Brain Plasticity

When we say that the brain is "plastic", we don't talk about the polymers. Brain plasticity means that the brain is marvelously responsive, adaptable and eternally changing. Its adaptations and changes occur in response to the demands and pressures of the environment that it encounters. We are literally remaking our brain and accumulating a trove of experiences and memories, every minute of the day; everyday of the week; every month and every year.

One important aspect of brain plasticity is the ability to retain and store more specific memories. We talk too much of memories but where are these memories stored? The storage of experience as memories is the foundation upon which the brain builds its capacity to continually remodel itself. Memory storage is carried out on the molecular level, and the synapse is the workhouse for ensuring that memories are preserved for long periods of time. Preservation of memories over the short term occurs because existing synapses are strengthened.

Another important component of brain plasticity is the concept of critical periods. These are relatively limited windows of opportunity during which the brain can learn, change and develop. If the opportunity is not seized during the critical period, the window may close forever ( Don't worry too much as there are brain training methodologies to open up the window). The concept has many important implications for building better brains, for enhancing creativity and for education. Examining everyday human life, inadequate environmental exposure results in failure to learn something during the critical period.

One of the best ways to get a new perspective on things to enhance this plasticity is to tackle a new field that you know little or nothing about. We might own our own creativity to bridge across these new disciplines. Many people have a secret longing to do something different from the work that is their daily bread. If you have always wanted to try your hand at painting or to master a foreign language, take the time and effort to do it. Do it in depth and with a passion, for this is the only way that you will really exercise your brain. Intense curiosity also aids this plasticity. This accelerates creativity. The seeds of creativity may be planted by nature but nurture helps it germinate, flower and grow. Nature cannot be changed but nurture is under our control.

We know that brain plasticity continues throughout life, and that using the brain is good for it. Individuals can do more to exercise their brains than they currently do, creating the possibility that they can slow aging process and perhaps lessen their risks for degenerative brain diseases.

THREE REVOLUTIONARY TOOLS FOR STRENGTH BUILDING

Have you ever been advised on the lines, " Capitalize on your strengths and manage around your weaknesses"? Easy to grasp - isn't it? But is it easy to implement??? !!! Well then, what needs to be done to achieve this? Here comes the solution of applying the three revolutionary tools on strength building. The three - talents, knowledge and skills - combine to create your strengths.

 

• Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior. 
• Knowledge consists of the facts and lessons learned.
• Skills are the steps of an activity.

Talents

 

Many people don't appreciate their talents. They think that with enough practice almost everything is learnable. They don't actively seek knowledge and skills to enhance their talents. Rather, they fall into the trap of trying to acquire as much knowledge and as many skills as they are able to, in the hope of bettering themselves in some general way, smoothing out their rough edges, and emerging suitably well rounded. To build up your strengths you must avoid this trap. Rather try to identify your talents. There can be areas of greatest potential, areas in which you have the best possible chance to cultivate a world- class strength that can help you to perform.

 

Knowledge 

 

There are two distinct kinds of knowledge for building your strengths. They are the factual and the experimental knowledge. You need both, and fortunately, you can acquire both of them. Sometimes, factual knowledge won't guarantee excellence, but excellence is impossible without it. To put it simple, you can never excel at painting if you don't know that red and green colour , when combined, gives brown. The experimental knowledge isn't taught in classrooms or found in manuals. Rather, it is something that you must discipline yourself to pick up along the way and retain.

 

Skills

 

Skills bring structure to experimental knowledge. It means that, whatever the activity, at some point a smart person will sit back and formalize all the accumulated knowledge into a sequence of steps that, if followed, will lead to performance. Skills help you to avoid trial and error and to incorporate directly new discoveries into your performance.

 

The bottom line is that : Identify your most powerful talents, hone them with skills and knowledge, and you will be on your way to living a strong life.

 

Cognitivism

I am happy to discuss yet another concept which is very crucial in a learning process -Cognitivism. Well, let me explain you what this concept is all about. Cognitivism is a learning theory that focuses on how information is received, organised, stored and retrieved by the brain.

