Improve Your Learning and Memory.

Evidence Matters

2012-01-19T16:03:00.000-06:00

Evidence Matters

Quite often, I suspect, readers of my memory columns wonder (complain?) about my emphasis on memory studies, what they show and do not show. Editors and publishers have told me that readers do not want to read about the evidence behind my advice. “Do this, don’t do that” is the kind of thing they want me to say. I, after all, am the authority and readers expect to take my word for it. However, I am constitutionally reluctant to pose as a know-it-all, and more so am opposed to believing that people don’t benefit from introspection about what they are doing and why they don’t change to become better at learning and memory.

A more practical reason is that improving learning and memory ability requires breaking old habits and the imposing difficulty of forging new and better approaches and mental habits. Just telling people what they should do (because I and fellow scientists know best) is not likely to be very effective. Change does not come easy to anybody and is even more difficult if clear and good reasons are not provided for making the change.

For example, in my e-book Better Grades, Less Effort (available at Amazon for Kindle and at Smashwords.com for all other readers), I tell students not to cram for exams. But that advice is largely ignored if I don’t explain why cramming is inefficient and unreliable. I have to be convincing, and that requires presenting the evidence for my position. Cramming is something students naturally do. It is not easy to get students to stop procrastinating and discipline themselves into routine study protocols.

There is also this: knowledge is often partial and temporary. What we think is the best way to go about things may even be wrong or sub-optimal at best. If we don’t know the evidence for the various options, how can we make the best choice?

How Memory Is Stored

2012-01-16T11:21:00.000-06:00

When you look up a phone number, the digits are coded as patterns of nerve impulses flowing around in a group of neurons. As long as the encoded numbers are “on-line” like this, your memory has access to the numbers.

But what if you start thinking about something else before you dial? Those neurons now have been recruited for another purpose and no longer carry the original number encoding. So you have to look up the number again.

But if the on-line activity goes on long enough, your memory of the number encoding can become stored permanently. How does that happen? Evidence indicates that new learning, as it becomes stored permanently causes new junctions (synapses) to be formed in the neurons of the circuit that originally encoded the information. You can even see physical signs in the form of new growths, called spines, on the nerve fiber terminals.

But what creates these new spines and their functional connections? This involves new RNA and protein synthesis. This in turn requires some genes to be activated to manufacture and maintain the new spines. There are apparently memory genes that are activated by nerve impulse activity. Gene activation is typically driven by specific regulatory proteins, and one such activity-dependent regulatory protein is called CREB.

For a short UTube video on gene expression, click here.

Formation of long-term memory first requires nerve impulse activation of the compound, cyclic AMP. The early studies on CREB were done in different labs, one of which used the mollusc, Aplysia, and the other using the fruit fly. So what does activated AMP do? One of the things is that it binds to a pre-existing protein (called protein kinase), causing part of the protein’s subunits to be liberated. The liberated components move to the neuron’s nucleus, where they bind to another protein, called CREB. Activated CREB then binds to the memory genes, switching them on.

Most recently, another activity-dependent memory gene activator has been discovered called Npas4. This one is especially important because it exists in mammals (mice were the experimental animal) and because it occurs in the hippocampus, the part of the brain necessary to form explicit long-term memories. Moreover, this protein regulates many well-known activity-regulated genes, which suggests that Npas4 might be a “master” control protein. In the study, Npas4 emerged in response to a contextual learning task. A knock-out gene strain of mice that had no Npas4 were poor at learning this task, and the deficit was restored by reversing the Npas4 knockout.

Research on drugs affecting activity-dependent gene regulator proteins is exciting, and may lead to a memory pill. In the meanwhile, the best you can do for your memory is to provide learning situations where original encoding is preserved intact long enough for these gene activation processes to be accomplished.

Sources:

1. Kandel, Eric R. (2005), "The Molecular Biology of Memory Storage: A Dialog Between Genes and Synapses", Bioscience Reports 24 (4–5): 475–522, doi:10.1007/s10540-005-2742-7, PMID 16134023

2. Ramamoorthi, K. et al. (2011). Npas4 regulates a transcriptional program in CA3 required for contextual memory formation. Science. 334: 1669-1675.

To Cram or Not to Cram? -- That Is the Question

2012-01-14T12:23:00.000-06:00

Most students, at one time or another, have crammed for an examination. Researchers refer to this as massed trials, where objects of learning are studied all at the same time in one session. Students may be forced to cram because they have procrastinated or did not have a regular, organized, and disciplined approach to study. Non-students may cram too, as in lawyers briefing a case, speakers rehearsing a speech, professors preparing a lecture, salesmen practicing a pitch, and so on.

In most situations research has made it abundantly clear that spacing the learning over many shorter sessions is much more effective than trying to do it all in one big session. Surprisingly, longer intervals between learning sessions are more effective than shorter intervals. For example, one study of students learning foreign-language words found that recall was highest at 56-day intervals as opposed to 28-day or 14-day intervals. The total amount of study time was cut in half: 13 sessions spaced 56 days apart produced comparable recall as 26 sessions with a 14-day interval.

Unfortunately, most academic courses are not designed to support longer study intervals (perhaps educators need to re-think how things are done). Not enough studies have been performed to examine which spacing protocol works best for certain kinds of learning tasks, but it is clear that massed trials are not efficient.

Why spacing makes such a big difference is not understood either, but it does have to do with basic biology. A recent study on seal snails, of all things, showed that the gene expression underlying long-term memory was affected by how five training shocks were spread out over time. Compared with a control test where snails got five shocks at 20-minute intervals, the most effective pattern (developed by computer model) was to give three shocks at 10-minute intervals, followed by a fourth at five minutes later and the fifth shock 30-minutes later.

