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Every Single Cognitive Bias in One Infographic

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Every Single Cognitive Bias in One Infographic

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Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus | KQED

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Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus | KQED

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The ability to focus is a secret element to success that often gets ignored. "The more you can concentrate the better you'll do on anything, because whatever talent you have, you can't apply it if you are distracted," Goleman said. He pointed to research on athletes showing that when given a concentration test, the results accurately predicted how well each would perform in a game the next day.

Perhaps the most well known study on concentration is a longitudinal study conducted with over 1,000 children in New Zealand by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, psychology and neuroscience professors at Duke University. The study tested children born in 1972 and 1973 regularly for eight years, measuring their ability to pay attention and to ignore distractions. Then, the researchers tracked those same children down at the age of 32 to see how well they fared in life. The ability to concentrate was the strongest predictor of success.

"This ability is more important than IQ or the socio economic status of the family you grew up in for determining career success, financial success and health," Goleman said. That could be a problem for students in the U.S. who often seem addicted to their devices, unable to put them down for even a few moments. Teachers say students are unable to comprehend the same texts that generations of students that came before them could master without problems, said Goleman. These are signs that educators may need to start paying attention to the act of attention itself. Digital natives may need help cultivating what was once an innate part of growing up.

"It's very important to amp up the focus side of the equation," Goleman said. He's not naive about the role digital devices play in society today, but he does believe that without managing how devices affect kids better they'll never learn the attention skills they'll need to succeed in the long term.

"There's a need now to teach kids concentration abilities as part of the school curriculum," Goleman said. "The more children and teens are natural focusers, the better able they'll be to use the digital tool for what they have to get done and then to use it in ways that they enjoy."

Some argue that the current generation of students grew up with digital devices and are much better at multitasking than their parents. But the idea of multitasking is a myth, Goleman said. When people say they're "multitasking," what they are really doing is something called "continuous partial attention," where the brain switches back and forth quickly between tasks. The problem is that as a student switches back and forth between homework and streaming through text messages, their ability to focus on either task erodes. That trend is less pronounced when the actions are routine, but it could have significant implications for how deeply a student understands a new concept.

"If you have a big project, what you need to do every day is have a protected time so you can get work done," Goleman said. For his part, when he's writing a book, Goleman goes to his studio where there is no email, no phone, nothing to distract him. He'll work for several hours and then spend designated time responding to people afterwards.

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Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus | KQED

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The ability to focus is a secret element to success that often gets ignored. "The more you can concentrate the better you'll do on anything, because whatever talent you have, you can't apply it if you are distracted," Goleman said.

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Brain's 'fear center' skews emotion in anxious kids - Futurity

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Brain's 'fear center' skews emotion in anxious kids - Futurity

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Brain’s ‘fear center’ skews emotion in anxious kids

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Signals from the brain’s “fear center” make it more difficult for children with anxiety and stress to regulate their emotions, research finds.

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New studies show the cost of student laptop use in lecture classes - Daniel Willingham--Science & Education

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New studies show the cost of student laptop use in lecture classes - Daniel Willingham--Science & Education

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It's been about ten years since college students on most campuses began to take notes on a laptop in lecture classes. So that's about 10 years of professors fretting about it.

It seems obvious that students are, at the least, themselves distracted during lectures--supporting anecdotal evidence can be collected by popping into the back of any large lecture hall and observing laptop content; you'll see plenty of social media websites open, students responding to messages or email, and a surprising number of people shopping.

​More insidious, some data indicate that using a laptop is distracting to students sitting behind the multi-tasking student.

But most data on the consequences of laptop use are correlational; for example, students who report taking notes on laptops earn lower grades than those who don't, and observational data show that students have non-course related software open during class (e.g., Kraushaar & Novak, 2010). The obvious problem is that laptop use may not be causing low grades; laptop use may be more appealing to those who would earn lower grades anyway.

Two new studies using different methods suggest that laptop use does, indeed, incur a cost to students.

In one (Carter et al., 2017) students in sections of a required introductory economics course were randomly assigned to use a laptop or to refrain from doing so. In a clever twist, some classrooms were asked to take notes on tablets with the tablet lying flat, hence reducing the likelihood that the screen would distract neighboring students.

The final examination was the same across sections, so scores on the exam served as the outcome measure for the study. Laptop (or tablet) use was associated with lower scores, d = -.18 (controlling for demographic variables, GPA, and ACT scores at admission). It is noteworthy that all of the effect was carried by performance on the multiple choice and short-answer portion of the exam, with no effect on essay grade. The researchers noted that essay grading is not objective and professors might center their grades on student performance.

We can have greater confidence that laptop use is really causal here, given that class sections were randomly assigned to use them or not. But there are some other caveats of interpretation. It's possible that teachers teach differently when they know their students are taking notes on devices. We should also be cautious in generalizing beyond the institution (West Point) and the class (economics). For example, perhaps economics requires the drawing of many figures and graphs, a process that's clumsy on a device. Perhaps the same experiment conducted in an English literature class would show no effect. Or maybe laptop use offers a small benefit to most students, but there's a minority for whom the forced use of a laptop incurs a big cost.

The second study ( Patterson & Patterson, 2017) uses a different, complimentary method that avoids these problems (but has others).

​The researchers noted that, at their institution, different classes required laptops (15%), forbade them (2%), or made them optional (83%). The researchers reasoned that a student who had a laptop-optional class might be nudged into using one if she had a laptop-required class the same day. After all, she would already have the laptop with her, so why not use it? And indeed, their survey showed that students were about 20% more likely to use a laptop under those circumstances.

And students were 48% less likely to use laptop in a laptop-optional class if they had another class the same day that forbade laptop use.

So researchers compared grades in a class where some students are biased to use laptops and others were biased not to use them--biased, not forced, so if a student believes he really takes better notes on a laptop, he can use it. And both the laptop-user and non-user are in the same class, with the same opportunities to be distracted by other students, and experiencing the same lecture from the professor.

Researchers analyzed about 5,500 grades in lap-top optional courses from undergraduate and masters students over the course of six semesters. All were enrolled at the same liberal arts college.

The effect of having a laptop-required course at another time was d = -.32 to -.46. Having a laptop-prohibited course the same day was associated with a positive effect, d = .14 to .25. (These effects controlled for gender, ethnicity, age, course load, course schedule difficulty, major, and GPA.)

Patterson & Patterson found that the negative effect was larger for weaker students--in fact, there was little or no effect for stronger students. They also found that laptop use (or more precisely, having a laptop-required course the same day) had a larger negative effective in quantitative classes.
​
So we have two studies--a randomized control trial, and a quasi-experimental design--to add to the correlational studies showing that students are better off taking notes by hand than doing so on a laptop. None is perfect, but different designs have different flaws. This desirable state of affairs is referred to as converging operations--different types of experiments all point to the same conclusion. ​

In closing, it's worth remembering that this study does not concern all classroom laptop use, but rather one function: taking notes in a lecture course. Still, considering that most time in introductory college courses is spent listening to lectures, the impact of this work ought to be consequential.

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New studies show the cost of student laptop use in lecture classes

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It's been about ten years since college students on most campuses began to take notes on a laptop in lecture classes. So that's about 10 years of professors fretting about it.

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Playbooks are evidence-based resources targeting specific character strengths. They are codeveloped by educators, scientists, and designers.

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Crossing the Divide [Internet]. Salt Lake City (UT): Genetic Science Learning Center; 2015 [cited 2019 Feb 4] Available from https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/neuroscience/crossingdivide/

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Introduction:

The adult human skeleton is a framework of 206 bones and is anatomically divided into two parts, the axial skeleton, and the appendicular skeleton.

Axial Skeleton:

The axial skeleton is the core of the skeleton, it consists of the following 80 bones:

: 22 bones
: 1 bone
: 32 bones
: 24 bones
: 1 bone

Appendicular Skeleton:

The appendicular skeleton is attached to the axial skeleton. It consists of 126 bones.

: 4 bones (Scapula and clavicle).
: 6 bones (Humerus and radius).
: 54 bones (Carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges).

Bony Pelvis: 2 bones (Os coxae).

: 8 bones (Femur, patella, tibia, and fibula).
: 52 bones (Tarsals, metatarsals, and phalanges).

Functionally, the bones primarily give support to the appendages and protect the fragile organs of the body such as the brain, spinal cord, heart, and lungs.
They also store calcium and phosphorus in the hard bone matrix, which can be released when needed elsewhere.
The bumps, ridges, and grooves on the surface of bones provide attachment sites for the skeletal muscles.
Additionally, many bones contain a soft tissue called marrow that produces new blood cells and stores fat.

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The adult human skeleton is a framework of 206 bones and is anatomically divided into two parts, the axial skeleton, and the appendicular skeleton. The axial skeleton is the core of the skeleton, it consists of the following 80 bones: : 22 bones : 1 bone : 32 bones : 24 bones : 1 bone The appendicular skeleton is attached to the axial skeleton.

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Lesson Plan and Activity Finder | NIDA for Teens

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Lesson Plan and Activity Finder | NIDA for Teens

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In this lesson, developed in partnership with Scholastic, students build skills that let them separate good science from misinformation. Students learn to spot the signs of misleading news and look for clues that indicate information is based on fact. This is especially important for teens who are inundated with stories on social media about important topics such as their health.

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Welcome to NIH/NINDS Brain Resources Page

The mission of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is to reduce the burden of neurological disorders through research. Hundreds of disorders, both common and rare, affect the nervous system.

On this site, you'll find great educational resources related to brain health and function for parents, students, and teachers.

These and additional educational materials can be ordered online in bulk for use in classrooms.

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The mission of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is to reduce the burden of neurological disorders through research. Hundreds of disorders, both common and rare, affect the nervous system. On this site, you'll find great educational resources related to brain health and function for parents, students, and teachers.

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Neuroscience For Kids - neuroscience in the news

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Neuroscience For Kids - neuroscience in the news

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neuroscience in the news

What's going on in the world of neuroscience? What's new? What's happening? With fascinating stories that focus on brain research, this page will keep you informed about the breaking discoveries and events in neuroscience.

New drug leads could battle brain-eating amoebae, Amercian Chemical Society, ScienceDaily, February 12, 2020.

Can bilingualism protect the brain even with early stages of dementia?, York University, ScienceDaily, February 13, 2020.

Molecule offers hope for halting Parkinson's, Parkinson's UK, ScienceDaily, February 14, 2020.

Later school start times reduce car crashes, improve teen safety, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, ScienceDaily, February 18, 2020.

Think all BPA-free products are safe? Not so fast, scientists warn, University of Missouri-Columbia ScienceDaily, February 18, 2020.

Brave Violinist Plays Violin During Brain Surgery, Interesting Engineering, February 19, 2020.

Exercise advice for spinal cord injury, University of British Columbia Okanagan campus, ScienceDaily, March 2, 2020.

Household chemical use linked to child language delays, Ohio State University, ScienceDaily, March 4, 2020.

Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, University of Arkansas, ScienceDaily, March 5, 2020.

New blood test method may predict Alzheimer's disease, NIH Research Matters, March 10, 2020.

Irregular sleep patterns may raise risk of heart disease, NIH Research Matters, March 10, 2020.

Your Brain Cells Jiggle With Every Heartbeat, Discover, March 10, 2020

Haunted by a Gene, New York Times, March 10, 2020.

Resolving inflammation: Could it prevent memory loss in Down syndrome and Alzheimer's?, Medical University of South Carolina, ScienceDaily, March 13, 2020.

Sobering new data on drinking and driving: 15% of US alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities involve alcohol under the legal limit, Elsevier, ScienceDaily, March 16, 2020.

Inflammation in the brain linked to several forms of dementia, University of Cambridge, ScienceDaily, March 16, 2020.

Her Incredible Sense Of Smell Is Helping Scientists Find New Ways To Diagnose Disease, NPR, March 23, 2020.

How well do you know the back of your hand, really?, York University, ScienceDaily, March 24, 2020.

Yep, Exercise Can Increase Brain Function, Bicycling, March 27, 2020.

Getting Closer to a Blood Test for Alzheimer's Disease?, NIH Director's Blog, March 30, 2020.

Many wild animals 'count' -- and it helps them survive to another day, National Geographic, March 30, 2020.

Sweet as: The science of how diet can change the way sugar tastes, University of Sydney, ScienceDaily, April 9, 2020.

Copyright © 1996-2020, Eric H. Chudler All Rights Reserved.

