Sev­eral recent arti­cles and news:

Brain Gain: the under­ground world of “neu­roen­hanc­ing” drugs (The New Yorker)

- “Alex remains enthu­si­as­tic about Adder­all, but he also has a slightly jaun­diced cri­tique of it. “It only works as a cog­ni­tive enhancer inso­far as you are ded­i­cated to accom­plish­ing the task at hand,” he said. “The num­ber of times I’ve taken Adder­all late at night and decided that, rather than start­ing my paper, hey, I’ll orga­nize my entire music library! I’ve seen peo­ple obses­sively clean­ing their rooms on it.” Alex thought that gen­er­ally the drug helped him to bear down on his work, but it also tended to pro­duce writ­ing with a char­ac­ter­is­tic flaw. “Often, I’ve looked back at papers I’ve writ­ten on Adder­all, and they’re ver­bose. They’re bela­bor­ing a point, try­ing to cre­ate this air­tight argu­ment, when if you just got to your point in a more direct man­ner it would be stronger. But with Adder­all I’d pro­duce two pages on some­thing that could be said in a cou­ple of sen­tences.” Nev­er­the­less, his Adderall-assisted papers usu­ally earned him at least a B. They got the job done. As Alex put it, “Pro­duc­tiv­ity is a good thing.”

Eschew Enhance­ment: Memory-boosting drugs should not be made avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic (Tech­nol­ogy Review)

- “Who might use them? Stu­dents will be tempted, as might play­ers of any game involv­ing count­ing or remem­ber­ing (chess, bridge, and even poker and black­jack). Cer­tain pro­fes­sion­als might desire a boost in atten­tion or memory”

- “But these poten­tially pow­er­ful med­i­cines should not be made avail­able to every­one, for two rea­sons. The first is safety. The last sev­eral years have pro­vided many exam­ples of side effects, some life-threatening…The sec­ond rea­son is that we still know rel­a­tively lit­tle about learn­ing and mem­ory and how they are inte­grated to make judg­ments and decisions.”

Kel­logg Set­tles with FTC over Health Claims on Cereal (Promo Magazine)

- “The FTC said that Kel­logg pro­moted the cereal as “clin­i­cally shown to improve kids’ atten­tive­ness by nearly 20%,” when in fact the study referred to in the ads showed dif­fer­ent results.”

- “The study found that only about half the chil­dren who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats for break­fast showed any improve­ment in atten­tive­ness, and only about one in nine improved by 20% or more, the FTC said.”

Brain shock: The new Gulf War syn­drome (New Scientist)

- “The US army also screens for symp­toms of mTBI when sol­diers return from a tour of duty, and again three months later. The army is also car­ry­ing out neu­rocog­ni­tive tests on recruits before they are sent into com­bat so that doc­tors can check for dete­ri­o­ra­tion in later tests.”

- “When it comes to com­bat trauma, unpick­ing the phys­i­cal from the psy­cho­log­i­cal is bound to be highly com­plex. As Barth says, per­haps the great­est dan­ger could be in try­ing to sim­plify the pic­ture too much. “I rec­om­mend that we get com­fort­able with the com­plex­ity,” he says, “and treat it as a challenge.”

Wel­come to the 186th edi­tion of the Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion, the weekly vir­tual gath­er­ing of dozens of blog­gers to dis­cuss all things education.

Q: Why do you say this edi­tion is “brain-based”?
A: Because the Q&A frame we are using is inspired by how Chris at Ouroboros recently hosted Encephalon Brain and Mind blog car­ni­val. (Is clas­sic Greek mak­ing a comeback?).

Q: As edu­ca­tors, what inspires us to do what we do?
A: Tracy sug­gests, “Hope for the future”.

Q: And what may hap­pen in the future?
A: Eric pro­poses that the field can learn much about how ath­letes train their minds and bod­ies to max­i­mize performance.

Q: What should not hap­pen in the future?
A: Dave hopes we stop the Text­book Insan­ity, killing trees to cre­ate books not every­one uses.

Q: What comes first, sub­ject or learner?
A: Bogu­sia has “switched sides”. She now cen­ters her teach­ing around her stu­dents, to make sure they appre­ci­ate the beauty of the subject.

Q: How do you know if some­thing is devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate?
Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

As promised in my pre­vi­ous post (10 Brain Train­ing Tips To Teach and Learn), here are some of the resources that inform my under­stand­ing of the brain: books, con­fer­ences, and websites.

BOOKS

There are a mul­ti­tude of books about the brain. For edu­ca­tors, the best of these are books that demys­tify the lan­guage of neu­ro­science while pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion applic­a­ble to the teaching/learning process.

Among the more pro­lific or well-known authors of this type include Jeb Schenck, Robert Syl­wester, Bar­bara Givens, Robert Marzano, Mar­ilee Sprenger, and Eric Jensen.

