Sensory Recruitment

Are you familiar with the term recruitment as it applies to absorbing sensory data? Recruitment can be defined as the enhancing of a sensory experience through the use of two or more senses (as compared to only one) when absorbing sensory data. For example, regardless of your sensory preference, you probably benefit from seeing a person’s face while communicating with him/her, especially if the surrounding environment is noisy. Looking at beautifully presented food often enhances the perception of its taste. Watching a person present a musical concert as you listen to the music may provide a very different experience to your brain when you listen to a CD of the concert later on. Studies in France have shown that multisensory integration is mediated by flexible, highly adaptive physiological processes that can take place very early in the sensory processing chain and that operate in both sensory-specific and nonspecific cortical structures in the brain in differing ways. Bottom line? Sensory recruitment often enhances your sensory experience as your brain absorbs incoming data in a way that does not occur when you receive the data primarily through only one sensory system.

Erase Fear Memories

Did you know studies at Uppsala University have shown that it is possible to erase a fear memory. When you experience a fearful event, a long-lasting memory is created by the process of consolidation (based on the formation of proteins). According to Thomas Ågren, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Psychology and co-author of the study, when participants had the reconsolidation process interrupted, the fearful memory was rendered neutral and no longer incited fear. Using a fMRI scanner, the researchers were able to show that the traces of that memory also disappeared from the amygdala, a part of the brain that normally stores fearful memories.

Pick Up on Your Cues

How aware are you of what is going on in your brain and body at any given moment? Animals and children usually are highly competent at picking up on real emotional cues--in themselves and in others. It seems that some of this ability to perceive emotional reality has been lost in adulthood. There’s really no magic to it. Just as a vision-challenged individual learns to pay more attention to sound than do those with so-called normal vision, you can learn to pay attention again to your gut feelings, those internal reactions that you may have been socialized to stuff. You can learn your own body’s signs of stress, how it tries to get your attention when your mind has missed some cues. Some physicians are now saying that all those seeking to heal, or to stay healthy, need to reclaim the lost capacity for reading your body’s own language, for facing the truth about their lives based on the emotional reality that their bodies know and are trying to convey.

Education Online

Reports are that online schooling is exploding in the USA.  According to NewScientist, a small but rapidly growing number of families are turning to the Internet as an alternative to chronically under-resourced brick and mortar institutions. And as Kurzweil put it: Proponents say online primary and secondary education, whether full-time or as part of a “blended” program of online and face-to-face education, could usher in a new era of personalizing education that will give each child the best chance of success. According to the Evergreen Education Group based in Durango, Colorado, during the 2010-2011 school year, approximately a quarter of a million students attended online-only schools. Knowmia (http://www.knowmia.com/) a Silicon Valley-based start-up, reportedly is building a recommendation engine for the ever-expanding collection of free online educational videos.

Green Tea and EGCG

It has long been believed that drinking green tea is good for the memory. Now Chinese researchers, led by Professor Yun Bai from the Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China, have discovered how the chemical properties green tea affect the generation of brain cells, providing benefits for memory and spatial learning. The study focused on the organic chemical EGCG (epigallocatechin-3 gallate), the major polyphenol in green tea. EGCG can easily pass through the blood-brain barrier and reach the functional parts of the brain. While EGCG is a known antioxidant, the team believes it could also have a beneficial effect against age-related degenerative diseases. And unlike coffee where you add new coffee and water to the second cup. the tea leaves are always there, so you only need to add hot water to make the effective components release. Incidentally, green tea is touted as China's favorite beverage . . .

Doorways and Forgetting

Have you ever entered a room and forgot what you were going to get or do in that room? Professor Gabriel Radvansky, Psychology Professor at University of Notre Dame, reported new research on this problem. According to Radvansky, “Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away.” Using college students as subjects, three experiments in both real and virtual environments were conducted. Subjects performed memory tasks while crossing a room and while exiting a doorway. Results showed that subjects forgot more after walking through a doorway compared to moving the same distance across a room, suggesting that the doorway or “event boundary” impedes one’s ability to retrieve thoughts or decisions made in a different room. As you pass through a doorway, say aloud what you want to do or find in the next room. That might help your brain to keep the goal in short-term working memory.

Your Brain's Imagination

Did you know that imagination forms the foundation for every uniquely human achievement? Creativity, progress, innovation, inventions, and so on all require imagination. As Ken Robinson PhD put it, through imagination you not only bring to mind things you have experienced, but things you have never experienced. You can conjecture, hypothesize, speculate, and suppose. Through imagination you can visit the past, contemplate, and present, and anticipate the future. You can also do something else that is both profound and of immense significance: you can create. Of all the brain’s capacities, the ability to imagine may be the one that most people tend to take for granted. That’s unfortunate. And yet imagination is different from creativity. Think of creativity as applied imagination, putting your imagination to work. Make something new, come up with new solutions to problems, think of new questions. Apply your imagination to every day living. Allow it help you be more successful.