Learn Faster and Remember More : 65 Techniques, Insights and Exercises from New Brain Research for Students, Parents and Other Active Minds

by Bragdon, Allen D.; Gamon, David

• ISBN13: 9780916410797
• ISBN10: 091641079X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Brainwaves Books

Table of Contents

Introduction/Anatomy/Glossary	9	(8)
The brain's Basic tools for perceiving useful information, organizing it, committing it to memory and recalling it
I The Developing Brain
The third trimester through high school
Learning in the Womb	17	(5)
Evolution has endowed human babies with an incredible ability to learn
The Eyes Have It	22	(6)
How children learn to read minds
Babies Are Self-Taught Linguists	28	(6)
Teach Your baby Grammar? Don't bother; brush up on your own
An Early Sign of Intelligence	34	(6)
Is my two-year-old a genius?
Language Learning	40	(8)
Reasons why a child may lag behind the normal timetable
Neglect	48	(7)
The worst form of abuse for learning
Self-Consciousness	55	(6)
The terrible twos
The Deceiving Brain	61	(5)
Very Likely, a three-year-old really does remember seeing a reindeer on the roof
Temperamental Limitations	66	(6)
The poker hand an infant's genome deals it
Parenting	72	(5)
The three key ways to teach character
Music	77	(8)
The best whole-brain builder - Mozart notwithstanding
Strategies to Improve Memory	85	(7)
But children need time to catch onto them
Words at Play	92	(8)
The more words heard, from infancy on up, the higher the verbal test scores
Habituation	100	(6)
The virtues of not paying attention
II The Maturing Years
From college to retirement
Focus on Focus	106	(7)
Paying attention is the key to learning, especially under pressure
Learning the Easy Way	113	(5)
A Little emotion helps
Using Your Mind's Ear	118	(8)
Executive function's versatile tool - the remarkable phonological loop
Long - Term Memory	126	(6)
Why repetition, rehearsal and practice work so well
Memory is Plural	132	(9)
Knowing how its systems interrelate improves coding into long - term memory
Mindlessness	141	(6)
The brain on autopilot loses altitude
Stress	147	(8)
A little bit too often kills memory cells
Make It Meaningful	155	(6)
The three Levels of remembering
Brain Nutrition	161	(10)
What foods help you do your best work at different times of day
Caffeine	171	(7)
In moderation, a smart drug
Learning Addiction	178	(8)
The Brain's reward for learning new skills
The Slighted Sense	186	(9)
How smells influence memory
Dreams at Work	195	(8)
The crucial role Sleep plays in learning
False Testimony	203	(6)
Memory for events is highly suggestible
Practice in the Mind	209	(3)
Visualizing a motor skill sharpens performance
Learning Without Knowing It	212	(8)
Why a bit of plagiarism is inevitable
III The Experienced Mind
Maintaining treasured qualities of life
Healthy Aging	220	(13)
Lessons from professors about outsmarting age-related memory loss
The Trick to Remembering Names	233	(7)
``That's OK, I don't remember yours either''
Making Memories	240	(5)
Techniques for getting around an imperfect memory
Influence of Stress on Mood and Health	245	(8)
How moods influence the health of your brain and body
Humor Therapy	253	(6)
When laughter becomes dead serious
Performing Music	259	(10)
A mind-saving hobby for aging brains
The Best Brain Workouts	269	(6)
Why Fill-in-the-Blank is better than Multiple-Choice
Teaching to Stay Alive	275	(4)
A commitment to listening hard feeds neurons
Full-Brain Engagement	279	(5)
How building a family tree puts into practice what the experts preach
It's Usually Not Alzheimer's	284	(10)
Healthy aging versus dementia, and how to tell the difference
Stroke!	294	(7)
Types, symptoms and a new treatment
Rebuilding Brain Cells	301	(7)
How physical and mental exercise improve ability to learn and recall
Coming Treatments	308	(6)
What the labs have discovered and what you can do in the meantime
Index	314

Excerpts

Chapter One

Learning in the Womb

Evolution has endowed human babies with an incredible ability to learn

Human babies come helpless and dependent into the world, more so than the young of any other species. A baby elk can stand a few hours after birth, and run within a day. On the other hand, human babies, with their eager, adaptable brains, are able to learn far more in their first two years of life than an animal ever will. They can even master the basics of the miraculously complex, uniquely human skill

-- language.

Why Is the Human Brain Less Mature at Birth

Than the Brains of Other Primates?

