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Adult Learner Strategies

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Adult Learner : Strategies | Learner Variability Project

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Association of childhood trauma with cognitive function in healthy adults a pilot study

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Follow up on references

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Learning outcomes are measurable statements that articulate at the beginning what students should know, be able to do, or value as a result of taking a course or completing a program (also called Backwards Course Design). Learning outcomes often take this form:

As a result of participating in (program/course name), you (students) will be able to (action verb) (learning statement).

Use your learning outcomes as a tool. Let them inform your choice of teaching strategies, course activities, and assessments.

Why Define Learning Outcomes?

Clearly identified learning outcomes allow instructors to:

Make hard decisions about selecting course content

Design assessments that allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills

Design teaching strategies or learning activities that will help students develop their knowledge and skills

Measure student learning accurately and effectively

Having access to articulated learning outcomes (in a syllabus, for example) helps students:

Decide if the course is a good fit for their academic trajectory

Identify what they need to do to be successful in the course

Take ownership of their progress

Be mindful of what they are learning

Getting Started with Setting Learning Outcomes

Ask yourself what the most important things a student should know (cognitive), be able to do (skills), or value (affective) after completing the course/program.

Consult a list of action verbs, which are verbs that result in overt behavior or products that can be observed and measured. Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives provides some useful verbs to write objectives for different levels of learning. For more information see Bloom's Taxonomy.

Avoid verbs that are unclear and cannot be observed and measured easily, for example: appreciate, become aware of, become familiar with, know, learn, and understand.

Draft a list of possible learning outcomes. Be realistic in considering what is possible for students to accomplish in your course. Only keep the most essential learning outcomes.

Edit and review the outcomes using the Learning Outcome Review Checklist.

References

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Learning outcomes are measurable statements that articulate at the beginning what students should know, be able to do, or value as a result of taking a course or completing a program (also called Backwards Course Design). Learning outcomes often take this form: As a result of participating in (program/course name), you (students) will be able to (action verb) (learning statement).

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Accessibility is always evolving. Online materials and technologies change frequently and, as a result, so do accessibility guidelines. This website is intended to be an evolving resource that will adapt alongside accessibility guidelines and technology innovations.

By bringing to light basic accessibility issues, CTI works to connect the Cornell teaching community with the necessary tools and skills to improve accessibility in all learning environments.

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Accessibility is always evolving. Online materials and technologies change frequently and, as a result, so do accessibility guidelines. This website is intended to be an evolving resource that will adapt alongside accessibility guidelines and technology innovations. By bringing to light basic accessibility issues, CTI works to connect the Cornell teaching community with the necessary tools and skills to improve accessibility in all learning environments.

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Creating an Accessible Course | Student Disability Services

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The best place to start with designing an accessible course is to think of ways to make your course accessible to all types of learners. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing curriculum in a manner inclusive of all types of learners, regardless of ability, disability, age, gender, cultural background, race, ethnicity, linguistic background, etc.

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It's just an ed thing.

It is a way to connect every student to the learning experience, and a way at looking at learning that is fully inclusive and promotes success for all learners, regardless of ability.

Mike Marotta

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based framework that helps teachers plan learning to meet the diverse and variable needs of all students. Find out how flexible supports for learning can be embedded into an environment and made available to everyone. Explore how hidden barriers ...

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What are assessment for learning strategies?

Assessment for Learning is a process of gathering information about students' knowledge, skills and understanding in order to inform teaching. It can be used as an ongoing part of the curriculum or it may take place at key stages such as end-of-year exams. The purpose of AfL is not just to test what you know but also to help teachers plan their lessons so that they are more effective.

The term 'assessment for learning' was first coined by Professor David Coleman who wrote his seminal book Assessment For Learning: A Framework for Understanding published in 1995. He defined AfL as follows:

" Assessment for learning is any activity which seeks to gather evidence on how well pupils have mastered specific aspects of subject matter."

In this way, AfL has been described as "a means of assessing student achievement". However, there is no single definition of AfL because each school will use different methods depending upon its own needs and resources. In addition, some schools choose to combine AfL with other forms of assessment such as formative assessments, summative examinations and portfolio work.

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Why do we assess?

Assessment is an integral part of the teaching process. It allows us to explore any improvements in learning outcomes that need to be addressed. This knowledge of student achievement can then be feedback into our teaching practice and inform us of how to move our students forward.