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What's going on in the world of neuroscience? What's new? What's happening? With fascinating stories that focus on brain research, this page will keep you informed about the breaking discoveries and events in neuroscience. New drug leads could battle brain-eating amoebae, Amercian Chemical Society, ScienceDaily, February 12, 2020.

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To study the brain, you typically have to be a graduate student at a major university. Not any more! Backyard Brains enables everyone to be a neuroscientist! We provide affordable neuroscience experiment kits for students of all ages to learn (hands-on) about electrophysiology.

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Everything you feel or do is the result of the activity of nerve cells throughout your body. Feel cold? That is the result of a nerve signal between your body and brain. Hungry? Your stomach communicates with your brain along nerves that connect the two organs. Even when you turn a page in this book, the muscles in your arm and hand are being activated by signals carried by nerves connecting those muscles to your brain.

All organs are composed of different types of tissue and these tissues are composed of many individual cells. In the brain, tissues are composed of neurons, a unique and very special type of cell. The brain is almost entirely made up of different types of neurons (or nerve cells), and these cells also run throughout your body, connecting almost every part of your body to your brain. There are many different types of neurons depending on where the cell is located in the body and exactly what it does. Luckily, all of these different types follow more or less the same basic structure, so you don't have to get lost in all of the details.

Neurons look a lot like trees and have three primary parts: a cell body, many branchlike extensions that grow off the cell body called dendrites, and a long trunk-like extension of the cell called an axon. The cell body is responsible for keeping the cell alive and acts as its control center while the dendrites receive connections from other cells. The axon connects the neuron to other cells and can be very, very short, as in adjacent neurons in the brain, or extremely long, like the neuron that connects your big toe to your brain through your spinal cord. Neurons can connect to other nerve cells or to completely different cell types like muscles, glands, or organs.

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Everything you feel or do is the result of the activity of nerve cells throughout your body. Feel cold? That is the result of a nerve signal between your body and brain. Hungry? Your stomach communicates with your brain along nerves that connect the two organs.

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12 things we know about how the brain works

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12 things we know about how the brain works

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Here are 12 things we know about how the brain works from Brain Rules.

1. Exercise boots brain power
Wondering whether there is a relationship between exercise and mental alertness? The answer is yes.

Just about every mental test possible was tried. No matter how it was measured, the answer was consistently yes: A lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary. Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called fluid-intelligence tasks. These tasks test the ability to reason quickly and think abstractly, improvising off previously learned material in order to solve a new problem. Essentially, exercise improves a whole host of abilities prized in the classroom and at work. [Brain Rules]

2. Your brain is a survival organ
The human brain evolved, too.

The brain is a survival organ. It is designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in nearly constant motion (to keep you alive long enough to pass your genes on). We were not the strongest on the planet but we developed the strongest brains, the key to our survival. ... The strongest brains survive, not the strongest bodies. ... Our ability to understand each other is our chief survival tool. Relationships helped us survive in the jungle and are critical to surviving at work and school today. ... If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, he or she may not perform as well. ... There is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and cubicle. [Brain Rules]
3. Every brain is wired differently
What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like - it literally rewires it. ... Regions of the brain develop at different rates in different people. The brains of school children are just as unevenly developed as their bodies. Our school system ignores the fact that every brain is wired differently. We wrongly assume every brain is the same. [Brain Rules]
4. We don't pay attention to boring things
The brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to higher level tasks, we just can't do it. ... Workplaces and schools actually encourage this type of multi-tasking. Walk into any office and you'll see people sending e-mail, answering their phones, Instant Messaging, and on MySpace - all at the same time. Research shows your error rate goes up 50 percent and it takes you twice as long to do things. When you're always online you're always distracted. So the always online organization is the always unproductive organization. [Brain Rules]

We must do something emotionally relevant every 10 minutes to reset our attention.
5. Repeat to remember
Improve your memory by elaborately encoding it during its initial moments. Many of us have trouble remembering names. If at a party you need help remembering Mary, it helps to repeat internally more information about her. "Mary is wearing a blue dress and my favorite color is blue." It may seem counterintuitive at first but study after study shows it improves your memory. [Brain Rules]
6. Remember to repeat
How do you remember better? Repeated exposure to information / in specifically timed intervals / provides the most powerful way to fix memory into the brain. ... Deliberately re-expose yourself to the information more elaborately if you want the retrieval to be of higher quality. Deliberately re-expose yourself to the information more elaborately, and in fixed, spaced intervals, if you want the retrieval to be the most vivid it can be. Learning occurs best when new information is incorporated gradually into the memory store rather than when it is jammed in all at once. ... Memory is enhanced by creating associations between concepts. This experiment has been done hundreds of times, always achieving the same result: Words presented in a logically organized, hierarchical structure are much better remembered than words placed randomly - typically 40 percent better. [Brain Rules]
7. If you sleep well, you'll think well
The bottom line is that sleep loss means mind loss. Sleep loss cripples thinking, in just about every way you can measure thinking. Sleep loss hurts attention, executive function, immediate memory, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning ability, general math knowledge. [Brain Rules]

As for naps?

Napping is normal. Ever feel tired in the afternoon? That's because your brain really wants to take a nap. There's a battle raging in your head between two armies. Each army is made of legions of brain cells and biochemicals - one desperately trying to keep you awake, the other desperately trying to force you to sleep. Around 3 p.m., 12 hours after the midpoint of your sleep, all your brain wants to do is nap. [Brain Rules]

The ideal time to nap - the nap zone.

One more tip: "Don't schedule important meetings at 3 p.m. It just doesn't make sense."
8. Stressed brains don't learn the same way
Your brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds. The brain is not designed for long term stress when you feel like you have no control. The saber-toothed tiger ate you or you ran away but it was all over in less than a minute. If you have a bad boss, the saber-toothed tiger can be at your door for years, and you begin to deregulate. If you are in a bad marriage, the saber-toothed tiger can be in your bed for years, and the same thing occurs. You can actually watch the brain shrink. [Brain Rules]

What causes stress?

Business professionals have spent a long time studying what types of stress make people less productive and, not surprisingly, have arrived at the same conclusion that Marty Seligman's German shepherds did: Control is critical. The perfect storm of occupational stress appears to be a combination of two malignant facts: a) a great deal is expected of you and b) you have no control over whether you will perform well. [Brain Rules]

What effect does stress have on the brain?

Stress damages virtually every kind of cognition that exists. It damages memory and executive function. It can hurt your motor skills. When you are stressed out over a long period of time it disrupts your immune response. You get sicker more often. It disrupts your ability to sleep. You get depressed. [Brain Rules]

Stress not only lowers performance, but also heightens emotional memory so that the poor performances are very easy for us to remember.
9. It's important to stimulate more senses
Our senses work together so it is important to stimulate them! Your head crackles with the perceptions of the whole world, sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, energetic as a frat party. ... Smell is unusually effective at evoking memory. If you're tested on the details of a movie while the smell of popcorn is wafted into the air, you'll remember 10-50 percent more. ... Those in multisensory environments always do better than those in unisensory environments. They have more recall with better resolution that lasts longer, evident even 20 years later. [Brain Rules]
10. Vision trumps all other senses
We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10 percent of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65 percent. ... Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time. ... Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it's how we've always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity. [Brain Rules]
11. Male and female brains are different
What's different? Mental health professionals have known for years about sex-based differences in the type and severity of psychiatric disorders. Males are more severely afflicted by schizophrenia than females. By more than 2 to 1, women are more likely to get depressed than men, a figure that shows up just after puberty and remains stable for the next 50 years. Males exhibit more antisocial behavior. Females have more anxiety. Most alcoholics and drug addicts are male. Most anorexics are female. ... Men and women process certain emotions differently. Emotions are useful. They make the brain pay attention. These differences are a product of complex interactions between nature and nurture. [Brain Rules]
12. We are powerful and natural explorers
The desire to explore never leaves us despite the classrooms and cubicles we are stuffed into. Babies are the model of how we learn - not by passive reaction to the environment but by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion. Babies methodically do experiments on objects, for example, to see what they will do. [Brain Rules]
More from Farnam Street...

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12 things we know about how the brain works

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Here are 12 things we know about how the brain works from Brain Rules . 1. Exercise boots brain power Wondering whether there is a relationship between exercise and mental alertness? The answer is yes. Just about every mental test possible was tried.

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The Marshmallow Experiment and the Power of Delayed Gratification

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The Marshmallow Experiment and the Power of Delayed Gratification

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In the 1960s, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel began conducting a series of important psychological studies.

During his experiments, Mischel and his team tested hundreds of children - most of them around the ages of 4 and 5 years old - and revealed what is now believed to be one of the most important characteristics for success in health, work, and life.

Let's talk about what happened and, more importantly, how you can use it.

The Marshmallow Experiment

The experiment began by bringing each child into a private room, sitting them down in a chair, and placing a marshmallow on the table in front of them.

At this point, the researcher offered a deal to the child.

The researcher told the child that he was going to leave the room and that if the child did not eat the marshmallow while he was away, then they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow. However, if the child decided to eat the first one before the researcher came back, then they would not get a second marshmallow.

So the choice was simple: one treat right now or two treats later.

The researcher left the room for 15 minutes.

As you can imagine, the footage of the children waiting alone in the room was rather entertaining. Some kids jumped up and ate the first marshmallow as soon as the researcher closed the door. Others wiggled and bounced and scooted in their chairs as they tried to restrain themselves, but eventually gave in to temptation a few minutes later. And finally, a few of the children did manage to wait the entire time.

Published in 1972, this popular study became known as The Marshmallow Experiment, but it wasn't the treat that made it famous. The interesting part came years later.

The Power of Delayed Gratification

As the years rolled on and the children grew up, the researchers conducted follow up studies and tracked each child's progress in a number of areas. What they found was surprising.

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures. (You can see the followup studies here, here, and here.)

The researchers followed each child for more than 40 years and over and over again, the group who waited patiently for the second marshmallow succeed in whatever capacity they were measuring. In other words, this series of experiments proved that the ability to delay gratification was critical for success in life.

And if you look around, you'll see this playing out everywhere...

If you delay the gratification of watching television and get your homework done now, then you'll learn more and get better grades.

If you delay the gratification of buying desserts and chips at the store, then you'll eat healthier when you get home.

If you delay the gratification of finishing your workout early and put in a few more reps, then you'll be stronger.

... and countless other examples.

Success usually comes down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction. And that's exactly what delayed gratification is all about.

This brings us to an interesting question: Did some children naturally have more self-control, and thus were destined for success? Or can you learn to develop this important trait?

What Determines Your Ability to Delay Gratification?

Researchers at the University of Rochester decided to replicate the marshmallow experiment, but with an important twist. (You can read the study here.)

Before offering the child the marshmallow, the researchers split the children into two groups.

The first group was exposed to a series of unreliable experiences. For example, the researcher gave the child a small box of crayons and promised to bring a bigger one, but never did. Then the researcher gave the child a small sticker and promised to bring a better selection of stickers, but never did.

Meanwhile, the second group had very reliable experiences. They were promised better crayons and got them. They were told about the better stickers and then they received them.

You can imagine the impact these experiences had on the marshmallow test. The children in the unreliable group had no reason to trust that the researchers would bring a second marshmallow and thus they didn't wait very long to eat the first one.

Meanwhile, the children in the second group were training their brains to see delayed gratification as a positive. Every time the researcher made a promise and then delivered on it, the child's brain registered two things: 1) waiting for gratification is worth it and 2) I have the capability to wait. As a result, the second group waited an average of four times longer than the first group.

In other words, the child's ability to delay gratification and display self-control was not a predetermined trait, but rather was impacted by the experiences and environment that surrounded them. In fact, the effects of the environment were almost instantaneous. Just a few minutes of reliable or unreliable experiences were enough to push the actions of each child in one direction or another.

What can you and I learn from all of this?

How to Become Better at Delaying Gratification

Before we go further, let's clear one thing up: for one reason or another, the Marshmallow Experiment has become particularly popular. You'll find it mentioned in nearly every major media outlet. But these studies are just one piece of data, a small insight into the story of success. Human behavior (and life in general) is a lot more complex than that, so let's not pretend that one choice a four-year-old makes will determine the rest of his or her life.

But...

The studies above do make one thing clear: if you want to succeed at something, at some point you will need to find the ability to be disciplined and take action instead of becoming distracted and doing what's easy. Success in nearly every field requires you to ignore doing something easier (delaying gratification) in favor of doing something harder ( doing the work and putting in your reps).

