A well protected jelly like mass at the top of a network of fibres extending to all parts of the body.

Glial cells, in a roughly 10:1 proportion to neurons, form a jelly like support system for neurons. They create the insulating myelin, provide structure to the neuronal network, manage waste, and clean up neurotransmitters.

The human brain is made up of 100 billion nerve cells or neurons – about the same as the number of trees in the Amazon rainforest. Each cell is connected to thousands of others. So the total number of connections in your brain is the same as the number of leaves in the rainforest – about 1000 trillion or the equivalent to the world’s telephone system, which is the biggest machine on the planet.

Grey matter, in the cortex, is the outer part of the brain containing neural cell bodies, in contrast to the inner white matter which does not and mostly contains myelinated axon tracts. These route the millions of nerve fibres from all parts of the body into and around the central nervous system. Scientists now believe that repeated activity / practice leads to greater myelination, improved nerve fiber insulation, which increases the efficiency of neuronal pathways.

For the average human adult, the brain weighs 1.35 kilograms (just under 3 lbs). The creature with the largest brain on the planet is the Sperm whale at 7.8 kilograms.

Average adult human brain width = 140 mm, length = 167 mm and height = 93 mm.

There is still some doubt at this stage that size correlates directly with intelligence. For example, Einstein had an average sized brain.

The nervous system is the network of neurons which transmit information in the form of electrical signals. Neurons communicate with each other at special junctions called synapses, where chemicals help to bridge the gap between one neuron and the next.

The chemical changes that occur in these areas of the brain are the basis of our ability to retrieve memories.

Teachers and students jointly establish successful learning environments.

Recent research in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and neurobiology and behavior, have identified several key factors that have been validated by empirical research.

What are the factors that enhance or inhibit involvement in learning? Engagement tends to decline if an activity is motivated by the promise of a reward (as opposed to an intrinsic motivation, such as a desire to increase one’s competence). Motivation is also reduced if individuals engage in more than one activity at a time, or if they attribute their failure to a lack of ability (rather than a lack of effort).

Learners have distinct styles that influence learning. Especially important is whether a student has a prevention and promotion focus. A student with a prevention focus is especially sensitive to negative outcomes, seeks to avoid errors, and is driven by security concerns, while a student with a promotion focus is more sensitive to positive outcomes. Learning is enhanced when there is regulatory fit, when the manner in which a student engages in an activity sustains their goal orientation or interests regarding that activity.

Learning, memory, and reasoning are enhanced when students have the opportunity to perceive and interact with real-world examples. Thus, simulations and problem solving activities can play a valuable role in promoting understanding and recall from the brain.

A mental model is a representation or a conceptualization of a larger reality which allows an individual to readily acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information. By allowing an individual to structure knowledge, mental models play a crucial role in cognition, recall, learning, and decision making.

Metacognition refers to one’s self-awareness of one’s own thought processes. It also involves the ability to monitor comprehension and accurately evaluate one’s learning. Metacognition helps students avoid distractions, sustain effort, and modify their learning strategies based on their awareness of the strategies’ effectiveness. Strategies for encouraging metacognition include having students:

• Ask reflective questions
• Recount their thought processes as they attempt to solve a problem
• Make graphic representations of their thoughts and knowledge (e.g. concept maps, flow charts, semantic webs)

Learning involves a process of personal transformation. It requires students to develop a capacity for self-direction, self-monitoring, and self-generation of ideas. In order to mature as a learner, a student must shed earlier ways of thinking and earlier forms of self-expression. Because the process of intellectual maturation involves fundamental transformations in a student’s self-perception and thinking, it is often emotionally wrenching.

We typically think of learning as the acquisition and application of knowledge. Even when we think of higher-order thinking skills -analysis, synthesis, and evaluation – we cling to a functionalist view of learning. But advanced learning requires more:

That students construct a conceptual framework that allows them to integrate and organize new knowledge into a coherent structure. To foster deep learning, instructors need to nurture creative and unconventional thinkers who are skeptical about the received wisdom and capable of challenging existing assumptions and paradigms. This involves cultivating:

▪ intellectual curiosity (or what is often called “intrinsic motivation”)
▪ intellectual independence (an unwillingness to accept any idea or conclusion on faith an inquiring mindset), and
▪ an interest in grappling with the aesthetic, ethical, political, and social implications of ideas

Deep learning entails examining facts and ideas critically, relating new and older knowledge, linking ideas together, and constructing novel conceptual structures. It involves the ability to place isolated, unlinked facts into larger conceptual structures. Conceptual thinking means something quite different than the learning of skills or the mastery of content and concepts. It involves the discovery of meaningful patterns, the formulation of generations, and constructing arguments that are located in a larger disciplinary conversation.