There are many reasons why schools should assess learners' progress regularly throughout the year. These include:

* To ensure all children achieve high standards

* To provide feedback to parents/carers

* To identify areas where improvement is needed

* To monitor attainment against national targets

* To demonstrate effectiveness of teaching

* To improve teacher practice

* To support continuous professional development

* To promote good citizenship

* To encourage self reflection

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Assessment for learning strategies

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How do assessment for learning strategies work?

AfL takes two main approaches - direct observation and questioning. Direct observation is the most common form of assessment, but it can be time consuming to carry out in a classroom setting. Questioning provides an alternative method that allows teachers to assess students' knowledge more quickly than they would with direct observation alone.Many of our members schools have been using the block building methodology as formative assessment strategies.

This type of assessment digs deeper than just questioning. As children build what they know, they reveal their true understanding of the lesson content. Similar to using concept maps, the mental models reveal their complex structure of knowledge or schema. What are questions used for?

If you are interested in developing open-ended questions as an effective feedback tool, you might be interested in looking at the universal thinking framework. As well as outlining essential actions involved in learning, the framework also provides essential questions related to different types of student learning. These are designed to dig deeper than multiple choice questions and can form the backbone of a really effective assessment tool.

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Assessment for learning strategies and outcomes

Asking questions as an assessment for learning strategy

You should always try to get answers to any question posed during class. However, asking questions after every lesson isn't practical because it's too disruptive to the flow of instruction. Instead, you can ask a few key questions at the end of each unit or chapter and then use them as assessments in your final exam.

The following are some examples of good questions that could be asked:

* What did I learn about this topic?

* How does this relate to other topics we've studied?

* Why do I need to know this information?

* Is there anything else I didn't understand?

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How do assessment for learning strategies improve learner outcomes?

Assessment is a key component of any educational system. It helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses in learners, which can be used as feedback to improve their performance. Assessment also provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate what they have learnt through various means such as written assignments or practical demonstrations. However, it has been observed that there are certain limitations with traditional forms of assessments. For example, many teachers find them time consuming and difficult to administer.

In addition, some students may not perform well on these tests due to lack of preparation or anxiety about being tested. This leads to poor student engagement and low motivation levels. Therefore, we need to look at new ways of assessing our learners so that we can get more accurate information from them. One way of doing this would be by using technology-based methods. The use of digital tools allows us to collect data quickly and efficiently without having to rely on human judgment.

These technologies include computer based testing, online quizzes, video recording, etc. They provide opportunities for educators to assess how much knowledge learners possess before they start teaching them. Embedding these strategies in your approach to teaching will help you achieve better results. The mental modelling strategy using the building blocks enables teachers to assess the levels of understanding in an engaging activity. This approach to deep thinking helps students to develop conceptual understanding and strengthens the learning process.

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Assessment for learning as a feedback loop

Getting started with assessment for learning strategies

Daily assessment strategies include Multiple Choice Questions. An MCQ is an open ended question where there are several possible answers. Students must select only one response from among four or five options. This type of formative assessment strategy provide teachers with valuable information about how their students understand concepts. Teachers may use these daily assessment strategies to determine if students have mastered content areas by asking them to identify which concept best describes the topic being taught. For example, when teaching vocabulary, teachers might ask students to choose between synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and polysemes.

In addition, teachers often use MCQs to assess whether students have learned key terms related to specific topics such as science, history, math, etc. When using this type of task it is important to make sure that all items on the test are relevant to your course material. If you do not want to give students practice at answering questions outside of class then you will need to create new ones specifically for testing purposes. It is recommended that you write out each item before giving it to students so that you can ensure that they fully comprehend its meaning. You can find many examples of MCQs online including those created by Khan Academy.

Short Answer Questions Short answer questions require students to respond to a prompt with either a single word or phrase. There are two main advantages to using this form of questioning. First, because students cannot guess wrong, they tend to think more carefully about their responses than in other forms of assessment. Second, since students are required to explain why they chose certain words or phrases, they learn to express themselves clearly.

However, like any form of assessment, short answer questions can be misused. Some instructors use them simply to see who has memorized the most facts. Others use them to gauge students' ability to synthesize knowledge into coherent explanations. To avoid misuse, it's essential to teach students how to constructively analyze written work.