But the key takeaway here is that even if you don't feel like you're good at delaying gratification now, you can train yourself to become better simply by making a few small improvements. In the case of the children in the study, this meant being exposed to a reliable environment where the researcher promised something and then delivered it.

You and I can do the same thing. We can train our ability to delay gratification, just like we can train our muscles in the gym. And you can do it in the same way as the child and the researcher: by promising something small and then delivering. Over and over again until your brain says, 1) yes, it's worth it to wait and 2) yes, I have the capability to do this.

Here are 4 simple ways to do exactly that:

1. Start incredibly small. Make your new habit "so easy you can't say no." (Hat tip to Leo Babauta.)

2. Improve one thing, by one percent. Do it again tomorrow.

3. Use the "Seinfeld Strategy" to maintain consistency.

4. Find a way to get started in less than 2 minutes.

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40 Years of Stanford Research Found That People With This One Quality Are More Likely to Succeed

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In the 1960s, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel began conducting a series of important psychological studies. During his experiments, Mischel and his team tested hundreds of children - most of them around the ages of 4 and 5 years old - and revealed what is now believed to be one of the most important characteristics for success in health, work, and life.

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Top Ten Favorite Tips to Improve Children’s Memory | Psychology Today

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Top Ten Favorite Tips to Improve Children’s Memory | Psychology Today

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Studying for tests is tough on kids and parents. I'm frequently asked to speak and write about how parents can help their children remember things they need to learn for school. From my perspective as a neurologist and teacher, I've evaluated the neuroscience research about how the brain learns and remembers most successfully. This article brings together the strategies I've suggested, based on that research, reported by parents and educators to be most helpful.

Multisensory input for best memory retrieval

Guide your children to learn important material through multiple sensory learning pathways (hearing, seeing, touching). They can visualize the earth orbiting sun, imagine an electron orbiting the nucleus of an atom, mimic the buzz of electricity as it whizzes by, or feel a tingling associated with a static electric charge by rubbing a balloon against their arm and feeling their hair move.

Encourage your child to create visual imagery of history events or scientific process. Describe by example how you might visualize the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, adding details you imagine in the scene. The more dramatic, bizarre, and memorable the image, the better.

Children can then draw a sketch of their visualizations and verbally communicate it to you in their own words. This reinforces the multisensory learning because they personalize and interact with the information in multiple ways. More brain pathways are stimulated and stronger long-term memory is constructed.

How it works:The brain constantly changes through neuroplasticity (building and strengthening the most used memory networks or pruning the unused memory circuits). When a region of the brain is stimulated repeatedly (which happens when we practice and use information), the connections between neurons (nerve cells) in that memory circuit increase in number and durability. These strengthened connections, if used consistently, become long-term, durable memories.

The more regions of the brain that store data about a topic, the more interconnections there are. This redundancy or cross-connections of sensory information storage about the topic means children will have more access to retrieve all of the related stored data. When they remember one way they learned it, signals go out from that memory storage to the related multiple storage areas and all the learning is retrieved to active memory.

Questioning

Asking questions: Have children develop questions before reading or listening to new or reviewed information. These can come from their books, ones you create, or their own created questions. You can even prepare post-its with questions in advance and make copies to use again and again, as the same questions can often apply to many reading assignments. Just give the appropriate ones to your children before they read.

Finding the answers as they read or listen increases memory because they have specific goals. There is also greater memory impact resulting from the intrinsic satisfaction of goal achievement when they discover answers.

Self-questioning: Have children begin by thinking about what they might learn in the reading or hear in the teacher's lesson. They prepare in advance by writing their predictions as unfinished statements and questions on a list before reading the assignment (and again when reviewing for the test). They can also do this on post-its with unfinished predictions or questions they write in advance. Before and as they read, they write responses to their questions (or the ones you help them prepare) on the post-its as they place them into the book.

When it is time to review, they use the original question lists or post it questions (without the answers they wrote). After answering each, they immediately check the text or notes to see if their answers are correct. By doing this after each question, with the correct information in sight, their brains rewire incorrect memory circuits with the correct information.

Here are some examples of the questions they can complete before, during, and after reading.
Before reading prediction questions such as:
* I think you'll be telling me...

* I already know things about YOU, so I predict.....
During reading children can complete the following questions or prompts:
* You are similar to what I have learned before, because you remind me of...

* I would have preferred a picture of...(or sketch/download their own)

* This surprised me because...

* This is something I want to know more about, so I will....
After reading:
* This gives me an idea for ...

* I see how this could be useful for...

* I think this will be on the test because...

How it works: Questioning before reading and for studying is great because it uses all the comprehension and memory strategies that work in a way that is fun for kids and doesn't require much written work. Because the prereading questions, predictions, and review self-questioning are not formal school assignments, there is no pressure or penalty for mistakes. They are active participants in their own learning and engage considerable mental muscle that builds strong long-term memory.

It turns out that time spent mentally working to predict, evaluate, and solve a question or problem prepares the brain for better storage when the answer is ultimately acquired. When there is a goal to discover information, that information becomes a stronger memory. Give hints if they don't know what to write initially, but let them try to figure it out.

When learners quiz themselves on questions before a test, followed by checking the accuracy of their answers, the result is up to three times the effective memory retention compared to just reviewing the material over and over for the same amount of time. Plus the memories made by this pretesting and checking last longer so less time is needed for review on final exams.

Curiosity and the unexpected

Children are born curious. They have a sense of wonder that can be preserved during school years to enhance their enjoyment of learning and memory.. If you boost their curiosity or add novelty to a study experience the information becomes more memorable.

Children's attention and memory systems will be more open to processing and remembering information that comes in after a novel experience. Connect what they are studying in school with something new/unusual in the car when you pick them up to spark their attention and curiosity that in some way relates to what they are learning. It can be anything from playing a song about the Mississippi River or wearing an unusual hat, cape, or watching a video clip about historical period they are studying. Even a change in their usual study space enhances the storage of what they learn because when they remember that you lit a candle at the table while they studied, they can remember the candle and the associated learning will be activated.

How it works: The brain only lets in a small part of the billions of bits of sensory information available every second. A filter in the low ( unconscious, automatic, animal-like) brain decides what gets in. When you link the novel, curious, or unexpected with their studying it opens up the brain's sensory intake filter so when the information they learn gets into their brains riding the coattails of the novelty that opened their attention filter.

Use the technique of surprise to light up your child's brains and illuminate the pathways to memory storage. The curiosity invests your child in listening to the lesson or reading the text to satisfy their curiosity. They connect with the information that follows because their brain is engaged and links it to the novelty.

Coded Notes

Recall that the brain's attention filter only lets in a small part of the billions of bits of sensory information available every second. Color gets through the brain's attention filter especially well.

Have your children use predesignated colors (colored post-its, colored pens, highlighters, etc.) each representing a specific type of information in their notes or books. Different colors can represent categories such as: levels of importance, related patterns, links to their personal experiences or prior knowledge, information they don't fully understand, and information they consider important to return to on further review.

For younger children, you can have a reminder of how colors represent levels of importance. This can be a picture of a traffic light on the wall that demonstrates levels of importance of color starting with green, and going up to orange, then red-like the traffic light. Older children can further delineate for the other categories using a poster of a rainbow with reminders of what each color represents e.g. violet for something that relates to what he already knows or a personal experience.

How it works: Information that we learn must become integrated into durable, long-term memory circuits of connected neurons to be sustained and retrievable. This means that the learner has to "do something" with the information so the neural network will be activated.

Color-coding is one of the most powerful mental manipulation activities for preserving new memories so the neuroplastic response (see below) makes them stronger. Mental manipulation is especially critical within the first 24 hours after new learning has occurred, so the developing small connection buds grow into strong links among the neurons holding the information.

Preheat the brain

The brain keeps information in short-term memory for only less than a minute unless it connects with prior knowledge. Activate your child's prior knowledge by reminding them of related topics they've learned before or about prior relevant family experiences concerning the topic. Prior knowledge is data that children have already acquired through formal teaching, personal experience, or real world associations.

"Activate" their prior knowledge by alerting children to information they already know connecting to what they are going to learn or review for a test. Show videos, family photos, or online images and hold discussions that remind your child of that prior knowledge and experience. This preheats those memories so their brains link the learning to networks already existing in their memory.

How it works: New memory encoding links the new with the known. The brain makes, stores, and retrieves new memories through pattern recognition and pattern matching. The brain's ability to learn new memory is directly related to how successfully it can relate it to existing prior memory.

If children are made aware of what they already know that connects with new information, these relational memories will become links to hold onto new learning. Your help in activating these related memories prepares their brains to successfully construct short-term memory connections.

Strengthen Memory Relationships

After school and as review have your child "do something" with new learning that emphasizes multiple relationships with similar information already stored in memory. Your child can write or draw a timeline on paper or even on butcher-block rolls taped round the room.

Information can be added throughout the learning unit such as important events in a novel he reads for English class or in history, progressive discoveries in science leading up to the current day knowledge, or larger and larger multiplication numbers he is memorizing. Using special colored or glitter pens and adding sketches increases personal relevance and that builds motivation and memory

How it works: The brain keeps the information linked in short-term memory for less than a minute unless more is done to increase its connections. These connections increase in number and thickness each time the new memory is activated.

This "firing" of a new memory circuit is what strengthens its "wiring" as in the phrase, "Neurons that fire together, wire together. Each time your child remembers or uses something he learned, that memory circuit is "activated"-an electrical current flows through the network. That electrical activity within the new memory circuit promotes the neuroplastic changes that will sustain the learning as long-term memory.

Frequently experienced or used memory circuits grow into the strongest, fastest networks. These are the most quickly retrieved when the information they hold is needed. This is the process of, "Practice makes permanent."

Extending memory durability with an external brain

After you child has correctly recalled the information for an assignment or text, it does not mean it has been stored in durable long-term memory. If it is memorized as an isolated rote fact, without links to multiple existing related memory networks, it is likely to be pruned away from disuse within a few weeks. This is what often happens when children return to school after summer vacation forgetting things learned the previous year...just think how many times you had to relearn "least common denominator" and "greatest common multiple."

Increased memory strengthening into durable long-term memories takes place when your child is aware of more relationships between the new memory and other things she already has stored in memory. Help your child create more memory connections through the use of written documents representing relationships between new and previous memory networks.

The use of diagrams and charts is particularly helpful as "external brains" with the addition of graphic organizers. These are a variety of patterning tools that guide your child to recognize multiple relationships among the new with prior learning. Examples of graphic organizers such as similarity/difference charts, Venn Diagrams, and tree and leaf charts can be found at http://yhoo.it/1sUWiJr and others can be tried before purchase at http://www.inspiration.com/.

Concisely summarizing verbal or written communication requires that a learner really understand the information. (Just think about how much meaning can be found in a perfectly crafted haiku.) That concept level of understanding is the basis for the most enduring memories that can be activated to solve new problems and for creative innovation.

Older children can use real or print versions of 140 spaces to " twitter " or "text message" their understanding into concise summaries. Younger children can make "phones" (decorated towel roll) and summarize learning making imaginary phone calls to anyone of their choice. The limitation is that there is only one minute left on the phone card so they need to practice "concise summarizing" as they condense their learning into less than a minute.

How it works: When memory circuits connected through multiple relationships (categorizing, graphic organizers, analogies, similarities/differences, analogies, etc.) they join into more extended, durable long-term memory concept networks with increased strength and speed of retrieval.

Patterning refers to the meaningful organization, coding, and categorization of information in the brain. It is through the patterns constructed and stored in neural networks that our brains recognize and make meaning of the millions of bits of sensory input received every second. The greater your child's experience in recognizing patterns, such as by sorting information into categories, the greater her chances of finding relevant patterns in new information.

Graphic organizers enhance the brain's natural tendency to construct meaning by forming patterns. The best graphic organizers engage the children' imaginations and positive emotions in a creative process whereby they recognize, sort, and discover patterns for themselves.

Patterning, with graphic organizers and diagrams, allows the brain to store information by adding new learning to existing categories. By using pattern recognition strategies, your child will make those links and construct permanent relational memories. These stores of related memory will increase accurate decision making, choices, and even answers to questions because the more memory linked in relational patterns, the more successfully the brain can interpret new information or questions. This is a process of prediction that occurs when the brain has enough information in a patterned memory category that it can find similar patterns to relate to new information. Then, it can predict what the patterns mean and what would be the best response to a question.