Learning is maximized:

▪ When information is presented in multiple ways

▪ When students are engaged, motivated, and actively participating

▪ When learning objectives are closely connected to methods of assessment

▪ When expectations are clear

▪ When learning is modeled or scaffolded in each discipline

▪ When students are involved in formulating inquiries and reflecting upon their learning

All learners benefit from appropriate engagement.

Recent research has demonstrated that a student’s ability to remember, retrieve, and utilize information is greater when an instructor’s presentations of difficult material are spread out over time rather than concentrated intensively.

Testing can be a valuable learning tool. It can focus on evaluation, or it can be used in other ways: to motivate
study, consolidate learning, combat overconfidence, and assist students in monitoring their own understanding. Testing enhances long-term memory and helps students retrieve and apply knowledge.

The early 20th century developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky wrote about “the zone of proximal development,” a phrase that refers to the level of understanding that a student can reach with a teacher’s help. Thus, an instructor seeks to stretch and broaden a students understanding (i.e. scaffold) by identifying those areas that are within a student’s grasp: not too easy, but also not too difficult.

Studies have shown that when students generate their own answers to a problem, their mastery of a topic is greater than when an instructor shows them how to solve a problem.

That students fall into certain stereotypes—jocks, grinds, party animals—is part of the conventional wisdom. Among the roles students commonly adopt are the compliant, the annoyingly argumentative, the habitual rebels, and the discouraged and fatalistic. Other student types include careerists, intellectuals, strivers, and the disconnected.

We frequently hear that students have disparate learning styles: That some are auditory learners, while others are visual or tactile or kinesthetic learners (who learn by manipulating objects or engaging in projects) or analytical learners (or prefer information presented in sequential steps), or global learners (who do not like to be bored and prefer various kinds of stimulation). Then there are other learning styles: competitive, collaborative, independent, dependent, participatory, resistant, and avoidant. Rather than placing students in rigid categories, it appears that most students learn in multiple ways and that it is best, therefore, to present information in multiple ways.

Transactional teaching involves the transmission of knowledge from teacher to students. Students are expected to assimilate and synthesize the new knowledge on their own. Transformational teaching, in contrast, is much more self-conscious about its objectives and methods. It adopts a learner-centered rather than an instructor-centered approach. It makes students privy to the instructor’s larger goals and expectations. It prepares students to understand that they will receive challenging feedback. It cultivates reflective learning by giving students opportunities to reflect on the learning process. It gives students assignments that they find meaningful, involving
case studies, real-world data and problems, research and inquiry, and the public display of their findings.

Student learning can be enhanced or hindered by the classroom environment. A safe, inclusive, and stimulating environment encourages students to actively participate. Fostering such an environment requires an instructor to be acutely sensitive to individual differences and to make sure that students understand the instructor’s expectations and goals, as well as the steps the student must take to meet these objectives. In addition to promoting sensitivity, an inclusive classroom encourages dialogue, a process that might include collaborative inquiry, peer criticism, and intellectual give-and-take.

Best Practice Suggestions

Encourage students to think like an anthropologist, biologist, chemist, literary critic, political scientist, sociologist, statistician, business person or politician. Include reviewing and critiquing journal articles, providing students with data sets, and having students make hypotheses and test them.

Encourage various forms of student reflection, leading students to assess their knowledge and reflect critically upon their assumptions and perspectives. These include reflection upon content and concepts, personal reflection (description of reactions, thoughts, and feelings), and metacognitive reflection (monitoring of one’s own thought processes).

Ensure that students are aware that the brain takes inputs from a variety of sources and that learning is enhanced when all these sources are activated.

Learning to learn ensures that you make best use of all your cognitive functions.

In the 21st Century, the new disadvantaged will be those who do not have the capacity to learn. They will sink, unable to change and adapt as they are flooded with ever more information and change. But learning is about more than just getting by in a changing world. Our ability to learn is what makes us human: we are born curious and our ability to continue learning is what defines us – as individuals, as communities and as societies. Learning can bring you, your family, your organisation and your community any number of benefits. Knowing that the brain is malleable and has the potential to continuously generate associations and connections is key.

