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.

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing. It was a fas­ci­nat­ing mix of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors talk­ing with and lis­ten­ing to each other. Some top­ics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought — insight on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed and how they influ­ence each other.

Using dra­matic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies.… The Con­fer­ence cre­ates an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary forum — a meet­ing place for neu­ro­sci­en­tists, edu­ca­tors, psy­chol­o­gists, clin­i­cians, and par­ents — to exam­ine these new research find­ings with respect to their applic­a­bil­ity in the class­room and clin­i­cal practice.

Take-aways

• Humans are a mix­ture of cog­ni­tion and emo­tion, and both ele­ments are essen­tial to func­tion and learn properly
• Edu­ca­tors and pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers need to learn more about the brain, how it grows, and how to cul­ti­vate it
• Stu­dents of all ages need to be both chal­lenged and nur­tured in order to succeed
• Peo­ple learn dif­fer­ently — try to teach and learn through as many dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties as pos­si­ble (engage lan­guage, motor skills, artis­tic cre­ation, social inter­ac­tion, sen­sory input, etc.)
• While short-term stress can heighten your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, long term stress kills you — you need to find bal­ance and release
• Test anx­i­ety and sub­se­quent poor test results can be improved with behav­ioral train­ing with feed­back based on heart rate variability
• Dr. Robert Sapol­sky is a very very enlight­en­ing and fun speaker
• Allow time for rest and con­sol­i­da­tion of learned material
• Emo­tional mem­o­ries are eas­ier to remember
• Con­fer­ences like these per­form a real ser­vice in fos­ter­ing dia­logues between sci­en­tists and educators

Read the rest of this entry »

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