With kids now back in school and off for college, the joy of another academic year begins. As a university professor, I am genuinely passionate for my students to achieve optimal performance in their studies and for our children to aspire to their personal best in all areas of life.
Let's face it, learning doesn't come easy to everyone, so how can we encourage our children to excel in school? As a professor who teaches courses in neuroscience, health and happiness, I am delighted to share these five scientifically proven tips from educational neuroscience that I offer to my own students to help improve focus, enhance memory and, more importantly, make learning fun!
Tip # 1 - Take A Breather
My mantra for the past decade that I’ve been telling to my students and clients is that “how you choose to breathe determines how you choose to live, heal and be.” I’m now going to add to that how you choose to breathe determines how you choose to learn! We’ve all heard the phrase “Take a Breather” when we need to calm down when feeling stressed, frustrated or overwhelmed, but it turns out that the phrase can now be backed up by neuroscience.
The latest research into mind-body medicine consistently shows that slow, deep, focused breathing into the lower belly activates the body’s natural relaxation-response, a mechanism that is wired into the human nervous system and triggered by consciously shifting the quality of the breath. It now appears that the body's relaxation-response is not only an evolutionary tool for survival, but a vital mechanism to improve focus, maintain calm and boost memory.
Centering and focusing on your breath is such an effective technique in the learning process that I’ve recently decided to begin every university class that I teach by leading my students in a 5-minute breathing exercise. We now know that when your brain and body come into alignment through the breath, it creates the important 4 C’s for learning: Calmness, Centeredness, Concentration, and Creativity! Watch this simple 5-minute guided video and breathing-exercise to teach help you get on track.
Tip # 2 - Before You Achieve It, You First Have To Visualize & Believe It!
Memory is one of the key components in learning. The traditional model of education focused on rote memorization of facts and figures with the expectation to recall such details for an exam. While this type of learning might be good for short-term memorization, true and effective learning is a multi-sensory skill that that requires long-term memory and multiple intelligences. Recent advances in brain-imaging now show that, in fact, different parts of the brain activate in short versus long-term memory.
The pre-frontal lobe, the outer and more recently developed region of the brain close to the skull, appears to be the predominant area responsible in short-term memory, also known as working-memory. Long-term memory involves more complex and integrated brain regions that employ the older evolutionary and more interior regions of the human brain, specifically the hippocampus and the limbic system. So why is this so important? It turns out these regions of the brain, connected to long-term memory, are where your brain makes cognitive associations and synthesizes incoming data from all your five senses. More importantly, these regions are intimately linked to other areas of the brain that govern emotions and visualization, which utilize other vital forms of intelligence, such as emotional, kinesthetic, visual, and spatial learning.
All the studies in neuroscience now indicate that the brain, like the body, is a muscle that you can strengthen and harness for your advantage to accomplish your goals in life. A technique I use myself and with my own students, which has been recognized to enhance memory, performance and confidence in leaning is cognitive visualization.
A quote I often use to explain cognitive visualization is: “Before you can achieve it, you first have to visualize and believe it!” Whether you want to call it “creative imagery,” “emotional learning,” or “muscle memory,” neuroscience now validates the long-held believe that in order to accomplish a task, your chance of success increases when you use multiple forms of intelligence, such as emotional, visual and kinesthetic. The technique of cognitive visualization starts by having you first visualize in your mind what you want to accomplish and then feel the emotional quality of successfully achieving that goal.
Let’s take an example where you have to give a report in front of the class. While you will have to prepare for the actual presentation by doing your research, writing your notes, and memorizing your speech, you can also do a cognitive visualization technique on a daily basis before the actual task. Perhaps, you can visualize yourself delivering the presentation to your audience, picture the actual room and even repeat the speech in your mind, while at the same time feeling the emotions of confidence and enthusiasm.
What you’re doing is actually training a part of your brain known as the premotor cortex to help your body, brain and being prepare for the activity well before the actual event occurs. In a recent article published in the journal Science, years of research into the premotor cortex reveal that this region is what accounts for us effectively planning and strategizing in order to accomplish a goal, whether that is an athletic performance, playing a musical instrument or taking an exam. It is as if your brain is already doing the action even before the body moves a muscle! Learn how cognitive visualization allows Olympic athletes, CEOs and even students gain a considerable advantage when it comes to achieving their goals in my article here.
Tip # 3 - Shake It Out: Move, Play, & Have Fun
We all know that movement and exercise are important for the body and for optimal health. Recently, more evidence from educational neuroscience supports the conclusion that movement of any kind, whether it’s recess, sports, dance, yoga, or just plain fun and play, stimulates the brain and improves learning! With advances in brain-mapping, we observe that there is a direct correlation between movement and cognitive function, specifically in an area of the brain called the cerebellum, a region located at the base of the brain in the back of the head. While the cerebellum is only about the size of a fist and constitutes about ten percent of the brain’s volume, it contains almost half of all the neurons of the human brain. One reason why the cerebellum is so densely packed with neurons and recognized as the most complex part of your brain is due to the fact that its primary function is to govern motor control. Even more remarkable is that recent studies suggest that the cerebellum’s motor control functions send important signals to other parts of the brain responsible for attention, spatial perception and most importantly, for memory.