Learning how to learn is therefore a crucial process in which we should all engage throughout our lives. Often we concentrate on what we are learning rather than how we are learning it.

The most important aspect of learning how to learn is that you really do need to actively think about your learning. Two main things will probably affect your approach to learning:

• your motivation (the reasons why you are engaged in a particular course of study)

We all have a learning history that has both positive and negative experiences. Maybe the reason your learning did not go too well was nothing to do with the topic or the activity, but simply that you had had a difficult day and found it impossible to concentrate.

It is likely that you will have some emotional feelings about why you learnt successfully or otherwise. Emotions and feelings are often part of our learning.

All learning has an affective component (to do with feelings) as well as a cognitive one (to do with thinking). Recognising this – and resolving any tensions in our feelings about learning – is an important part of learning how to learn.

Memories are the result of electrochemical changes that take place in brain neurons.

In the one-year-long study on sea slugs-organisms, which have relatively simple nervous system, the team led by Kelsey Martin wanted to find where is knowledge stored in the complex brains of mammals, New Scientist reported.

Earlier researches showed that memory formation in the brain involves the strengthening of synaptic connections between nerve cells.

Short-term memories, such as a telephone number about to be used, seem to be stored in two small curled-up structures called the hippocampi, buried deep in the brain’s two hemispheres, the researchers said.

They also found that there were similar changes to the genes of neurons in the cortex over the subsequent week.

Earlier in 2008, researchers at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa showed in mice that during the first hour after a memorable event there were chemical changes to the DNA of neurons in this area, altering the proteins produced.

They said that these changes seemed to be permanent, indicating that long-term memories are stored there. Last year, another team led by Sheena Josselyn at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, found that in mice they could erase a frightening memory of a noise by killing amygdala neurons whose synapses had recently been strengthened after exposure to the noise.

It was the first time a specific memory had been traced to the nerve cells that encoded it.

We all know life-long learning is a must

In life, you are either growing or you are dying. Why is it that when people have a birthday with a zero in the end of it, most of them see it as a lot more significant than most other birthdays? It is because they measure their life in terms of those numbers. When some people hit 30 for example, they will sort of freak out because they had certain goals they set when they were 20 but they are nowhere close to achieving them. For others, it’s when they hit 40, also known as the mid-life crisis.

Are you a confessed self improvement junkie? It’s not such a bad thing and you are not alone. In fact as time goes on, you will be in the minority if you aren’t.

Many people think that one ‘magical’ day they will arrive at the place called, ‘I know all there is to know,’ and they can rest on their laurels. Many people arbitrarily decide when they have ‘arrived.’ However, unbeknown to them, they are simply settling for a mediocre life. You see, not many things will feel worse internally than knowing that your life hasn’t really improved in any way from what it was 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, or even 1 year ago.

This is why you must dedicate your life to personal growth. When you are constantly improving all areas of your life, you grow as a person. You become more mature in terms of knowing and having what you truly want in life. Self improvement isn’t about being weak or seeking help because something is wrong with you. It’s quite the opposite actually. It’s about taking control of your life, your personal power, and making it the way you want it to be. Statistics show that only a small percentage of people will read more than one learning book a year after they graduate from school. This is such a shame. There is so much one can learn and improve upon at any and all stages of life, and it will have a direct impact on the brain and your mental faculties.

So what mindset is appropriate if you want to improve what your brain can do?

What better way to learn how to improve an aspect of your life than to explore the strategies of people who have already mastered it? And nowadays there is instant access to audio books and video content online! If you drive alot, why not put some time aside to listen to something other than music. Are you using your smart phone / tablet technology to full effect? Remember also, much of this content is available for free at your local library if that is important to you.

There really isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t make self improvement a part of your daily life and therein lie the four key elements of how to get the best out of your brain. 1) your personal desire to make changes 2) understanding that the ‘structure’ of all our brains alters throughout our lives and that neuroplasticity is a key natural physiological component which inquiring mindsets exploit 3) recognition that regular involvement in your chosen areas of interest makes all the difference, and 4) adding to what you already know in a mind map kind of way reinforces what you already know and acts as connectors for new pieces of the puzzle.