A leading theory is based on the fact that humans walked upright while their ancestors used their arms as forelegs, walking on their knuckles as the apes do. Perhaps the first humans stood upright so they could see above the grasses in the savannas in order to spot predators and game. (This may account for the weaker sense of smell in humans.) Upright posture may also have allowed their bodies to keep cool by venting heat through the head into the moving air above the grasses.

    In the course of evolution the upright position must have shifted weight to the pelvis, which thickened to bear it, closing down the birth opening. As the pelvis was thickening, the head of the fetus continued to grow larger to accommodate the constantly enlarging brain. Whatever the reasons, the human fetus had to be born well before the brain and head had reached maturity so it would still be small enough to pass through the birth canal.

Are babies able to learn while still in the womb?

The powerful need that a baby has to learn is matched by an unusual ability which unfolds gradually in the infant brain. Its helplessness acts as a powerful motivator to figure out how to survive in its new environment when it can no longer depend on the peaceful, protected life in the womb where learning had already started. Investigators into the development of infant learning and memory have discovered that fetuses are not only listening to what's going on outside the womb, but are already capable of some basic kinds of learning and remembering. In other words, even before we're born, we're forming memories.

Memories formed in the womb

Any mother knows that her baby prefers her voice to that of any other person. That isn't just motherly conceit. Even before three days of age, newborns are capable of telling their mother's voice apart from other women's voices. Not only that, they're so fond of their own mother's voice they'll do whatever's in their power to hear it. Psychologists know this because of experiments in which a newborn infant is permitted to "produce" a voice -- turn on a recording of a woman reading a story -- by sucking on a specially-rigged pacifier. If it's their own mother's voice they turn on by sucking, they'll do so more vigorously and frequently than if it's the voice of some other woman. (New or prospective fathers might find it interesting to know that a fetus does not learn this kind of preference for its father's voice or, for that matter, for any voice coming from outside the body holding the womb. So don't feel hurt if your baby pays less attention to you.)

    It takes a newborn a little longer to recognize its mother by her face. Since there's no way a baby can come into the world already armed with the knowledge of what its mother looks like, it has to learn this after birth -- by matching the mother's voice to the face it's coming from. At one month, infants can match their mother's voice to her face. They prove it by looking at the mother's face, and ignoring the face of another woman sitting by her side, when a tape-recording of the mother's voice is played. After about three months, an infant can pick out its mother by sight alone.

    One might think the newborn could have learned a preference for its mother's voice while bonding with the mother just after birth. But it goes deeper than that. In an experiment in which pregnant mothers read a certain story out loud once a week for the last six weeks of pregnancy, their newborns turned out to prefer that story to others. Another study showed that when pregnant women sing a certain melody once a day during the last two weeks of pregnancy, the babies prefer that melody to an unfamiliar one after they're born. So babies can not only hear their mother's voice while in the womb and recognize it after birth, they're even capable of attending to and remembering some of the finer details of what they hear, down to specific melodies and perhaps even the sounds of particular words.

How we know what a fetus learns

Other studies have even gone inside the womb to explore the capacity of third-trimester fetuses to learn. How can such an experiment be done? If you make a noise by placing a "vibroacoustic stimulator" against a pregnant mother's abdomen, the fetus will move. If this is done repeatedly the fetus will eventually stop moving in response to the noise. That shows that the fetus has habituated -- it has learned to recognize the sound and tune it out. A fetus will show the effects of this simple kind of learning -- responding less persistently to the same stimulus reapplied in the future -- not just after ten minutes, but even after 24 hours.

    But don't rush out to buy a Latin Primer to tutor your unborn baby in the classics. Habituation is a kind of learning so basic that we share it with fruit flies and sea slugs. There is no evidence that newborns understand the meaning of what they have heard.

    If, however, survival of a helpless newborn depends on bonding with the mother immediately after birth, presumably an infant's brain must be sufficiently developed to recognize matters essential for its post-natal well-being. Therefore, the bonding process must begin prior to birth. As we've seen, to conserve energy the fetus is able to learn not to react when a new event has proven that it is not a danger. To identify its food-source later on, the fetus acquires the life-preserving ability to recognize and crave the sound of its mother's voice. Research indicates that while still in the womb, the fetus acquires a preference for foods the mother eats, say carrots, and carries that preference with it into the world. Whether an infant inherits its mother's third-trimester cravings remains speculative.

Excerpted from Learn Faster & Remember More by David Gamon, Ph.D. and Allen D. Bragdon. Copyright © 2001 by Allen D. Bragdon Publishers, Inc.. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.