Recognizing Emotions After Brain Injury: Re-Learning a Critical Social Skill

• October 4, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

For most of us, interpreting and expressing emotion is something deeply instinctive. But what happens when that ability to express ourselves or read another’s emotions goes awry? Imagine what can happen to a student’s classroom experience if they can’t make sense of something as simple as their teacher’s facial expression. In the past, these kinds of students have been seen as having behavior problems. So how can we help them succeed?

Research has shown that people with traumatic brain injuries often experience this same inability to interpret and respond to emotions, a condition called "affect recognition."

Barry Willer, professor of psychiatry and specialist in TBI (traumatic brain injury) of the University of Buffalo, tells the story of a man and his wife who came into his office with a problem. The woman had experienced a mild traumatic brain injury. While her husband was supporting her recovery as best he could, she consistently described his attitude as “indifferent. “ He was frustrated, to say the least.

“His wife didn’t know she wasn’t recognizing his emotions,” said Willer, recounting the story in a 2009 interview with Insciences Journal , “and he had no idea what was going on.”

This couple is by no means alone. Nearly fifty percent of all traumatic brain injuries result in problems interpreting and expressing emotion.

As educators, being able to connect with our students at an emotional level is essential to classroom success. Without that connection, the learning process can quite easily come to a halt. Thankfully, Willer has demonstrated that there is hope for this population, and that the human brain is quite capable of re-learning how to understand facial expressions and use that information to interpret emotion.

Willer and his team have developed two specific interventions that have shown positive results:

• Facial Affect Recognition (FAR): Individuals view faces on a computer screen that directs them to concentrate on specific elements of each face. "Look at the eyes. What are the eyes doing? What is the mouth doing?" and asks them to name the emotion.
• Stories of Emotional Inference (SEI): Participants are asked to read stories that describe events, along with character’s beliefs, wants and behaviors. From this information, participants are asked to infer the character’s emotions.

"What was so exciting about our preliminary study," says Willer, "is that someone may lose the ability to recognize emotions, but even 10 years later, they can re–learn the skill if given the right assistance."

As it turns out, the only emotion that traumatic brain injuries do not erase is "happy," which is very hard–wired and has an extensive amount of "redundant circuitry." Says Willer, "I don’t know how that happened, but we all can be glad it did."

For further reading:  Milders, M., Fuchs, S., & Crawford, J. R. Neuropsychological impairments and changes in emotional and social behaviour following severe traumatic brain injury. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 25, 2003. 157-172.

Related Reading:

Lifelong Learning and the Plastic Brain

5 Paths to Brain Health: Tips From Dr. Paul Nussbaum

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: adaptivity, behavior, brain plasticity, brain training, cognitive skills, effort, memory, processing

Using Fiction Writing Activities to Develop Creative Thinking in the Classroom

• September 29, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

We are always on the lookout for more effective ways of teaching creativity in the classroom. With much attention on the decreasing status of the United States in the world economy, the need for a stronger creative class, and the realization that the next generation of professionals and leaders will have to be more innovative than ever to solve the world’s problems, educators need more ways to teach children the ability to engage in creative thinking.

In the classroom, so much of what we do focuses on teaching our students to recognize and repeat patterns. Mathematical functions follow patterns. Letters and languages represent graphical and sound patterns that have meaning because of their repetition.

Creativity, on the other hand, is the breaking of patterns. In the creative act, the mind proceeds to a place where there is no existing path to follow, building something new where there was nothing before.

So therein lies our problem: if teaching strengthens the mind’s ability to recognize patterns of meaning, how do we teach creativity – an act that by its very nature breaks with patterns?

The neuroscience research behind brain plasticity has shown us how the brain responds to stimuli by forming neural pathways, and that the brain constantly changes, much like a landscape changes under the influence of the forces of water and wind. The brain adapts in order to more efficiently recognize and make use of the information and patterns that make up the world in which we live.

The answer: we need to teach the patterns that support creative thinking. Writing fiction and storytelling offer immense power and potential for us to help our students learn to break their patterns of thinking and develop these creative habits of mind.

Creative idea generation is not easy; in fact, it can be quite intimidating for a great many youngsters, not to mention adults. Our goal should be to help our students let go of their inhibitions and become comfortable with – or even better, excited about – undertaking creative challenges.