Whichever daily assessment strategy you choose to use it's important to make it engaging for your class. A good summative assessment should be fun and where possible, have a game-like quality.

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Using feedback effectively

Classroom feedback is a very important part of the teaching process. It can be used to help students understand their strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide them with information about how they are doing in class. Feedback also helps teachers identify areas where instruction needs improvement or revision.

Task-focused feedback provides specific suggestions for improving student performance on assignments, tests, projects, etc., while formative assessment focuses more directly on what students know and don't know at any given time. In this chapter we will discuss ways that you can use classroom feedback to improve your teaching practice.

The following sections describe different types of feedback:

* Classroom feedback forms

* Student response systems

* Peer review

* Self-assessment tools

* Formative assessments

* Summative evaluations

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Formative and summitted assessments

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Understanding different types of task focused feedback

Feedback has been defined by many sources as "the act of providing an evaluation of someone's work". The term may refer specifically to written comments from others who have observed the person performing some task; it may include verbal comments made during discussions or meetings; or it may simply mean giving a grade to a paper or test score. Regardless of its source, feedback should always be positive. If negative, corrective action must follow immediately so that the situation does not continue to deteriorate.

There are several reasons why feedback is necessary. First, if people do not receive feedback when they make mistakes, then they cannot learn from those errors. Second, without feedback, there would be no way to evaluate whether individuals were meeting expectations. Third, feedback allows us to see our own progress over time. Fourth, feedback enables us to compare ourselves against other people. Finally, feedback gives us insight into how effective our methods are working.

There are two basic kinds of feedback: summative and formative. Evaluative feedback tells us something about the quality of a product or service. For example, after reading a book, I might give myself a rating based on my overall impression of the text. This type of evaluative feedback is called summative because it summarizes all aspects of the experience. On the other hand, formative feedback indicates only one aspect of the experience for instance, the level of understandin g demonstrated by a particular group member. Such feedback is usually provided verbally rather than through writing.

Summative Feedback as an assessment for learning strategy

A summary evaluation is often referred to as a final exam or report card. It includes grades, scores, percentages, rankings, and/or ratings. These results indicate whether the individual met his or her goals or exceeded them. They tell us nothing about the process used to reach these conclusions.

However, summative evaluation is useful for comparing groups of learners within a single course or across courses. An important distinction between summative and formative evaluation is that the former involves evaluating outcomes whereas the latter evaluates processes.

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Using assessment for learning strategies for making improvements to learner outcomes

A total of 576 learners completed questionnaires before and after participating in the course. Results indicated significant increases in all four areas measured by the questionnaire: knowledge about the subject matter; confidence in understanding concepts related to the subject matter; ability to apply what they have learned; and interest in pursuing further studies in the area.

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Embracing technology to enhance assessment for learning

Technology has revolutionized the teaching process by providing teachers with various tools to enhance learning outcomes. Using technology to enhance assessment for learning is a good opportunity for teachers to promote student learning outcomes.

By incorporating technology into their assessment process, teachers can use the feedback loop to provide detailed feedback to students. Feedback is a critical form of feedback that provides students with the necessary information to improve their learning. Using technology allows teachers to provide descriptive feedback that answers students' questions and provides them with evidence of their learning.

For example, teachers can use mini whiteboards or polling apps to assess student learning and provide immediate feedback. These tools can be used to assess student understanding of concepts, answer exam questions, and provide a form of feedback that supports the learning process.

Technology allows for creativity in assessment, which can help students engage in the assessment process, rather than viewing it as a separate task.

Overall, using technology to enhance assessment for learning can be an effective way for teachers to promote student learning outcomes. By providing students with detailed feedback and utilizing creative forms of assessment, teachers can support students in their learning journey and provide them with the tools necessary to succeed.

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Evidencing Learning

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What learning theory is AFL based upon?

AFL improves learner outcomes by providing a framework for the design of instruction and assessment. Learning theories are used to guide instructional decisions, such as how much time should be spent on each topic in an educational program or what type of questions will best assess student knowledge.

If you are interested in learning more about research and practice please do subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

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Strategies for Assessment for Learning: All the research and techniques you need for making AFL happen in the classroom.