When new memories are connected to existing networks of related information already in brain storage, the neural circuits expand into strong networks that are even more effective in recognizing subsequent pattern in new learning. When he adds new memories related to information already in brain storage, the neural circuit for that pattern or category of knowledge grows larger as more connections form between nerve cells. In essence, the more information stored in the brain's networks, the more successfully children respond to their environments. The more they learn, the more information stored in extended neural networks, the more likely their brains are to relate to new information-hence learning promotes learning.

Personal Relevance

Personalize the material by relating it to you child's or the family's experiences to make powerful personally meaningful, emotionally positive memories. Help her make connections to how the information relates to things she considers important, interesting, and applicable to her life. Ask, "What does that remind you of?" or "Do you think I could use that information in my work?"

Older children may be more comfortable relating the information to their potential careers or things they care about in the community or world. "How do you think you could ever use that information?" or "Why might this information be useful or important to you or to historians/writers/scientists/mathematicians in the future?" Asking questions like these shows increases the value your child's brain places on the information and memory.

Ranking in Personalized lists: When children are invited to arrange a list of words (vocabulary, spelling, etc.) starting with the words they find the most "pleasurable" to the words they find the least "pleasurable", they recall more than if they simply copy the list as it is several times.

How it works: Rote memory involves simply memorizing, and soon forgetting, facts that are often of little personal interest, such as a list of vocabulary words. Usually these facts are not paired with interesting connections that would give them meaningful context or relationship to children's' lives or past experiences. There are no neural networks (patterns) to which these isolated bits of data can connect, so permanent memories are not constructed.

By using personalizing, connecting, and other tools of increasing personal relevance, your child will spend less time memorizing. Instead, she will be able to link new information to her previous knowledge, existing categories of stored information, and personal experiences to efficiently construct permanent memories more rapidly and enjoyably.

Translate learning into another form

Using different ways makes the learning more memorable and builds more nerve cell circuits to access and remember the information.

* Write or tell a story: After reading a chapter in history, literature, science, you child can enjoy making it into story form and telling it to a younger sibling or writing it as a narrative. This works by making dry, factual information more personalized allowing more time to think about it as he "translates" the facts into an accurate but more relatable form...such as the history of Paul Revere from the perspective of his horse.

* Dramatize: Even at home, if you child puts the information into a skit or a pantomime for you to guess in a charades game, that process will increase the brain pathways to long-term memory. You can also pantomime the vocabulary word and have your child select it from the list.

* Teach the information: Have your child teach the information to you, a sibling, or even your dog or cat. The value comes from the brain's greater mental effort understanding the process of teaching it.

How it works: To successfully turn learning into a story, skit, or lesson for someone else requires a clarity of thought and understanding that supports long term memory of the concept. Putting information in story (narrative) form, such as writing about electrons dancing circles around their friend the neutron in the center, increases memory because children grew up hearing stories. The pattern for stories (beginning, problem, resolution, happily ever after) is strong in their brain and increased recall occurs when learning is translated into stories, etc.

Brain-Breaks

It is not just nightly sleep that maintains healthy brains and supports learning and memory. Syn-naps, or brain breaks, are important during homework and study sessions to keep neurons firing efficiently. Depending on students' ages and focus abilities, the time intervals when they need syn-naps will vary. Syn-naps should to take place before fatigue, boredom, distraction, and inattention set in. As a general rule, to keep children alert and engaged, syn-naps should be scheduled after 10 minutes of concentrated review or practice for elementary school and 15-30 minutes for middle and high school students.

During these three to five minute breaks there does not need to be a disruption in the flow of learning. Simply stretching, drinking water, or moving to a different part of the room can provide a fresh outlook. A bit of physical activity, such as jumping jacks or singing a song can be revitalizing.

How it works: The syn-naps is the opportunity construct long-memory while children relax and refresh their brain supplies. The brain-breaks allow brain chemicals to be replenished revitalizing the brain. During these breaks, the brain can dedicate more energy to embedding the newly learned material, because it is not actively taking in new information.

There is a restoration of neurotransmitters and brain transport proteins needed for memory construction and attention, that deplete after as little as ten minutes of doing the same activity. After just a few minutes, the refreshed brains will be ready for new memory storage.

Physical movement during the syn-naps will also increase the blood flow to the cranial circulation, and the deep breathing of exercise will increase the blood levels of oxygen.

Joy and enthusiasm

Joy and enthusiasm are absolutely essential for learning to happen-literally, scientifically, as a matter of fact and research. I offer you these tips to help you promote those experiences for your children. I invite you to add your tips or select your most useful from these so we can continue to share ways to help children build their best brains.

photos Licenced by Shutterstock

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Top Ten Favorite Tips to Improve Children's Memory

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Studying for tests is tough on kids and parents. From my perspective as a neurologist and teacher, I've evaluated the neuroscience research about how the brain learns and remembers most successfully. This article brings together the strategies I've suggested, based on that research, reported by parents and educators to be most helpful.

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THE Blog Your Teenager Must Read | Psychology Today

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THE Blog Your Teenager Must Read | Psychology Today

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As a parent of a teen, you no doubt know about the risk of teen brain impulsivity. But does your teen really "get it?" Have your teens read this article so they do "get" how their brains are uniquely wired and hopefully follow suggestions that could save their lives

What your powerful teen brain needs to know

You now possess a Ferrari brain with a supercharger found only during your teen years. When you learn how to avoid crashing it, you'll get to drive it to the places in your dreams.

Before I get to the topic you've heard before, about the risky impulsivity of teen brains, let's start with your teen brain's superpowers. The supercharger is a brain chemical, dopamine. When you feel that burst of pleasure, deep satisfaction, or rush of excitement triggered by something you do, think, or experience, you're feeling a wave of dopamine surging through your brain.

Your brain's chemical superpower

Your brain's dopamine reward-pleasure responses remain highest during your teen years. Your increased number of dopamine receptors, and their increased response the dopamine that is released, stimulates your teen brain like a supercharged racecar. This unique teen superpower is yours to tap into to drive your new explorations, to try new things, and to push envelopes discovering new interests and friends.

Now is when you have the boosted dopamine pleasure expectations to give you the push to take chances - to do to do things exciting, creative, daring and challenging - but potentially less enticing to try later once your brain wires into mature, adult control systems. You can use your dopamine drive to ask someone out on a date, stretch your limits and take a challenging class, try out new styles of clothes and hair, take up a new sport or act in a play. Do something you've never tried before.

A brain owner's manual for your unique teen brain

As a teenager today you are faced with more decisions and choices then ever before. More choices may sound like a good thing, but the number of decisions you are required to make each day can overwhelm your teen brain at its current stage of development.

Your teen brain is programmed to be impulsive and to explore. That's a good thing when it empowers you to try new foods, clubs, and extend your friendship groups. But you are also more likely to die during your teen years than at any other future time, until you are elderly. Teen death rate from preventable causes is three times that of any other time during your life.

Beware of the collision zone

During these years, as your body reaches peaks of surging hormones, strength, coordination, and endurance, you are in a collision zone, not because you are bad or thoughtless, but because your brain's power has not yet developed to resist the pull of instant gratification or heed warnings about risky behaviors.

You know there are times you should hold back on your teen brain's impulsivity and make more considered choices before taking potentially risky actions. But, there's a problem. As you are growing into an adult body and have access to the same risky temptations - alcohol, drugs, driving while texting, - your surging dopamine makes these things particularly attractive. At the same time, your teen brain has not yet wired the control centers for the judgment and high-risk avoidance to judge consequences before acting. These elements remain under construction until your mid twenties.

Even though you have the information and reasoning capabilities to understand the potential for harm associated with risky actions, you don't yet have the strongly wired control system for communication between your brain circuits of knowledge and those programmed to go for the dopamine-pleasure.

These moderating functions nevertheless are exactly what you need to resist the pull of potential pleasure your brain anticipates arising from risky actions. You can't wait the five to ten years for you brain's natural development of fully wired executive function control systems. Critical choices confront you now, everyday. The good news, though, that by increasing your awareness of possible impulsive decisions, you can develop strategies to build resistance to impulsive decisions. You can have more control of your choices as you evaluate alternatives and make your best decisions now.

Build your judgment brainpower by watching your brain jump to conclusions

Answer these questions aloud one right after the other without reading ahead.

1. What color is the opposite of black?
What happened?
Was your first response to the question, "What does a cow drink?" "milk" even through you know that cows drink water? (I know, calves drink milk, but the question did say "cows"). Your response of "milk" is an example of your still impulsive teen brain's programming to stop jump to the first response instead of waiting to consider other options.

Now try this to see if knowing about impulsive first responses is enough to put you in control of your choices.

1. Spell the word with four letters, starting with a J and rhyming with "smoke" means a funny story.

J _ _ _

2. Now, spell the four-letter word, starting with a P that that means to push on someone or thing with one finger (it also rhymes with "smoke").

P _ _ _

3. I bet you spelled "joke" and "poke" - good job.

4. And what is the name for the white of an egg?

Did you first think "yolk" even though you know the yolk is the yellow part and the white is called the white or the albumin? "Yoke" is often the response given by teens. It is also the first response that comes to mind for adults, but their brains have gone through the additional wiring that gives it stronger impulse control. That is why some adults think "yoke" first, but don't say it. They wait a moment and see if they are missing something beyond that first response. That is when it comes to them that the yoke is the yellow part and the white is just called "the white" or "albumin."

Examples of impulsive first responses that will activate memories of your own

Now that you've experienced your brain jumping to conclusions, help build your power to resist first responses by reflecting about times you have already paid the price of your brain's impulsive wiring.

Use the list below to explore consequences of impulsive decisions often regretted by teens. You'll build your control networks by thinking of similar times you wish you'd taken more time to think before acting.

Making careless mistakes due to not reading all the instructions before starting

Choosing the first multiple-choice answer that seems right without looking at the other options that included the most correct response

Rushing through reading (so much reading) to get it over with, but finding you don't remember what you read

Playing video games or checking social media when you have required homework, so you had to stay up way too late or couldn't finish your homework

Responding impulsively to a text and regretting that you didn't think about the possible negative consequences until after you sent it

Deciding early in a movie or book that a character is the bad guy, then later, after finding out more about the person, realizing that you'd jumped to your opinion too quickly. Or perhaps this has happened in your real social life.

Answering a call or taking a quick look at an anticipated text while riding a bike, crossing a busy street, or driving a car

Not considering the possible negative outcomes of blindly following along with your friends and peers

Build impulsivity breaks for your race car brain to use when danger is signaled ahead

By using strategies you choose from the list below, you'll experience situations to strengthen the brain networks needed to override your brain's impulsive drives when you choose to.

When reading a novel or a history book and problems or historical disputes come up, and come across decisions made, stop and consider what might have resulted in a better outcome.

When designing something for art or planning a report and come up with an idea or plan, consider one more way of doing it. Then evaluate which of the two will have the best outcome.

When you solve problems in math or science, take the time to find another way to get the same solution.

When reading email, facebook postings, blogs, or books that demonstrate negative consequences resulting from other people's bad choices, stop and think what might have been a better decision for them to make.

Before posting on your social media or responding to a text about something personal or private, wait several minutes. Take that time to even briefly consider any possible negative consequences that could result from an impulsive post or text.

When you have an important decision to make, even if you are pretty sure, take a full minute think if there could be possible negative consequences, even in the future, from the choice.

Seek doors to open and boundaries to push

Before your teen brain transitions into an adult brain, which sadly will be more resistant to trying new things and exploring new pathways, tap into the great potential of your teen brain's imagination and vitality.

Now that you have strategies to consider the potential consequences of your choices and actions, jump into the driver's seat of your supercharged brain. Seek out and explore new experiences and opportunities dawning before you during these unique years of your life.

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As a parent of a teen, you no doubt know about the risk of teen brain impulsivity. But does your teen really "get it?" Have your teens read this article so they do "get" how their brains are uniquely wired and hopefully follow suggestions that could save their lives You now possess a Ferrari brain with a supercharger found only during your teen years.

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Memorizing: Faster, Easier, Longer Lasting, and More Fun | Psychology Today

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Memorizing: Faster, Easier, Longer Lasting, and More Fun | Psychology Today

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Memorizing: Faster, Easier, Longer Lasting, and More Fun

Using multiple senses is memory cement for stronger & faster memory networks

When you need something right now, it's great to have a backup kept in a second location. If you keep duplicate car keys or spare sunglasses in a drawer by the front door, and not just in your purse or jacket pocket, you are much more likely to have them quickly when you need them.

