IT IS amazing how much scientists know about the brain, yet how little we take this knowledge to work in our schools and in our lives.
I recently braved the swine flu scare at its peak and traveled to Washington, DC, to attend the 23rd Learning and the Brain Conference.
The theme was “The Creative Brain: Using Brain Research on Creativity and the Arts to Improve Learning.”
One could tell how rich the content was going to be just from the 450-page program each participant was handed.
The three-day conference presented nine plenary speakers and 12 breakout sessions that surely were a tall order for our brains.
Was I glad there was nonstop Starbucks in the house and, for a breather, the Capitol Hill park around the corner for a walk!
Out of the million bits of information that I gathered during the conference, here were 10 points on how the brain ticks and twitters:
1. Humanities and science share characteristics of innovative creativity. Contrary to common belief that science and the arts are separate in brain-hemispheric dominance or that one may be good in either mathematics or English, there is much crossing in branches of learning and creativity.
Who could articulate this better than Dr. Nancy Andreasen who, having earned her Ph.D. in literature and taught Shakespeare for many years at the University of Iowa, went on to become an M.D. and now holds the Andrew H. Woods Chair of Psychiatry at the Carver College of Medicine in the same university.
To illustrate, she showed examples of Renaissance Man or “Polymath” in the lives and works of Michaelangelo (engineer, architect, painter and sculptor), Albert Einstein (physician, musician and theologian) and George Lucas (film maker who received a medal for technology). As Konrad Lorenz said, when one saw beauty in nature, he could become a poet or a naturalist, or both.
Lessons learned: Schools should not track students too early for either science or arts. The university should offer a good Liberal or General Education for all students.
2. Memories access the past --
and the future. When we think of memory we often think of the past, and yet memory enables us to imagine the future, and is thus a key to creativity. Memory is not a photograph (as lawyers would want us to believe); we interpret and create memory. Memory is more like a painting.
According to Dr. Kenneth Kosik, impaired memory leads to impaired imagination, as with those afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. Anxiety results from too much or too little imagination.
Memory has emotion; those with Asperger’s Syndrome have memory without emotion. Too much memory leads to impairment of abstraction and ability to synthesize. How important is memory? It accesses the past so that we can process bits of information but, more importantly, memory accesses the future--to plan, to predict, to imagine.
In the past many years, memory got a bad rap, having been mistaken for rote-memory. Much learning and creativity occur from deep learning that makes use of good memory.
3. Working on different art forms activates different parts of the brain. Doctor Michael Posner revealed from the brain anatomy which parts were involved in dance, music, visual arts and writing. As shown on the images, there are even different mental demands in listening to music from playing music, tapping movement to emotional reactions, memory associations to visual perception. Good quality parenting and educational environment train better attention.
The general factor of interest in the arts is openness -- orienting
sensitivities. And interest in aesthetics influences production of dopamine and serotonin -- very important for emotional self-regulation. Arts training also influences cognition. Doctor Martin Gardiner presented one research after another on the impact of Kodaly music training on math and reading.
Educational implication: Schools should not eliminate or reduce arts subjects but should instead enrich arts program in terms of variety and levels of depth.
4. Recess is the most important part of the day. A 2009 Mt. Sinai study of 11,000 8- to 9-year-olds revealed that with increasing recess time, less trouble-making was recorded. Play keeps our major brain systems synchronized.
Doctor John Ratey, the most applauded speaker and one of my favorite authors (“A User’s Guide to the Brain”), said “that which we call thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement.”
Exercise moves the mind. It prepares the learner, controls impulses, improves attention, lessens fatigue, improves the mood, and combats stress.
He asked schools to allow for a minimum 30-minute recess. Recess is the body’s natural Ritalin.
Ratey suggested “standing desks” or “walking desks” and gym balls for chairs in future classrooms and “treadmill conference tables” for future board meetings. His ideas are in his latest book “Spark: A Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain” (2008).
5. Aging is good! If the messenger is the message, then Gene Cohen, M.D., Ph.D., the lovable octogenarian speaker who wore a bow tie and a smile and who once appeared with George Burns in a series of interviews, led me to look forward to positive, creative aging or, as he called it, “the new senior moment” when older individuals experience a new period of their life when they shine and come into their own.
In our mid-50s to 70s, during the “liberation” phase of the mature mind, the metaphorical voice within constantly asks these three questions: (1) If not now, when? (2) Why not? and (3) What can they do to me?
These feelings move us toward experimenting with new approaches in life -- a sense to speak our mind and do what needs to be done. Think of Georgia O’Keeffe, Arnold Toynbee, and Charles Darwin.