There is no reason to think this protocol is optimal for humans learning a variety of tasks. But it does help make the point that spaced learning is more effective and perhaps irregular intervals might be better than evenly spaced ones.

Why does spacing work? Two ideas prevail. One is that in massed trials, there is not much time for each presentation to be processed in context. In spaced trials, each learning presentation occurs in a slightly different context, thus providing many more implicit cues that can be unconsciously accessed during retrieval attempts.

Finally, a host of recently reported studies show that each time you are re-exposed to a learning object, the memory is re-consolidated. Successive consolidation events reinforce each other. Multiple consolidations do not occur in massed trials because consolidation takes many minutes or even hours.

Given what I have explained elsewhere on the benefits of self-testing, I suspect that spaced learning would be optimized if the learner self-tested first during each rehearsal session and then checked the recall against the original learning material.

Sources:

Bahrick, H. P. et al. (1993). Maintenance of foreign language vocabulary and the spacing effect. Psychological Science. 4 (5): 316-321.

Zhang, Y. et al. (2011). Computational design of enhanced learning protocols. Nature Neuroscience. Published online Dec. 28, doi: 10.1038/nn.2990

Neat summary graphic on memory

2012-01-13T10:24:00.001-06:00

One of the followers of this blog called my attention to a neat summary graphic on memory that her group at Online Colleges has posted. See http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2012/01/09/memory-works/ I think it is a good summary and consistent with what I have been published in my books (http://thankyoubrain.com) and this blog.

... nice job.

2011-12-31T10:26:00.000-06:00

Improving Memory Involves More Than Gimmicks

Two elderly couples were enjoying friendly conversation when one of the men asked the other, "Fred, how was the memory clinic you went to last month?"

"Outstanding," Fred replied. "They taught us all the latest psychological techniques - visualization, association - it made a huge difference for me."

"That's great! What was the name of the clinic?"

Fred went blank. He thought and thought, but couldn't remember. Then Fred smiled and asked, "What do you call that red flower with the long stem and thorns?"

"You mean a rose?"

"Yes, that's it!" He turned to his wife. . ."Rose, what was the name of that clinic?"

Memory techniques, like visualized associations, are important for improving memory. I sometimes get chided, as in a recent commentary, for writing about things that readers think are unrelated to memory.

But memory is not independent of everything else that brains do. This includes general thinking abilities, motivation, attitudes, lifestyle, and the mental challenges that a person seeks. General health, exercise, sleep, response to stress, and diet are also important. I have elaborated on these influences on memory in my books and learning and memory blog. Research continually expands our understanding of these indirect influences on learning and memory, and I try to keep readers informed of the practical applications of these developments.

Another under-appreciated area about memory is the role of learning. As two sides of the same coin, learning and memory are interdependent. How we approach a learning task has enormous impact on how much of it we remember. These factors include study strategy, attentiveness, distractibility and cognitive interference, and organization and categorization of learning material. Likewise, how much you remember of learned material affects one’s capacity for understanding and memorizing new material. Experts in a given field have become experts because what they have memorized includes learning templates and schema that help them to be better learners than non-experts. They may have learned to increase working memory capacity, which in turn improves the ability to think and solve problems. That is, the more they know, the more they can know.

Memory ability is multi-dimensional. The complete learner employs all the means of improving knowledge.

Your Kid May Be Smart. Just Don’t Tell Him So Too Often

2011-12-27T10:11:00.001-06:00

Some people say that we learn best from our mistakes. But all of us know about people who never seem to learn from their mistakes. This failure to learn is most obvious with people who keep making poor decisions and lifestyle choices. The psychological explanations are many and complex.

For simplicity, let us restrict explanation to the world of education. Educational philosophy has changed a great deal in the 50 years since I was in school. Back then, for example, I had the highest grades in school, but many of my teachers went out of their way to cut me down a notch or two so I wouldn’t get conceited. Aside from the debatable question of whether that worked, the point is that today, the educational establishment has the opposite philosophy. They tend to tell all kids they are smart. I have seen elementary schools where most students are selected as “Honors Students.” I know college education professors who won’t give anything less than an A. Why is praise so liberally applied? In part, the idea is to bolster student self-esteem. Also motivating teachers is the reluctance to admit that some kids are smarter than others. Equal outcome is the politically correct expectation. That’s why we have the No Child Left Behind law. Everybody is supposed to succeed because all are presumed equal. Of course the reality is that this is a lie, and the only way everybody achieves the same is to lower the standards to the least common denominator.

Research clearly shows that whether students learn best from their mistakes depends on a student’s self-perception. Research by Carol Dweck and colleagues at Stanford demonstrated that the students who are most likely to learn from their mistakes are those who don’t think of themselves as smart as such but smart enough to get smarter. They have a “growth mindset,” a belief system that they can get better if they will just invest the time and effort. In one of the group’s experiments, half of the students were repeatedly praised for “being smart,” and these students were not good at learning from mistakes. It is not clear why. Maybe they thought the problem was in the learning material, not in them. The other half of students were praised for effort and improvement and these students got better and made fewer mistakes. Several months later, all students repeated a standardized test, and the “smart” students’ scores dropped 20%, while the “growth mindset” students scored 30% higher.