I have found books Read the rest of this entry »

We read today how Panel Urges Schools to Empha­size Core Math Skills (Wash­ing­ton Post). Now, there is a more fun­da­men­tal ques­tion to con­sider: what should the schools of the XXI cen­tury look like and do?.

To cre­ate a much needed dia­logue, I asked one the most thought­ful edu­ca­tion blog­gers around to share her (I guess it’s “her”) impres­sions with us. Enjoy!
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What do we want our schools to do, and for whom? 

–By edu­won­kette

“Schools,” Stan­ford his­to­rian David Laba­ree wrote, “occupy an awk­ward posi­tion at the inter­sec­tion between what we hope soci­ety will become and what we think it really is.” What do we want our schools to do, and for whom?

Schools, like most orga­ni­za­tions, have many goals. These goals often com­pete with and dis­place each other. Rely­ing heav­ily on the work of David Laba­ree, I will dis­cuss three cen­tral goals of Amer­i­can schools – social effi­ciency, demo­c­ra­tic equal­ity, and social mobil­ity. Through­out the his­tory of Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion, these goals have been run­ning against each other in a metaphor­i­cal horser­ace. While they are not mutu­ally exclu­sive, the three goals intro­duce very dif­fer­ent met­rics of edu­ca­tional suc­cess. More often than not, they sit uncom­fort­ably with each other.

Read the rest of this entry »

Joanne Jacobs, edu­ca­tor, blog­ger and author of Our School: The Inspir­ing Story of Two Teach­ers, One Big Idea and the Char­ter School That Beat the Odds, par­tic­i­pates today in our Author Speaks Series with an excel­lent arti­cle on how “Schools won’t improve until admin­is­tra­tors and teach­ers can admit the prob­lems, ana­lyze what’s going wrong and try new strate­gies. Stu­dents won’t improve if they think they’re “spe­cial” just the way they are.” Enjoy, and feel free to add your com­ment to engage in a stim­u­lat­ing conversation.

Sev­eral recent news pieces, includ­ing this New York Times arti­cle, have reported on an emerg­ing trend: schools using tech­niques such as yoga and med­i­ta­tion to help stu­dents man­age anx­i­ety and stress. To bet­ter under­stand what is going on, we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.

–Alvaro

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Mind­ful Kids, Peace­ful Schools

With eyes closed and deep breaths, stu­dents are learn­ing a new method to reduce anx­i­ety, con­flict, and atten­tion dis­or­ders. But don’t call it meditation.

— By Jill Suttie

At Toluca Lake ele­men­tary school in Los Ange­les, a cyclone fence encloses the asphalt black­top, which is teem­ing with kids. It’s recess time and the kids, who are mostly Latino, are play­ing tag, yelling, throw­ing balls, and jump­ing rope. When the bell rings, they reluc­tantly stop and head back to their class­rooms except for Daniel Murphy’s sec­ond grade class.

Murphy’s stu­dents file into the school audi­to­rium, each car­ry­ing a round blue pil­low dec­o­rated with white stars. They enter gig­gling and chat­ting, but soon they are seated in a cir­cle on their cush­ions, eyes closed, quiet and con­cen­trat­ing. Two teach­ers give the chil­dren instruc­tions on how to pay atten­tion to their breath­ing, telling them to notice the rise and fall of their bel­lies and chests, the pas­sage of air in and out of their noses. Though the room is chilly the heat­ing sys­tem broke down ear­lier that day the chil­dren appear com­fort­able, many with Read the rest of this entry »

Quick post for my UC-Berkeley OLLI stu­dents: here are the links I promised.

- Col­lec­tion of 50 Brain Teasers.

- Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series includ­ing in-depth notes of inter­views with lead­ing sci­en­tists and practitioners.

- Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve-Yaakov Stern: which talks about the Cog­ni­tive Reserve and Alzheimer’s symp­toms, and includes a great clip on the famous “nun study”.

- Arti­cles and Papers: a col­lec­tion of good read­ing materials.

- Books: the selec­tion of books we discussed.

- YouTube Chan­nel: some clips you will enjoy to refresh your class memories.

Enjoy!

 

Very intense week, and very fun. I will be writ­ing more about this week’s 3 speak­ing events, but let me say now that our key messages

1) our brains remain flex­i­ble dur­ing our lifetimes,

2) we can refine our brains with tar­geted practice,

3) good brain exer­cise, or “men­tal cross-training”, requires nov­elty, vari­ety, and increas­ing level of chal­lenge (but with­out cre­at­ing too much stress),

are being very well accepted from both healthy aging and work­place pro­duc­tiv­ity points of view. We have ONE brain: health and pro­duc­tiv­ity are 2 sides of the same coin.

If you want to make sure we learn more about our brains, you can help fel­low blog­ger Shel­ley Batts get a col­lege schol­ar­ship by voting here. She has a great neu­ro­science blog, is now final­ist in a com­pe­ti­tion to win a nice schol­ar­ship, and needs out help.

