Searching for "brain"

teens brain

Students should learn about their own brains and how they’re changing because it can be empowering for young people to know and understand more about why they might be feeling a certain way.

Posted by MindShift on Sunday, January 24, 2021

Why Teens Should Understand Their Own Brains (And Why Their Teachers Should, Too!)

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/51237/why-teens-should-understand-their-own-brains-and-why-their-teachers-should-too

a new book, Inventing Ourselves, The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain — where she dives into the research and the science — and offers insights into how young adults are thinking, problem-solving and learning.

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more on the brain in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=brain

brain concepts

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A new book by an MIT professor is full of surprising truths about how the brain works.

Posted by EdSurge HigherEd on Thursday, December 24, 2020

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-12-22-forgetting-is-a-feature-not-a-bug-how-the-brain-grasps-new-concepts

a new book called “Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn.”

“Our approach to teaching is based on the assumption that the teacher has a pen and the student’s brain is a sheet of paper. That’s actually wrong,”

Forgetting is a key strength of the brain, even though it has to be fought against by teachers, he says. My note: why is this a revelation? My psychology professor in the 80s was drilling in us: one, who does not forget, does not remember.

professors need to space out lessons and reteach important material at intervals, he adds, to get past the tendency to forget. My note: that also has been discussed extensively in the past two decades: e.g. the chunk theory, microlearning etc: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=chunk+theory

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more on the brain and education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=brain

ethics computers brain

+++The Ethical Challenges of Connecting Our Brains to Computers from r/tech

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ethical-challenges-of-connecting-our-brains-to-computers/

Although brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are the heart of neurotech, it is more broadly defined as technology able to collect, interpret, infer or modify information generated by any part of the nervous system.

There are different types of it—some is invasive, some isn’t. Invasive brain-computer interfaces involve placing microelectrodes or other kinds of neurotech materials directly onto the brain or even embedding them into the neural tissue. The idea is to directly sense or modulate neural activity.

Noninvasive neurotech is also used for pain management. Together with Boston Scientific, IBM researchers are applying machine learning, the internet of things, and neurotech to improve chronic pain therapy.

As new, emerging technology, neurotech challenges corporations, researchers and individuals to reaffirm our commitment to responsible innovation. It’s essential to enforce guardrails so that they lead to beneficial long-term outcomes—on company, national and international levels. We need to ensure that researchers and manufacturers of neurotech as well as policymakers and consumers approach it responsibly and ethically.

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more on ethics in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=ethics

Musk’s brain-computer startup

Elon Musk’s brain-computer startup is getting ready to blow your mind

Musk reckons his brain-computer interface could one day help humans merge with AI, record their memories, or download their consciousness. Could he be right?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musks-brain-computer-startup-is-getting-ready-to-blow-your-mind/

The idea is to solve these problems with an implantable digital device that can interpret, and possibly alter, the electrical signals made by neurons in the brain.

the latest iteration of the company’s hardware: a small, circular device that attaches to the surface of the brain, gathering data from the cortex and passing it on to external computing systems for analysis.

Several different types of working brain-computer interfaces already exist, gathering data on electrical signals from the user’s brain and translating them into data that can be interpreted by machines.

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If we put computers in our brains, strange things might happen to our minds

Using a brain-computer interface can fundamentally change our grey matter, a view of ourselves and even how fast our brains can change the world.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/if-we-put-computers-in-our-brains-strange-things-might-happen-to-our-minds/

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more on AI in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=artificial+intelligence

brain activity study

Duke University researchers say every brain activity study you’ve ever read is wrong

https://www.fastcompany.com/90520750/duke-university-researchers-say-every-brain-activity-study-youve-ever-read-is-wrong

The researchers reexamined 56 peer-reviewed, published papers that conducted 90 fMRI experiments, some by leaders in the field, and also looked at the results of so-called “test/retest” fMRIs, where 65 subjects were asked to do the same tasks months apart. They found that of seven measures of brain function, none had consistent readings.

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more on the brain in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=brain

screen time and brain development

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2018/12/early_results_of_study_show_sc.html

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study tested 4,500 9-10-year-olds in its first released dataset. The ABCD study is the largest long-term study of brain development in U.S.