Jason Moser followed up this idea with an experiment in which subjects performed a tedious task in which some mistakes were inevitable. Those who did best at learning from the mistakes were those who believed most strongly that they could get better at this task and make fewer mistakes. Brain electrical recordings during the task revealed two electrical signatures of the mindset, the first being an error-related negative voltage about 50 milliseconds after an error occurred, and a second positive voltage up to about a half a second later. The size of this second signal correlated with how intensely the subject paid conscious attention and was distressed by the mistake. This second signal was larger in those subjects that were the best learners, and they made even fewer mistakes as the task was repeated.

Ego is probably a factor. The “smart” students may seem to have plenty of self-esteem, but apparently failure is too painful a challenge to their ego and they find ways to rationalize or dismiss the mistakes. Students with a growth mindset may have better self-esteem, because they accept the challenge to their ego, and believe they can get better, which usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A little humility is a good thing. Most of us, even the smartest, have a lot to be humble about. There is even a book on the subject, “Why Do Smart People Make Such Stupid Mistakes.”

Sources:

1. http://www.brainology.us/default.aspx?gclid=CNn04-q_oq0CFbEDtgodQj4iuQ

2. Mangels, J. A. (2006) Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. SCAN, 1, 75–86. doi:10.1093/scan/nsl013

3. Merrington, C. (2011). Why Do Smart People Make Such Stupid Mistakes, St Albans, Herts, United Kingdom: Ecademy Press.

My other blog activities

2011-12-11T13:22:00.000-06:00

I am delighted to have so many followers. However, it is not nearly as many as I apparently have at Psychology Today, where the reader views of my posts there now total over 65,000 (see http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic). Some of my posts there are cross posts from this blog, but others are unique.

You may want to know about my other blog on excuse-making, misplaced blame, and how to grow in competence and self-esteem by dealing with deception of self and others. See http://blamegameblog.blogspot.com.

Save Us From the Education Experts

2011-11-30T18:46:00.000-06:00

The New Framework for K-12 Science Education.

What They Missed.

The National Research Council of the National Academies recently released their landmark epistle, A Framework for K-12 Science Education. This book advocates the practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas that students should know at each K-12 grade level. The purpose is to influence the science educa

While I applaud the purpose, I find much to criticize about these recommendations from this august body of experts. I won’t burden you with the details on everything I find lacking, but one whole category of recommendations seems to have been overlooked. Their guidelines say almost nothing about brain and behavior. Students are humans, and the most distinctive and important feature of being human is the brain and the behavior it controls. Why don't we require students to understand more about their brain and behavior, particularly as to the relationships to social interactions, emotions, and learning and memory? This is the one category of human experience where children especially need guidance and education. And in this category something that is especially applicable to school children is the science about learning and memory. We tell school children WHAT to learn (much of which is irrelevant to their life at the moment), but not HOW to learn. That is really bizarre. U.S. education needs to be rescued from the clutches of the establishment “experts.”

Bill Klemm

http://thankyoubrain.com

Author of e-book, Better Grades, Less Effort

Fix Bad Federal Education Policy

2011-11-17T16:21:00.000-06:00

Fix Bad Federal Education Policy

Congress is now going through the ritual of tweaking the No Child Left Behind law for the nation’s schools. The law is vigorously opposed by both teacher unions and the TEA party. That should tell you all you need to know about this bad legislation. Of course the reasons for opposition are quite different, but all have a large degree of validity. Teachers don’t like bureaucrats judging them and their schools, and the TEA party thinks we have too much federal government intrusion in general.

The law, however tweaked by revision, is fatally flawed by its basic assumptions. Foremost is the fantasy that government should provide not only equal opportunity but equal outcome. The only way you can get all students to have equal learning is to dumb down the curricula, which is what is done. Schools cater to the lower performing students at the expense of good students. For example, over the last two decades an analysis by the Wall Street Journal revealed that the lowest-performing students have shown clear gains in test scores but little improvement for other students.

A second flaw is that the law ignores the extraordinary range of mental development in children. Some students cannot be salvaged at a given grade level. Moreover, student motivation for learning is a highly mutable, often changing from year to year. Some students cannot be salvaged at any stage, either for reasons of neglect, abuse, bad parenting, or the students’ own negative attitudes. “Do-gooder” focus on these students drags down the whole educational enterprise.

Then there is the problem of misplaced incentives. Where are the incentives for students to do better? In fact, the students are being asked to help make their school and teachers look good.

Finally, this era of No Child Left Behind and high-stakes testing fails to help us understand how to accomplish the basic purpose of assessment: figuring out what students know and need to learn. Multiple-choice tests are certainly not reliable. In fact, these tests mostly measure recognition memory, the least reliable indicator of what has been remembered.

One teacher, Ryan Kinser, endorses the idea of “teaching to the test,” but we need better tests: ones based on “curriculum-embedded performance assessments that are valid, reliable, and accurate measures of what and how students learned.” I would add that testing per se is not the problem. Indeed, research shows that tests reinforce retention of what has been learned. At a local school level, low-stakes benchmark tests should be routine and frequent.

Teachers do need to be held accountable. But not for the weaknesses of the culture of their community, or for bad school administrators and policies, or for the poor educations they get in Colleges of Education, or for the flawed requirements of No Child Left Behind. Teachers have no control over many of the bad things schools do. The school year is too short, summer vacation is too long, more short holidays are needed, the school day needs to be restructured, most textbooks are just terrible, subjects are taught along academic themes rather than the integrated real world students live in, and the school environment in general just kills the joy of learning.

What should the role of the federal government be in education? It should be in administering meaningful educational research, providing guidance (not mandates) on academic standards, and disseminating “best practices.” No more, no less.