Have some more time? You can watch this excellent 90-second video of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr Lisa Sak­sida doing yoga in front of the fire while explain­ing the nature of Brain and Mind (via Mind­Hacks). Quotes:

“I wish peo­ple under­stood that there is no mind/brain dual­ity. Specif­i­cally, I wish peo­ple under­stood that there is no such thing as a purely psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der. Every event in your psy­cho­log­i­cal life, and there­fore every psy­cho­log­i­cal change, is reducible in the­ory to events and changes in your brain. We should there­fore not judge peo­ple dif­fer­ently, accord­ing to whether they are con­sid­ered to have a ‘psy­cho­log­i­cal’ as opposed to a ‘neu­ro­log­i­cal’ problem.”

“Of course, a lack of mind/brain split does not mean that we should aban­don all talk of psy­chol­ogy. Psy­chol­ogy and neu­ro­science are two ways of study­ing the same thing, and both are essen­tial for under­stand­ing the human condition.”

For more, check the posts in these always great blog car­ni­vals (selected col­lec­tions of blog posts by a num­ber of blog­gers around spe­cific topics)

Tan­gled Bank (sci­ence in general)

Encephalon (neu­ro­science)

Credit: Photo of Neu­rons by sym­pha­nee via flickr

The Aspen Health Forum gath­ered an impres­sive group of around 250 peo­ple to dis­cuss the most press­ing issues in Health and Med­ical Sci­ence (check out the Pro­gram and the Speak­ers bios), on Octo­ber 3-6th. It was the first con­fer­ence, by the way, where I have heard a speaker say: “I resus­ci­tated a woman yesterday”.

Key high­lights and trends:

1– Global health prob­lems require the atten­tion of the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity. Richard Klaus­ner encour­aged the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity to focus on Global Prob­lems: mater­nal mor­tal­ity rates, HIV/ AIDS, nutri­tion, can­cer, clean water.  Bill Frist, for­mer Sen­ate Major­ity Leader, added to that list the increas­ing epi­demic risks of global zootic dis­eases (trans­mit­ted between humans and ani­mals), sup­ported by 2 inter­est­ing data points: at any one moment, there are 500,000 peo­ple fly­ing world­wide; in a year, air­lines trans­port the equiv­a­lent of 2 bil­lion passengers.

2– “Let’s get real…Ideology kills”. Mary Robin­son, for­mer Pres­i­dent of Ire­land, on what it takes to stop HIV/ AIDS: “I am from Ire­land, a Catholic coun­try. And I am Catholic. But I can see how ide­ol­ogy kills..we need more empa­thy with real­ity, and to work with local women in those coun­tries who need things like female con­doms.” She was implic­itly crit­i­ciz­ing the large bud­get devoted to unre­al­is­tic absti­nence pro­grams. This ses­sion included a fas­ci­nat­ing exchange where Bill Frist rose from the audi­ence to defend the role of US aid, explain­ing how 60% of retro­vi­ral drugs in African coun­tries have been funded by the Amer­i­can tax­payer, high­light­ing Pres­i­dent Bush’s courage to make HIV/AIDS a top agenda item in many devel­op­ing coun­tries, and crit­i­ciz­ing other coun­tries for not doing enough. Which made Nobel Prize Lau­re­ate Peter Agre, also in the audi­ence, stand up and encour­age the US to really step up to the plate and devote 1% of the GDP to aid, as a num­ber of Euro­pean coun­tries do, instead of 0.1%.

3– Where is the new “Sput­nik”?: Basic sci­ence is cru­cial for inno­va­tion and for eco­nomic growth, but it is often under­ap­pre­ci­ated. Sci­en­tists are not “nerds”, as some­times they are por­trayed in pop­u­lar cul­ture, but peo­ple with a deep curios­ity and drive to solve a Big prob­lem. Many of the speak­ers had been inspired by the Sput­nik and the Apollo mis­sions to become sci­en­tists, at a time when the pro­fes­sion was con­sid­ered cool. Two Nobel Prize Lau­re­ates (Peter Agre, Michael Bishop), talked about their lives and careers try­ing to demys­tify what it takes to be a sci­en­tist and to win a Nobel Prize. Both are grate­ful to the tax­pay­ers dol­lars that funded their research, and insist we must do a bet­ter job at explain­ing the sci­en­tific process to soci­ety at large. Both are proud of hav­ing attended small lib­eral arts col­leges, and hav­ing evolved from there, fueled by their great curios­ity and unpre­dictable, serendip­i­tous paths, into launch­ing new sci­en­tific and med­ical fields.  Bishop listed a num­ber of times where he made deci­sions that were con­sid­ered “career sui­cide” by men­tors and col­leagues, and men­tioned “I was con­fused” around 15 times in 15 minutes…down to earth and inspiring.

4– We need a true Health Care Cul­ture: Mark Ganz sum­ma­rized it best by explain­ing how his health provider group improved care when they rede­fined them­selves from “we are 7,000 employ­ees” to “we are a 3 mil­lion strong com­mu­nity”, mov­ing from Read the rest of this entry »