Happy nurtured toddlers, advance in leaps and bounds.

This confirms what, to most of us is intuitive; nuturing parents give rise to creative adaptive human beings because the growth of young brains has been nourished to permit development to those ends, and this serves to illustrate the value of ‘practice’ in early years; ‘practice’ in anything but practice in a supportive, positive, affirming, loving, low stress environment.

The research, which is published online at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, correlates a nurturing environment with a 10% size increase of the hippocampus, and a larger size hippocampus would suggest a link to improved performance in school, among other things.

Researchers say it is logical that the hippocampus is smaller among depressed children as adult studies have demonstrated similar results. What was surprising was how nurturing made such a big difference in mentally healthy children.

To understand more about how to nurture your children from day one to success, take a look at this programme.

Young brains are well suited to retaining all sorts of bits of information.

New insights into brain development affirm what many parents and caregivers have known for years, 1) good prenatal care, 2) warm and loving attachments between young children and adults, and 3) positive stimulation from the time of birth, really do make a difference in children’s development for a lifetime.

Massive amounts of resource are being focused on getting to a clearer understanding of the physiology of the brain with particular emphasis on how to use the effectively and how to repair them when things go wrong.

In June 1996, a conference at the University of Chicago entitled “Brain Development in Young Children: New Frontiers for Research, Policy and Practice” gathered professionals from the neurosciences, medicine, education, human services, the media, business, and public policy, to focus on what we know about the developing brain and how that knowledge can and should inform efforts to improve results for children and their families. The following summarises what had been learnt at that stage:

• Human development hinges on the interplay between nature and nurture. The impact of environmental factors on the young child’s brain development is dramatic and specific, not merely influencing the general direction of development, but actually affecting how the intricate circuitry of the human brain is “wired.” How humans develop and learn depends critically and continually on the interplay between an individual’s genetic endowment and the nutrition, surroundings, care, stimulation, and teaching that are provided or withheld.
• Early care has decisive and long-lasting effects on how people develop and learn, how they cope with stress, and how they regulate their own emotions. Warm and responsive early care helps babies thrive and plays a vital role in healthy development. A child’s capacity to control its own emotional state appears to hinge on biological systems shaped by her early experiences and attachments. A strong, secure attachment to a nurturing adult can have a protective biological function, helping a growing child withstand the ordinary stress of daily life.
• The human brain has a remarkable capacity to change, but timing is crucial. The brain itself can be altered—or helped to compensate for problems—with appropriately timed, intensive intervention. In the first decade of life, the brain’s ability to change and compensate is especially remarkable. There are optimal periods of opportunity – “prime times” during which the brain is particularly efficient at specific types of learning.
• The brain’s plasticity also means that there are times when negative experiences or the absence of appropriate stimulation are more likely to have serious and sustained effects. Early exposure to nicotine, alcohol, and drugs may have even more harmful and long lasting effects on young children than was previously suspected. These risk factors frequently are associated with or exacerbated by poverty. For children growing up in poverty, economic deprivation affects their nutrition, access to medical care, the safety and predictability of their physical environment, the level of family stress, and the quality and continuity of their day-to-day care.
• Evidence amassed by neuroscientists and child development experts over the last decade point to the wisdom and efficacy of prevention and early intervention. Well designed programs created to promote healthy cognitive, emotional, and social development can improve the prospects – and the quality of life – of many children. The efficacy of early intervention has been demonstrated and replicated in diverse communities across the world.

Peer groups can have a major impact on all of our learning outcomes.

A learners’ psychological development does not end at adolescence.

Indeed, it is clear that the college and subsequent years are just as important in a learners’ cognitive, emotional, moral, and social development. How does college affect the brain of students? It influences their verbal, quantitative, and subject matter competence, their cognitive skills, their identity, self concept, and self-esteem, and values and attitudes.

• The peer group is the single most important source of influence on students’ development: on personality development, attitudes and values, behavior patterns, career development, and satisfaction with college.

• The extent of peer interaction is strongly connected to overall satisfaction with college.

• Women’s attendance at women’s colleges and African American students attendance at predominantly black colleges is positively related to success and achievement in later life.

• The degree to which faculty are student oriented is second only to the influence of the peer group on students’ growth. Measures include interactions outside of class, student engagement in research under a faculty members’ supervision, and feedback on papers.