I have evolved a simple approach called ITP (Information - Transfer - Practice) to achieve cognitivism. The first element of my ITP methodolgy is information. This information needs to be meaningful. Meaning is critical to learning. We have a pre-existing knowledge. A proper meaningful information can interact with this pre-existing information for better learning and retention power. In other words, meaning is the interaction between the 'learned' and 'to be learned'.

The next step of ITP is the transfer of this meaningful information to the students. The transfer can be felicitated through the use of examples during initial learning. Instead of defining and explaining the terminology, it is always wise to give multiple examples and make the kid understand the underlying principle involved. A compare and contrast mode can also be applied for a deep knowledge.

Example of compare and contrast concept using a hurricane and tornado:

The final element is practice. We have all heard of the proverb 'Practice makes a man perfect'. Do you know why? It's because

• it imposes meaning on concepts
• enhances better transfer
• overcomes context specificity
• helps in acquisition of expertise

Hence these three elements are critical to cognitivism and enhances the learner's mind consciously. It has a direct impact on the process that happens inside the human mind and internal mental structure. The overall goal of this ITP approach is to process any new information effectively and efficiently by the students.

UNCONSCIOUS INCUBATION

Have you ever come across  the word - UNCONSCIOUS INCUBATION. Well, it is nothing but a process in which the unconscious mind keeps working on a problem while the conscious mind stops thinking about it. It is a humbling thought that the mind frequently works better without our interference. You have probably had the experience of wrestling with a problem without coming to a solution and then, after you have stopped thinking about it, the answer suddenly comes to you in a flash of inspiration. The unconscious mind is a great mystery. If it were merely a storehouse for all the things that we don't need to think about immediately,that would be quite understandable. But the unconscious is far more complex than that. It keeps thinking all the time, whether we are awake or asleep. From time to time, it throws up notations in a way that seems quite ransom. Certainly, it is outside our conscious mind.Sometimes it generates thoughts that seem to have no immediate relevance to anything. Anyways, it is not the place to go too deeply into the workings of the mind. Let us confine ourselves to ways in which 'unconscious incubation' can be used to help our creative powers. Although there is no sure way of making the unconscious work on a problem, there are things we can do to give it encouragement.

• Spend as much time as you can attempting to work out the problem in your conscious mind. It doesn't matter if all the ideas you come up with are no good. The most important thing is to focus your mind upon the problem and consider it from every angle.
• Write down all the possible solutions, or at the very least, make notes of the difficulties you encounter and the reasons that no solution has been found.This is very important because the unconscious mind will not provide flashes of inspiration unless you have exhausted more conventional methods.
• Now, take a break. It doesn't really matter what you do but it should be something that has no relation to your problem.
• Leave your problem alone for at least 24 hours. If no solution presents itself, go back to think consciously about possible solutions.
• But the unconscious mind is utterly unpredictable, there is no guarantee that a solution will be forthcoming at all. However, it sometimes happens that the problem will incubate for months or years. You just never know what is going to come to surface!

One particular example that I would like to share in this aspect is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the late summer of 1883, Mark Twain finished a book that, according to his own account, he had 'been fooling over for seven years'. This is a clear example of the way in which creative tasks cannot be hurried. Doubtless, if Twain had tried to complete it quickly, it would have been a much lesser book than the one we know now - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It took him seven years of unconscious incubation before the book got published.

Good stress and bad stress

There is so much talk of stress these days.The almost universal view is that stress is a bad thing, something to be avoided. While prolonged exposure to stress is certainly bad for the mind and ultimately damaging to your immune system, some stress is not only inevitable but probably desirable. You will all be surprised at this comment. But its true.For the mind to operate at its full potential, it requires a certain level of stress. It is more useful to think in terms of good and bad stress. Harnessed well, stress helps us through exams,and allows us to excel at challenging intellectual assignments and endure physical hardship. 

