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Scientists are always uncovering new ways into how people learn best, and some of the most recent neuroscience research has shown connections between basic survival functions, social and emotional reactions to the world, and creative impulses.

Students’ social and emotional reactions to learning are imperative to feeling motivated to learn and to their ability to creatively solve problems, according to Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, who wrote Musings on the Neurobiological and Evolutionary Origins of Creativity via a Developmental Analysis of One Child’s Poetry [PDF]. Her research tries to understand why emotions are so important to learning by examining what happens to brain functions.

“Neuroimaging experiments show us that we use the very same neural systems to feel our bodies as to feel our relationships, our moral judgments, and our creative inspiration,” said Immordino-Yang, a professor at USC’s Rossier School of Education and an expert on the neuroscience of learning and creativity. Her whose work focuses on how neuroscience can help teachers understand the ways students learn best, and to that end, she’s created a free online curriculum for teachers.

The neuromechanisms responsible for feeling and managing the body’s physical survival and consciousness have been co-opted to also manage social survival. “Survival in the savanna depends on a brain that is wired to make sense of the environment, and to play out the things it notices through patterns of bodily and mental reactions,” Immordino-Yang writes. “This same brain, the same logic, helps us make sense of and survive in the social world of today.” To make something relevant to a learner, it should inspire an emotional reaction in the person, triggering these survivalist parts of the brain that indicate something is important.

[RELATED: Teaching Social and Emotional Skills in School]

“The way that we make meaning out of situations, and the way that we feel and evaluate things, is plated on the same neural platforms as do the basic job of managing our viscera,” Immordino Yang said. When a topic strikes a chord with a student it feels meaningful because the part of his brain firing is the same part that keeps him conscious and alive. It’s also the part of the brain responsible for novel, creative or new ideas.

“Creativity is representing some kind of relevant problem in a new way and making people understand it, and feel about it, and have some insight into something that matters,” Immordino-Yang said. She argues that creative moments are motivated by caring deeply about a subject. Furthermore, humans make meaning by relating new information to feelings, memories and other personal information to give it context.

To undertake that complicated process of internalizing information Immordino-Yang has found that it’s necessary to shut out external inputs and focus intensely on what’s going on internally. Asking students to constantly pay attention or allowing them to be distracted by games, phones, and other stimuli may deprive them of the important inward-looking time crucial to deeper learning.

“The way in which people learn information, the way in which they make it their own, assimilate it, are dependent heavily on a neural system that is fundamentally incompatible with external information and distraction,” Immordino-Yang said. Long term learning happens when the brain calls up old memories and incorporates the new knowledge into a personalized understanding of the world. And that’s often a creative process. It takes creativity to synthesize new information within the context of old experiences and to reshape difficult concepts into something understandable. Immordino-Yang argues that the essence of that process requires the thinker to disengage from the world around them.

[RELATED: How to Fuel Students' Learning Through Their Interests]

That doesn’t necessarily mean that daydreaming is the key to developing innovative ideas. There are times when insight strikes while the mind wanders, but Immordino-Yang says that in those cases the information is already present. When it comes to learning something new, the inward focus is often real work.

“Help kids know how to make meaning and sense of what they are learning so they can see who they are,” Immordino-Yang said. “Creativity is just an extension of that.” She gave the example of her young daughter who wrote a song about loving her young brother, but the imagery in the song incorporated space, planets, and the galaxy. She had just learned about those concepts, but in order to really understand their significance, she needed to express them within the totally understood and emotional space of family love. Allowing kids the space for the interplay between the emotional and cognitive spaces will benefit the long-term learner.

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Getting enough sleep is an under-valued but crucial part of learning. Contrary to students’ belief that staying up all night to cram for an exam will lead to higher scores, truth is, the need for a good night’s rest is even more important than finishing homework or studying for a test.

A recent study in the journal Child Development showed that sacrificing sleep in order to study will actually backfire. The study followed 535 Los Angeles high school students for 14 days, tracking how long they slept, as well as how well they understood material being taught in class and how they performed on a test, quiz, or homework.

