Brains Rule!
So, I’m at the final keynote of DevLearn. My anticipation is almost as high as the level of amusement. The winners from DemoFest are receiving well-deserved awards. The Best of Show goes to: DISTIL Interactive for Business in Balance: Implementing an Environmental Management System. But all of the participants were winners. By and large, the entries were the best of the best in current implementations of e-learning, judged on their merits by their peers, who are at the top of the industry, and undergirding it’s progress.
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And now, for the rock star geek of the day–Dr. John Medina, author of “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD)“. Here’s what he has to say (summarized by me): | ![]() |
- We don’t know how the brain processes information; we have developed mythologies about how the brain processes information.
- What we know about the brain is its performance envelop (that the brain evolved to function at high speed…that is, while we were constantly in motion–about 12 km per day)
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Several experiments…here are a couple:
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Korsokov’s Syndrome - locked in time in terms of memory.
Brain Rule of Memory - repeat to remember. Most of the processes that decide if something is going to be remembered occurs in the first three seconds.
Memory is not a unified concept. Episodic, Motor, Short-term, immediate, working, long-term, semantic, prospective spatial, event-based, time-based, habituation, encoding , and declarative memory. We have no idea how it wokrs….but John focuses on Declarative Memory:
Meaning: this is a fish; a car; a guitar.
What do we know about declarative memory. When meaning comes into your head, enters into a very volatile area called immediate memory. Foveating - the area of the eye where you lock down and get all of the information. We can track where you’re foveating…
Immediate memory - the buffer where you hold things…Alan Baddeley called it working memory (phonological loop…immediate, working, long-term.)
We know about capacity for working memory: 7 +/- 2 pieces of information for 30 seconds (IQ independent). Most of human learning can be thought of as intelligent, controlled memory. If you repeat some of it, it will persist and go to working memory…get a signature between 60 to 120 minutes (IQ dependent).
Miguel Najdorf - chess player
Model for a future classroom. Capturing the memory buffer every 120 minutes…
Part 2: Long-Term Memory
Testing memory of the crowd by presenting song lyrics…dating back to 1949 (some of us are old, but I didn’t know that one).
Long-term - you’ve repeated past the 120 minute time limit and recruited it. Systems consolidation - takes about 10 years to fully consolidate a memory. Evolutionary, we grew up out doors and needed to be flexible and able to solve problems by no committing too much to memory (as cement); otherwise keep amendable. Brain built to solve problems related to surviving in the great out doors.
Neural field trip - nervous system, thalamus, hippocampus, surface of human brain (cortex - means bark) 2 ml wrapping paper…this is where the good stuff happens…a balloon with a sparkler inside it…the hippocampus is the sparkler.
Start phase - 30 second
Alert phase - hippocampus consulted & signal connected
Nomadic Phase - memory goes somewhere, we don’t know where…it travels around for about 10 years and then after 10 years…
Permanent Storage - hippocampus lets go, memory is permanent, tries to remember the first few seconds of what you remembered 10 years below. During the 10 year journey, the memory is fully corruptable, and there is no guarantee of fidelity.
It might be better to think of knowledge as booster shots…that we need over and over again in order to make sure we recruit items to long term memory. It takes up to 10 years, with repetition. REPEAT TO REMEMBER.
Brain Rule # 2: Exercise
John lost over 30 pounds over the last year by inserting an aerobic environment.
Getting older - research on aging process - statistically, showing a bipolar statistical distribution - some aged like Mike Wallace - 91 years old - bright, smart, flying around the world … a lot of people aging like that. On the other side are people aging like Keith Richards - 62 - aging badly. Risk for alzheimers & other disorders going through the roof. The independent variable predicting which (paper from 89) - presence or absence of sedentary life style: active lifestyle => Mike Wallace.
Active lifestyle people maintain higher level of intelligence. Smarter in every category you can test. (see phooto of Cognitive effects of exercise) Executive function, memory, spatial, reaction time).
Could you turn Keith Richards into Mike Wallace? Yes…kinda…can even be done with COPD function patients. 16 weeks (see next photo) Aerobics, not toning.
Memory does not improve with aerobic or toning exercises. If you want to improve your memory, data suggests you have to be exercising aerobically for 36 months. You actually can reverse age-related memory loss…but it takes a long time.
How much do you need to do? Not much - 20-30 minutes 2 to 3 times a week. Standard Cooperian Workout.If you stop the exercise, you’ll go back to the lower level of executive function. The sweet spot is right during cool down…that is, you are most capable of improving memory at this point.
If you could tear it all down and create a brain-friendly learning environment, you would have a guided workout for 8 hours a day punctuated with learning opportunities.
You have to be careful with this data.
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Describes how memorizing is only part of the learning stream. I didn’t get all the details because I was photographing, but I noticed Jay Cross doing a little video clip, so check out his blog. |
“I don’t know how any of this applies to e-Learning”…”seven year construction project”…
…gotta catch a flight now.
Joe