The same is true for memorizing things you need to remember. If you want to remember something more easily, you can construct that memory and store duplicates of the information in multiple locations of your brain's storage system. Learning, reviewing, and practicing new information through multiple senses does just that. You achieve information storage in multiple brain areas and benefit from faster memory construction and access to the information when you want it.

Memory Cement

Using multiple senses is a powerful and enjoyable way to build strong memory circuits in less time and keep the information secure in long-term memory.

Here's how it works. Memory networks are constructed by brain activation. To turn information into memory, it must be assimilated into neural networks. This occurs by active processing (repeated activations) at the synapses. Each time the information or experience is encountered, the repeated activations signal the construction of increased, stronger connections among the neurons holding the memory.

When new information first enters (e.g. through things you hear, see, touch, visualize, smell, taste, imagine, movements, etc.), it is held in short-term memory for less than one minute. To convert into long-term memory there must be the repeated activations of the temporary memory circuit that, at first, has only weakly connected neurons.

The repeated activation (use) of that circuit promotes what is called the neuroplastic response. This stimulation-activated neuroplasticity transforms the weakly linked short-term templates into strongly connected, efficient, durable, and easily retrievable long-term memory circuits.

The More Senses the Better

Each type of sensory memory is stored in the lobe that receives the input from that specialized sensory system. Learning that is multisensory stimulates two or more memory systems in separate sensory brain storage regions. Visual memory is stored in the back of the brain (occipital lobes), auditory memory of what is heard is stored in the side regions (temporal lobes), memories of touching experiences are stored to the left and right of center (parietal lobes), and movement memory in the lower posterior regions, such as the cerebellum.

With multiple sensory inputs of the information e.g. touching, seeing, moving, hearing, or visualizing, etc., multiple brain regions store information about the information being learned or skill being practiced. We see on neuroimaging how the multiple regions storing different sensory experiences of the same information connect to each other by communicating networks.

Because each sense has a separate storage area in the brain, multisensory memory is easier to hook in, store, and remember. When one is activated (e.g. recall of what was seen) the others (what was heard, felt, visualized) are almost immediately coactivated. By remembering one of the ways the information was experienced, the other parts of the memory will come on line and be available for recall.

Multisensory memory power can be examined through the lens of neuroscience research. You may have heard people say that if one sense is lost the others get stronger. That may or may not be true for all senses, but here is an experiment in which a part of the brain did get stronger when a sense was lost.

The visual response center in the brain, the occipital cortex, is usually only activated by visual sensory information. Subjects were blindfolded for five-days and did not get any visual or light input to their brains. Initially there was a big drop in activity in their visual response occipital cortexes. They did receive intense study and practice in reading by touch, using braille.

After the five days of braille practice, their visual occipital cortexes showed neural activity in new circuits that had been constructed and were quite similar to those found in people blind from birth. Using their touch increased their memory storage in both their sensory (touch) and visual response part of their brains1.

More Senses, More Storage, Easier Retrieval

You cement new memories more efficiently and power up their access to remembering (retrieving) the information when you experience, practice or review through multiple senses. By the act of touching, seeing, moving, hearing, and/or visualizing not only do multiple brain regions hold the information for faster memorization, but they also permit increased efficiency for memory retrieval.

Each new sensory approach to the information builds more interconnecting brain circuits. These brain cell networks are the roadways that link various parts of the brain. Just like traffic flow in a busy city, the more alternate pathways there are to connect with a memory, the more efficiently the traffic will flow, and the more rapidly and easily that memory will be retrieved when needed.

When a sensory cue comes in to retrieve a memory, the increased number of synaptic connections gives rise to more powerful recall. Remembering one sensory cue will activate the others. For example, if you process information about how sound waves work through reading, visualizing, and touching a vibrating object, you'll have at least three brain storage boxes holding that knowledge. It doesn't matter which one comes to mind when you are trying to remember facts about sound waves. When you recall any one, such as the feel of the vibrations, the related information about what your heard, read, or visualized will pop into your recall.

Use It So You Don't Lose It

Use hearing, vision, and movement or touch to boost your memory of things you need to recall for tests, say in a presentation, or perform steps in a procedure. Here are some examples you can adapt for what you need to remember:

Visualize: If you exaggerate the information in an over-the-top visualization, the extra emotional punch or humor will intensify the memory. Example?? When subjects were shown video clips of hands touching varied objects, brain scans revealed activation not only of the visual cortex, but also of the neural regions in a distant region of the brain normally activated when the brain directs the actual touching2.

Tunes and rhymes boost memory: Just the way you've found it easier to recall lyrics to a song than to memorize a poem, you'll increase memory storage when you put the information into a familiar tune or turn it into a rhyme. When gestures are part of that sound memory, the movements add a third storage locker for the information to further increase memory access.

Hearing what you read: Next time there is something you need to read and remember, add the auditory sensory information by reading it quietly aloud. Your brain will now receive the information through the two sensory systems, vision and hearing. You'll be more likely to recall what you read because of its duplicate areas of storage.

Touch and Movement: Movements add a multidimensional component to memory and are especially useful to remember ideas or concepts. An example is for students learning about planetary movement to physically revolve around a ball on the floor mimicking a planet revolving around the sun. Then they would add turning in circles as they walk in their orbits, representing the rotation of the planet on its axis.

Another example of a multisensory learning is about the topic of electricity. It helps students understand the concept of electrons in electricity when they do more than read about it. After reading about the relationship of electrons to the nucleus of an atom, they can visualize an electron orbiting the nucleus of an atom, mimic the buzz of electricity as it whizzes by, and feel the tingling associated with the electron's negative charge by rubbing a balloon against their arms and feeling their arm hairs move. The multiple brain pathways stimulated will carry the new information into multiple long-term memory banks for easy future withdrawal.

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So, make memorizing (and understanding) faster, more efficient, and more enjoyable with multisensory processing. Memory construction will accelerate and you'll have better access to retrieve the information for the test or task for which it was learned. An even greater reward is the enhanced access to the information beyond the test or task to use for new applications, new problems, or creative innovations. Pretty good bonuses from making more powerful memories the multisensory way!

K. Meyer, J. T. Kaplan, R. Essex, H. Damasio, A. Damasio. (2011). Seeing Touch Is Correlated with Content-Specific Activity in Primary Somatosensory Cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 2011; 21(9).

Merabet, L., Hamilton,R., Schlaug,G., Swisher,J., Kiriakopoulos, E., Pitskel,B., Kauffman, T., and Pascual-Leone, A. (2008). Rapid and Reversible Recruitment of Early Visual Cortex for Touch. PLoS ONE. 2008; 3(8): e3046.

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Memorizing: Faster, Easier, Longer Lasting, and More Fun

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When you need something right now, it's great to have a backup kept in a second location. If you keep duplicate car keys or spare sunglasses in a drawer by the front door, and not just in your purse or jacket pocket, you are much more likely to have them quickly when you need them.

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Neurotransmission - Neurologic Disorders - Merck Manuals Professional Edition

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Neurotransmission - Neurologic Disorders - Merck Manuals Professional Edition

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A neuron generates and propagates an action potential along its axon, then transmits this signal across a synapse by releasing neurotransmitters, which trigger a reaction in another neuron or an effector cell (eg, muscle cells, most exocrine and endocrine cells). Neurotransmitters that are released bind to receptors on another neuron. Neurons that release neurotransmitters are called presynaptic neurons. Neurons that receive neurotransmitter signals are called postsynaptic neurons. The signal may stimulate or inhibit the receiving cell, depending on the neurotransmitter and receptor involved.

Sometimes signals between neurons occur in the reverse direction (called retrograde neurotransmission). In such cases, the dendrites (a neuron's receiving branches) on the postsynaptic neurons release neurotransmitters that affect receptors on the presynaptic neurons. Retrograde transmission can inhibit presynaptic neurons from releasing additional neurotransmitters and help control the level of activity and communication among neurons.

In the central nervous system (CNS), interconnections are complex. An impulse from one neuron to another may pass from

A neuron can simultaneously receive many impulses-excitatory and inhibitory-from other neurons and integrate simultaneous impulses into various patterns of firing.

Action potential propagation along an axon is electrical, caused by the exchanges of sodium and potassium ions across the axonal membrane. A particular neuron generates the same action potential after each stimulus, conducting it at a fixed velocity along the axon. Velocity depends on axonal diameter and degree of myelination and ranges from 1 to 4 m/sec in small unmyelinated fibers to 75 m/sec in large myelinated ones. Propagation speed is higher in myelinated fibers because the myelin cover has regular gaps (nodes of Ranvier) where the axon is exposed. The electrical impulse jumps from one node to the next, skipping the myelinated section of the axon. Thus, disorders that alter the myelin cover (eg, multiple sclerosis) interfere with impulse propagation, causing various neurologic symptoms.

Impulse transmission is chemical, caused by release of specific neurotransmitters from the nerve ending (terminal). Neurotransmitters diffuse across the synaptic cleft and bind briefly to specific receptors on the adjoining neuron or effector cell. Depending on the receptor, the response may be excitatory or inhibitory. Usually, neurons do not touch each other; instead, they communicate through the transmission of neurotransmitters across the synapses.

One type of synapse, the electrical synapse, does not involve neurotransmitters; ion channels directly connect the cytoplasm of the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons. This type of transmission is the fastest.

The nerve cell body produces enzymes that synthesize most neurotransmitters, which are stored in vesicles at the nerve terminal (see figure Neurotransmission). The amount in one vesicle (usually several thousand molecules) is a quantum. A membrane action potential arriving at the terminal opens axonal calcium channels; calcium inflow releases neurotransmitter molecules from many vesicles by fusing the vesicle membranes to the nerve terminal membrane. Membrane fusion generates an opening through which the molecules are expelled into the synaptic cleft via exocytosis.

Excitatory and inhibitory signals

The reaction triggered by neurotransmitter release can either excite or activate the postsynaptic neuron or inhibit or block its activity. Postsynaptic neurons receive multiple neurotransmitter signals and electrical signals from many neurons. The receiving neuron ultimately adds the inputs together, and if more excitatory signals are received, the neuron fires and sends signals to other neurons. If the sum of the signals are inhibitory, the neuron does not fire and does not influence the activity of other neurons. This adding up of responses is called summation.

Other forms of summation include

For a neuron to generate a signal and fire, it must reach a threshold potential. A threshold potential is produced by a net increase in sodium influx into the cell during the exchange of sodium and potassium ions. When enough sodium enters the cell, the threshold is reached; when the threshold is reached, an action potential is fired; it travels along the neuron's membrane. If the threshold is not reached, no action potential occurs.

Neurotransmission

Action potentials open the axonal calcium channels (not shown). Calcium activates release of neurotransmitters (NT) from vesicles where they are stored. NT molecules fill the synaptic cleft. Some bind to postsynaptic receptors, initiating a response. The others are pumped back into the axon and stored or diffuse into the surrounding tissues.

The amount of neurotransmitters in the terminal is typically independent of nerve activity and kept relatively constant by modifying uptake of neurotransmitter precursors or the activity of enzymes involved in neurotransmitter synthesis or destruction. Stimulation of presynaptic receptors can decrease presynaptic neurotransmitter synthesis, and blockade can increase it.

The neurotransmitter-receptor interaction must be terminated quickly to end the continued action of the neurotransmitter and/or to allow rapid, repeated activation of receptors. One of the following can happen to neurotransmitters that have interacted with receptors:

Neurotransmitters taken up by the nerve terminals are repackaged in granules or vesicles in the axon terminal for reuse.

Malfunction of these processes can result in clinical disease. For example, loss of memory in Alzheimer disease is postulated to involve insufficiency of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in synapses, which mediates the laying down of new memories. Certain drugs (eg, donepezil, galanthamine, rivastigmine) block the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (which breaks down acetylcholine) and thus increase the amount of acetylcholine in the synapse. As a result, memory function may improve.

Some types of single neurons can release two or more different neurotransmitters (called cotransmission)-for example, acetylcholine and glutamate. Multiple neurotransmitters may act on a single postsynaptic neuron or affect multiple postsynaptic neurons. Cotransmission allows for intricate communication among neurons to control different events in the CNS and the peripheral nervous system (PNS).

Neurotransmitter receptors are protein complexes that span the cell membrane. Their nature determines whether a given neurotransmitter is excitatory or inhibitory. Receptors that are continuously stimulated by neurotransmitters or drugs become desensitized (downregulated); those that are not stimulated by their neurotransmitter or are chronically blocked by drugs become supersensitive (upregulated). Downregulation or upregulation of receptors strongly influences the development of tolerance and physical dependence. These concepts are particularly important in organ or tissue transplantation, in which denervation deprives receptors of their neurotransmitter. Withdrawal symptoms can be explained at least in part by a rebound phenomenon due to altered receptor affinity or density.

