Mastering Learning Series: Brain Secrets Revealed
Brain Secrets Revealed
Your brain is distinctly unique to you, and only you! No one else has a brain like yours…and there will never be another like it! Each 3-lb brain is the product of its own individual life experience. From the moment you are born, your brain launches a lifelong process of change: pruning, growing, adapting…responding to daily experiences…resulting in a unique YOU! The brain is not fixed, as previously thought, but physically continues to change and to grow throughout one’s lifetime.
Furthermore, the human brain not only grows intelligence, neuroscientists are discovering that the human brain possesses the power…to improve health; to prevent disease; and, miraculously, to overcome some forms of brain damage. Amazing!
Challenge Yourself
Ongoing research in the neurosciences is pushing the envelope, challenging previous knowledge, attitudes, and assumptions about how humans learn. Inevitably these new ideas challenge old ways. In Brain Secrets, Dr. Merzenich employs: “Challenge Yourself!” “Your brain wants to be challenged.” “Challenge it to learn new
things…and to be purposeful.” “By our 30th birthday”, says Merzenich, “We’re not doing enough to build our cognitive reserves.”
No matter one’s age, the brain will recognize this new perspective on learning: the human brain is curious about itself! So engage the new brain science…question, explore, engage…define how the new brain science works best for you (for health and learning), your family, your work, and your community.
The Challenge…and The Promise
Recognize both The Challenge…developing a virtually limitless learning capacity, and The Promise…for all.
On Mastering Learning (OML) embraces The New Science of Learning, accepting the challenge of unwrapping the scientific findings through authentic, equitable, purposeful, respectful and in-depth inquiry and development. Our goal is to reveal the brain’s secrets, develop authentic brain-based learning models, and build cognitive reserve, a plentiful supply of synapses for each of us to use as we age.
Brain Works
How our brain works naturally is profoundly complex and truly magical!! Up until now, our learning model has consisted primarily of copying the actions of others around us, from observing our environment. Through modeling, trial and error and rote repetition, our early learning habits emerged. Few were “coached” in how to learn or how to learn better. We either “got it”, “or not”… “Or not” becoming to mean that we “were not good at” …often “Learning” instead, that we “could not learn”… (Math, a second language, science, to draw) limiting the scope of possibility.
In contrast, “How the Brain Learns” immediately switches our learning channels from an outside/in, to an inside/out perspective. Research shows that our senses: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, function as gateways for learning. Via the senses, external information is converted to internal electrical and chemical messengers, firing the learning process. A word read, an image seen, a sound heard…transformed into electrical sparks that ignite the learning process.
Brain Exercises #2
Stated simply, learning requires sensory interaction with the external world. Internally, the “sensory receptors” are alerted to receive incoming information. Quality of the interaction, and ultimately the quality of learning, is controlled by the learner…
by the Degree of Focus applied and Attention given to incoming messages.
#1 Assess how you Focus
- How well do you focus
- What do you naturally focus on
- Do you find it difficult to focus due to workload, interruptions or interest
- Have you read a page only to find that you do not remember anything you read; or not hear the radio or television while listening or watching
- Do you have a habit of staring into space registering absolutely nothing
These are the all signs of a Lack of Focus…
#2 Focus on how you Focus
- Hone your pipelines to learning
- Relate smells to early life experiences…listen to the cadence of birds chirping…touch various fabrics…study the “green” in your life…assess a new food based on taste, texture, smell, and color
- Get moving…take a nature walk or dance to re-awaken all of the senses
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About the Author
Mentored by Malcolm Knowles (long considered the “father of adult education” in America), Dr. Alice F. Dyer has devoted her professional career to a brain-based approach to human development via teaching and training. She founded Corporate College Services in 1997. For more than 20 years, CCS has championed accelerated learning in the workplace.