1. Brain Rule #9 SENSORY INTEGRATIION
Stimulate More of the 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.

2. If you were to spend the afternoon at the Pike Place Market
What would you hear?
What would you smell?
Would you taste anything?
What would you see?
What would you feel?
Snapshots like this perfectly exemplify how much information your brain might process simultaneously – you are a wonder!

3. The McGurk Effect Illustrate sensory integration:
Show you video saying “ga” – really dubbed “ba” into it
With eyes closed, you hear “ba” just fine
When you open your eyes you see the lips say “ga” while your ears still hear “ba”
The brain gets confused with the contradiction, so it makes something up and you hear “da”
The brain attempts to integrate
Like going to a movie
The McGurk Effect

4. How the Senses Integrate
Sensation
Absorb information & convert to electrical signals
Routing
Directed to separate parts of the brain
Perception
Merge information from senses
We absorb information about an event through our senses, translate it into electrical signals (some for sight, others from sound, etc) disperse those signals to separate parts of the brain, then reconstruct what happened, eventually perceiving the event as a whole.
Why does this work, and furthermore, how does it work?  When a child is taught using simultaneous multisensory techniques, multiple messages are sent out to the brain at the same time.  This means that you are using multiple pathways in the brain to reach your students.  If one pathway to the brain is blocked (as in a learning disability), there are other alternatives.  If a child cannot learn auditorially (by just listening), he can still learn through another available pathway.  If the teacher tends to instruct through lecture only, and the child has auditory processing issues, then that child probably won't learn much from this type of instruction.  You can ensure that all learners continue to benefit from instruction by including as many simultaneous multi-sensory lessons as you possibly can in your instructional time.

5. Perceptual Processing
“There are only three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.”
– W. Somerset Maugham
Bottom Up
Top Down
Bottom Up – Interpretation is Data driven
Example – After your eyes read that sentence, the thalamus has spattered various aspects of the sentence all over your brain, and bottom up processors go to work. The visual system: Feature detectors (like auditors in an accounting firm) inspect all structural elements of letters: upside down arch = U; 2 straight lines at right angles become a T, combinations of straight lines and curves become the word “three”
Written info = lots of visuals which takes a long time to integrate  why reading is relatively a slow way to put info in the brain
Sense basic features of stimuli & then integrate them
Top Down – Schema driven interpretation
Board of directors meeting reading the report auditors report & then reacting to it; comments are made and your brain analyzes this information in light of pre-existing knowldege  you’ve heard the word “three” before, and you’re familiar with rules, information is added or deleted from the data stream (which happens a lot)
Previous experience & expectation are first used to recognize stimuli & differ from person to person
People can see the same thing, but have 2 different experiences

6. What do you see?
Example of top-down processing is with the Rat Man of Bugelski and Alampay (1961).
Subjects saw this picture after viewing earlier slides that showed line drawings of (1) animals, or (2) faces. Depending on whether they saw animals or faces in previous slides, subjects reported seeing either (1) a rat or (2) a man wearing glasses. They had been "set" for one or the other interpretation by the preceding slides. This is a form of top-down processing, in which a schema influences interpretation of the data. Subjects saw this picture after viewing earlier slides that showed line drawings of (1) animals, or (2) faces. Depending on whether they saw animals or faces in previous slides, subjects reported seeing either (1) a rat or (2) a man wearing glasses. They had been "set" for one or the other interpretation by the preceding slides. This is a form of top-down processing, in which a schema influences interpretation of the data.

7. Synesthesia
Synesthesia is a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight. Another form of synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people's names with a sensory perception such as smell, color or flavor. The word synesthesia comes from two Greek words, syn (together) and aisthesis (perception). Therefore, synesthesia literally means "joined perception."
Imagine each time you saw the word “sky” you suddenly tasted lemon in your mouth?
This is an example of what a synesthete might experience daily
Scientists know very little about this condition
It appears to be short-circuiting between the processing of sensory inputs
An experiment: even when synesthete couldn’t recall the exact word, he/she could still get the taste as long as there was some generalized description of the missing word – illustrates that sensory processes are wired together  stimulate more of the senses
Experiment with fMRI tech
Showed a video of someone speaking, but turned off sound
The area responsible for processing sound (audio cortex) was stimulated as if the person actually were hearing sound
When shown a person “making faces” the auditory cortex was silent
It had to be a visual input related to sound – so visual inputs influence auditory inputs