From a practical standpoint, we have access to endless activities to spur our students on to cultivate their creativity through writing fiction. These are just three of them:
 

• Ask students to develop a “what if” question and then answer it with a story. That simple act of creating their “what if” question forces the mind to go to a place it has never been before, and in writing the story, they get to spin out that idea as far as it will go.
  Example: “What if mice could read minds?” or “What if we could send a spaceship to a black hole?”
• Give each student a character from one well-known story, place that character in the context of another well-known story, and ask them to write about what happens. Example: “The giant climbs down the beanstalk and meets three little pigs. What happens next?”
• Ask each student to select one item they would want with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Then, ask them to write a story about how they got to the island and how that item ensured their survival. Example: “I would want a small folding knife. When I fell off the ship during a storm, I had had it in my pocket because I had been carving a stick on the deck. Luckily, it didn’t fall out of my pocket when I hit the water…”

While it offers a higher level of challenge, I’d like to offer one final exercise to consider adapting for your students: the six word short story. Perhaps the most famous example is Ernest Hemingway’s story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” This kind of poetic and conceptual challenge forces students to combine creative thinking with a laser-focus on word choice.

For younger students, this can be adapted by asking students to write their own six-word versions of well-known stories and fables. More advanced students can be given the freedom to come up with their own stories.

While these fiction writing activities are primarily for elementary school students, they can all be adapted for adolescents and, especially in the case of the six-word exercise, adult learners.

But notice that each of these examples puts some limits around the creative process. This is the key to fostering creative thinking: through focusing each student’s effort into a tightly formulated creative problem, they are then freed to develop and follow their ideas to conclusion.

In such fictional writing, students learn that they have the power to break patterns of thinking and develop their own creative ways to think through problems, skills that will serve them well as they grow and mature into tomorrow’s creative thinkers and leaders.

In my own six words? Your instruction focused, their creativity unleashed.

For resources on teaching fiction writing, visit the National Writing Project and their resources for teaching fiction writing and Creative Writing: Teaching Theory and Practice.

Related Reading:

Teaching and Learning with Intent through Guided Reading Activities

The Great Homework Debate: Is Homework Helpful or Harmful to Students?

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: arts, creativity, effort, elementary learning, learning through play, motivating students, play, teacher impact, writing

Leigh Ann’s Story: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives

• August 4, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

This post is the second in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.

Leigh Ann’s Story:

“Hi, my name is Leigh Ann.  I’m a BrainPro Representative with Scientific Learning and I have a few stories I would like to tell today about some outcomes that have really touched my heart.

The first story I want to tell is about Henry.  He’s eleven.  He lives in Michigan and his mom was really very excited to tell me this story. At eleven, he couldn’t spend more than fifteen to twenty minutes reading, and a month after he started our software he spent three hours in the hammock in his backyard reading a book from cover to cover.  And when he was finished he ran in the house and he goes, ‘That was fun!’ And his mom was just so thrilled when she told me that story.

There was a seventeen-year-old boy in Canada, and the Internet where they lived was not strong enough to deliver our software into the home.  So he had to drive forty minutes one way to his dad’s office.  So he drove an hour and twenty minutes each day.  That boy’s life completely changed.  His parents said he’s a different boy.  He saw himself catching up to the smarter kids in class.  It completely, totally changed his life.

And those are the stories, those are the things that help me get out of bed every morning and get to work with a big smile on my face and know that I’m make a big difference in children’s lives.”

Related Reading:

Jolene’s Story: “I Saw Tremendous Change”

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, child reading development, effort, emotions in learning, employee stories, high school learning, improving reading skills, learning to read, motivating students, reading comprehension, self-esteem, student growth, success stories

The Need for Physically Active Learning

• July 7, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

The human mind is most engaged to react and perform at optimal capacity when our hearts are pumping and our blood is flowing. Any athlete will tell you that he or she feels most alive and sharp when they are in the midst of the contest, heart beating hard, mind alert and ready. Given the interconnected nature of how our brains and bodies function, how the brain gets more oxygen and works better when the heart is pumping, it’s easy to see that we are designed not only to learn, but to think best “on our feet.”

In fact, this concept extends far beyond circulation alone; physical activity has been shown to have substantive affects on brain chemistry. In 2003, Sibley and Etnier demonstrated that, for 4-18 year-olds, exercise positively impacts perception skills, IQ, achievement, verbal and math scores, development and academic readiness.^[i] Exercise can affect the release of neurotransmitters key to the learning process, such as norepinephrine (which increases blood flow to skeletal muscles as well as to the brain) and acetylcholine (which can slow the heart rate and contribute to sustained attention).