• Active learning—including class presentations, group projects, and discussion—and substantive projects also have positive effects on students’ growth.

Successful teaching, involves much more than the transmission of skills and content. The ultimate goal is to nurture independent, self-directed, self-motivated learners who are capable of directing and critiquing their own work, who are open to alternate viewpoints, and who have highly developed higher order skills in interpretation, analysis, and communication. As an instructor, one of the most important tasks is to guide, motivate, and assist students through this maturational process. Students must recognize the limits of their current skills, knowledge, and perspectives. They must realize that approaches rewarded in high school—such as rote memorization, the mechanical use of formulas, or the parroting back of ideas from a textbook—are no longer sufficient in college, where a premium is placed on originality, high-level analytical skills, and facility in writing. Teaching can be didactic, emphasizing the transfer of information. It can be philetic, in which the teacher serves as role model and mentor. It can be evocative, assisting students in discovering the personal meaning of a topic or text, rather than seeking some larger truth. Then there is heuristic teaching, which engages students in a process of inquiry and discovery to help them develop the habits of a particular discipline.

Learning generally does not take place in isolation. Rather, learning involves interpersonal interactions in a social setting. Therefore we need to pay close attention to the psycho-social and emotional dimensions of learning. The psycho-social aspects of learning have been a particular concern among feminist pedagogues, who argue that learning is context sensitive. Proponents of feminist pedagogies view the classroom as a site of power, privilege, and hierarchy, and regard teaching as an inherently political act. Yet the politics of the classroom, these scholars maintain, remain obfuscated.

Within the traditional classroom, these scholars argue, certain ideas, perspectives, and forms of behavior, discourse, and argumentation are favored. The conceptual design of a course tends to remain hidden and unexamined, while the selection of topics and readings reflects unspoken ideological presumptions. Meanwhile the approach to teaching in the traditional classroom, whether involving lecture or discussion, takes the significance of a particular text or topic for granted and fails to model the range of alternate interpretive or analytical approaches. All of these factors lead some, if not many, students to feel marginalized, discouraging deep learning.

Practicing a wide variety of techniques helps improve cognitive functions across the board.

We humans all use a variety of senses to gather information and that the more ‘vivid’ and cross sensational that input is, the more likely we will retain the information in the brain longer term. We see, we touch, we smell, we hear and we taste. We tend to organise things and we also experience emotions; happiness, sadness, anger and so on and it is perhaps components of all these things together that become lodged in our minds, by way of brain chemistry, as recoverable memories.

We know that memory champions use a variety of techniques to store and retrieve ‘data’ in their quests for recognition as superbrains; yet the very same people face the same mundane challenges to do with where the car keys were last placed or why they decided to walk down a particular aisle in the supermarket. So it appears that in most cases, if you specifically wish to remember things, that is any things, practice using a system until it becomes second nature and recognise that the interplay of all your senses and processing methods can contribute to more efficient retrieval.

In essence, it seems we take inputs from all our senses; we process (logically, emotionally) and over the years we each evolve serendipitously, what you might call a developed learning style:

• Visual
• Aural
• Kinaesthetic

and a preferred learning environment:

• social
• solitary

So there we have it, all things being equal, you are going to get the best out of your brain by using all available inputs, developing logical and emotional processes and cultivating your ability to operate in different learning environments. The final key component is the desire / drive to progress and the recognition that practice makes perfect. After all Mozart didn’t become the pre-eminent 18th century composer that we know him as today, without practicing from before the age of five; Bill Gates didn’t excel in the computer industry without constant involvement with technology from the age of 13; in fact pretty much anybody that got good at anything, immersed themselves in it and worked away at it.

So, as regards getting the best out of your brain here are a few suggestions:

• Understand why you are seeking to remember things. Do you just have a deep desire to know things? Do you wish to show off a bit? Do you desperately want to qualify?
• Seek to use all your senses when learning and thereby enhance capabilities across all learning styles. Actively ask yourself what am I seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling and associate that the new data.
• Recognise the value of interaction and the purpose of reflection and drive yourself to engage in both on a daily basis.
• When processing, think logic AND emotions; continuously build on your logical faculties and expose your emotional connection to the work.
• Remember, practice involves repetition and repetition drives the chemistry of long term memories so consider using a program like this to keep you interested and focused.