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Neurologist Lisa M. Shulman, MD, FAAN, explains how tragedy affects the brain

In the recent American Brain Foundation webinar " Healing Your Brain After Loss: A Neurologist's Perspective, " Lisa M. Shulman, MD, explains the effects of traumatic events, such as loss and personal tragedy, on the brain. Dr. Shulman is the director of the University of Maryland Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center and is The Rosalyn Newman Distinguished Scholar in Parkinson's Disease. She has also served as treasurer for the American Academy of Neurology as well as on their Board of Directors, and in 2018, received the President's Award from the AAN for contributions to the Academy and the neurological profession. Discover the key learnings from the virtual event below.

The Brain's Response to Grief

Grief comes in many forms. Whether brought on by the death of a loved one, a serious illness or injury, divorce, abuse, or another cause, the brain interprets grief as emotional trauma or PTSD. Dr. Shulman explains that the human brain handles emotional trauma and stress using the same set of processes.

"Traumatic loss is perceived as a threat to survival and defaults to protective survival and defense mechanisms," says Dr. Shulman. This response engages the fight or flight mechanism, which increases blood pressure and heart rate and releases specific hormones. Grief and loss affect the brain and body in many different ways. They can cause changes in memory, behavior, sleep, and body function, affecting the immune system as well as the heart. It can also lead to cognitive effects, such as brain fog. The brain's goal? Survival.

"Grief is a normal protective process," says Dr. Shulman. "This process is an evolutionary adaptation to promote survival in the face of emotional trauma." Changes in brain function go largely undetected when an individual continues functioning normally, but these experiences still affect how the brain works.

How Tragedy Affects the Brain

In response to traumatic events, the brain creates connections between nerves and strengthens or weakens existing connections depending on the duration and degree of the emotional response. Neuroplasticity, or the ability to alter neural connections, allows the brain to compensate for injury, illness, loss, and other life-altering traumatic events by forming new neural connections based on these experiences. This helps an individual adapt to new situations or environments.

Low to moderate stress increases nerve growth and improves memory while reducing fear. However, chronic stress causes a reduction in nerve growth and memory and increases fear to help an individual focus on survival. This stress response can have a negative effect and the more it happens, the more it becomes hardwired.

"When a circuit fires repeatedly," Dr. Shulman says, "it's reinforced and becomes a default setting." Over the long term, grief can disrupt the diverse cognitive domains of memory, decision-making, visuospatial function, attention, word fluency, and the speed of information processing.

Healing the Brain After Loss

According to Dr. Shulman, even the effects of long-term chronic stress are reversible. She points to mindfulness and relaxation practices like journaling, cognitive behavior therapy, counseling, creativity, and meditation as outlets for post-traumatic growth. These strategies allow feelings of safety, security, and calmness to return so that one can move forward.

"If we don't work through the traumatic experiences that we have, they will continue to be an obstacle in our lives," says Dr. Shulman.

Learn more about how grief, loss, and tragedy affect the brain by watching the webinar or reading Dr. Shulman's book, "Before and After Loss: A Neurologist's Perspective on Loss, Grief and Our Brain."
The American Brain Foundation was founded to bring researchers and donors together in the fight against brain disease. Interested in more events? Check out our upcoming events and webinars.

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Healing Your Brain After Loss: How Grief Rewires the Brain

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In the recent American Brain Foundation webinar " Healing Your Brain After Loss: A Neurologist's Perspective, " Lisa M. Shulman, MD, explains the effects of traumatic events, such as loss and personal tragedy, on the brain. Dr. Shulman is the director of the University of Maryland Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center and is The Rosalyn Newman Distinguished Scholar in Parkinson's Disease.

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Grief Is a Learning Experience

Loved ones are wired into our brain. Learning that they're gone requires rewiring

By Claudia Christine Wolf

Why does it hurt so much to lose someone you love? What happens in your brain as it strives to cope? Pioneering psychologist Mary-Frances O'Connor worked on one of the first neuroimaging studies of grief more than two decades ago. She and her colleagues found that a loved one's absence means a major disruption not only to our life but also within our brain.

