Schools are begin­ning to offer an increas­ing num­ber of courses in social and emo­tional intel­li­gence, teach­ing stu­dents how to bet­ter under­stand their own emo­tions and the emo­tions of others.

It sounds warm and fuzzy, but it’s a trend backed up by hard data. Today, new stud­ies reveal that teach­ing kids to be emo­tion­ally and socially com­pe­tent boosts their aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment. More pre­cisely, when schools offer stu­dents pro­grams in social and emo­tional learn­ing, their achieve­ment scores gain around 11 per­cent­age points.

That’s what I heard at a forum held last Decem­ber by the Col­lab­o­ra­tive for Aca­d­e­mic, Social, and Emo­tional Learn­ing (CASEL). (Dis­clo­sure: I’m a co-founder of CASEL.) Roger Weiss­berg, the organization’s direc­tor, gave a pre­view of a mas­sive study run by researchers at Loy­ola Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois, which ana­lyzed eval­u­a­tions of more than 233,000 stu­dents across the country.

Social-emotional learn­ing, they dis­cov­ered, helps stu­dents Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Gole­man requires no intro­duc­tion. Per­son­ally, of all his books I have read, the one I found most stim­u­lat­ing was Destruc­tive Emo­tions: A Sci­en­tific Dia­logue With the Dalai Lama, a superb overview of what emo­tions are and how we can put them to good use. He is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio inter­views includ­ing one with George Lucas on Edu­cat­ing Hearts and Minds: Rethink­ing Education.

We are hon­ored to bring you a guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine, a UC-Berkeley-based quar­terly mag­a­zine that high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Enjoy!

- Alvaro

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The Power of Mindsight

How can we free our­selves from pris­ons of the past?

– By Daniel Goleman

When you were young, which of these did you feel more often?

a) No mat­ter what I do, my par­ents love me;

b) I can’t seem to please my par­ents, no mat­ter what I do;

c) My par­ents don’t really notice me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very inter­est­ing new study, Crit­i­cal Period Plas­tic­ity of Adult-Born Neu­rons, pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­ron by a team of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine researchers. The press release New Adult Brain Cells May Be Cen­tral To Life­long Learn­ing con­tains a good sum­mary (the bold for­mat is mine):

• “The steady for­ma­tion of new brain cells in adults may rep­re­sent more than merely a patch­ing up of aging brains, a new study has shown.”
• “The new adult brain cells may serve to give the adult brain the same kind of learn­ing abil­ity that young brains have while still allow­ing the exist­ing, mature cir­cuitry to main­tain stability.”
• “The researchers found that the new adult neu­rons showed a pat­tern of chang­ing plas­tic­ity very sim­i­lar to that seen in brain cells in new­born ani­mals. That is, the new adult brain cells showed a “crit­i­cal period” in which they were highly plas­tic before they set­tled into the less plas­tic prop­er­ties of mature brain cells. In new­born ani­mals, such a crit­i­cal period enables an impor­tant, early burst of wiring of new brain cir­cuitry with expe­ri­ence.”
• “The researchers also observed in the new adult neu­rons anatom­i­cal evi­dence of the same kind of for­ma­tion of new con­nec­tions that take place in the brains of new­borns as they wire new path­ways in response to expe­ri­ence.”
• “They con­cluded that “adult neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis may rep­re­sent not merely a replace­ment mech­a­nism for lost neu­rons, but instead an ongo­ing devel­op­men­tal process that con­tin­u­ously reju­ve­nates the mature ner­vous sys­tem by offer­ing expanded capac­ity of plas­tic­ity in response to expe­ri­ence through­out life.”

In short: not only do we know today that the adult brain is capa­ble of cre­at­ing new neu­rons, but this shows that our expe­ri­ence influ­ences what hap­pens to those neu­rons once cre­ated. Pretty rev­o­lu­tion­ary under­stand­ing, that still needs to per­me­ate through soci­ety and influ­ence our lifestyles and habits.

Some related posts:

• Brain Fit­ness Glossary
• Want to Improve Mem­ory? Strengthen Your Synapses.
• Brain Exer­cise FAQs
• Easy Steps to Improve Your Brain Health Now