Skills for Success: An Owner’s Manual for the Teenage Brain, With Evidence From the Frontiers of Neuroscience Day One

Introductions and expectations In six workshops, we’ll answer these questions: How does your brain work? (Today!) What skills can make your brain learn better? What skills can help you have more success with other people in school? How can you use this knowledge to help high school students develop the skills for success?

Warm-up:

How can learning about the brain help students like you have more skills to have success?

Abilities like doing math and reading in English have their bases in the brain. Scientists have learned a lot about the brain and how it works. You can use this knowledge to help you learn tricks and skills that can help you remember things in school.

Localization of Function

Parts of Your Brain! Frontal lobe: abstract thinking, decision making, understanding other people’s behavior, making choices, and thinking about (or planning for) the future Parietal lobe: interprets the sense of touch Temporal lobe: sound and language (sound is the main one) Occipital lobe: vision

What Happens if a Part of Your Brain is Destroyed?

How Exactly Does the Brain Think Thoughts?

Game How do links neurons send information from one part of the brain to another?

“What part of the neuron receives messages from other cells?” “Dendrites!!!”

Summary The brain transfers information through connections of neurons. You can use skills that help your brain send that information down those connections more easily.

Skills for Success: An Owner’s Manual for the Teenage Brain, With Evidence From the Frontiers of Neuroscience Day Two

Warm-up

Memory

Outline Types of memory False memories Mnemonics

Different types of memory Working memory vs. long- term memory Episodic vs. semantic memory Declarative vs. procedural memory

Working memory versus long-term memory Long-term memory: “a storage for information you might need later” Working memory: “a memory that holds onto the information you are working with right now”

Episodic versus semantic memory Episodic memory: memory for specific events Semantic memory: memory that contains knowledge not tied to any time or place

Declarative versus procedural knowledge Declarative: Knowing that Procedural: Knowing how

WHEN CAN YOUR MEMORY GO WRONG?

The Brain and Energy [note about how much energy the brain uses and how it needs energy to keep the electricity in the neurons firing in the right way]

The Brain and Sleep [note about hippocampus and the formation of new memories]

Other Brain Deficiencies A Famous Patient Named H.M. Anterograde amnesia Inability to form new long-term memories Due to deficiencies in the hippocampus

Clive Wearing The Man with a 30 Second Memory

Memory Video Video What happened? What did the thief look like? Was color was her headband? Were her eyes brown or blue? What animal walked by?

False memories  Elizabeth Loftus Elizabeth Loftus George Franklin

What kinds of strategies do you use to remember things better?

Mnemonic devices These are memory strategies

Chunking Which string of letters did you remember better? Why? Chunking: you group related information together and then remember it as a unit (letters in a word; the songs by your favorite singer) Phone numbers are great examples of chunking:

Chunking Phone numbers are great examples of chunking: So are songs And words PPELA APPLE=much easier to remember!

Visual images A doll A chair A hairbrush If you want to remember the above list better, you can picture a doll combing her hair with a hairbrush while sitting in a chair.

Visual images

Method of loci If you want to remember a list, it is useful to picture each object in the list in a specific location that you are familiar with. For example, you can mentally “place” each object in the list in different rooms of your house.

Verse Words rhyme or maintain a fixe rhythm. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November.

Acronyms You take the first letter of each thing you want to remember and make a word out of it. If you want to remember the colors of the rainbow, you can think of the acronym: ROY G BIV: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo (blue-violet), violet

Acronyms T emporal lobe O ccipital lobe P arietal lobe F rontal lobe

Mnemonics Verse Method of loci Chunking

Taking notes FRACTIONS (Mon. Dec 2, 2009) ADDING: To add fractions, first find a common denominator. Then add numerators. Example 1/6 +2/3 = ? same as: 1/6+ 2(2)/3(2)=? same as 1/6+4/6=5/6 SUBTRACTING:

Review All the parts of the brain work together to form new memories. If you take care of your brain (sleep and food) And if you use memory devices Then you can remember things better!

Closing Activity