W. R. Klemm

Professor of Neuroscience

http://thankyoubrain.com

New e-book on Better Grades, Less Effort

2011-10-14T09:49:00.002-05:00

Better Grades News Release, Sept. 20, 2011
From: Benecton Press

Dr. Bill Klemm, "Memory Medic," has just released a new e-book, Better Grades, Less Effort. The book is available from Smashwords.com IN ALL E-FORMATS for only $2.49 (order from http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/24623). Read the 5-star reviews there. Amazon has it for Kindle.

The book explains the memory tips and tricks he used to become valedictorian, an Honors student in three universities -- including graduating with a D.V.M. degree, and to secure a PhD in two-and-a-half years. He shares what he has learned about student approaches to study over 47 years as a professor. Klemm claims that poor memory is what holds most students back from superior achievement.

Dr. Klemm has priced the book so that every student can afford it. He argues that this book can change a person's life, as his own experience with learning how to learn changed his life. He says, "If you won't invest the cost of a burger in your future, what does that say about your future?"

The ideas in the book are directed to students in high school or college. Parents are urged to explain these ideas to their elementary-school children.

This book is also for any working professional engaged in on-the-job training programs. Dr. Klemm claims It will also help workers master their field and become more competent -- and more likely to be successful.

Neuro-education: hot new area in education

2011-09-28T12:19:00.000-05:00

I just returned from the Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning conference that I attended in Aspen, Colorado. Neuro-education is a hot new education movement based on transitioning discoveries about brain function into teaching practices. Actually, this is what I have been doing since 2004 with my efforts to find practical applications in memory research and explain them to teachers and students (see http://thankyoubrain.com).

You would never guess who the conference organizers invited to be the keynote speaker. It was Goldie Hawn. Yes, I mean the famous actress many of us think of as a ditsy blonde. She is a grandmother now, but still vivacious and attractive (and I was thrilled with our brief visit). Goldie has created a neuroscience-based “Minds Up” educational Foundation and program to improve learning in elementary school children (see www.thehawnfoundation.org/minsup). Her program espouses some of the things that are central to brain-based education. She shows that even those we think of as ditsy blondes are interested in neuroscience and how it can help us learn and remember. Elementary school teachers are using her approach not only to teach neuroscience (see, it is not arcane), they also teach kids to be more introspective about how what they feel, think and do affects the brain and their learning.

Showing kids how to be aware of and control their feelings and behavior is a key part of neuro-education. The experts refer to this capability as “Executive Function,” which they simplistically ascribe to the prefrontal cortex (pfc). The pfc is the part of the brain that is most developed in higher primates, such as chimps, apes and humans. As such, the pfc is certainly crucial to executive brain functions. But many researchers, including me, have shown that higher cognitive functions arise from widespread action across many parts of the neocortex.

Anyway, from a teaching perspective, what is important about Executive Function training is teach kids how to be better at it. Goldie’s program emphasizes teaching kids to recognize when they are wired, upset, angry, or have other emotions that interfere with their learning. By being more self-aware, they have a better chance to control themselves.

I also met at that conference, Nobel Prize physicist, Carl Wieman, now Associate Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology. His talk stressed that educators need to emphasize concepts and principles. He also made the point that everybody who has gone to school tends to think they are an expert in learning. But he emphasized, “novices seldom recognize what they do not know, especially in education.”

Also presenting at the conference was the U.N.’s World Bank’s education director, Helen Abadzi of the (and fellow Auburn graduate), She told me about the science-based reform initiatives the Bank is pursuing in developing countries.

We all know that U.S. education is in crisis. Many think the solution is just to spend more money. But there is plenty of non-partisan research showing there is no reliable correlation between funding and educational achievement. The plea for more money is akin to the fallacy of solving the federal budget deficit crisis by borrowing still more money. No, the solution for both problems is to stop doing things that don’t work and do more of what does. The ideas of “neuro-education” are crucial to effective reform.

Research in this area includes, in addition to training Executive Function, such things as reasoning training, improving working memory, ways to improve memory consolidation and retrieval, and treatments for reading disabilities and ADHD.

"Infectious" Memory

2011-08-23T10:13:00.000-05:00

We all know that people tend to conform their thinking and beliefs to those of their social group. We call this peer pressure or “group think.” What many do not realize is that similar effects occur with what we remember. The conformity effect of group think and “infectious” memory is the reason it is so frustrating trying to argue over polarized positions, like politics or religion. In politics for example, conservatives, believing in lower taxes, recall that Regan lowered taxes, while apparently forgetting that the rate then was an outrageous 90%, counting all taxes. I have heard liberals, believing in higher taxes, say that lowering taxes does not raise federal revenues and that Regan actually raised taxes. In other words, people tend to remember what supports their belief system and forget what does not It’s more comfortable intellectually not to be confused by the facts.

When people reminisce in groups, like family reunions, political rallies, or other social groups, they tend to remember many of the same things, even when some of those things are factually wrong. Think about how people tell stories. Most of us embellish the story to make it more interesting. With repeated telling, the embellishments gradually get incorporated into the story teller’s memory, even to the point where it becomes a different story. This is an example where the storyteller has infected his own memory. But the group of listeners add their own small embellishments, some of which may even be wrong, to the recollection, and these provide memory infection from the group.

Group contamination of remembered fact can have serious consequences, ranging, for example, from political and religious intolerance, prejudices of all sorts, and wrongful criminal convictions resulting from false eyewitness testimony.