“Although the researchers expected that extra hours of studying that ate into sleep time might create problems in terms of students’ understanding of what they were taught in class, they were surprised to find that diminishing sleep in order to study was actually associated with doing more poorly on a test, quiz, or homework,” Science Daily wrote.

“Reduced sleep … accounts for the increase in academic problems that occurs after days of increased studying,” said UCLA scientist Andrew Fuligni. “Although these nights of extra studying may seem necessary, they can come at a cost.”

In another study by a research team at the University of York, researchers found that sleep even helps boost language acquisition skills in young children. ”Children’s ability to recall and recognize new words improved approximately 12 hours after training, but only if sleep occurs,” said Dr. Lisa Henderson, a lead researcher on the study. “The key effects were maintained one week later, suggesting that these new words are retained in long-term memory.” The study, published in Developmental Science, shows that when they sleep enough, children show the same learning patterns as adults.

Yet even with the well-documented evidence that sleep is necessary to learning, students continue to face increasing demands on their time. Kids often participate in extracurricular activities as well as hours of homework each night.

What’s really happening during sleep?

Sleep happens in several stages, with each phase serving a particular purpose. The human body takes care of its physical needs first. Quickly passing through stages one and two, which are brief, the body settles into several hours of stage three and four sleep. During these stages, neurons in the brain have synchronized into a regular rhythm and the body begins to repair itself. The immune system is restored, muscles and cardiovascular systems are rejuvenated and the positive effects on metabolism and muscle growth from exercise take effect.

“The reason to get a good night’s sleep is really so you can enjoy the next day and so you can consolidate what you did the day before,” said Dr. Matt Carter, senior fellow at the University of Washington in a recent webinar.

Towards the end of a typical six- to eight-hour night of sleep, the brain gets its chance at rejuvenation, during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. This is the stage that’s crucial for learners because the brain solidifies all that was taken in the day before and clears out old, unnecessary memories to make room for new information.

“In REM sleep your brain is basically replaying everything that happened during the day and consolidating what you’ve learned,” Carter said. During the learning process, the brain’s synapses fire in particular patterns. At night, those patterns are firing over and over again, strengthening the path. Equally important, there are many small details the brain remembers from the previous day that it won’t need. During REM sleep the brain purges the unnecessary details to make room for new learning the following day.

“If you didn’t get a good night’s sleep it’s really hard to learn new things because you didn’t clear out all the synaptic connections,” said Carter. The brain-rejuvenating functions happen in REM sleep, a later sleep stage, so if a student doesn’t sleep enough he won’t spend much time in REM.

Just as with adults, sleep-deprived kids won’t be able to focus as well, and over time, the effects of sleep deprivation will wear on the body.

What’s the solution?

Educator Madeline Levine and author of Teach Your Children Well says high schools should adjust their schedules to meet the needs of adolescents. School should start at 10 a.m. to help ensure high school students get the nine hours they need. That would go a long way in helping them to focus in class and could even prevent depression, a condition increasingly linked to lack of sleep.

And it’s not just about the number of hours in bed – it’s about the quality of sleep. “Sleep is something you can prepare for and be deliberate about,” Carter said, adding that people assume sleep comes naturally to kids. But for young ones, it’s especially important to establish a routine, not to eat carbohydrates before sleep, and to avoid bright screens before bed — the glow biologically resets circadian rhythms that respond to how much light enters the eye. For kids who have trouble falling asleep, parents should teach them relaxation techniques like taking deep breaths and listening to slow tempo music – that helps the neurons fall into their synchronized pattern quicker.

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Neuroscience may seem like an advanced subject of study, perhaps best reserved for college or even graduate school. Two researchers from Temple University in Philadelphia propose that it be taught earlier, however—much earlier. As in first grade.

In a study published in this month’s issue of the journal Early Education and Development, psychologists Peter Marshall and Christina Comalli began by surveying children aged four to 13 to discover what they already knew about the brain. Previous research had found that elementary school pupils typically have a limited understanding of the brain and how it functions, believing it to be something like “a container for storing memories and facts.”