Why is this so important for educators, parents and students to know? What the latest medical research indicates is that the same region of your brain that involves movement, exercise, fun and play is the exact same area that governs cognition and learning! While there is a common bias that play and movement are acceptable for only younger children, the scientific evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the brain’s ability to increase cognitive function through movement, exercise and play is one that continues throughout life!
Not only do exercise, movement and play keep the body healthy, they also appear to stimulate brain activity, improve learning, enhance memory, promote motivation and instill confidence in the learning process. Now that’s one game I’ll gladly play! Read article explaining how movement and exercise improve cognition and learning.
Tip # 4 - Get Outside
Closely connected to the idea of how movement and exercise enhance learning is a corollary concept coming out of neuroscience that nature appears to promote a healthy brain conducive for learning. We all know how peaceful and relaxing it is to sit on the beach, hike in the mountains or enjoy a beautiful sunset, but there appears to be something more profound happening in your brain whenever you’re immersed in nature. In a ground-breaking study published in Psychological Study, a direct correlation was made between being in nature with increased cognitive attention. In 2002, a study was conducted in which 169 young girls living in public housing projects in urban Chicago were divided into two control groups: those living in units overlooking nature and greenery and those living in units void of natural views. The results were astounding. Factoring in all other criteria, the girls who had views of nature consistently performed better than those in the other control group in tests to measure focus, concentration and mental discipline. Similar tests have been conducted in the past few years with the same startling conclusion–nature makes us happy & healthy.
So how exactly does nature improve focus, enhance concentration, and perhaps even reduce anxiety and depression? The answer resides in your brain and relates again to the relaxation response, an evolutionary mechanism that appears to be “wired” into our neurobiology. The growing field of ecopsychology studies the affects of nature on the brain and reveals that your brain has two forms of attention: voluntary (direct) and involuntary (indirect). The voluntary/direct attention enables you to focus your thoughts and harness neural energy for tasks that require direct concentration, e.g. writing this article, taking an exam or listening to a lecture. The other type is an involuntary/indirect attention that your brain does with little or no effort, e.g. watching a sunset, meditating, having a casual conversation, dancing or being in nature.
In our current non-stop technologically driven world, a student's brain is not only bombarded with academic information, but a barrage of texts, emails and other virtual data on a daily basis. The brain is overwhelmed with all this sensory data, as it requires an unimaginable amount of forced and focused attention to be in this voluntary/direct mode. As a result, your brain functions in a constant stressful beta-wave state for the majority of your waking day. Rarely, do we take the time in our awake state for the brain to go into the involuntary/indirect attention state that correlates to the calming, soothing alpha-waves.
It appears that when we are immersed in nature, our brains automatically drop into the involuntary, indirect attention-mode that is connected with the healing alpha-wave brain state. Research suggests that even a short walk in the park during your lunch break, touching a tree on your way to school, or literally “stopping to smell the roses” once in a while is beneficial, as it is an evolutionary trait that your brain evolved to do. So while it turns out that certainly being in nature has tremendous benefits on the mind, brain and learning, it appears that just having a view of nature from your home or in school can increase cognitive focus and attention in the classroom.
Tip # 5 - Relax & Sleep: More ZZZZ's Make for More A's
Of all the neuroscience tips for better learning, the one by far that is the easiest and simplest to do is get more sleep. In order to get those A’s you might need to get more Zzzz’s! The reason that sleep is so important is that it has a significant impact on memory and learning. A fascinating experiment conducted at the Harvard Medical School on sleep, memory and learning reveals that learning actually continues to occur while you are asleep and that getting a good night’s sleep after you learn something is just as important as getting rest before an exam.
Furthermore, it appears that the brain consolidates learning in sleep during the specific phase of Rapid Eye Movement (REM), better known as dream-state sleep. During this period important neural information is released from the hippocampus, the area responsible for memory, into specific areas of the cortex required for learning. Thus, the more sleep one gets the greater the duration of these important sleep phases to increase distribution of cognitive material into the appropriate neural networks.
So the day you study the American Civil War in school, during REM dream sleep that same night your brain appears to review and reenact all that information, eventually solidifying them into your brain’s memory banks. What all the research into sleep, memory and learning observes is very simple–the more sleep you get in the bedroom, the better chance of success in the classroom!
While I can't wave a magic wand and give everyone A's this year, I hope these five tips allow you to make learning fun, engaging and exciting.
Here's to a successful school year!
Dr. Jay Kumar
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