Using Your Whole Brain

This is a really interesting subject, audrey@homeschoolsource.co.uk.

Via Smaragda Papadopoulou, Tom Perran

Some people may actually see sounds, say researchers who found this odd ability is possible when the parts of the brain devoted to vision are small. Brain anatomy is key to seeing this illusion. These findings points to a clever strategy the brain might use when vision is unreliable, investigators added. Scientists took a closer look at the sound-induced flash illusion. When a single flash is followed by two bleeps, people sometimes also see two illusory consecutive flashes.

 

Past experiments revealed there are strong differences between individuals when it comes to how prone they are to this illusion. "Some would experience it almost every time a flash was accompanied by two bleeps, others would almost never see the second flash," said researcher Benjamin de Haas, a neuroscientist at University College London. These differences suggested to de Haas and his colleagues that maybe variations in brain anatomy were behind who saw the illusion and who did not. To find out, the researchers analyzed the brains of 29 volunteers with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and tested them with flashes and bleeps.

 

audrey@homeschoolsource.co.uk Psychology Tutor says:

Ramachandran and Hubbard (2003) carried out  research with synaesthesia, where people experience objects seen as a smell or a sound. They looked at the case of Esmeralda Jones, who sees the colour blue when she hears the musical note C sharp. She uses this skill to colour code piano keys, which helps her remember and play music.

 

This type of ability is shown in other ways using two different shapes. One smooth and curvy and the other jagged and pointy. It was found that 95-98% assigned the name “bouba” to the rounded shape and “kiki” to the jagged, even though none of the participants had ever seen the shape. So, what are the implications?

 

Hubbard and Ramachandran argued that The Bouba-Kiki Effect is actually an example of synaesthesia; the conflation of one sense with another; and that humans learn to associate certain sounds with certain shapes as they develop. Therefore the language we use can significantly influence how we think about the world around us.

 

This is so amazing.  Anyone who wants to try the Boba-Kiki effect can contact:  audrey@homeschoolsource.co.uk or you can find it on the website and try it yourself.

Via Dr. Stefan Gruenwald

What happens when you tell your students to "pay attention!" More than you may think. This post explores what goes on in the brain and ways the brain pays attention. Research is shared as well as what you can do in your classroom immediately as well what you can do in the long term.
Short term solutions include "using prediction; using the brief pause and chunk technique; priming the learning with small hints, appetizers and teasers" and more.

You may also choose to view a video of a session "Teaching with the Brain in Mind" at http://www.scilearn.com/company/webinars/ (you will need to scroll down the page to find the link).

 

Feed your child's whole brain with the biggest selection of inexpensive educational games, toys and books on the web!  Go to http://www.homeschoolsource.co.uk

Via Beth Dichter

Make use of kinaesthetic learning tools – Most learners have a kinaesthetic style of learning. (Also read learning styles) and for them, classroom trainers often set up a colourful classroom to help kinaesthetic learners better ...

 

Developing a person's strengths will increase their response to the learning experience, which helps them to develop their weaknesses as well as their strengths.

A well-balanced world, and well-balanced organisations and teams, are necessarily comprised of people who possess different mixtures of intelligences. This gives the group a fuller collective capability than a group of identically able specialists.

 

Kinaesthetic learning tools help everyone, as most people have a mixture of abilities.  Watch babies:  they use ALL their skills, naturally. We should encourage this by giving children a variety of learn material.  http://www/homeschoolsource.co.uk   for hundreds of learning resources.

"Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain ... Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. ..."

"This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true."

"With time, this misremembering gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength."

 

Audrey@homeschoolsource.co.uk: Could this phenomenon not be due to the reconstruction of information proposed by Bartlett and later by Elizabeth Loftus.  We are always trying to match new information with information already stored in our memory. No matter how strange the new information is we will make it fit something already there;  thereby leading to a distortion of this new learning.   

Via Katherine Stevens

The Thessaloniki Science Center & Technology Museum, in an attempt to demonstrate the continuity of scientific knowledge, as well as its dynamics and its prospects, began creating a collection of three-dimensional representations of structures and ideas of ancient Greek scientists and Technologists.

The aim is to present developments in technology and the achievements that radically changed the lives of people at all levels: in production, consumption of food, clothing, living conditions, science and culture.

...

 

και ντοκυμανταίρ του History Channel για την τεχνολογία των αρχαίων Ελλήνων

http://krasodad.blogspot.gr/2011/10/blog-post_8970.html

 

Via Informatics