In this context, I would like to share an information that psychologist Hans Seley is often called the 'Father of Stress' due to his extensive research into the topic. He called these smaller amounts of positive stress 'eustress'. People exposed to eustress may have experienced more success in their exams as it improves some aspects of intelligence. A report says that stress is actually a cognitive enhancer which can boost several aspects of mental prowess and hence helps in professional and academic capabilities. For example a little stress while revising for an exam or a presentation can help you remember what you have read on the big night. But remember stress is good only when taken as small dosages of eustress. Otherwise it becomes a bad stress.

When it is mismanaged, it produces angry or rude behaviour. Too much stress, or extended periods of stress, stops the mind working at its full potential.The main causes of bad stress are from predominantly two sources; people and situations.Try to identify who or what causes you to feel badly stressed. This will help you address the problem and work towards a situation or take avoidance measures. Another aspect is planning. Planning reduces stress considerably - just think how often you see other people or yourself fret because there isn't enough time to prepare for something or are confronted with something unexpected but predictable. Watch out for the good and bad stress in you so that it does not wear you down!

Enhancing concentration in kids

An alert state of mind and a good motivation are inevitable in boosting concentration and eventually a good mental capability. There are two stages to concentrating. First, you need to banish distraction and clutter. This involves discipline and time management. Most children feel more calm and alert in the day. If this is true, utilize this time for tackling brain jobs. Clear your mind and choose a comfortable, calm place to start off. The first time you sit down to study - it is a warm-up time; so you won't be at peak concentration. You would need about 10-15 minutes to shut out all distractions before concentrating well. As you progress, the concentrations starts diminishing. Ensure that you make a commitment to finish one more paragraph before taking a break. Then take a break and relax yourself . You can leave the study area for a break but do not stretch too long or you will need another warm-up session when you continue with your studying!

The second stage is to take care of your attention. Research has shown that when you pay attention to something the parts of the brain processing information becomes more effective. Attention span varies from an individual to another. Try to look out or calculate your attention span. Say if you are able to read 15 minutes without distraction, then 15 minutes is your reading span. Now see if you can read for 20 minutes continuously without being distracted. This way you can analyse your time and increase the attention span accordingly. This is the best way to increase the attention span.

An important aspect that i would like to address in this aspect of concentration is that never listen to pop, drums or any fast track music while reading as this could disastrously lead to poor concentration. Many children do argue that they have fared better listening to music. But this would not be helpful in the long run because listening to fast beats makes the mind very brisk but for the mind to be peak in concentration, it needs to be calm, and relaxed. So put these into practice and concentrate!

Listening skill

Listening is a smart strategy that enhances one’s personality. When we talk, we repeat what we already know; but when we listen, we often learn something. By the simple act of listening, you pick up other people’s good idea. Of course you should make a mental note not to use their sillier ones! Too many people go through life never really knowing what people around them think because they have simply never made the time to listen to them. Good speakers don’t always make the best listeners. But a speaker, who knows how to be a good listener, has a profound impact on his speeches. Moreover, they share more than their own experience. Here are some of the suggestions to improve your listening skills.

 

Maintain eye contact with the speaker whenever possible
Focus on what someone is saying, and not how they are saying it. It’s easy to get distracted by a distinctive accent, or voice.
Make sure that you are interested and that you are following what is being said by quiet acknowledging sounds.
Be patient and avoid jumping in with too many questions.
Check your understanding of what is being said time to time by repeating things back and encouraging the speaker to add more details.
Try to empathize.
Try not to make your mind wander. Stay active by asking yourself questions about what you are listening to.
Treat listening as a mental challenge and feel good because you are managing to achieve it.
During a conversation, wait for 2 seconds after the person finishes speaking to make sure that they have finished their thought.
Take a comfortable listening position. A good listener uses positive body language; leaning forward and showing an enthusiastic, relaxed nature.
Listen with openness. Be a supportive, but neutral listener.

Many successful leaders credit their success to effective listening skills. Effective listening is a skill that is one of the building blocks of success – so spend some time thinking about it and developing the same.