Re: [xmca] brain activity of taxi drivers

The jazz guitarist Pat Martino had a brain aneurysm and recovering from
surgery found he
had completely forgotten how to play guitar. He managed to re-teach himself
from scratch, in part through listening to his own old recordings. The
results can be seen on You Tube - presumably the product of brain rewiring
caused by much practice.

Bruce R

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 12:29 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] brain activity of taxi drivers

> Do people have a view on Norman Doidge:
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/default.htm
>
> His book "The Brain that changes itself" is a best seller
> and we're waiting for the new printing to get our copy, as
> he offers hope for stroke sufferers.
>
> Andy
>
> Martin Packer wrote:
>> More on the effects of behavior on the brain, more specifically on the
>> 'executive function' Mike recently mentioned:
>>
>> <
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/health/healthspecial2/15brain.html?_r=1&em=&oref=login&pagewanted=all
>>
>> TimesPeople
>> The New York Times
>> Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
>>
>> September 15, 2008
>> Training Young Brains to Behave
>> By BENEDICT CAREY
>>
>> AFTER inflicting months of sleep deprivation on their parents, young
>> children often switch course and begin what could be called a
>> thought-deprivation campaign.
>>
>> This is the stage, around age 2 or 3, when their brains seem to send
>> multiple messages to the body at once — eat, scream, spill juice, throw
>> crayons — and good luck to anyone trying to form a complete sentence or
>> thought in their presence. Toddlers are interruption machines, all
>> impulse
>> and little control.
>>
>> One reason is that an area of the brain that is critical to inhibiting
>> urges, the prefrontal cortex, is still a work in progress. The density of
>> neural connections in the 2-year-old prefrontal cortex, for instance, is
>> far
>> higher than in adults, and levels of neurotransmitters, the mind's
>> chemical
>> messengers, are lower. Some children's brains adapt quickly, while
>> others'
>> take time — and, as a result, classmates, friends and adults are
>> interrupted
>> for years along the way.
>>
>> But just as biology shapes behavior, so behavior can accelerate biology.
>> And
>> a small group of educational and cognitive scientists now say that mental
>> exercises of a certain kind can teach children to become more
>> self-possessed
>> at earlier ages, reducing stress levels at home and improving their
>> experience in school. Researchers can test this ability, which they call
>> executive function, and they say it is more strongly associated with
>> school
>> success than I.Q.
>>
>> "We know that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until the 20s,
>> and some people will ask, 'Why are you trying to improve prefrontal
>> abilities when the biological substrate is not there yet?' " said Adele
>> Diamond, a professor of developmental cognitive science at the University
>> of
>> British Columbia in Vancouver. "I tell them that 2-year-olds have legs,
>> too,
>> which will not reach full length for 10 years or more — but they can
>> still
>> walk and run and benefit from exercise."
>>
>> Executive function involves three important skills. The first is the
>> ability
>> to resist distractions or delay gratification to finish a job: to finish
>> the
>> book report before turning on the television. The second is working
>> memory,
>> the capacity to hold multiple numbers or ideas in the mind, — for
>> example,
>> to do simple addition or subtraction without pencil and paper. The third
>> is
>> cognitive flexibility, the presence of mind to adapt when demands
>> change —
>> when recess is canceled, say, and there's a pop quiz in math.
>>
>> Researchers can rate these abilities with some precision by giving young
>> children several straightforward mental tests. In one, youngsters sit in
>> front of a computer and when a red heart appears on the left side of the
>> screen, they strike a key on the left, and when it appears on the right
>> screen they strike a key on the right. Most of them do well on this.
>>
>> But when scientists change the rules, and have the children strike a key
>> on
>> the right when the symbol appears on the left, and vice versa, the test
>> gets
>> harder. The number of errors they commit, and the time it takes the
>> children
>> to answer, are considered measures of their ability to regulate
>> themselves.
>> Other similar kinds of tests can track improvements in working memory and
>> intellectual flexibility. Researchers have designed school-based
>> curriculums
>> intended to improve each of these abilities. In a study published in
>> 2007,
>> Dr. Diamond led a team that compared one of these programs — called Tools
>> of
>> the Mind — to a standard literacy curriculum, in several preschools in
>> the
>> Northeast. The Tools program features a variety of exercises, including a
>> counting activity in which children pair off. One child counts a given
>> number of objects from a pile and separates them, and then the other
>> child
>> checks the sum. The "checker" has a sheet of paper with a list of
>> numbers,
>> each beside a corresponding number of dots: for example, four dots line
>> up
>> beside the No. 4. By placing the objects on the dots, the child can see
>> whether the count was accurate. This double-checking is intended to force
>> the "counter" to be more careful and to stall the other child's impulse
>> to
>> grab an object.
>>
>> In another activity, also done in pairs, one child tells a partner a
>> story
>> based on pictures in a book while the other child listens. The listener
>> holds a drawing of an ear — a visual reminder that his role is to listen
>> and
>> not to interrupt. The child telling the story holds a drawing of a
>> mouth — a
>> reminder of her role as the speaker. After about two months, children
>> didn't
>> need the props anymore: they had internalized the rules, namely that the
>> listener listens until it's his or her turn to speak.
>>
>> "The activities are specifically designed to promote self-regulation, and
>> they are embedded in the teaching," said Deborah J. Leong, an educational
>> psychologist and professor emerita at Metropolitan State College of
>> Denver,
>> who designed the Tools program with Elena Bodrova, principal researcher
>> at
>> McREL, an educational research group in Denver. The program also focuses
>> on
>> pretend play with a purpose, namely dramatic role-playing in which
>> children
>> decide beforehand what their roles are and must stay in character — an
>> exercise that draws on all aspects of self-regulation.
>>
>> The 2007 preschool study tracked 85 preschoolers in the Tools program and
>> 62
>> in the basic literacy curriculum. After one year, teachers in one school
>> judged that the children in the special program were doing so well that
>> all
>> students were moved into it. After two years, and factoring out the
>> effects
>> of gender and age, the researchers found that the students in the special
>> program scored about 20 percent higher on all of the demanding measures
>> of
>> executive function. "Although play is often thought frivolous, it may be
>> essential," the study authors concluded.
>>
>> Parents, too, can help their children become more self-possessed in this
>> way. Jessica Fanning and Helen J. Neville, who are neuroscientists at the
>> University of Oregon, are testing how parent training classes affect the
>> same kind of executive skills in youngsters. Their preliminary finding is
>> that the children of parents taking the training have developed
>> significantly better concentration and self-discipline than the others.
>>
>> Researchers say that parents can use a variety of home activities to help
>> children sharpen executive skills. Some of these are obvious: reading to
>> a
>> child while continually establishing eye contact. By tilting the book so
>> pictures are obscured, parents force youngsters to follow the words
>> carefully, holding more of them in mind at one time — a function of
>> working
>> memory.
>>
>> Singing a bedtime song or a cleanup song can keep children focused on the
>> chore at hand, resisting distractions. The familiar verses tell them how
>> much time they have to finish a chore.
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435
> Skype andy.blunden
> Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
> http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
>
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Received on Thu Sep 25 08:34 PDT 2008