The science of learning is a relatively new discipline, evolving from the fields of cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, and (most recently) neuroscience. This 3 part series of Daily Snippets offers some fresh perspective on How to Become Smarter:

Situations can make us smarter.
(But they can also suppress our intelligence).

Situations can be internal or external. They can be brief and momentary, or they can be persistent and long-lasting. They can be as varied as the conditions under which we learn; the conditions that exist in the classroom or the workplace, the conditions exerted by a peer group. They can be the physical conditions that learners experience by way of how much stress they’re under and how much sleep and exercise they get, and the mental conditions learners create for themselves by the levels of expertise and attention and motivation they’re able to achieve.

Simply put, situational intelligence, in other words, is the only kind of intelligence there is.
Why? We are always doing our thinking in a particular situation.
On one level this is obvious, but on another it is quite radical.

Since its earliest beginnings, the study of intelligence has emphasized its inherent and fixed qualities, determined mostly by innate characteristics of an individual. This was the view of Lewis Terman, the creator of the modern intelligence test who used the notion of fixed intelligence to identify and cultivate children who were ‘gifted.’ To assert that intelligence is in large part a product of the situations we find ourselves in is a departure, not only from the way science has traditionally thought about ability, but from the way many of us think about ability today.

Here’s a quirky little animated video (entitled The Amygdala Hijack in Action!), which illustrates how an emotional response can narrow our view of things, impair our judgment and cause us to act irrationally in certain situations.

For more information on the Amygdala Hijack – its effects on our rational thinking and problem solving abilities – ask us about our transformational Your Brain at Work programme.

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Thanks to rapidly-improving technology, yesterday’s science fiction is today’s science fact.

Consider that Jules Verne’s 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon, predicted (with surprising accuracy) lunar modules, solar sails, and humans landing on the moon — over 100 years before “one small step for a man” became a reality. Aldous Huxley’s classic 1932 sci-fi novel Brave New World spookily predicted test tube babies, cloning and genetic manipulation. And then in the late 1960s members of the Starship Enterprise used a PADD (personal access display device) to bring their computer with them. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the actual guide used in the books) sounds an awful lot like an iPad with truly universal wi-fi access.

In the technologically advanced world in which we live, it’s difficult to imagine how unconventional – indeed, radical – the first suggestions of such ideas might have seemed to the general population. Well, at least until a presentation in New York last Saturday, when a Russian multimillionaire discussed his plans for enabling humans to outlive their bodies.

Dmitry Itskov’s aggressive timetable of milestones towards that goal includes:

By 2020, robots we can control remotely with our brains.

By 2025, the capability to transplant the brain into a life-support system, which could be a robot body – essentially, a robot prosthesis that       can  replace an ailing, perhaps dying body.

By 2035, the ability to move the mind into a computer, eliminating the need for the robot bodies to carry around wet, messy brains.

By 2045, technology nirvana in the form of artificial brains controlling insubstantial, hologram bodies.

The testimony of the neuroscience experts invited to Itskov’s Global Future 2045 conference at the Lincoln Center in New York City’s Manhattan borough indicate that Itskov’s timetable is ambitious to the point of being unrealistic. Of course, beyond the discussion of feasibility, numerous other questions bubble to the service here:

Is immortality desirable?
If so, what’s the best way to get there?
Do we leave behind something essentially human if we leave our bodies behind?
If you send your robot copy to work, do you get paid?

This Daily Snippet is adapted from a News24 article entitled, Tycoon Wants to Move Mind to Machine. We’d be delighted to hear your thoughts on this contentious proposal.
What problems do you think such technological advancement would cause?
Which challenges do you believe such advancements would enable mankind to overcome?

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A team of Stanford scientists have recently published a paper suggesting that, someday, it might be possible to use a brain scan or even a simple blood test to figure out which kids will benefit from math tutoring.