Not surprisingly, infectious memory is not only caused by faulty memory processes in brain but also help create the faulty brain processes. Researchers in Israel and Great Britain teamed up to use brain imaging to study infectious memory. They tested how subjects remembered from recollection of others.

The strategy was to show a movie to groups of five and then test for individual recall. The first memory test revealed how much the person initially remembered and how confident the person was about the recall accuracy. Then, a second test of recall occurred after attempts to socially manipulate the memory. Finally, a third memory test occurred after the social manipulation was removed. The social manipulation, given four days after Test 1, involved presentation of fabricated recollections of the movie from the other four group members.

A given subject tended to conform his own memory to that of the group, even when the group’s memory was fabricated by the experimenter. With Test 2, after social manipulation with false information, subjects conformed their memory to that of the group’s recall in 68.3% of the test trials, versus only 15.5% in the non-manipulated condition. Test 3, performed 11 days later, revealed that memory error still persisted but at a lower rate. Even so, errors were significantly greater in the socially manipulated group than in the non-manipulated group.

Brain imaging (functional MRI) revealed that infectious memory modified the brain activity representation of memory. That is, whether a person would form a long-lasting memory that conformed to erroneous memories of the group could be predicted by a particular imaging signature of increased activity in the two major areas known to form memories, the amygdala and the hippocampus. Such increased activity was only seen when the infected memory became long-lasting, not for memories that did not survive.

One might question why humans have this tendency for group think and group memory. Presumably, it has value because “two minds are better than one,” that is, most individuals can benefit from the thinking of others. Learning should be more efficient and accurate. However, serious problems can arise when the group is wrong, as in religious cults, authoritarian governments, and social prejudices.

All of this makes a strong case that you should not spend all your time with people who think like you do. Likewise, what you read and watch on TV should be diverse. If you are religious, maybe you should read both the Bible and the Koran (a little Buddhism might help too). If you are a news junkie, maybe you should watch both Fox News and the mainstream networks. If all your friends are in the same ethnic or socio-economic group, maybe you need some new friends..I am not arguing that you should be all things to all people, just that your opinions and the remembered basis for them be more completely informed and accurate.

Source: Roediger, H. L. III and McDermott, K. B. 2011. Remember when? Science. 333, 108-111.

U.S. Dept.of unEducation

2011-08-13T12:33:00.000-05:00

In a my last blog post, I argued that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is counterproductive. This is just one of many examples where government bureaucrats seem to sit around all day thinking up things to tell us we can and cannot do. These anointed experts think they know best. Worse yet, they can’t seem to recognize when their mandates don’t work.

There is another most recent example where government pontificators want new educational programs to foist on the public. Democratic Senators Mary Landrieu and Patty Murray proposed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed a mandated solution to the very real problem that there are three million job openings in the U.S. right now that cannot be filled because people lack the training. Instead of our protective treatment of illiterate illegal immigrants while discriminating against foreigners who have the training that could fill those jobs, they propose a taxpayer-funded special jobs training programs. Clearly, their claim they want to help business won’t wash. They just want to buy votes.

First, they know about the report of the National Commission of Adult Literacy showing that 90 million adults are too educationally challenged to likely succeed in post-secondary training. Every year 1.8 million students don’t even make it out of high school. A poll of businesses showed that 67% of the owners said they had trouble finding competent workers. Another poll showed that 42% of small business owners hired fewer people than they really needed because of the scarcity of skilled workers. Landrieu and Murray acknowledge that one reason companies are moving off shore is to find good workers. Notably, these Senators won’t acknowledge that government over-regulation and tax policy have anything to do with business leaving America. All of this contributes to a very real economic problem. But the Senators’ solution is to expand and develop multiple government programs funded with money we don’t have. They want to treat the symptom (lack of skills) instead of the underlying causes (social deterioration and poor public education).

The social deterioration is promoted by a government entitlement environment in which politicians urge the “have-nots” to envy and hate the people who have things they do not. Envy is poisonous for individuals and for society. Just such an environment has spawned the recent riots in England, and I fear it will break out soon here (so-called “flash mob attacks already have). The losers in our society are told they have an excuse (being exploited by the “rich”) rather than being told they have to become more personally responsible. These folks need to read my “Blame Game” book.

The poor public education is generally acknowledged, but nobody seems to know how to fix it. The supposed fixes coming from the Dept. of Education just do not work. There are legitimate roles for the DOE, but they need to stop telling us what we have to do. They should focus on promoting educational research and more inclusive think-tank activities for ideas (not mandates) for educational reform.

Implicit in the NCLB law is an assumption that states can't be trusted because many of them don’t really care about improving education. How absurd! The states, above all, have the greatest vested interest in producing a competent work force to stimulate their local businesses. States compete with other states for tax-generating business. Most states are ineffective in educating their youngsters, but it is because their policy makers don’t know any better and because federal educational law causes more problems than it solves. The federal government should help, not be in the way.

Time to Change the No Child Left Behind Law

2011-07-30T16:44:00.000-05:00

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law was originally proposed by the administration of George W. Bush immediately after he took office. The bill, shepherded through the Senate by co-author Senator Ted Kennedy, received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and passed in 2001. You would think any law that attracts the support of polar-opposite politicians must be a good idea. Not only that, the federal government has committed enormous amounts of money to make it work. Since enactment, Congress increased federal funding of education from $42.2 billion in 2001 to $54.4 billion in 2007. Funding tied to NCLB received a 40.4% increase from $17.4 billion in 2001 to $24.4 billion.