8. Temporal contiguity principle
Multimedia & Learning
Multimedia principle
Temporal contiguity principle
Spatial contiguity principle
Coherence principle
Modality principle
Although multimedia only combines 2 of the senses, we use this method quite often.
Cognitive psychologist Richard Mayer studied 3 different groups
One group who received info via hearing, one group via sight, and one group with both
The group who received information using both senses had more accurate recall of the info and were even better able to remember 20 years later
When touch is combined with visual recognition, learning leaps forward by 30%
Through this research he found how multimedia exposure affects human learning
Multimedia principle
Students learn better from words and pictures than just words
Temporal contiguity principle
Students learn better when corresponding words/pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively
Spatial contiguity principle
Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near to each other rather than far from each on page or screen
Coherence principle
Students learn better when extraneous information is excluded
Modality principle
Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation & on screen text

9. The Proust Effect
The Proust Effect, from French author Marcel Proust studied how smells have the ability to stimulate long-lost memories
Other similar experiments investigate how smell enhance retrieval of information
2 groups see a movie together then asked to take a memory test
One group takes test in unmanipulated room
Experimental group takes test in room flooded with smell of popcorn
Some results found that smell-exposed experimental group can accurately retrieve 2x as many memories than the control group – other show 10-20% improvement
Why such disparity?
Odors best retrieve emotional or autobiographical memories rather than declarative
Smells need to stay congruent – gasoline smells into experimental room wouldn’t create same results
Unlike other senses, smell doesn’t check in with the thalamus and ask for permission to connect to the rest of the brain
Smell signals bypass and go right to brain destinations
Amygdala
Where emotional and memory of emotional experiences
Smell directly stimulates amygdala so it directly stimulates emotions
Smell also travels to the part of your brain behind your eyes (orbitofrontal cortex) where you make decisions
“My smell is so important, I am going to give you a memorable emotion. What are you going to do about it? –odor
Smell is really important to business. When you walk into Starbucks, the first thing you smell is coffee. They have done a number of things over the years to make sure that’s the case.

10. Survival by Teamwork Experiment with fMRI tech
Showed a video of someone speaking, but turned off sound
The area responsible for processing sound (audio cortex) was stimulated as if the person actually were hearing sound
When shown a person “making faces” the auditory cortex was silent
It had to be a visual input related to sound – so visual inputs influence auditory inputs
This is an example that shows learning is LESS effective in a unisensory environment
Simultaneous multi-sensory teaching is the engagement of multiple pathways in the brain at the same time in the teaching process.  This is different from what many people tend to think of as multi-sensory teaching, because Medina promotes that children use multiple senses at the same time to practice the material, rather than using one of their senses at a time.
Research shows us that in order to get the best learning outcomes possible, children need to simultaneously use as many of their senses as they can when they practice.  This will speed up responses, increase accuracy, improve stimulation detection and enrich encoding at the moment for learning. For example, if you are trying to teach a child a new word, the child should ideally see it, say it, hear it, and do it- all at the same time.

11. The Learning Link
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. So, get your kids involved in their learning by involving their senses.

12. If you combine audio with visual, memory recall is higher than for reading, seeing or hearing alone.

13. Memory recall jumps if the learning experience is participatory or if it involves doing the real thing (flying an airplane vs reading about flying one)

14. Sources
Cytowic, R. E. (Performer) (2013). What color is tuesday? exploring synesthesia [Web]. Retrieved from Dewey, R. (2007). Top-down and bottom-up processing. Retrieved from up_processing.html Haupt, H. (2013, April 26). How to turn passive learning into active learning. Retrieved from learning/ Medina, J. (2013). Sensory integration. Retrieved from Medina, J. (Writer) (2013). The mcgurk effect [Web]. Retrieved from Novataste. (Designer). Synesthesia: Smelling Sounds & Seeing Smells [PrintPhoto]. Retrieved from Sommers, J. L. (Photographer). (2012, June ). Your name tastes like purples [Print Photo]. Retrieved from Susan. (Designer). (2010, August 21). Do you have synesthesia? [Web Graphic]. Retrieved from