O'Connor now runs the Grief, Loss and Social Stress (GLASS) Lab at the University of Arizona, where she tries to tease out the biological mechanisms underlying grief. In particular, she studies prolonged grief, a state in which people don't seem to heal, instead staying immersed in their loss for years. In her book The Grieving Brain (HarperOne, 2022), O'Connor explains how insight into brain circuits and neurotransmitters can enable us to navigate bereavement with self-compassion. "Grief is the cost of loving someone," she writes. When a loved one dies, it can feel like we've lost a part of ourselves because their presence is coded into our neurons.

Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Scientific American 's German-language sibling publication, spoke with O'Connor about how love permanently changes our neural wiring and what we can do to feel more like ourselves while our brain tries to update its understanding of the world when a loved one is gone.

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People who have lost someone often feel like their beloved will walk into the room at any moment, or sometimes they think they're seeing the person on the street. Why does that happen?
It's not perfectly worked out yet, but I have what I call the gone-but-also-everlasting theory. We think of the brain as a single entity, but there are many systems in it. On the one hand, you have the memory system, in which, say, we have a memory of being at the bedside or at a funeral. So one stream of information in our brain understands the reality of our loss and can remember that happening. But there's another stream of information in our brain, and that comes from attachment neurobiology.

To understand what happens during loss, we first have to think about what happens during bonding. When that relationship is created, that bond is encoded in the brain in very specific regions and very specific ways. It comes with a belief that "I will always be there for you and you will always be there for me."

That is the nature of a bonded relationship. It is what makes us know our partner will be at home when we return after work or enables us to send our children off to school-we know that they will return to us and that we will seek them out if they, for some reason, don't turn up. The belief that they are out there in the world, even if we can't see them or hear them, works very well when our loved ones are alive.

That attachment neurobiology, that belief in the everlasting nature of the bond, does not change immediately when a loved one dies. That second stream of information is still telling us they're out there. We should go find them because they are missing, because they are lost. And so those two streams of information-the memory of the reality on one hand and, on the other, this belief that they are out there-cannot both be true.

Our brain really struggles to understand what has happened. And when we become aware that we have both beliefs, it causes a lot of distress and grief.
In your book, you also write about the brain as a prediction machine. When it comes to bereavement, is the brain making wrong predictions?
Predictions happen at a lot of different levels, because usually our relationships with our loved ones are multifaceted. So the brain is predicting, as I just said, that our loved one is out there, and it is sort of motivating us to go seek them out. It has difficulty learning to predict their absence. If you've woken up next to someone for thousands of days, and you wake up one morning, and they're not there next to you in bed, it's actually not a very good prediction that they have died, right? Our brain would much rather believe, "Oh, they're on a trip, or they've gotten up early today, and they're just not here right now."

In fact, over time we have to change our prediction to understand that they will not be next to us on any day in the future. But those are not the only predictions that we have to cope with. There's also a level of simple habit when we live with someone or when we have a relationship with someone. We predict when we will interact with them and in what way we will interact with them. So, for example, you're at the grocery store, and you pick up a soy milk because your daughter is lactose intolerant. It's not a conscious decision. It's just an automatic habit. But if your daughter just died, you may for some time pick up soy milk even though no one is drinking soy milk in your home any longer. So even at the level of habits, we have to constantly be confronted by all the changes caused by the loss of this important person in our life.
How is the presence of a loved one hardwired in the brain?
I would say they are not hardwired into our brain; rather they are in the wiring of our brain. So when we fall in love with our baby or we fall in love with the person who becomes our spouse, it changes the wiring. It updates the physical connections between neurons, and it changes the way that proteins are folded. The epigenetics [environmental and behavioral influences on the ways in which genes are expressed as proteins] of our brain change because we have fallen in love with this specific person.

Those physical traces in the brain have to be changed to reflect an updated understanding of the world, and that takes time. But it also takes experience. We have to have many, many days of being in the world without our spouse or our child or our best friend for the brain to create new connections and a new understanding of what it means to be without this person.

The general principle that this is how the brain works comes from Nobel Prize winners Edvard I. Moser and May-Britt Moser, who discovered what they call "object-trace cells" in the brain. They did experiments where they would take a rat and put it in a little black box every day. And then one day there was a blue tower inside the black box. The rat went to visit it, and because they were measuring single neurons firing, they could see that there were specific cells, [called object cells], that were firing as the rat investigated this little blue tower. And one day they took the blue tower away. For many days, even in the absence of the blue tower, [other cells that evidently tracked absence, the] object-trace cells, continued to fire because the rat expected that there would be a blue tower.