How do arts and creativity promote health in aging? They provide opportunities to experience a sense of control, mastery, a sense of satisfaction and empowerment.
Furthermore, brain activities in older adults are less lateralized than in younger adults; integrating left-right engagement boosts creativity. Learn more from Dr. Cohen’s book “The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain” (2005).
Implications: Midlife continuing education saves our community from wasted aging. And schools and companies may want to reconsider mandatory retirement.
6. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) learn language visually, not phonologically. For them, sounds that cannot be seen cannot be processed.
“Sounds make pictures go away,” according to Dr. Ellyn Arwood and Carole Kaulitz. Teaching students to be literate through auditory tasks such as spelling and phonics is frustrating for children with ASD and may result in acting out or aggressive behaviors. Connecting visual images (cartoons) with visual-motor patterns (writing) help children with ASD learn academic, social and behavioral meaning.
The speakers demonstrated powerfully what they termed as “viconic relational” language. Language that carries relational message (such as drawing the child into the cartoon and with another human being) creates cognitive meaning. Shapes (not sounds) develop concepts and concepts lead to language. From their lectures I appreciate how much they know and care about helping children with ASD.
7. Tango is neuroscience. The research of Dr. Steve Brown elucidated the neural systems and subsystems that underlay dance. We observed from neuro-images how different the patterns were for dancing to anticipated, regular rhythm and irregular unpredictable rhythm.
The cerebellum is like an internal neural metronome that keeps time. But externally paired with unpredictability, the dance involves the cortex and thalamus.
Dance requires the integration of spatial pattern, rhythm, synchronization to external stimuli and whole-body coordination.
There are parallels between speech and dance. Voice and language are to speech as body and gesture are to dance. Dance is a gestural language that uses narrative devices, costumes, characters and plots that tell stories. Shouldn’t dance be taught like literature?
8. Group genius is the new genius. We are moving away from industrial economy to knowledge economy to creativity economy. Many schools are not prepared to teach students how to create knowledge.
Creative knowledge is based on innovation and collaboration. Out goes the lone genius. In comes group genius. The creative classroom has for its core task what Dr. Keith Sawyer termed as “collaborative conversations.” What happens during the conversations may be more important than the product of those conversations.
An apt metaphor is when a jazz ensemble works on improvisation, interaction and collaboration. The whole becomes greater than its parts. The musician does not improvise what he wants but aligns with what the group is doing.
Some good examples are the Chicago Improvisation Theater where, for 30 minutes, actors go on stage without script; and Gore-Tex, which allows employees 10 percent of the week to do whatever they want to create.
Classrooms can be places of “mutual tinkering” where small sparks add up to one big idea.
9. Creative individuals experience mood disorders. The dark side of genius and creativity was not overlooked in the conference. There seems to be a strong association between creativity and mood disorders -- Vincent van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Luther, Winston Churchill, Peter Tchaikovsky, John Nash, to mention a few.
A study of 15 writers in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop showed that 80 percent had some type of mood disorder. Another study of British writers selected for having won major awards such as the Booker Prize showed that 38 percent had been treated for mood disorder with playwrights ranking highest and poets coming in second.
Studies to generalize other types of creativity, e.g. inventors, performing artists and scientists, are yet to be accomplished. Clinicians, family members and even teachers who deal with creative individuals confront a variety of challenges, but understanding is needed and medical help available.
10. Creativity can be caught and taught. Dr. Elena Grigorenko suggested that creativity was modifiable and quantifiable, and that inheritability (that is, creativity emerges from synergistic interaction of a cluster of personality characteristics), familiality (genes and family characteristics) and environmentality were interrelated to creativity.
Doctor Robert Epstein shared four simple techniques to boost creativity:
Capturing. Creative people have learned ways to pay attention to and to preserve some of the new ideas that they encounter. Artists carry sketchpads; writers, notepads; and photographers, cameras. Semi-sleep state is a good time to capture.
Challenging. Putting yourself in a difficult situation -- time constraint, aging, open-ended problems, ultimate survival --sparks creativity.
Broadening. Instead of letting a child gravitate to one “activity center” of his/her interest, excite him/her with multiple and varied repertoires of learning opportunities.
Surrounding. With diverse stimuli and changing them regularly, and with interesting creative people -- musicians, painters, filmmakers, scientists, philosophers, and writers.
Attending the conference had been a mind-stretching, mind-boggling, mind-cluttering, and mind-clarifying experience. It may take me three more brains and a few more months to read, digest, abstract, synthesize, share, experiment and explore all these new learning.
I recall my late father who would ask us kids at the dinner table: “What have you learned today?” I am happy I have much to tell.
E-mail grace@koo.org