Their research used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the size and activity of the brains of a group of third-graders. Based on the brain scans, kids with a larger-than-normal hippocampus — a part of the brain associated with memory — and with strong connections between the hippocampus and two other regions of the brain were far more likely to improve their math skills with tutoring than their peers.

It’s a small study and there are many variables that still need to be worked out before results can be applied to larger groups of children. The whole field of educational neuroscience is just starting to blossom. And academic experts — people who specialize in how students learn best — say it’ll likely be years, or even decades, before any of the current research works its way into the classroom.

Still, it’s intriguing to consider that the size of our brains and how we’re wired doesn’t only make us good at math, but also better at learning it.

We write this Daily Snippet for you, so we’d like to hear from you.
What thoughts and perspectives bubble to the surface when you read this?

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In 65 BC Cicero of Greece wrote:

“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits and keeps the mind in vigour”.

What does modern science have to say about this connection between physical exercise and mental wellbeing? Drs. Kirsten Hotting and Brigitte Roeder of the University of Hamburg, Germany have recently published a review in the Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews journal which reveals just how important exercise is for maintaining a healthy brain.

As a prelude to an array of experiments, volunteers were put on a regimen of physical exercise (for example 45 min exercise thrice a week for a six month period). One of the experiments involved asking the volunteers to do a focus attention task, requiring them to focus on a single central object while ignoring distracting objects surrounding it. Using FMRI to establish which parts of the brain were involved in the task, it was revealed that volunteers who went through the exercise protocol did far better than those who did not. And the imaging analysis showed increasing activity in the front of the brain.

A few other important finding emerged:

Firstly, aerobic exercises (which require greater oxygen intake) are more effective than stretching exercises alone.

Secondly, the benefits of physical exercise is more apparent for certain brain functions such as memory, visual attention, motor control and speed – all involving the frontal region of the brain.

Thirdly, there are different types of physical exercises — aerobic and anaerobic, active and sedentary. Hotting and Roeder observe: “first evidence suggests that different types of physical training affect different neuro-cognitive networks”. More research needs to be undertaken in this area.

And finally, it is more beneficial to combine physical exercise with cognitive challenges. In other words, one should exercise AND do crosswords, sudoku, and practice or listen to music. Physical and cognitive stimulation contribute additively for improving brain function.

Today’s Daily Snippet is adapted from an article entitled Exercise is Brain Food by D. Balasubramanian, which appeared in The Hindu. Of course, we’d love to hear about your perspectives and/or and personal experiences on the matter, so please drop us a line.

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With numerous large-scale, collaborative research projects being undertaken in the field of neuroscience, the rate of advancement is going to be quite … well, um … mind blowing. This final instalment of Neuroscience Research Takes Centre Stage briefly touches on one of the major obstacles (as we at NeuroLeadership Group see it) to accelerating advances in neuroscience research.

Even as a seasoned veteran in the research space, neuroscientist Eve Marder (a past president of the Society for Neuroscience and one of 14 advisors to Obama’s BRAIN trust) struggles to contain her excitement. Speaking of the technological innovations of the last decade, Eve says: “We couldn’t even dream of these experiments 15 years ago”.

But there are those that express doubt that the goals of the Obama’s BRAIN initiative are clear enough. As a community of leadership and organisational coaches, NeuroLeadership Group appreciates that clear defined goals make the finish line of success easily identifiable – and achievable! In the words of Tony Robbins: “Setting clear goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible”.

So how has the success of this large-scale research project been defined?

At the unveiling of the project on the 2nd of April this year, Obama ‘defined’ the goals of the BRAIN initiative as “… to grow our economy; to create new jobs; to reignite a rising, thriving middle class by investing in one of our core strengths, and that’s American innovation”.

The job of Eve Marder and the other 13 advisors to the BRAIN trust is a heady one indeed: “to figure out how to achieve the initiative’s sweeping vision to develop new technologies that will facilitate asking and answering numerous questions about the brain in health and disease”.

