation is the first to examine changes in the developing brain in response to long-term music training.“It’d be difficult to find another activity that takes up so much real estate in the brain, Schlaug added.

Attention and intelligence

Training can strengthen regions of the brain linked to attention, self-control and general intelligence, reported Michael Posner, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon. He speculated that the focus-intensive tasks involved in arts learning might provide some of the same effects.

“Years of neuroimaging have now given us a plausible or putative mechanism by which arts training could now influence cognition, including attention and IQ, he said.

“The basic idea of the theory is here. There are brain network associations with each specific art form, Posner said. “In classroom situations, children can be absorbed by practicing music, he said. “And there are consequences to [the] effort that the child expends. Posner’s research focused on the brain’s executive attention network, which enables a state of alertness and the ability to focus on a task. It is also linked to the self-regulation of impulses in children.

Posner found that children trained on attention-related tasks have more effective attention networks and even improved in far transfer domains. When children participated in training sessions specifically designed to improve attention, “not only did attention improve, but also generalized parts of intelligence related to fluid intelligence and IQ increased, he said.

If controlled training can increase attention and general intelligence, Posner hypothesized, then perhaps arts training also has a far transfer effect.“If we are able to engage children in an art form for which their brain is prepared, and they have an openness and creativity, we can train them in this and see improvement in attention, as well as intelligence and cognition in general, he said.

The Dana Press has released several articles about the event, including: “Attention May Link Arts and Intelligence”, “The Arts Will Help School Accountability, by Mariale Hardiman, assistant dean at the John Hopkins University School of Education; and remarks given by Dr. Jerome Kagan at the event, “Six Good Reasons for Advocating the Importance of Arts in School.

–Nicky Penttila is a senior writer and Web editor for Dana Press, part of the Dana Foundation. The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation with principal interests in brain science, immunology, and arts education.

Related articles:

» Training Attention and Emotional Self-Regulation — Interview with Michael Posner

» Arts and Smarts: Test Scores and Cognitive Development

» Musical training as mental exercise for cognitive performance