The law had worthy goals, requiring the states to: 1) set specific academic standards by grade level, and 2) provide accountability testing to assure the standards are being met by all students. The 100% student compliance requirement lies at the heart of the problem. The Obama administration ardently supports NCLB, as expressed by Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius in the July 25th issue of Time magazine. She said, “U.S. competitiveness depends on ensuring that all children can reach their full potential. Our reform agenda will help us reach that goal.” Now, after 10 years of this grand — and very expensive — experiment in government intervention in education, it is clear that the goal is unrealistic for all children.

Moreover, the premise that this goal is needed for U. S. competitiveness is wrong. Just the opposite is true. How is promoting mediocrity of value to the nation’s welfare? For a country to dominate economically and militarily it must nurture its most talented people, not hold them back with educational goals aimed at the lowest common denominator. NCLB has no requirements for gifted and talented students. The emphasis on assuring success of the least able students causes many states to reduce their programs for superior students. NCLB forces schools to devote so much time, money, and energy to underperforming students that they neglect gifted and talented students. School systems are doomed to fail when they become devoted to children who are hostile to learning, can’t speak English, who are mentally disabled, or come from families who are not interested in the education of their children. And we have plenty of failed schools in the U.S. to prove the point.

The major reason NCLB does not work is that it has caused the states to lower achievement goals, water down curriculum, and motivate teachers to "teach to the test." Students are sentenced to an endless regimen of test-preparation drills. And we wonder so many students, good and bad, don’t like school. Learning should be fun.

Because it is a major logistical problem to hand-grade so many tests, the tests are typically in multiple-choice format, the least reliable measure of what a student knows. Students with real potential are not challenged. Although accountability is supposed to be the watchword, the least accountable are the underperforming students. Many of them could care less. If they fail to measure up, it is the teacher and the school that suffer the consequences. Social promotion is still the common practice.

Schools are sorely tempted to “game” the system, especially by lowering standards and focusing ever more on teaching to the test. Some teachers are so tempted, as recently witnessed in the Atlanta schools, that they help students cheat or actually change the student answer sheets to get the over-all grades up.

A big source of the problem is reading. Although the funding for reading quadrupled from $286 million in 2001 to $1.2 billion today, there is little evidence of improvement. Every teacher I encounter in professional development workshops says they have many kids who are 2-3 grade levels below expected reading standard. Many teachers say none of their students are at grade level.

Another problem is that NCLB diverts attention away from practices that might be much more effective. Local school board flexibility and control are restricted. Little attention is given to thinking of new ways of structure use of time during the school day and school year. Curriculum innovations are discouraged in favor of using only accepted practices (which obviously don’t seem to work very well). NCLB provides no guidance or incentive for teaching students how to learn as opposed to what to learn. There is no incentive for students to be creative. Indeed, they are often discriminated against for thinking “outside the box” of high-stakes tests.

I think our system of education at all levels has been corrupted by the move away from academic merit. The mentality of progressives that everyone should have equal outcomes is well meaning but destructive. All a liberal society should owe its citizens is equal opportunity. Of course, progressives may argue that students with a bad attitude, or who don’t speak English, or who can’t read, or who are mentally disabled do not have equal opportunity because of their limitations. And trying to fix that is what has gotten U.S. education into uncorrectable trouble.

Many advocacy groups are mobilizing to get NCLB changed or scrapped. Unfortunately, most of these groups still endorse the goal of closing the gap between achievers and underachievers, which will only perpetuate the weakness of public education.

Law makers can’t agree on how to reform education. Maybe it is time to get the federal government out of regulating education. It certain does not have a winning track record nor a compelling plan to get education right. We don’t need more spending on education. Over-all, the U.S. will spend $0.9 trillion this year on education. It has been going up every year. We need to stop mis-spending so much on policies that don’t work.

It is also a good idea for the federal government to stop dictating how schooling should be done. Every state has incentive enough for its citizens to become as educated as possible. They don’t need a one-size-fits-all dictate from Washington.

Sources:

1. U.S. Department of Education. "Press Releases", 2006-02-06. Retrieved on 2008-06-05.

2. No Child Left Behind Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act

3. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

More Bad News About U.S. Students

2011-07-22T15:44:00.000-05:00

Recently released national geography test scores add to the growing list of surveys showing the ignorance of U.S. students. This survey from the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed for example that only a third of U.S. students know how to determine distance on a map or that the American Southwest has water-shortage problems. Less than a half of 8th graders know that Islam originated in Saudi Arabia.

On the latest national exam, the percentage of students scoring as “proficient” or higher was only 23% of fourth graders, 30% of eighth graders, and 21% of twelfth graders. When the scores were compared with those on the test when last given in 2001, there was no improvement in either eighth or twelfth graders.

The only good news is that some mild improvement occurred with lowest-scoring students. This is a dubious achievement of the “No Child Left Behind Law” which otherwise stated should be called the “No Child Pushed Forward.” In other words, the obsessive focus on the poorest students is punishing students with more promise. Of course, this is totally congruent with our current political climate of pushing for equal outcomes and punishing success.

Similar dismal results have been reported in recent surveys of performance in history and civics. And student mastery of science and math is notoriously unimpressive. The education professionals don’t seem to understand the cause. I’ll tell you the cause: students don’t know how to learn. That is the one skill that schools studiously seem to avoid. They are so focused on teaching to these high-stakes tests that little attention is devoted to anything else, particularly learning skills.

Students these days do almost everything wrong when it comes to learning. They can’t pay attention, they multitask like crazy, their mind is abuzz with everything other than school, and they don’t know how to study or memorize.