Consider President John F. Kennedy’s clearly defined objectives of the Apollo Space Programme (to which Obama’s BRAIN initiative is frequently being compared): “a moon landing and safe return”. If brain science initiatives were framed in an equally compelling way, they may be more likely to improve the lives of millions of people with autism, attention deficits, depression, traumatic brain injury, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, and more.

How does this relate to you as someone on a journey of personal development?

What does this mean for you as a leader or a manager in your organisation?

How clearly defined are your personal and organisational goals?

How might you refine these goals to be more specific and measurable?

We hope you gained value from this 3 part collection of Daily Snippets entitled Neuroscience Research Takes Centre Stage. We really value your opinions and perspectives, so please take a moment to share your thoughts on this topic with us.

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Neuroscience research is rapidly altering our ‘view of the world’.

Yesterday’s Daily Snippet was the first of a 3 part series on America’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, announced by Barak Obama earlier this year. In this second instalment of Neuroscience Research Takes Centre Stage, we take a quick peek at two other large-scale research projects.

The human brain can be studied as a hierarchy of complex networks on different temporal and spatial scales. While many significant advances have been made through various focused studies, these only reflect limited aspects of how the brain is formed and how it works. It has become increasingly urgent to integrate the many techniques, methods and models, and to merge fragmented findings into a uniform research framework or platform. To this end, the Brainnetome project was launched nearly 10 years ago in China.

And then, halfway across the globe, the European Union is pouring $1.5 billion into its Human Brain Project.

As Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, recently said, “Healthy brains are essential for happy individuals and families, for an efficient work force, for innovative products and services. . . . Therefore, investment in brain research is an intelligent investment, especially in times of scare resources, as it can help avoid even higher costs to society in the future.”

With this major surge in collaborative brain research, you can be sure that major breakthroughs in areas of leadership development, learning and mental health (to name only a few) are imminent.

Tomorrow’s Daily Snippet considers some of the shifts that are necessary for accelerated advances in neuroscience research. As always, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a line if you have any thoughts, comments or questions.

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Could there be a more awe-inspiring entity than the human brain?

Weighing little over a kilogram, the brain contains roughly 90 billion neurons that communicate among themselves to form an unimaginable number of connections — estimated to be somewhere in the range of 100 trillion.

Perhaps it is not too surprising then, that American President, Barrack Obama recently announced a decade-long effort to study the workings of the human brain and to map its activity. The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, which will involve federal agencies and private foundations, is set to cost $100 million in its first year and, ultimately, billions of dollars.

But the research will reportedly “pay” for itself as it aids in understanding and developing new therapies for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and autism, and a variety of mental illnesses, which collectively affect 100 million Americans and cost Americans $500 billion a year in health care costs.

Neuroscience research has revealed that that new experiences and new learning can change the brain’s wiring – displacing the long-held belief that that the brain is incapable of changing once it reached adulthood. In the areas of education, for stroke patients, and for those who had tough childhoods, the implication is that adverse effects on the brain aren’t irreversible.

The new research facilitated by the BRAIN Trust seeks to unlock some of the mysteries of an organ considered to be the final frontier of medical research.

Today’s Daily Snippet is the in a three part series on America’s BRAIN initiative, and serves to provide a comfortable introduction to a deeper look at the programme and its goals. If you have any thoughts, questions or comments on the matter, please drop us a line. We love hearing from you.

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While most children will learn to socialise and communicate without any effort, others will experience significant challenges in socialising. While many will easily integrate into peer groups and will be happy forming friendships, some will remain on the margins of any peer group, mostly isolated.

If a child with such social difficulties also demonstrates unusually narrow interests and strongly repetitive behaviour, there is a strong possibility that he or she may have autism or Asperger Syndrome – both subgroups of the autistic spectrum.

In autism the child will learn to talk at a very late stage, often saying no words before the age of two. The child may also have learning difficulties, with a below average IQ and developmental delay.