Marshall and Comalli’s questionnaire turned up the same uncertain grasp of the topic, which the researchers attributed to several factors. First, while parents and teachers talk often with young children about parts of the body and how they work, they rarely mention this most important organ. (A 2005 study by another group of scientists found that young children hear very few instances of the word brain in everyday conversation.) Secondly, children can’t observe their own brains, and so are left to guess about what’s going on inside their heads—not unlike the state of ignorance in which adults dwelled for many centuries before the founding of neuroscience as a scientific discipline. And finally, most students aren’t formally taught much about the brain until at least middle school. Marshall and Comalli believe such instruction can and should begin much sooner.

To that end, they designed a 20-minute lesson about the brain and delivered it to a group of first-grade students. Even this brief intervention, the psychologists report, “was enough to improve their knowledge of brain functioning as assessed three weeks later”; a control group of first graders, taught for 20 minutes about honeybees, showed no such improvement. Marshall and Comalli’s neuroscience lesson was especially focused on teaching children about the role of the brain in sensory activities—that the brain is not just “for thinking,” as many kids assume, but also for seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling.

But the success of their effort opens another possibility. In a well-known body of research, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has demonstrated that teaching students about how their brains work—in particular, that the brain is plastic and can develop new capacities with effort and practice—makes a big difference in how constructively kids deal with mistakes and setbacks, and how motivated they are to persist until they achieve mastery.

Dweck’s landmark studies were carried out with fifth-graders, and her program Brainology, a computerized tutorial on brain function, is designed for students in fifth through ninth grades. But why wait to introduce these crucial concepts? Dweck’s own research has found that children’s attitudes and behaviors regarding achievement and failure are already in place by preschool. Parents’ and educators’ messages about the malleability of the brain and the importance of effort must begin even earlier: talk of “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and “this little piggy went to market” should also make room for mentions of growing brains.

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By Annie Murphy Paul

It’s not often that a story about the brain warms the heart. But that’s exactly what happened to me when I read an article last month in the Washington Post. It’s about how teachers in many schools in the D.C. area are foregoing empty praise of the “Good job!” variety, in favor of giving students solid information that will do them some real good. That information concerns how their brains work and how their intelligence and skills develop, and it’s knowledge that should be made available to every child in the country.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck conducted the groundbreaking research showing that praise intended to raise young people’s self-esteem can seriously backfire. When we tell children, “You’re so smart,” we communicate the message that they’d better not take risks or make mistakes, lest they reveal that they’re not so smart after all. Dweck calls this cautious attitude the “fixed mindset,” and she’s found that it’s associated with greater anxiety and reduced achievement. Students with a “growth mindset,” on the other hand, believe that intelligence can be expanded with hard work and persistence, and they view challenges as invigorating and even fun. They’re more resilient in the face of setbacks, and they do better academically.

Now Dweck has designed a program, called Brainology, which aims to help students develop a growth mindset. Its website explains: “Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. Brainology shows students that they are in control of their brain and its development.” That’s a crucial message to pass on to children, and it’s not just empty words of encouragement—it’s supported by cutting-edge research on neuroplasticity, which shows that the brain changes and grows when we learn new things. You, and your child, can learn to be smarter.

That, in fact, is something like the credo of this column, which will be appearing every week on MindShift. Each week, I’ll share the latest findings from neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology—discoveries that help us understand how we learn and how we can do it better. I hope you’ll join me here, and share what you read with others. We’ll be doing out part to spread a growth mindset, one click at a time.

Annie Murphy Paul, the author of Origins, is at work on a book about the science of learning.

Lenny Gonzales

Our love-hate relationship with technology is the subject of research psychologist Dr. Larry D. Rosen’s new book iDisorder. From his perspective, “tech gadgets and applications are turning us into basket-cases suffering from versions of obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention-deficit syndrome,” according to a recent HechingerEd blog.

Rosen also spoke at last year’s Learning & the Brain Conference, along with Dr. Gary Small, author of the book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. (Yes, the similarity of the titles are noted.)

The two authors bring their own experiences and perspectives to the table, some on opposite spectrums, but some quite similar. This MindShift article, How Technology Wires the Learning Brain describes Small’s point of view about one specific tactic he agrees with Rosen: scratch the technology itch in intervals, then set it aside.