And only a handful has been willing to spend a meager $2.49 on my e-book which could change their life. I am about to decide they won’t buy the book because it has to be read. In general, students hate to read. I give many professional development workshops to teachers and at every single one teachers complain about so many of their students being at least two grades below the expected reading grade level. Some teachers say none of their students are at grade level.

So, guess what: I am starting to make the book an audio book. We’ll see what their excuse is now. I am not sanguine about the possibilities. Teachers tell me the real problem in education is that too many students don’t want to learn anything. They just want to be entertained.

More and more of these poorly prepared students are going to college. You have to be my age to know just how markedly the quality of college students has deteriorated since 1950. I used to love to teach. It’s not fun any more.

The e-book, by the way, is available in all formats from http://smashwords.com. The title is Better Grades. Less Effort.

More Learning With Fewer Teachers

2011-06-23T10:26:00.003-05:00

State budget deficits are causing schools all across the nation to cut expenses, often including cutting teaching staff. Colleges are increasingly under fire for rising tuition and professors who don't teach enough classes. What all this boils down to is the pressing need to "do more with less." But how? Schools already have too many problems. Schools should not get distracted from the fundamentals of teaching and learning.

A recent study from University of Washington professors compared two approaches for teaching large introductory biology classes: 1) traditional lecture method, and 2) “active learning” without lecture. Eliminating lecture does not in itself improve teacher-student ratios. Indeed, some have said it doesn’t matter whether one lectures to 20 students or a thousand.

What is important is to address the question of what happens to educational quality if you reduce the number of teachers. There is certainly no evidence that increasing the number of students in a lecture hall will improve teaching effectiveness, and in fact the opposite is likely. Statistically, increasing class sizes in lecture courses has a disproportionate deleterious effect on socio-economically disadvantaged students. So, as number of teachers decreases in response to economic necessity, we can expect the educational gap to grow between advantaged and disadvantaged.

So, how should educators respond to having more students and fewer teachers? The educational literature has been building for decades toward the conclusion that lecturing is a poor way to teach. We teachers know about many alternative “active learning” strategies, but just don’t use them much, because lecturing seems so intuitive and for most of us, it has become a habit. And lecturing is the environment in which most of us were trained.

In the U. Washington study, the professors compared grade performance in classes based on lectures with classes based on active learning. The type of active learning they used included pre-class reading quizzes, daily multiple-choice “clicker” questions, a peer group instruction format that included so-called “constructivist” learning exercises, and weekly practice exams. Also, they adjusted learning requirements to require more creative and critical thinking, since most college students have little experience with higher cognitive tasks of synthesizing and applying learned material in new contexts (as specified in Bloom’s taxonomy of learning). The learning activities went beyond the lower levels of learning vocabulary and understanding of concepts.

Large student populations were involved for both comparison groups, and the classes studied spanned several semesters. Student performance was measured in terms of difference from the predicted performance based on college grades prior to entering this biology class and SAT scores (which are highly reliable predictors, based their previous analysis of five year’s of class data). This analysis also revealed a reliable prediction that disadvantaged students were twice as likely to fail this course than non-disadvantaged students.

Not surprising (to me at least) was the consistent result of better final grades in the classes that had active learning instead of lectures. The benefit was especially noticeable on exam questions that demanded higher-level thinking. Moreover, the disadvantaged students improved disproportionately.

The authors did not examine possible explanations for why active learning yielded better results than lecturing. I think the explanation is obvious, based on what I know about mechanisms of learning and memory. First, learning from lectures requires sustained paying attention, but a whole generation of multitasking students has emerged who are not very adept at sustained attentiveness. Accordingly, the short attention spans of these students make it difficult for them to be engaged with the lecture content. Engagement lies at the heart of effective learning.

Secondly, active learning requires more engagement because the students have to “do something” instead of just listen. They have to find, assimilate, and use information to solve problems — all of which enhance understanding and are effective memory rehearsal strategies. The social dynamic of student learning teams facilitates these activities. It is much harder to drift off task, daydream, or sleep in class when a student has to interact socially with peers to perform a learning activity.

These ideas have been advocated for several decades. But now, it seems imperative for teachers to use these approaches in an age where there will be fewer teachers and where more students are unable to benefit from lecturing. This requires for many teachers a sea-change in teaching attitude and strategy. It is no longer suffices for a teacher to be a source and dispenser of information. Information already exists in many places, text books, Web sites, and videos, often in better presentation form than a typical teacher can produce. Even the expected role of teachers in explaining everything is problematic. Students remember much better that which they have to figure out. Working in groups makes it easier to figure out difficult material. Students can often explain things to each better than teachers can because teachers have more difficulty in knowing why students are having a comprehension problem.

The teacher must become a manager of learning activities. This means structuring in-class time so that students work collaboratively on learning activities. Students also need homework that gets beyond “busy work.” And, as I have been advocating for some time now, students will benefit from more frequent testing, especially under lower-stakes conditions.

Effective managers are those who can “scale up” to manage more and more people. We can’t wait for a new generation of teachers and professors. We need professional development programs now that emphasize management of student learning.

Source:

Haak, D. C., et al. 2011. Increased structure and active learning reduce the achievement gap in introductory biology. Science. 332: 12131-1216.

Learning: No Pain, No Gain

2011-06-07T15:04:00.001-05:00

The “best” teachers are the one’s who make learning easy. At least that is what the poorer students say. They may be wrong. The popular belief that it is easier to learn things that are easy rather than harder is also probably wrong. Easy material may not elicit enough attention and engagement to produce lasting learning. So, educators may need to re-think the whole notion of what makes a teacher effective. Making learning easier makes the teacher more popular, but that does not necessarily translate to real student achievement.