With these concepts in mind, now imagine the modern classroom. The average student sits for hours a day usually sitting still.  She shouldn’t stand up and stretch, or worse, walk around the classroom. (For goodness sake, that’s distracting to the other students and disrespectful to the teacher.) Physical education programs are getting cut due to shrinking budgets, and recess time is being cut to create more opportunities for test preparation. Obesity and diabetes are dangerously on the rise. Since the early 1970s, the number of overweight students has quadrupled from four percent to seventeen percent. (American Heart Association)

In general, the classroom becomes a place where we expect students to focus the mind and quiet the body. What we’re learning is that this is just not necessarily the best way to go. A new trend in classroom management is bringing this tradition into question. Through what is becoming known as “physically active learning,” educators are not only experimenting with integrating more physical activity into classroom lessons, but they are generating positive results.

According to Jena Mee, a physical education and school health education consultant for the Department of Education, “Research is showing us very persuasively that if students exercise for sustained periods of time before they do challenging work, they perform cognitive tasks better, they remember things better, they can apply their skills better.”^[ii]

In theory, the idea is to break up lessons with short breaks of physical activity that get students up out of their seats and moving around the room. According to eSchool News, “The approach also has been shown to improve attendance and student behavior and reduce discipline referrals.”

As educators under pressure to maximize student academic performance, we often focus on the material and forget that our real goal is to help the whole child. This research is just one more reminder that we need to attend to the body as well as the mind. If we can do both, we will help our students become all that much more successful.

While the research is still developing, you can get the story as reported this past May on eschoolnews.com.

And if you want to explore one idea to bring more physical activity into your classroom, how about using exercise balls instead of chairs?

[i] Sibley B.A. and Etnier J.L. (2003). The relationship between physical activity and cognition in children: a meta- analysis. Pediatric Exercise Science, 15:243-256.

[ii] ‘Physically active learning’ improves test scores, sharpens concentration. eSchool News. May 16, 2011.

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, behavior, cognitive skills, effort, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, exercise, health and well being, how children learn, learning environment, learning through play, memory, motivating students, physical education, play, self-esteem, student growth, teacher impact

5 Paths To Brain Health: Tips From Dr. Paul Nussbaum

• July 5, 2011 by Carrie Gajowski

As the webinar coordinator here at Scientific Learning, I hosted yet another fascinating webinar about brain health with Dr. Paul Nussbaum in early May called “Brain Health Across the Lifespan”.  Dr. Nussbaum combined humor with interesting facts about the brain and the webinar ended up being one of our best sessions to date.  He provided a simple yet comprehensive look at the brain and how it functions. 

One interesting story Dr. Nussbaum shared was about the development and eventual delaying of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease based on lifestyle choices.  He cited research that has been done at autopsy that shows that there can be evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain that has never manifested in memory problems during a person’s life.   

Dr. Nussbaum concluded that if you look at the individual’s life, you might find that they had a higher education level or more demanding occupation or participated in complex and varied activities throughout life, building up a stronger and more “fit” brain and delaying the onset of the disease.

He then covered 5 important aspects to brain health and suggested some activities that can keep your brain fit and healthy throughout your lifetime:

1. Nutrition:  Eat more “good” fats including Omega-3 fatty acids, more fruits and vegetables, and fewer “bad” fats and processed foods. 
2. Socialization:  Stay involved with life and develop a personal mission and hobbies along with building networks of family and friendships.
3. Physical Activity: Be mobile and active.  Walk, play, run, garden, exercise, bike, hike.  These activities can help reduce the risk of dementia later on in life.
4. Mental Stimulation:  Learn a second language, learn sign language, travel, play board games, and either play or listen to music.
5. Spirituality:  Slow down, meditate, and learn relaxation procedures.  Identify what your stressors are and how they affect you and then identify ways to handle them.

To find out more about Brain Health, watch our previously recorded webinar or visit Dr. Nussbaum’s website.

Related Reading:

Lifelong Leaning and the Plastic Brain

Educating Kids about Nutrition and the Brain

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Brain Fitness, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain training, cognitive skills, effort, exercise, health and well being, language learning, memory, musical training, play, Scientific Learning events, webinar

Musical Training and Cognitive Abilities

• August 5, 2010 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

The debate over music and its benefits for the development of early cognitive abilities have raged now for almost two decades. Can classical music transform children into smarter, more effective learners? Today's research indicates that the clear answer is that this is the wrong question. The question is this: What are the differences in the effects of passively listening to music vs. active musical training upon cognitive abilities?

