HOW THE BRAIN WORKS

HOW THE BRAIN WORKS WHEN IT IS LEARNING

THE BRAIN IS LEARNING

By Charles Finlay

what is going on when the brain is learning?

At this point it is beginning to look as if the brain wants complete images, stories, thoughts, or packages of information that have some kind of relevance to put into brain structure.

The "gray matter" that is below the neuro-cortex is the learning and memory given to us from the beginning of human time. The most accessible information is that which is most connected. The cortex is our memory, who we see ourselves as, and our learning. Our learning and much of our memory is often changing so it is important to hold a memory reservoir. This reservoir is set up so we know who we are in an ever changing world. Each moment is different, so it is necessary to have a system by which we can know our identity. "We change with each heart beat." S. Freud. When new information comes in it is evaluated by "photo memory," and if it is found useful to keep, it is sent deeper in to the hippocampus for short term memory. Because, at this point the information is still in a state of flux, and not yet built into the brain, the term "liquid memory" will be used.

The information is also evaluated by the portion of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is the place where emotions are valued, felt, and sent. This little under-rated organ plays a great part in learning because the level of emotion is directly related to the process of learning. The amygdala is the place from which the motivation for the learning of information comes. The information in the hippocampus is compared to the "feeling" for the information from the amygdala.

Experiments carried out at Harvard, using words so distasteful that the test subjects often became angry, showed a greater recall and significantly higher memory of detail than the control group. The conclusion seemed to show that when input information is attached with strong emotional information, learning and memory is specifically increased. This experiment seems to show more evidence that the amygdala is an "amplifier" for learning input. For the instructional designer looking for optimum outcome, stimulation of the amygdala through the learners feelings, could show a marked increase in overall improvement.

After the hippocampus and amygdala have held the information packets in liquid memory and acted on it accordingly, the process of evaluation takes place. If the information is not perceived to be of importance, it is washed out from the middle. This is called the "Primacy -Recency effect" in which the first remembered data and the last remembered data is held in short term or not-deep memory and seems to wash out data in the middle. It is possible that this is done to determine the level of importance of the information. If the first information set is important, then the last set will complete the packet with the emotion set filling in the middle information. It is a bit like a compression equation. Sight plus sound plus event, multiplied (amplified) by emotion, equals complete understanding.

When understanding is reached, the brain may wish to keep all the information in memory. At this point the liquid memory sends images and feelings and specific codes to the frontal lobe of the cerebrum. This part of the brain has many functions, but one of the most important is to sort data and assign it to the proper place. With the new data now coming in, the cerebrum sends impulse signals in the theta wave cycle to the parts of the brain in which the data needs to be stored. With the construction of new dendrites, the new learning becomes part of the learner's brain. All of this may have happened in less then a few seconds. The brain is then ready for the input of more new learning, so we can now look at how to teach to this eager learning organ.

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References for this section:

Calvin, William H. & Ojemann, George A.,(1994). ***Conversations with Neil's Brain

Thorndike, Edward L.,(1932). Fundamentals of learning. Teachers College, Columbia University: New York.

Redfield, James (1993). The Celostiean Prophecy, An Adventure.

Bingham, Roger, (1995). The Fabric Of The Mind . Roger Bingham: Washington, D.C.

Wilhite, Stephen C. and Payne, David E., (1992). Learning And Memory. Allyn and Bacon: Massachusetts.