Most neurotransmitters interact primarily with postsynaptic receptors, but some receptors are located on presynaptic neurons, providing fine control of neurotransmitter release.

One family of receptors, termed ionotropic receptors (eg, N-methyl-d-glutamate, kinate-quisqualate, nicotinic acetylcholine, glycine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid [GABA] receptors), consist of ion channels that open when bound to the neurotransmitter and effect a very rapid response. In the other family, termed metabotropic receptors (eg, serotonin, alpha- and beta-adrenergic, and dopaminergic receptors), neurotransmitters interact with G proteins and activate another molecule (second messenger such as cAMP) that catalyzes a chain of events through protein phosphorylation, calcium mobilization, or both; cellular changes mediated by second messengers are slower and permit finer tuning of the rapid ionotropic neurotransmitter response. Far more neurotransmitters activate specific receptors than second messengers.

At least 100 substances can act as neurotransmitters; about 18 are of major importance. Several occur in slightly different forms. Neurotransmitters can be grouped in different classes, such as

Small molecules (eg, glutamate, gamma-aminobutyric acid, glycine, adenosine, acetylcholine, serotonin, histamine, noradrenaline)

These amino acids are the major excitatory neurotransmitters in the CNS. They occur in the cortex, cerebellum, and spinal cord. In neurons, synthesis of nitric oxide (NO) increases in response to glutamate. Excess glutamate can be toxic, increasing intracellular calcium, free radicals, and proteinase activity. These neurotransmitters may contribute to tolerance to opioid therapy and mediate hyperalgesia.

Glutamate receptors are classified as NMDA ( N-methyl-d-aspartate) receptors and non-NMDA receptors. Phencyclidine (PCP, also known as angel dust) and memantine (used to treat Alzheimer disease) bind to NMDA receptors.

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It is an amino acid derived from glutamate, which is decarboxylated by glutamate decarboxylase. After interaction with its receptors, GABA is actively pumped back into nerve terminals and metabolized. Glycine, which resembles GABA in its action, occurs principally in interneurons (Renshaw cells) of the spinal cord and in circuits that relax antagonist muscles.

GABA receptors are classified as GABA-A (activating chloride channels) and GABA-B (potentiating cAMP formation). GABA-A receptors are the site of action for several neuroactive drugs, including benzodiazepines, barbiturates, picrotoxin, and muscimol. Alcohol also binds to GABA-A receptors. GABA-B receptors are activated by baclofen, used to treat muscle spasms (eg, in multiple sclerosis).

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, or 5-HT) is generated by the raphe nucleus and midline neurons of the pons and upper brain stem. Tryptophan is hydroxylated by tryptophan hydroxylase to 5-hydroxytryptophan, then decarboxylated to serotonin. Serotonin levels are controlled by the uptake of tryptophan and intraneuronal monoamine oxidase (MAO), which breaks down serotonin. Ultimately, serotonin is excreted in the urine as 5-hydroxyindoacetic acid or 5-HIAA.

Serotoninergic (5-HT) receptors (with at least 15 subtypes) are classified as 5-HT1 (with 4 subtypes), 5-HT2, and 5-HT3. Selective serotonin receptor agonists (eg, sumatriptan) can abort migraines.

Acetylcholine is the major neurotransmitter of the bulbospinal motor neurons, autonomic preganglionic fibers, postganglionic cholinergic (parasympathetic) fibers, and many neurons in the CNS (eg, basal ganglia, motor cortex). It is synthesized from choline and acetyl coenzyme A by choline acetyltransferase, and its action is rapidly terminated via local hydrolysis to choline and acetate by acetylcholinesterase. Acetylcholine levels are regulated by choline acetyltransferase and by choline uptake. Levels of this neurotransmitter are decreased in patients with Alzheimer disease.

Cholinergic receptors are classified as nicotinic N1 (in the adrenal medulla and autonomic ganglia) or N2 (in skeletal muscle) or muscarinic M1 through M5 (widely distributed in the CNS). M1 occurs in the autonomic nervous system, striatum, cortex, and hippocampus; M2 occurs in the autonomic nervous system, heart, intestinal smooth muscle, hindbrain, and cerebellum.

Dopamine interacts with receptors on some peripheral nerve fibers and many central neurons (eg, in the substantia nigra, midbrain, ventral tegmental area, and hypothalamus). The amino acid tyrosine is taken up by dopaminergic neurons and converted by tyrosine hydroxylase to 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (dopa), which is decarboxylated by aromatic-l-amino-acid decarboxylase to dopamine. After release and interaction with receptors, dopamine is actively pumped back (reuptake) into the nerve terminal. Tyrosine hydroxylase and MAO (which breaks down dopamine) regulate dopamine levels in nerve terminals.

Dopaminergic receptors are classified as D1 through D5. D3 and D4 receptors play a role in thought control (limiting the negative symptoms of schizophrenia); D2 receptor activation controls the extrapyramidal system. However, receptor affinity does not predict functional response (intrinsic activity). For example, ropinirole, which has high affinity for the D3 receptor, has intrinsic activity via activation of D2 receptors.

Norepinephrine is the neurotransmitter of most postganglionic sympathetic fibers and many central neurons (eg, in the locus caeruleus and hypothalamus). The precursor tyrosine is converted to dopamine, which is hydroxylated by dopamine beta-hydroxylase to norepinephrine. After release and interaction with receptors, some norepinephrine is degraded by catechol O-methyltransferase (COMT), and the remainder is actively taken back into the nerve terminal, where it is degraded by MAO. Tyrosine hydroxylase, dopamine beta-hydroxylase, and MAO regulate intraneuronal norepinephrine levels.

Adrenergic receptors are classified as alpha-1 (postsynaptic in the sympathetic system), alpha-2 (presynaptic in the sympathetic system and postsynaptic in the brain), beta-1 (in the heart), or beta-2 (in other sympathetically innervated structures).

Endorphins and enkephalins are opioids.

Endorphins are large polypeptides that activate many central neurons (eg, in the hypothalamus, amygdala, thalamus, and locus caeruleus). The cell body contains a large polypeptide called pro-opiomelanocortin, the precursor of alpha-, beta-, and gamma-endorphins. Pro-opiomelanocortin is transported down the axon and cleaved into fragments; one is beta-endorphin, contained in neurons that project to the periaqueductal gray matter, limbic structures, and major catecholamine-containing neurons in the brain. After release and interaction with receptors, beta-endorphin is hydrolyzed by peptidases.

Enkephalins include met-enkephalin and leu-enkephalin, which are small polypeptides present in many central neurons (eg, in the globus pallidus, thalamus, caudate, and central gray matter). Their precursor, proenkephalin, is formed in the cell body, then split by specific peptidases into the active peptides. These substances are also localized in the spinal cord, where they modulate pain signals. The neurotransmitters of pain signals in the posterior horn of the spinal cord are glutamate and substance P. Enkephalins decrease the amount of neurotransmitter released and hyperpolarize (make more negative) the postsynaptic membrane, reducing the generation of action potentials and pain perception at the level of the postcentral gyrus. After release and interaction with peptidergic receptors, enkephalins are hydrolyzed into smaller, inactive peptides and amino acids. Rapid inactivation of exogenous enkephalins prevents these substances from being clinically useful. More stable molecules (eg, morphine) are used as analgesics instead.

Endorphin-enkephalin (opioid) receptors are classified as mu-1 and mu-2 (affecting sensorimotor integration and analgesia), delta-1 and delta-2 (affecting motor integration, cognitive function, and analgesia), and kappa-1, kappa-2, and kappa-3 (affecting water balance regulation, analgesia, and food intake). Sigma receptors, currently classified as nonopioid and mostly localized in the hippocampus, bind PCP. New data suggest the presence of many more receptor subtypes, with pharmacologic implications. Components of the molecular precursor to the receptor protein can be rearranged during receptor synthesis to produce several receptor variants (eg, 27 splice variants of the mu opioid receptor). Also, two receptors can combine (dimerize) to form a new receptor.

Dynorphins are a group of 7 peptides with similar amino acid sequences. They, like enkephalins, are opioids.

Substance P, a peptide, occurs in central neurons (in the habenula, substantia nigra, basal ganglia, medulla, and hypothalamus) and is highly concentrated in the dorsal root ganglia. Its release is triggered by intense afferent painful stimuli. It modulates the neural response to pain and mood; it modulates nausea and vomiting through the activation of NK1A receptors that are localized in the brain stem.

Nitric oxide (NO) is a labile gas that mediates many neuronal processes. It is generated from arginine by NO synthase. Neurotransmitters that increase intracellular calcium (eg, substance P, glutamate, acetylcholine) stimulate NO synthesis in neurons that express NO synthetase. NO may be an intracellular messenger; it may diffuse out of a cell into a second neuron and produce physiologic responses (eg, long-term potentiation [strengthening of certain presynaptic and postsynaptic responses-a form of learning]) or enhance glutamate (NMDA-receptor-mediated) neurotoxicity (eg, in Parkinson disease, stroke, or Alzheimer disease).

Substances with less firmly established roles in neurotransmission include histamine, vasopressin, vasoactive intestinal peptide, carnosine, bradykinin, cholecystokinin, bombesin, somatostatin, corticotropin-releasing factor, neurotensin, and possibly adenosine.

Endocannabinoids are endogenous lipid-based neurotransmitters that modulate brain, endocrine, and immune system function.

Disorders or substances that alter the production, release, reception, breakdown, or reuptake of neurotransmitters or that change the number and affinity of receptors can cause neurologic or psychiatric symptoms and cause disease (see table Examples of Disorders Associated With Defects in Neurotransmission). Drugs that modify neurotransmission can alleviate many of these disorders (eg, Parkinson disease, depression).

Examples of Disorders Associated With Defects in Neurotransmission

Blockade of 5-HT2A/2C (a type of 5-HT receptor abundant in the prefrontal area) may increase the efficacy of SSRIs (eg, trazodone).

Phenytoin, lamotrigine, carbamazepine, valproate, topiramate, and some other antiseizure drugs (eg, zonisamide, oxcarbazepine) stabilize voltage-dependent sodium channels.

Phenytoin also reduces excessive neurotransmitter release.

Lamotrigine may decrease levels of glutamate and aspartate.

Phenobarbital and benzodiazepines enhance GABA activation by affecting the GABA-A receptor-chloride channel complex.

Tiagabine blocks GABA glial uptake.

Valproate increases levels of GABA.

Topiramate increases GABA activity.

NSAIDs inhibit prostaglandin synthesis selectively (with COX-2 inhibitors-eg, celecoxib, parecoxib) or nonselectively (with COX-1 and -2 inhibitors-eg, ibuprofen, naproxen) and reduce pain impulse formation.

Opioid analgesics (eg, morphine) activate endorphin-enkephalin (mu, delta, and kappa) receptors, reducing pain impulse transmission.

New treatments that can block CGRP receptors can attenuate dilation of the cranial blood vessels and prevent migraine pain.

Clonazepam or certain other antiseizure drugs (eg, phenytoin, phenobarbital, diazepam, valproate) may result in improvement.

Inhibition of acetylcholine release from motor neurons by toxin from Clostridium botulinum

Amanita muscaria: Contains ibotenic acid (which has effects similar to those of glutamate) and a metabolite similar to muscimol (which has effects similar to those of GABA)

Inocybe and Clitocybe spp: Stimulation of muscarinic receptors by muscarine and related compounds

Snake venom from Bungarus multicinctus (Taiwanese banded krait)

Blocks acetylcholine receptors at neuromuscular junction by alpha- Bungarus toxin

CGRP = calcitonin gene-related peptide; CRF = corticotropin (ACTH)-releasing factor; GABA = gamma-aminobutyric acid; 5-HT = serotonin; IVIG = IV immune globulin; MAO = monoamine oxidase; MAO-B = MAO type B; NMDA = N-methyl-d-aspartate; NSAID = nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug; PIP2= phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate; SSRI = selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

Last full review/revision March 2019 by Kenneth Maiese, MD

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Neurotransmission - Neurologic Disorders - Merck Manuals Professional Edition

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A neuron generates and propagates an action potential along its axon, then transmits this signal across a synapse by releasing neurotransmitters, which trigger a reaction in another neuron or an effector cell (eg, muscle cells, most exocrine and endocrine cells). Neurotransmitters that are released bind to receptors on another neuron.