On passive listening
Ever since French researcher Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, in his 1991 book Pourquoi Mozart?, put forth the assertion that listening to the music of Mozart can retrain the brain, laypeople and researchers alike have been on the hunt for evidence to support his claims. Two years later, University of California at Irvine psychologist Frances H. Rauscher reported findings demonstrating that passively listening to Mozart's music enhanced college students' cognitive abilities. (Such claims gave rise to numerous products that were aggressively marketed to parents, the most popular being the highly scrutinized Baby Einstein series. See this 2009 article in the NY Times.)

While they garnered a fantastic amount of attention, researchers around the world have been highly skeptical of Rauscher's conclusions. Today, numerous studies have demonstrated that, alas, passively listening to music will not transform babies' brains into mini computational powerhouses. See this May 10, 2010 article in Science News.

On active training
All this does not translate to the conclusion that there is no educational benefit to music. I'm happy to report that active musical training, such as taking formal lessons in learning to play the piano or read music, does produce substantive positive changes in the brain in children as well as adults. As we know, the brain is plastic; it changes based on how it is exercised. (That is why we talk so much about brain fitness at Scientific Learning.)

In contrast to Tomatis and Raucher's work in passive musical listening, last year a team of European researchers published a study entitled, "Musical Training Influences Linguistic Abilities in 8-Year-Old Children: More Evidence for Brain Plasticity." Researchers tested thirty-two non-musician children over nine months to look at their predispositions for music, as well as to measure the effects of musical training upon non-musical functions.

Remarkably, they found that just six months formal musical training had positive affects upon subjects' abilities in speech. Specifically, subjects' musically trained ears allowed them to better discern differences in pitch. Further, this research supported the idea of brain plasticity in showing that even short periods of training the brain can have large effects upon brain function.

But how does musical training affect language processing in adults? Again, the research clearly outlines the positive affects, demonstrating that brain plasticity continues on through adulthood:

• Schon, Magne and Besson published in 2004 demonstrated that training helps adults process not only music, but also speech. In studying the perception of fundamental frequency--the lowest threshold of audible tones--in eighteen musicians and non-musicians (mean age of 31), results showed that extensive musical training does have a clear affect on "the perception of pitch contour in spoken language."
• The research from Gabb, Tallal, Kim, Laskminarayanan, Archie, Glover and Gabriela suggests that musical training actually "changes the neural network involved in rapid spectrotemporal processing so that it overlaps primarily with brain areas traditionally associated with language processing (e.g., Broca's region)."

The significance of all this research is clear; don't just listen to the music. Take up producing your own and you'll be rewarded with all that music has to offer, while gaining improved brain function as a bonus.

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: auditory processing, brain plasticity, brain training, cognitive skills, early learning, effort, elementary learning, elementary school learning, language learning, musical training, oral language skills, processing

The Brain Gets Better at What it Does: Dr. Martha Burns on Brain Plasticity

• May 21, 2010 by Norene Wiesen

In March, Dr. Martha Burns visited Australia to present the latest findings on how the brain learns.  Dr. Burns is an extremely knowledgeable and highly sought after speaker, so I'm pleased to let you know that an interview she gave on brain plasticity while there is now available online at nouspod.com.

The recording is presented in two parts, totaling about 20 minutes listening time.  If you don't have time to listen to both parts of the interview at once, either part works well alone.  But remember to come back later and listen to the other part of the interview--because the whole thing is too good to be missed! 

These are the points addressed in each part:

Dr. Martha Burns Explains Neuroplasticity 1:

• What is neuroplasticity, in simple terms?
• What are the differences in brain plasticity between younger and older people?
• What are neurotransmitters and what role do they play in neuroplasticity?
• What are neuromodulators and how do they influence learning?
• How do rewards and novelty influence learning?
• How does Ritalin affect the brain?
• What are the unique brain benefits of exercise?
• What is the role of brain plasticity in anxiety and depression?

Dr. Martha Burns Explains Neuroplasticity 2:

• Can brain plasticity influence intelligence?
• How important are grades vs. effort?
• What behaviors should teachers reward in their students?
• What role should technology play in schools?
• How can educators invite students to participate in class more?

These recordings are also a great source of brain information to share with your students in the classroom!

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, brain plasticity, effort, emotions in learning, health and well being, how adults learn, how children learn, intelligence, learning environment, learning through play, motivating students, novelty, teacher impact, technology in education