By: Alvaro Fernandez
Quotes from a great article, Professor, 81, proves brain stays young:
- In 1960, Diamond became the first female faculty member in Cal’s science department, achieving full professorship in 1974. She still teaches anatomy with her 81st birthday two weeks away.
- Diamond, a professor of anatomy at UC Berkeley, determined that the brain can stay young through stimulation, which can be achieved through her five-point plan: diet, exercise, challenge, newness and tender loving care.
- Using her plan, how is she challenged?
- “Every student who sits in that chair,” she said, pointing across the desk in her fifth-floor office in the Life Sciences Building on campus. “They come in here asking questions, and you better have the answers.”
- What newness, then, is in her life?
- “I have grandchildren,” she said. “What could be better, deciding new things for them, to stimulate their brains.”
- She has four children, four grandchildren and a husband, Arnold Scheidel, who teaches anatomy at UCLA. They see each other on school weekends,
- Diamond feels her own brain growing.
Keep reading here.
Related resources
A previous post listing a number of her essays: Marian Diamond and the Brain Revolution
Her great book Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nurture Your Child’s Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence, by Berkeley’s Marian Diamond and Janet L. Hopson.
By: Alvaro Fernandez
I find via MindHacks that NYT Magazine has published a great article titled The Gregarious Brain, subtitled “Williams syndrome — a genetic accident that causes cognitive deficits-”. The writer, David Dobbs, does an spectacular job at explaining that syndrome in the context of what cognitive skills are and how they evolved. Some sample quotes:
- “In the view of two of Bellugi’s frequent collaborators, Albert Galaburda, a Harvard Medical School professor of neurology and neuroscience, and Allan Reiss, a neuroscientist at the Stanford School of Medicine, Nicki’s learned facility at sports talk illustrates a central lesson of Williams and, for that matter, modern genetics: genes (or their absence) do not hard-wire people for certain behaviors. There is no gene for understanding calculus. But genes do shape behavior and personality, and they do so by creating brain structures and functions that favor certain abilities and appetites more than others.”
- “…This doesn’t mean that specific behaviors are hard-wired. M.I.T. math majors aren’t born doing calculus, and people with Williams don’t enter life telling stories. As Allan Reiss put it: “It’s not just ‘genes make brain make behavior.’ You have environment and experience too. By environment, Reiss means less the atmosphere of a home or a school than the endless string of challenges and opportunities that life presents any person starting at birth.”
- (Talking about when our ancestors started to live in larger groups) “But the bigger groups imposed a new brain load: the members had to be smart enough to balance their individual needs with those of the pack. This meant cooperating and exercising some individual restraint. It also required Read the rest of this entry »
By: Alvaro Fernandez
(Thanks for the lead, Tom!)
David Brooks writes a great column (requires subscription) in the NYT titled A Critique of Pure Reason. He expands the usual restricted understanding of “education” to incorporate a wider sense of “learning”, by discussing
1. Where
Each of us has one and same brain, for school (or work) and for “real” life. Labels such as “formal” or “informal” learning are quite irrelevant from a neural development point of view. What happens at home is as important as what happens in school.
-
“They will understand that schools filled with students who can’t control their impulses, who can’t focus their attention and who can’t regulate their emotions will not succeed, no matter how many reforms are made by governors, superintendents or presidents.”
Skills in that list, that usually don’t get explicit attention, and they should, since they are both critical and trainable:
Read the rest of this entry »
By: Alvaro Fernandez
“…across the country, brain health programs are springing up, offering the possibility of a cognitive fountain of youth.”
“From “brain gyms” on the Internet to “brain-healthy” foods and activities at assisted living centers, the programs are aimed at baby boomers anxious about entering their golden years and at their parents trying to stave off memory loss or dementia.”
Keep reading today’s New York Times article As Minds Age, What’s Next? Brain Calisthenics.
The article also refers to Posit Science, HappyNeuron, MyBrainTrainer, and other companies, insurers and residences offering brain fitness programs/brain exercise software.
And includes a note of caution: “This is going to be one of the hottest topics in the next five years — it’s going to be huge,” said Nancy Ceridwyn, co-director of special projects for the American Society on Aging. “The challenge we have is it’s going to be a lot like the anti-aging industry: how much science is there behind this?”
You can learn more by checking our longer post yesterday, New Research on How to Maintain a Sharp Brain, where we commented on yesterday’s NYT Editorial, the results from the JAMA study and an IHRSA newsletter to fitness and health clubs that we authored.
By: Caroline Latham
There has been a lot of recent buzz about brain fitness. A New York Times editorial printed today states:
When tested five years later, these participants [in a cognitive training study] had less of a decline in the skill they were trained in than did a control group that received no cognitive training. The payoff from mental exercise seemed far greater than we are accustomed to getting for physical exercise — as if 10 workouts at the gym were enough to keep you fit five years later.
and
If further studies show that mental exercises can improve everyday functioning, doctors may need to prescribe such training, senior centers may want to set up “brain gyms,” and aging Americans would be wise to do brain-stretching activities. For this purpose, even the Medicare prescription drug program, which critics deem too confusing for many older people to navigate, could prove an unexpected blessing. Spend 10 hours mastering its intricacies today and you could be a lot sharper than your compatriots five years from now.
Read the rest of this entry »
By: Alvaro Fernandez
Jonah Lehrer dissects and builds on a New York Times article on the education Achievement gap. Quotes from Jonah’s post:
- “most of the research suggests that the “achievement gap” has real neurological roots, which are caused by distinct home environments: Hart and Risley showed that language exposure in early childhood correlated strongly with I.Q. and academic success later on in a child’s life.”
- “This is really important research, but I can’t help but think that part of the equation is missing. While Paul Tough, author of the Times article, focuses on gaps in environmental enrichment — poor kids are exposed to fewer words, have less stimulating conversations, etc. — he ignores what might be an even more potent variable: stress.”
- “Gould’s work implies that the symptoms of poverty are not simply states of mind; they actually warp the mind. Because neurons are designed to reflect their circumstances, not to rise above them, the monotonous stress of living in a slum literally limits the brain.”
Dave writes How to educate those who seem uneducable, building on Jonah’s post and linking to “research by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman showing that self-discipline is more important than high IQ in student achievement.”
I agree that the importance of stress management and self-discipline (or emotional self-regulation) are often overlooked, which is precisely why we are focusing there. You can read a Technology & Learning magazine article on Biofeedback for Emotional Management and Peak Performance, and a post on Cognitive Neuroscience and Education Today, where we mentioned:
(new programs help address) Anxiety and stress: not only test anxiety, but overall high-levels of anxiety that inhibit learning and higher-order thinking: a program already used in many schools, and with promising research results, is the Institute of HeartMath’s Freeze-Framer. Read How stress and anxiety may affect Learning Readiness, and Why chronic stress is something to avoid.
Good night,
Alvaro
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