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Mindset Kit | Resources for growth and learning mindsets

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Mindset Kit | Resources for growth and learning mindsets

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The Mindset Kit is a free set of online lessons and practices designed to help you teach and foster adaptive beliefs about learning.

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Mindset Kit - Resources for growth and learning mindsets

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A free resource for educators and parents who want to foster learning mindsets such as growth mindset. Follow lessons and practices from experts and members of our community.

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How to Engage Strong Executive Skills in Gifted Learners | TGS

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How to Engage Strong Executive Skills in Gifted Learners | TGS

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When organizing and planning tasks, we employ executive functioning (EF), a set of mental skills put to use by most of us without much thought or intentional effort. Adult life requires an awful lot of EF - it's how we get to the airport on time, how we buy a house or get projects done at work or chores done at home. EF in children, however, and particularly in gifted children, is a very different thing, and EF deficits and/or weaknesses can easily become a source of frustration for children as well as for teachers and parents.

Executive function is what allows you to plan and perform a series of actions needed to complete a specific duty or project. Children, naturally, don't tend to excel in this kind of seeing-around-corners planning, and things "fall through the cracks." What it looks like is homework that is completed but not turned in; incomplete work despite plenty of time to complete it; or last-second panic over a long-term project that is due in the morning. When this happens, you may encounter these tried-and-true phrases: "I am not organized." "I can't stay focused." "I am not a good planner."

We've heard those from our kids, and, more than likely, we've said these phrases at some point about ourselves.

The good news for gifted students battling attention, mood, or impulse issues - which can be governed by EF- is that it is possible to manage and ameliorate EF weaknesses. Research shows that we can improve the area of the brain responsible for executive functioning with early interventions and strategies. Even by practicing breathing exercises and balancing games, it's possible to develop these cognitive abilities and apply them to all aspects of your life.

Begin By Talking About Executive Skills With Gifted Learners: Creating Buy-In

Teaching children how to improve executive functioning skills requires patience and a set of achievable, short-term goals. The first step is making sure the child is on board and ready to do the work.

At The Grayson School, students work regularly with "Dr. Matt," school counselor Matt Zakreski, Psy.D., on improving organization and planning techniques, both of which are EF skills that stymie many gifted students.

"When we think about building executive functioning skills in students, I think that most people fail to achieve an initial buy-in," Dr. Matt says. "I would suggest working with your children to determine what areas of their lives they feel that they're struggling (e.g., forgetting homework at school), and what their values are (e.g., 'I want to get good grades'). Parents are less successful at implementing changes without child approval, so why fight? Find an area that motivates your child, and work from there."

Dr. Matt explains that because success breeds greater success, adding more executive functioning skills in one arena is likely to transfer the improvements to other arenas:

"If your child wants to be a better YouTuber, what does she need to get started? Where is a good place to keep her materials? What schedules/deadlines exist for her to work with? What values are active in these efforts? Work with your child to find her own answers and then check in periodically - see how things have changed, both positively and negatively. With that information, you'll be much more likely to be able help her implement EF changes in different arenas. Remember that kids are also very adept at using technology; use their interests and skills to your advantage! There are many apps that help kids organize themselves and keep their focus, such as 30/30, Evernote, and Quizlet."

"Partner with your children to add the changes they need to be more successful at home and at school," advises Dr. Matt. "Anticipate failures and setbacks. For example, if your child remembers his backpack for two months, then suddenly forgets it again, reflect back to the effort given, which is far more important than the temporary set back."

Dr. Matt suggests that talking with your gifted child about how EF works can be helpful, especially since their advanced verbal abilities and abstract thinking skills actually make such a metacognitive conversation possible at a young age. "You can tell your child that executive functioning is a skill that develops over time (thanks to brain development), rather than being something inborn," he explains. "Every time they practice by making a plan, organizing a planner, or setting up a checklist, they are literally changing their brains for the better!" Think growth mindset.

Executive Functioning Skills and Gifted Children

"The goal of gifted education is to achieve eminence in one's chosen field," Dr. Matt says. "Yet it is awfully hard to achieve eminence without executive functioning skills. Being able to self-regulate and self-reflect are vital pieces of these children's ability to reach their high levels of potential. It's also really important to reflect on the importance of using executive functioning skills to being able to act appropriately in the world."

While most gifted students excel academically, many have significant EF challenges. Some of these may include managing time, paying attention, and following directions. The problem is compounded because the students often don't need any of these skills in their early school years - the work in typical mixed-ability schools is so easy for them that it takes nearly no time, effort, or even looking at the instructions at the top of a worksheet for them to complete work successfully. So when their peers are learning all of these things alongside their elementary spelling and arithmetic homework, the gifted child is instead rewarded with academic success without developing these skills at all.

At some point, though, the level or amount or type of work "catches up with" a gifted student, so that even a student with stellar academic performance and intellectual capability can have her performance in school fall apart because she truly doesn't know how to work incrementally on a two-week-long project or how to carefully parse the language of an assignment to write an organized, targeted essay. She was managing just fine without these EF skills for so long that now it is genuinely remedial to pick them up, and she definitely knows it - so there may be some chafing at the idea that she needs explicit instruction and/or support for something this seemingly simple.

It's important for you and your child to understand that EF skills aren't only useful for academic work; even a straight-A student will eventually will have a hard time managing his life outside the classroom unless she has EF skills in her cognitive "toolbox."

Does your child want to go to college? Get a job? Go on a date?

"Being organized and holding a structure is important to getting things done personally and professionally," says Dr. Matt. "For all of these life skills, it is vitally important to be organized, show up on time (and prepared!), and keep focused despite distractions."

Dr. Matt shares uses examples to help his students grasp the real-world implications of EF problems: "Brian" was a bright kid whose goal was to work at GameStop. He applied and got an interview, but arrived 20 minutes late due to rush-hour traffic. As a result, Brian, who was overqualified for the position, walked into GameStop with his tie untied and without his résumé. (Adults will be unsurprised to hear that he didn't get the job.)

Students also hear a social example - in this case, describing "Sally," who finally worked up the courage to ask a date to the winter formal. Thinking the event started at 8:00 p.m., Sally and her date arrived an hour late on dance night and weren't admitted to the event.

"Whatever the child thinks the 'final boss' is (e.g., getting a job, going to college), you need A LOT OF XP (experience points) to even get to that level, let alone be successful when you get there," Dr. Matt cautions. "Developing this competence early and often will build the skills they need to be successful."

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How to Engage Strong Executive Skills in Gifted Learners | TGS

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When organizing and planning tasks, we employ executive functioning (EF), a set of mental skills put to use by most of us without much thought or intentional effort. Adult life requires an awful lot of EF - it's how we get to the airport on time, how we buy a house or get projects done at work or chores done at home.

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Why Executive Function Is A Vital Stepping-Stone For Kids’ Ability to Learn | MindShift | KQED News

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Why Executive Function Is A Vital Stepping-Stone For Kids’ Ability to Learn | MindShift | KQED News

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iStock/manopjk

Neuroscientists and educational psychologists are constantly learning more about how children learn and the various influences beyond IQ that affect cognition. Some research, like Carol Dweck's on growth mindset or Angela Duckworth's on grit, quickly became catch phrases among educators. At the same time, critics have pushed back against the notion that students underperform only because of cognitive deficits, pointing to an equally pressing need for big changes to teaching practice. Many teachers are trying to combine the research about cognitive skills with more effective teaching practices. They are finding that whether students are working on self-directed projects or worksheets, executive functioning skills are important.

Bruce Wexler has been studying executive functioning - a group of cognitive abilities crucial for managing oneself and information - for the past 20 years. He first worked with adults, but he began to wonder if he could design interventions specifically for young children to get them started down a positive path before any of the negative secondary qualities associated with under-achievement - like disengagement, low self-esteem and behavior problems - began to manifest at school.

"The data just keeps coming in about the importance of focus, self-control and working memory for learning and life," Wexler said in an edWeb webinar. One meta-analysis of six studies found that a child's executive functioning skills in kindergarten predicted reading and math achievement into middle school and beyond. This research is particularly important because students who have poor executive functioning skills because of trauma, poverty, or diagnosed disorders are missing out on learning. Often these children haven't had a chance to develop executive functioning skills required for school before arriving there.

Many kinds of interventions can work to improve executive functioning, another reason researchers feel confident that this cognitive ability is not innate, but rather taught. Martial arts, yoga and exercise, among others, help improve students' ability to focus and control themselves. Wexler helped design his own intervention, called Activate, which uses a mixture of online games and physical activities to target focus, self-control and working memory, the skills most closely linked with academic achievement.

To test whether the program works Wexler's company, C8Sciences, took executive function tests designed by the National Institutes of Health and made them Web-based so teachers could use them in class. These tests helped Wexler's team learn about the relative areas of cognitive weaknesses in students before using the Activate program.

"Soon it became evident that not only did we want that information, but that it was very valuable for teachers," Wexler said. It's often hard for a teacher to know when a student isn't learning something because of a lack of executive functioning capacity, because it hasn't been taught well enough, or because the student just needs more time with the content. The online diagnostic tests helped give them valuable insight to tailor their teaching.

After determining a baseline for students, Wexler's team asked teachers to use the Activate program and then tested students after four months to see how it affected their cognitive abilities. Early tests showed the training improved working memory, but Wexler was more interested in whether the training would carry over into academic achievement, so he tested third-graders from a low-income school on reading proficiency. In the test group that used Activate, 83 percent of students reached third-grade reading proficiency, compared to 58 percent districtwide. On a first-grade math proficiency test, 92 percent of students in the test group reached proficiency, compared to 63 percent districtwide. In another first-grade class at the same school that did not receive the training, only 53 percent of students reached proficiency.

"Training these executive functions leads to improvement in achievement schools," Wexler concluded. And the effects seemed to last through the summer. Another test showed kindergartners who received the training showed better executive functioning skills when they started first grade than their peers.

When Wexler compared the effects he was seeing to other interventions - like one-on-one tutoring, summer and after-school programming - improving executive functioning skills had a much bigger effect. "Training a whole classroom in focus, self-control, and memory has a bigger effect on math achievement than providing one-on-one tutoring," Wexler said. Tutoring had the next strongest effect.

Executive functioning training also seems to make a difference regardless of student IQ. "Its effect was four times as big as the differences in IQ," Wexler said. "Of course IQ is important, but executive functioning is something we can do something about."
SCHOOLS FOCUSING ON EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
Carlisle Area School District has taken the research on executive function and put it into practice, especially in K-5 schools where educators hope to improve these cognitive skills early so students don't fall behind. District leaders started by educating teachers about different neural pathways and why problems with executive functioning could lead to problems with learning. In trainings they give teachers scenarios, and ask them to identify a student's cognitive weakness based on behavior, and then design an intervention. They also ask teachers to reflect on their own cognitive weaknesses and where they might be able to identify with a disorganized student or one who has a hard time staying on task.

Carlisle teachers also have a long list of strategies they integrate into the day with the whole class that emphasize brain breaks, exercise and routines. Additionally, some children need more help developing executive functioning, and educators differentiate strategies for them as well. They often talk to students about how their brain works and emphasize that when their "amygdala is hijacked," they need to stop and think about the next action rather than lashing out.
STRATEGIES

Breathing buddies: Students lie down on the floor with a favorite stuffed animal on their chests. They slowly breathe in and out, watching the animal rise and fall. This helps students calm down when they are upset and gives them a strategy to implement when they feel themselves getting worked up.

Teachers keep "meta boxes" in their classrooms full of fidget toys students can use to help them pay attention when they feel like they need to move.

When transitioning between subjects or recess, teachers often play calming music and let only five kids in at a time to limit the chaos.

Many elementary school teachers have had the experience of asking a question, seeing many hands in the air, but then calling on a student who says he forgot. That could be a working memory problem. Some Carlisle teachers are proactively addressing this by letting those kids record their thoughts on paper or a device so they can contribute when they're called on.

Carlisle was an early adopter of Wexler's Activate program, too. The iPad lessons focus on typical working memory games that require students to remember the order of things, progressively getting harder as the game develops. The physical games reinforce the online learning with social interactions that help embed the memories in movement. Mass ball is one game that requires students to throw a ball in a specific sequence. Students have to juggle paying attention to the order and catching the ball.

