the school age child
Thoughts on enhancing your Brain Span - by Buffy McClelland
Could we improve the way our brains work? Scientists used to think that how our brain developed was mostly controlled by our genetics. Modern science now tells us that our brains mostly wire up after birth, growing connections between the brain cells we are born with, in response to our experience of the world around us. Genetics obviously has an impact, just not as much as was previously thought. The growing baby experiences the world through her senses - sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste - and this experience shapes her brain development.
There are "critical periods" during which the brain is primed and ready to blossom. For example, great steps forward in language are usually made between the ages of one and three. However, our brains are always able to change in response to new experiences, and the older child and adult brain can and does enthusiastically respond and change through new stimuli experienced through the senses. Helping the brain see the world more effectively through the senses allows more accurate information processing, generally improving many aspects of life, at all ages from infancy to old age.
Most people only think of training their minds to improve general performance in life. However, most people have subtle limitations in how well their brains can interpret the world. This limits their performance, sometimes markedly. Mostly, you don't even know that you have a minor deficit in one or more of your senses, how you are just feels normal to you.
The sensory brain.
Our brains do all the work in life. All information enters the brain via sensory pathways, e.g. vision, hearing, touch, muscle position in space (proprioception), balance, etc. Most people do not process this information as effectively as they could do, simply because their brains have not been trained to pay attention to the right stimuli.
Our brains have to deal with a mass of sensory information which floods in continuously. The brain has to sort out virtually instantaneously what is the important information to attend to and downgrades or ignores other signals. Our responses are controlled by the brain, often in ways that are out of our conscious control, using very complex feedback pathways in response to the information which the brain has decided is the main priority.
Effective brain function is another way of describing a brain which can process, analyse and respond to all sensory input as effectively as possible. New research shows that all brains are flexible (even those of the elderly!), and can change in response to the right input.
How do we read, write and do all the clever things expected of us? We are not specialised for reading, maths, computing or many other activities which modern lifestyles require. Most humans lived a much simpler and much more physical life until very recently, and our brains have not had time to evolve. So, our brains have to make do with brain systems which have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years and which are specialised for physical activities. The effectiveness of all of these systems depends on the how well our brain can interpret the real world around us, experienced through our senses.
So we can only read well when our brains have correctly heard the sounds of the words we are reading, when our brains can smoothly move our eyes from left to right along the line of words, when we can discriminate between letters and words and then relate these words to real meaning.
Helping your brain to interpret your senses more effectively is likely to lead to more effective thinking, because you can base your decisions on more accurate information about the outside world around you.
Text and Layout, Copyright © Dr Buffy McClelland, 2010. All rights reserved.