What's amazing about this, of course, is that a blue tower is not very important in the life of a rat. Think how much more important our loved ones are in our life and how many more ways they influence us. We can't do single recordings of single human neurons, but the general principle can be applied to grieving. We have to change the way our our neural networks are firing to understand our new reality.
What role does closeness play? The closer we are to a person, the more, of course, the loss hurts.
It seems that "closeness" is a dimension we use to predict what our interaction will be like with a loved one when we see them. In the same way that we can predict the time and place we will see our loved one, we can also predict the closeness we will feel with them. If I said to you, for example, "Where is your partner?" or "Where is your child?" you probably would be able to give me almost an immediate answer. Those dimensions of time and space are a way that we keep our loved one's presence in our mind. In a similar way, we keep a sense of how close we are to them in our subconscious mind.

So, for example, we will often think of them when we're doing something stressful as a way to soothe ourselves, even if they're not present for us in that time and space. Just thinking about our closeness with them changes our stress response. Just as our brain cannot really understand the abstract idea that our loved one is no longer in time and space, it continues to expect our loved ones to respond to us. The fact that they don't respond to us..., in an illogical way, can feel like they're ignoring us. So I think people who are grieving too often feel overwhelmed with anger with this person for dying, and they know that is completely illogical. But the feeling is that if we are close to them, they should be responding to us.

When we're grieving, the feelings we have, the thoughts that we have, even some of the things that we do-we feel like we're losing our mind. But if you understand why your brain might be reacting this way, I think it gives us a little patience with ourselves. Grieving is a form of learning. And learning takes time and experience, and our brain is doing its best to help us. But it's going to take some time.
You did the first neuroimaging study of grief in 2003. What did you find out?
When I began studying the psychology and neuroscience of grief, the primary way that researchers were thinking about the loss of a loved one was in a stress framework, the idea being that this is an incredibly stressful life event, and we respond to that stressful life event by coping with it. It was very much this idea of "you have so many things to cope with. And here is another thing on your plate that you have to cope with."

Because of some of the research I've done, we discovered that when we have a bonded relationship, it is encoded in the reward network of the brain. The reward network is motivating us to seek loved ones out and to enjoy them as we did when we were with them. That is how researchers now think about grief-as having had something taken away from us, from our sense of self, rather than having something added onto our plate. And this is a pretty big difference in thinking about how grieving works.

When people say, "I feel like part of myself is missing," this may not be only a metaphor. It may in fact be part of how the brain has encoded that relationship, so the absence of that person is like an amputation rather than simply an additional stressor.
People usually say that time will heal all wounds. Is this also true for grief?
Yes but with caveats. Grieving can be thought of as a form of learning-learning that this person is really gone, learning to predict their absence, learning what it means to be a person who has grief or to understand our own identity as a widow instead of a married person, for example. Then it requires not only time but experience. So, for example, if you were in a coma for a month after a loved one had died, and you woke up to hear the news, you would be having the same grief reaction as before the coma. It's not time specifically that helps us to adapt; it's about having new experiences in the world and allowing our brain to understand what life is like now.

Because it is often very painful to be in the world, to see old friends or to go to a place where you spent time with the loved one, we often avoid those experiences. But in many ways, those are exactly the experiences that our brain needs to learn how to understand the world now. And so in psychotherapy, often we enable a grieving person to tackle some of these things they've been avoiding so they can learn new skills-how to allow a wave of grief to come but to also allow that wave to recede so they can continue to do meaningful things in life or to have relationships with living loved ones.
What are the typical emotions people will experience, and where do they come from?
We have a much wider range of emotions than any of us expect when we are grieving. They include, of course, sadness and yearning. But they also include anger and blame and guilt and other things as well, such as panic. When we are separated from a loved one, we feel panicky. If you're in the grocery store, and you look down, and your toddler is not next to you, you feel this panic. People who are grieving often describe a sense of panic as well, because we expect our loved one to be there, and our natural response to their absence can be to feel panicky.