Carlisle teachers also have students do a lot of balancing games, which help with executive functioning. Teachers might ask students to walk on a line balancing bean bags on their heads or to do the same walk on tiptoe. Teachers also use relay races to get kids moving, since exercise alone helps with executive functioning.

Adults have an attention span of about 12 minutes with a fully developed executive functioning system, so it's no wonder kids can't focus without a break. "It cannot be overemphasized that all of us need to be thinking about taking information in smaller chunks," said Malinda Mikesell, the reading supervisor for the Carlisle Area School District. She said kids need an opportunity to do something with the information on their own before having the chance to reset for the next chunk of information.

"We have mature executive function systems as adults, so we have to be careful that we're not putting our perspective onto very immature executive functioning systems," Mikesell said. She also emphasized that teachers in her district have successfully involved parents in their effort to improve executive functions, educating the adults about the brain and what cognitive weaknesses look like. Often parents have noticed the same lack of short-term memory, difficulty focusing, and disorganization affecting kids at school, and are happy to learn tips to help their child.

Mikesell said Carlisle is in the early stages of evaluating data on how well their approach is working. Early data showed that kids in the Activate program were outperforming peers not in the program on reading tests. Teachers are also reporting stories about disorganized students improving, who never had what they needed for the day or activity. Now those students are able to follow the classroom routines and are benefiting from checklists and visual organizers that teachers put together to help them with their working memory weaknesses.

Why Executive Function Is A Vital Stepping-Stone For Kids' Ability to Learn

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Why Executive Function Is A Vital Stepping-Stone For Kids' Ability to Learn

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Neuroscientists and educational psychologists are constantly learning more about how children learn and the various influences beyond IQ that affect cognition. Some research, like Carol Dweck's on growth mindset or Angela Duckworth's on grit, quickly became catch phrases among educators.

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Four Teaching Moves That Promote A Growth Mindset In All Readers | MindShift | KQED News

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Four Teaching Moves That Promote A Growth Mindset In All Readers | MindShift | KQED News

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Children reading the book. ( iStock)

Reading can be a very fraught topic for parents, teachers and students. Strong reading skills are essential for accessing later curriculum, so teachers put a lot of emphasis on it early. But the pressure and angst of getting students reading on schedule can sap the joy out of an activity that many young children love. At its heart, reading is a way to access stories, which in turn make readers wonder about the world. In the race to get kids reading, it can be easy to treat reading like a procedure, instead of the complicated experience that it is.

In her ten years of teaching, Courtney Rejent has had many students pass through her classes who claimed they hated reading, but rather than forcing them to read books they hate or making them fill out reading logs to show they read at home, Rejent has taken to heart an approach to reading that is much more relationship-based. Her sixth grade classroom runs on a reader's and writer's workshop model, which means students are doing the majority of their reading and writing in class, where Rejent can help them.

'These kids come with some amazing ideas, amazing qualities, amazing thinking and we need to value that as educators as well.' Courtney Rejent

"Readers, especially struggling readers, often have this mindset that they'll never be a good reader," Rejent said. By middle or high school, kids who struggle with reading are acutely aware that they aren't reading on grade level and often avoid reading because they've experienced so little success. Rejent believes that every student comes to her classroom with skills and strengths, but they often don't recognize them that way. Her first step with a student who states he hates to read is to name what that student is doing positively, as a way to build rapport and help the student see it for himself.

Rejent remembers one student at the beginning of the year who would "find anything else to do besides read." In her first conference with him she pointed out that when he sat down to read he would find where he left off and then re-read a little bit. The boy mumbled he did that because he couldn't remember what happened. But Rejent celebrated that reading strategy, acknowledging that all readers do that.

"It's almost small little moments you have with readers that then piece together to make a kid realize they can grow," Rejent said. That boy grew tremendously in his reading ability over the year. He started noticing character development and growth, and began looking across the text to make connections between events driving the narrative. He may not have finished sixth grade reading at grade level, but he'd begun to engage with reading again and had made huge progress.

"These kids come with some amazing ideas, amazing qualities, amazing thinking and we need to value that as educators as well," Rejent said. "Seeing the positives allow us to build, rather than to fix."

She also doesn't think it's appropriate for kids to be so aware of their own reading level. "Levels are important for the teacher to know so you know what the student needs to know next, but it's not something the child should be labeled as," Rejent said. She continually goes back to the idea that whether a student likes to read or not is often an accumulation of experiences around reading. So she never focuses on the reading level; instead she encourages students to try different strategies and tries to help each learner on his or her individual path.
STRATEGIES
Rejent learned many of the approaches to reading she now uses daily from Gravity Goldberg, a former teacher and current literacy consultant and author who works with the English Language Arts teachers at Westbrook Middle School where Rejent teaches. Goldberg's approaches are based in research, but focus on how individual children relate to reading. She says often teachers need to shift their role in the classroom in order for students to take more ownership over their reading growth.

Most often teachers spend their time assigning what students should read and how they should show what they read, monitoring to make sure students have done what was asked, and making decisions about what students will do and how they will do it. Those roles make the teacher the main driver of the learning. In order to step back from those traditional roles, teachers have to replace them with new strategies.

"There's a place for those three, but when that's our main role there isn't space for ownership and to develop that growth mindset," Goldberg said. She coaches teachers to think of themselves in four very different roles, and to step back from constantly stepping in when students struggle. A big part of that is making it clear that struggle is part of reading, not a unique experience to students learning to read. It's common to start a book and be confused, or to read a passage and miss something, but teachers don't often make it clear how universal that experience is, no matter one's reading level. Rather than being assignors, monitors and managers, Goldberg coaches teachers to see themselves as miners, mirrors, models and mentors.

MINER: To understand what is driving reluctance in each individual, Goldberg says teachers need to step back and observe how the student interacts with reading, what they say about their approaches to reading, and how they feel about it in order to understand what particular strategies will move them forward. This might be one of the hardest and most rewarding parts of teaching reading. Students dislike reading for many reasons and different strategies will work with different kids. A student who can articulate what he tried, what he didn't understand, and what he needs help with is signaling that he's willing to lean into the struggle. That's very different from a student who avoids reading altogether.

And Goldberg says this more nuanced, personal picture of a reader won't come from standard reading tests. Instead, it often comes from a student's word choice, her body language, her process. Fifth grade teacher Gail Cordello says taking the time to observe students was a tough transition for her.

"I thought it was a waste of time," she said. She wanted to jump in with data from reading tests and start focusing on the deficits she saw in her students. But when she did finally step back and try to notice positives she could give feedback on first, the classroom dynamic shifted in a meaningful way.

"When you flip that, all of a sudden you have kids who are open to you," Cordello said. She tries to give specific, process-oriented feedback and to stay very positive at the outset of a relationship with a student. Pretty soon she started realizing even her best students were reading because they knew they had to in order to do well in school. But when the classroom dynamic started to shift "they started to do things for themselves and not because the teacher asked them to do it."

MIRROR: This is where teachers can give students growth mindset oriented feedback that calls out the work students put into reading, focusing on the strategies they used and not on the end result. Goldberg says language is very important in this feedback. Even saying something simple like, "I like how you made a prediction," can indicate satisfaction with an end goal. She suggests thinking about it as a narrative, rather than a label. Describe what the reader did, rather than labeling it. "That way we're acknowledging the work they put in," she said.
This is when teachers get to show students how to use strategies that may help them improve. It's the third "teacher move" on Goldberg's list because before teachers can effectively model, they need to have a sense of the individual reader and to have given feedback on the strategies already in use. But, "if students aren't taking time to preview their book ahead of time, just telling them probably isn't enough," Goldberg said. She suggests thinking of it like a cooking TV program by showing students why the strategy is useful and when they might choose to use it.

"We have our own books and we show them in our books how we go about the process of reading," Goldberg said. If the teacher recognizes that many students are skipping words they don't know, for example, she might choose to model what she does when she comes across a word she doesn't know in a shared reading exercise. She might go back and re-read the sentence, talk through how she can use contextual clues to figure it out, and maybe even look it up. This modeling process not only helps students understand why a strategy is useful, but it also shows them that everyone struggles when reading.

Another important part of modeling is to help students understand how to transfer reading strategies across books. For example, when reading out loud to students the teacher could stop, identify a conflict in the plot and discuss with students how that conflict reflects all the decisions a character makes. Then students can go back to their independent reading books to practice the same strategy on a different book, aiding transfer. If teachers focus too much on the specifics of one book, then students may not naturally extrapolate the strategy to their own reading.

MENTOR: When a student is trying to use a new strategy, she might struggle. That's when a teacher can do a little coaching, like "try reading it again," or "what other words do you know that have that part," to help cue the strategy. Crucially, though, teachers aren't stepping in to do the work for students. Goldberg says when teachers help too much they rob the student of the "learning high," that exultant feeling after getting something that didn't come naturally.

She acknowledges that it can be very hard to let students struggle, even when teachers know the skill is within the student's reach. She suggests three tips that work for her. First, she'll just take a step back. "That little bit of space reminds me it's not my job to fix it," Goldberg said. She also might write the struggle down on a clipboard so she can talk to the student about it in a reading conference later. That gives her permission to step away in the moment. Lastly, she suggests naming the struggle. So, for example, "You're confused about the main idea." When said with empathy it might give the student a little shove in the right direction without solving the problem for her.

Goldberg's approach to reading instruction works well within the reader's workshop model because students are reading in front of teachers. When teachers expect most reading to happen at home, it either doesn't happen at all or the teacher has very little information about how it went and what the student might still need to learn. Rejent only has students for 60 minutes a day, but she's seen huge gains in reading growth when she can conference with students on reading during class time.

But reading in class doesn't mean student shouldn't also read at home. In fact, parents can use many of the strategies Goldberg describes for teachers. Reading aloud and modeling the reading process, trying to get at the heart of why a child doesn't like to read instead of forcing them to do it, letting them choose what they read, these are all good parental strategies that support reading too.
REWARDS FOR READING
Most kids loved stories when they were little, but as they grew up and learned to read the joy and pleasure of the story may have become buried under the stress, or shame, or frustration of reading. When working to build readers back up, Goldberg says she doesn't recommend external rewards for reading. Pizza parties and extra recess for reading send the message that reading is work, not play.

Adults don't read because someone will give them a pizza party. They read because they get invested in characters, or they want to understand something better, or they want to be able to talk about a book everyone is reading. Reading for children shouldn't be so different. If rewards are already in place, Goldberg suggests using reading-focused rewards when kids reach their goals. Maybe that means ten extra minutes of reading time or a trip to the bookstore or library where the child can pick out anything he or she wants.

Teachers like Rejent and Cordello using some of the strategies Goldberg recommends say they've seen huge shifts in the ownership students have over reading. "I actually saw kids get enthusiastic and engaged with reading for the length of the year," Cordello said. Before, they were just doing what they were told because it was a school subject. Now they argue over whether they'd rather have a read aloud or independent reading time.

Four Teaching Moves That Promote A Growth Mindset In All Readers

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Four Teaching Moves That Promote A Growth Mindset In All Readers

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Reading can be a very fraught topic for parents, teachers and students. Strong reading skills are essential for accessing later curriculum, so teachers put a lot of emphasis on it early. But the pressure and angst of getting students reading on schedule can sap the joy out of an activity that many young children love.

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How Students Critiquing One Another’s Work Raises The Quality Bar | MindShift | KQED News

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How Students Critiquing One Another’s Work Raises The Quality Bar | MindShift | KQED News

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Too often, when students produce school work, they turn it into a teacher for a grade and move on. And after the teacher spends time evaluating the student's work, many students never look at the feedback, a cycle that frustrates both parties and isn't the most effective way to learn.

Several schools are trying a different model -- one that takes more time but also helps students feel more ownership over the quality of their work. Called peer critique, students follow clear protocols that remind them to "be kind, be specific, and be helpful" in the feedback they give to peers.

In the Edutopia video shown below about Two Rivers Charter School in Washington, D.C., students explain how through a process of revisions, they can feel proud about gradually producing high quality work. And, since students start doing the peer critique protocol in preschool, the school has built up a culture infused with a growth mindset. Students are constantly experiencing that they can learn from other people's work and that work can always be better.

"You're basically changing the idea of what it means to 'be done,' " said Jessica Wodatch, executive director of Two Rivers Charter School.

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How Students Critiquing One Another's Work Raises The Quality Bar

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Too often, when students produce school work, they turn it into a teacher for a grade and move on. And after the teacher spends time evaluating the student's work, many students never look at the feedback, a cycle that frustrates both parties and isn't the most effective way to learn.