In contrast, in Asperger Syndrome, children will talk on time and have no learning difficulties, although they will still find socialising very challenging and often be ‘obsessed’ with narrow topics of interest.

With early research showing that autism and Asperger Syndrome run in families, Cambridge researchers have collaborated with the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, to pinpoint specific structural and functional differences in the brains of people with autism and Asperger Syndrome. Cambridge scientists were the first to discover that a part of the brain called the amygdala is under-active when people with autism and Asperger Syndrome are trying to decode emotional facial expressions.

Also, because autism and Asperger Syndrome affect boys far more often than girls, neuroscientists have been driving research into foetal testosterone in order to examine its effects on brain development. Foetal testosterone shapes brain development to alter an individual’s cognitive profile, and the research reveals that higher prenatal testosterone levels are associated with reduced social skills but superior attention to detail in infants.

Today’s Daily Snippet was adapted from a Cambridge Neuroscience article entitled “Pioneering New Methods for Diagnosing and Supporting People with Autism and Asperger Syndrome”.

With June being our Youth Month, these Daily Snippets are focused on children and neuroscience. If you’re finding value in these articles – or would like to learn more about specific topic – we’d love to hear from you.

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When is a child ready to read?

Why do so many children have difficulty with this fundamental academic skill?

These questions have long been a debate in education circles. Now, for the first time in a concerted way, neuroscience is entering the debate, bringing evidence-based science and the sophisticated tools of modern brain research to the discussion table.

As neuroscience delves into the neurobiology of reading, one thing is becoming clear: not all children’s brains are “wired” for reading in the same way.

Now, new techniques in neuroimaging are shedding light on the neurobiological underpinnings of “reading readiness” and subtle brain differences that may help explain the wide variance of reading proficiency among children. Researchers are finding evidence that links a child’s reading ability to subtle differences in the neural pathways that connect and coordinate the brain regions involved in the skills that comprise reading proficiency. These skills range from visual recognition of letters and words, to phonological processing, to higher-level systems that enable content comprehension.

Martha Bridge Denckla, a research scientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, suggests that reading is a talent – a biologically bestowed gift that is not doled out equally to everyone.

Society generally accepts that some people do not possess whatever the neurological basis for musical talent may be – we just say that they don’t have an ‘ear’ for music. According to Denckla, people can also be born with an untalented ‘ear’ for the speech sounds of language, which makes it very difficult to connect with an alphabetic system and be proficient at reading.

If you’re interested in a more detailed discussion of this research, you can access a copy of “Ready to Read? Neuroscience Research Sheds Light on Brain Correlates of Reading” by Brenda Patoine, from which this Daily Snippet was adapted.

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American poet Ogden Nash once wrote, “Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.”

Scientists have recently discovered a key substance in the central nervous system responsible for transmitting the sensation of an itch from the skin to the brain – a finding that raises the prospect of new treatments for serious itching conditions.

Medical researchers have found that the neuro-transmitter, a small molecule that transmits signals between nerve cells, plays a crucial role in the perception of an itch, which in some people can lead to chronic, long-term scratching.

According to Mark Hoon, a lead investigator at the US National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Washington DC, an itch – once thought to be a low-level form of pain – is a distinct sensation that is “uniquely hardwired into the nervous system with the biochemical equivalent of its own dedicated land line to the brain”.

A better understanding of the biology of itch and the molecules involved can only mean we are closer to finding a treatment for chronic itching. For patients suffering from chronic skin disorders (such as psoriasis and eczema) this is great news!

“[Having undertaken this research using rats and mice] … the next challenge is to find similar biocircuitry in people, evaluate what’s there and to identify molecules that can be targeted to turn off chronic itch without causing unwanted side-effects,” said Mark Hoon. “So this is a start, not a finish.”

This Daily Snippet is adapted from an article entitled “Don’t scratch the itch: Scientists find substance that could be key to stopping the sensation” by Steve Connor.

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