But grief is not only an emotional response. We have a physiological response as well. Our heart rate usually goes up a little bit. Our cortisol stress hormones increase, and these often make it difficult to eat or to sleep. All these changes can make us very off-balance, can make it difficult to concentrate or to remember important details in our day-to-day life.
Is grief only about the loss of a loved one, or can it also come from other losses?
Where do we start? We know that for social mammals, attachment bonds are as vital as food and water to our survival. Because you are a human adult, I know that you had an attachment relationship that enabled you to survive to adulthood, which required you to be bonded with someone who cared for you. It is for this reason, I think, that our brain evolved mechanisms to create attachment bonds and to adapt when those bonds are broken. And obviously the most concrete example of breaking those bonds is through the death of a loved one.

But human relationships are broken for many reasons, whether that is a divorce or the "empty nest" when our children move out into the world or simply becoming estranged from a very close friend. These breaks change that bonded relationship so that we can no longer rely on the belief "I will always be there for you, and you will always be there for me." And so, I think, we experience these other disruptions in relationships as grief as well.

And grief is not only about the loss of a person. We have grief over the loss of many things-the loss of health, the loss of a job. Our brain might have evolved to understand the loss of a relationship as grief, but it's always also a loss of a part of ourselves. Even the language we use is helpful here. I describe myself as a daughter-that's a word that I use about me. When I lose a parent, it is a loss of an aspect of myself. Similarly, the loss of eyesight is the loss of how I function in the world with my eyes.

In a study some years ago, we found that the severity of yearning was greatest with bereavement and somewhat less with a breakup, but they were still the same qualitative experience. Of course, there are other things that impact breakups. If the other person initiated it, the yearning was much greater than if the griever had initiated or if it had been a mutual decision. Grief operates differently in these different types of losses but shares a common experience.
Some people have a much harder time coping with the loss. Why is that?
We know from really detailed studies that although there are similarities across the way people grieve, not everyone has the same experience in grieving. For most of us, the waves of grief become less intense and less frequent over time. But for perhaps one in 10 bereaved people or even fewer, for many, many months, they don't show any change in their grief reaction. They still seem to be responding the same way they did right after the death happened.

We call this state prolonged grief. Most people continue to feel waves of grief for years after the loss of someone important, but typically their grieving starts to change within a year. For a few people, there is no change. It's important to identify them because psychotherapy can help them overcome some of these barriers that are preventing them from adapting.

There are some predictors for prolonged grief, and they include things such as preexisting mental health difficulties and having very little social support. Being very isolated also seems to predict poorer outcomes in grieving. We have a lot to learn about what individual variation in the brain leads to prolonged grieving, but the science is very much in its infancy.
People who lost somebody will often, out of nowhere, have thoughts about the person. Where do they come from, and are they good or bad?
People are often very shocked by the intensity and frequency of these intrusive thoughts. There are a few things to know that can help you to feel more normal in the midst of these thoughts. One is that we actually have intrusive thoughts all the time. Another thing is that when a loved one is alive, thoughts about them just pop into our head. Our mind sends us push notifications like "don't forget that you have to pick up your daughter at sports and not at school today."

It's just that after they've died, the same intrusive thoughts are very distressing to us. The context in which they're happening is very different now and very painful. Intrusive thoughts can also lead us to ruminating-we keep going over it and over it, and we can't seem to let it go. One of the really common experiences that people have, a very natural and normal response, is the "could" or "should" thoughts. These are the million stories that we play out in our head where something could have gone differently. We should have gotten them to the hospital sooner or to the doctor.

For many grieving people, these stories go around and around and around in their head. And the challenge is that our brain can come up with an infinite number of these alternatives in which, if something was done at the right time, "my loved one would have lived." But the only reality that we are currently dealing with is the fact that they did not live. These thoughts are quite natural and normal and common, but they don't help us to adapt to what's happening now. Many people come to realize that there is no way through these thoughts; rather they have to find a way around the thoughts and allow them to recede.
How does understanding the neuroscience of grief help people navigate this lonely landscape?
Neuroscience can give us some insight into why we feel such pain and how and why the brain is making that happen. I think it can make us feel more normal that our brain is on a learning trajectory. And we simply have to accept that things will be difficult for some time while our brain tries to update its understanding of the world. But it's also very comforting to understand how. When we have this loving relationship with someone, it means that our brain is permanently, physically changed. What that means is even after a loved one has died, they are still physically with us. They are still in those folded proteins and neural connections. And there's something, to me, very comforting about knowing that my mother or my father still lives in me physically.

This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.

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