Early data from the study, analyzed by another group of researchers from the CHEO Research Institute’s Healthy Active Living and Obesity also showed that kids who spend less than two hours a day on screens, participated in 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity, and received nine to 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep had higher cognitive abilities.Cognition was measured by language abilities, episodic memory, executive function, attention, working memory, and processing speed.

prime the brain for learning

Activities That Prime the Brain for Learning

Brain breaks and focused attention practices help students feel relaxed and alert and ready to learn.

BRAIN BREAKS

FOCUSED ATTENTION PRACTICES

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more on mindfulness in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mindfulness

Your Brain Off Facebook

This Is Your Brain Off Facebook

Planning on quitting the social platform? A major new study offers a glimpse of what unplugging might do for your life. (Spoiler: It’s not so bad.)

Benedict Carey, Jan 30, 2019

This Is Your Brain Off Facebook by BENEDICT CAREY

So what happens if you actually do quit? A new study, the most comprehensive to date, offers a preview.

Well before news broke that Facebook had shared users’ data without consent, scientists and habitual users debated how the platform had changed the experience of daily life.

the use of Facebook and other social media is linked to mental distress, especially in adolescents.

Others have likened habitual Facebook use to a mental disorder, comparing it to drug addiction and even publishing magnetic-resonance images of what Facebook addiction “looks like in the brain.”

When Facebook has published its own analyses to test such claims, the company has been roundly criticized.

For abstainers, breaking up with Facebook freed up about an hour a day, on average, and more than twice that for the heaviest users.

research led by Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has found that high levels of passive browsing on social media predict lowered moods, compared to more active engagement.

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more on Facebook in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=facebook

music and the brain

What’s Going On Inside the Brain When We Play Music?

Published on 

Humans love music, especially when there’s repetition that catches the attention.

“Playing music is the brain’s equivalent of a full body workout,” says educator Anita Collins in a TED-Ed video on how playing music benefits the brain. Playing music requires the visual, auditory, and motor cortices all at once

 

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more on the brain in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=brain

sound and the brain

What Types of Sound Experiences Enable Children to Learn Best?

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46824/what-types-of-sound-experiences-enable-children-to-learn-best
At Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Lab, Kraus and colleagues measure how the brain responds when various sounds enter the ear. They’ve found that the brain reacts to sound in microseconds, and that brain waves closely resemble the sound waves.
Making sense of sound is one of the most “computationally complex” functions of the brain, Kraus said, which explains why so many language and other disorders, including autism, reveal themselves in the way the brain processes sound. The way the brain responds to the “ingredients” of sound—pitching, timing and timbre—is a window into brain health and learning ability.

practical suggestions for creating space “activities that promote sound-to-meaning development,” whether at home or in school:
Reduce noise. Chronic background noise is associated with several auditory and learning problems: it contributes to “neural noise,” wherein brain neurons fire spontaneously in the absence of sound; it reduces the brain’s sensitivity to sound; and it slows auditory growth.
Read aloud. Even before kids are able to read themselves, hearing stories told by others develops vocabulary and builds working memory; to understand how a story unfolds, listeners, need to remember what was said before.
Encourage children to play a musical instrument. “There is an explicit link between making music and strengthening language skills, so that keeping music education at the center of curricula can pay big dividends for children’s cognitive, emotional, and educational health.Two years of music instruction in elementary and even secondary school can trigger biological changes in how the brain processes sound, which in turn affects language development.
Listen to audiobooks and podcasts. Well-told stories can draw kids in and build attention skills and working memory. The number and quality of these recordings has exploded in recent years, making it that much easier to find a good fit for individuals and classes.
Support learning a second language. Growing up in a bilingual environment causes a child’s brain to manage two languages at once.
Avoid white noise machines. In an effort to soothe children to sleep, some parents set up sound machines in bedrooms. These devices, which emit “meaningless sound,” as Kraus put it, can interfere with how the brain develops sound-processing circuitry.
Use the spread of technology to your advantage. Rather than bemoan the constant bleeping and chirping of everyday life, much of it the result of technological advances, welcome the new sound opportunities these developments provide. Technologies that shrink the globalized world enable second-language learning.

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More on the brain in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=brain

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