Here’s that original post:

Kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend 11.5 hours a day using technology — whether that’s computers, television, mobile phones, or video games – and usually more than one at a time. That’s a big chunk of their 15 or 16 waking hours.

But does that spell doom for the next generation? Not necessarily, according to Dr. Gary Small, a neuroscientist and professor at UCLA, who spoke at the Learning & the Brain Conference.

“Young people are born into technology, and they’re used to using it 24/7,” Small said. “Their brains are wired to use it elegantly.”

The downside of such immersion in technological devices, he said, is that they’re not having conversations, looking people in the eye, or noticing verbal cues. “These are important ‘technologies,’ so to speak, that have evolved over centuries and are tremendously powerful.”

But that’s not the headline here. Small’s main point was this: “The technology train has left. You have to deal with it, understand it, and get some perspective.”

Video games, for example, aren’t just about repetitive tasks – many of them have built-in social components that allow kids to communicate. Texting isn’t about using a gadget — it’s about connecting with someone else.

“Texting is an expression of what it means to be human,” Small said. “We love being connected to other people. It’s a very compelling emotional urge, and it’s hard to give up moment to moment.”

That’s why one well-liked teacher Small knows gives her students a five-minute texting break in the middle of class. Educators also use texting in class as a means to gauge understanding of the subject and take instant polls, for example.

It might seem odd, but Small suggests also carving out time for face-to-face emotional exercises and in-person conversations to counterbalance all the inevitable gadget-communication.

“We can train empathic behavior,” he said.

TECH AND CREATIVITY

Is technology making us less creative? Parents and educators have been worried about this issue, wondering whether hours of playing video games will zap their inclination to write or paint or sing.

Small said the Internet trains our minds to have a “staccato” train of thought, jumping from idea to idea, like we do from Web site to Web site. But is that the most creative way to think? Do we have time to sit back and be thoughtful?

On one hand, we’re trained not to think deeply about subjects when we text quick snippets, Tweet short thoughts, or click on a simple thumbs up or thumbs down on a link. We experience information overload and have no time for reflection or problem solving.

On the other hand, technology trains the brain to be nimble and to process new ideas quickly. We become more open to new ideas, and communicate more freely and frequently.

“The brain is complex,” he said. “The answers are not straightforward.”

IS THE INTERNET MAKING US SMARTER?

In a study called “Your Brain on Google,” Small and his peers tested the brain activity of two groups — “Internet-naïve” (mostly 65 and older who had very little experience online) and “Internet smart”– while reading a book versus conducting a Google search.

In the “Internet savvy” group, there was twice as much brain activity in all parts of the brain while they were conducting a Google search than while they were reading a book. And in the “Internet-naïve” group, after a week of Googling subjects online, there was a significant burst in frontal lobe activity, which controls short-term memory and decision-making.

Small’s conclusion? “Google is making us smart,” he said. “Searching online is brain exercise.”

Technology can train our brains in positive ways, he added. Surgeons who play video games, for example, make fewer surgical errors. Those who play video games have improved reaction time, better peripheral vision.

“It’s a matter of finding balance,” he said. “Upgrade the technology skills of older ‘digital immigrants,’ and help young kids improve social skills.”

Other interesting nuggets from Small’s talk:

• Is technology addictive? Another complex question. Small said the American Psychiatric Group doesn’t think so. But there is an undeniable Pavlovian response to certain stimulus – and the Internet happens to be the medium for gratifying the urge. For example, if you’re addicted to shopping, is e-Bay to blame? When triggered, dopamine creates powerful urges to keep it flowing. “The consequence of a certain behavior reinforces a behavior,” Small said.
• Brains are malleable, much like computers. If we spend a lot of time engaged in a repeated mental task, the neural circuits will strengthen. Conversely, if we neglect those tasks, the neural circuits will weaken.
• The “thinking brain” – seeing the big picture – is not fully developed in children. Empathy and the ability to perceive and understand emotional point of view and communicate that understanding has not kicked in.
• The term “use it or lose it” applies to brain functions: 60% of synaptic connections are pruned away when not used.
• What will happen to brain development as result of the evolution of the handheld tool? Genetic variants that adapt best to environment are most likely to survive.

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Kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend 11.5 hours a day using technology — whether that’s computers, television, mobile phones, or video games – and usually more than one at a time. That’s a big chunk of their 15 or 16 waking hours.

But does that spell doom for the next generation? Not necessarily, according to Dr. Gary Small, a neuroscientist and professor at UCLA, who spoke at the Learning & the Brain Conference last week.

“Young people are born into technology, and they’re used to using it 24/7,” Small said. “Their brains are wired to use it elegantly.”

The downside of such immersion in technological devices, he said, is that they’re not having conversations, looking people in the eye, or noticing verbal cues. “These are important ‘technologies,’ so to speak, that have evolved over centuries and are tremendously powerful.”

But that’s not the headline here. Small’s main point was this: “The technology train has left. You have to deal with it, understand it, and get some perspective.”

Video games, for example, aren’t just about repetitive tasks – many of them have built-in social components that allow kids to communicate. Texting isn’t about using a gadget — it’s about connecting with someone else.

“Texting is an expression of what it means to be human,” Small said. “We love being connected to other people. It’s a very compelling emotional urge, and it’s hard to give up moment to moment.”

That’s why one well-liked teacher Small knows gives her students a five-minute texting break in the middle of class. Educators also use texting in class as a means to gauge understanding of the subject and take instant polls, for example.

It might seem odd, but Small suggests also carving out time for face-to-face emotional exercises and in-person conversations to counterbalance all the inevitable gadget-communication.

“We can train empathic behavior,” he said.

TECH AND CREATIVITY

Is technology making us less creative? Parents and educators have been worried about this issue, wondering whether hours of playing video games will zap their inclination to write or paint or sing.

Small said the Internet trains our minds to have a “staccato” train of thought, jumping from idea to idea, like we do from Website to Website. Is that the most creative way to think? Do we have time to sit back and be thoughtful?

On one hand, we’re trained not to think deeply about subjects when we text quick snippets, Tweet short thoughts, or click on a simple thumbs up or thumbs down on a link. We experience information overload and have no time for reflection or problem solving.

On the other hand, technology trains the brain to be nimble and to process new ideas quickly. We become more open to new ideas, and communicate more freely and frequently.

“The brain is complex,” he said. “The answers are not straightforward.”

IS THE INTERNET MAKING US SMARTER?

In a study called “Your Brain on Google,” Small and his peers tested the brain activity of two groups — “Internet-naïve” (mostly 65 and older who had very little experience online) and “Internet smart”– while reading a book versus conducting a Google search.

In the “Internet savvy” group, there was twice as much brain activity in all parts of the brain while they were conducting a Google search than while they were reading a book. And in the “Internet-naïve” group, after a week of Googling subjects online, there was a significant burst in frontal lobe activity, which controls short-term memory and decision-making.

Small’s conclusion? “Google is making us smart,” he said. “Searching online is brain exercise.”

Technology can train our brains in positive ways, he added. Surgeons who play video games, for example, make fewer surgical errors. Those who play video games have improved reaction time, better peripheral vision.

“It’s a matter of finding balance,” he said. “Upgrade the technology skills of older ‘digital immigrants,’ and help young kids improve social skills.”

Other interesting nuggets from Small’s talk:

• Is technology addictive? Another complex question. Small said the American Psychiatric Group doesn’t think so. But there is an undeniable Pavlovian response to certain stimulus – and the Internet happens to be the medium for gratifying the urge. For example, if you’re addicted to shopping, is e-Bay to blame? When triggered, dopamine creates powerful urges to keep it flowing. “The consequence of a certain behavior reinforces a behavior,” Small said.
• Brains are malleable, much like computers. If we spend a lot of time engaged in a repeated mental task, the neural circuits will strengthen. Conversely, if we neglect those tasks, the neural circuits will weaken.
• The “thinking brain” – seeing the big picture – is not fully developed in children. Empathy and the ability to perceive and understand emotional point of view and communicate that understanding has not kicked in.
• The term “use it or lose it” applies to brain functions: 60% of synaptic connections are pruned away when not used.
• What will happen to brain development as result of the evolution of the handheld tool? Genetic variants that adapt best to environment are most likely to survive.

For more about Your Brain on Google, watch this PBS report on Small’s study.