Kent State psychology professors have just reported a study of this matter with college students. They find that when students think something is easy to learn they may have only a superficial level of learning that does not last much beyond the next test. Just staring repeatedly at learning material is not nearly as effective as forcing retrieval of the information. Moreover, students can develop an easy-learning attitude that leads to bad study habits and an ineffective learning style.

Other research that I have summarized elsewhere shows that students likely do not know material as well as they think they do. That is, if they perceive they have “got it in the bag,” they may find out they are sadly mistaken at test time. Likewise, students tend to quit study too soon, thinking the material was easy and they have learned it. In fact, repeatedly studying material you assume you know makes it more likely that you really do know it.

Easy learning, as in a single cramming session, is deceptive. It is not nearly as effective as the harder learning of spreading out the study over many days and weeks. The self-testing under the delayed conditions is much more effective precisely because it is harder to recall material learned days ago .

In the Kent State studies, college-aged students were asked to study for a week a pack of 48 flashcards that paired Swahili vocabulary words with their English translations. The students were divided into two groups and in both groups, students asked to use a mediator — word, phrase or concept — link both words of a pair. Students in one group were given practice quizzes where they were shown a word and asked to name the other member of the pair. An examination at the end of the week revealed that the practice-quiz group performed much better on the final exam, especially if they were asked to recall the mediator.

In a study recently reported at an American Educational Research Association meeting in by Katherine Rawsom at Williams College, students studied 35 Swahili-English word pairs on flash cards. The students were asked to practice until they got the vocabulary correct using either the entire stack or five stacks of seven cards each. Researchers instructed students to study the flashcards until they had gotten each translation correct either once, five, or 10 times, before taking a final quiz a week later. Getting the stack correct five times was three times more effective for the final quiz than the stack was correct only once. Also, study of one big stack was better than five little ones.

Students had predicted just the opposite. They expected studying smaller groups of flashcards would be more helpful than studying the big stack, and they expected no real benefit from studying cards more than once. They remembered about as many words as they expected to recall when studying the entire pack, 43 percent to 46 percent. Yet those who had studied the small stacks expected to remember nearly 60 percent of words yet recalled only 17 percent. In general, students were incorrect in two ways: 1) they give too little value to learning strategies that are difficult (using multiple sessions on the big stack), and 2) they give too much credence to strategies that were later documented to be less effective.

The deceptiveness of ease of learning was reinforced in a study reported in Psychological Science by Nate Kornell and collaborators at three other universities. Participants were asked to predict how easily they would remember vocabulary words after studying them once or multiple times. Some of the words were presented in the standard font size on the person’s computer screen, while others were presented four times larger —something that makes the text feel easier to process but prior research shows does not improve memory. In addition, for some words, participants were told they would be allowed to study more than once.

The participants uniformly predicted that studying the words in larger font would help them remember more than studying the words multiple times. In fact, increased font size did nothing to help them, but studying even once more improved their recall of the new words.

Some school authorities have it all backwards. They want teachers to make the material as easy to learn as possible. I don’t mean to excuse teachers whose instruction is disorganized and confusing. But teachers who challenge students with difficult material and assignments, as well as frequent testing, are actually doing their students a favor. They are just the opposite of the accusation of being “bad” teachers.

This also relates to “dumbing down” the curriculum, which may actually interfere with learning. If we raised standards, we would find that students have to get more engaged. Better learning is predictable. I think that when learning is difficult, learners are obliged to be more engaged. And it is the engagement that achieves lasting learning. Of course this only works for students who are motivated to learn.

Sources:

Cavallos, M. (2011) How testing improves memory. Science News. November 6th, 2010; Vol.178 #10

Kornell, N., Rhodes, M. G., Castel, A. D., & Tauber, S. K. (2011). The ease of processing heuristic and the stability bias: Dissociating memory, memory beliefs, and memory judgments. Psychological Science. 22(6) 787 –794

Sparks, Sarah D. (2011). Studies find “desirable difficulties” help students learn. Education Week, April 26.

U. S. Students Memorize Too Much?

2011-05-01T15:12:00.001-05:00

Making kids memorize too much is the problem with U.S. schools, according to a new movie documentary, "Race to Nowhere." This movie, produced by a housewife and first-time film maker, is being embraced all across the country by teachers and parents. It is a hot item, especially in New Jersey, where the teacher's union has locked horns with Governor Christi over cost cutting of teacher benefits. Wall Street Journal assistant editor, James Freeman, has done us all a favor by exposing this clap-trap propaganda. Yet this movie is called "a must-see" by the New York Times, an endorsement source that may tell you all you need to know about the movie. Schools, especially in New Jersey, are helping to arrange public showings. Parents, teachers, and educational policy makers are urged to join this propaganda campaign and shown how to do so on the movie's web site.

But let us examine the premise. Are students really stressed out by too much memorization? I am not a uninformed housewife. I have worked with middle-school teachers and their schools for 10 years in developing and deploying science curriculum. I think students are asked to memorize too little, not too much. The movie contends that students don't know much because they are overwhelmed with more material than their little brains can handle. B.S.! I know what state standards require. Trust me, students are not asked to learn too much.

I wrote a book recently, Blame Game, How to Win It (available at Amazon), that focuses on the damaging consequences of misplaced blame. I point out that people make excuses for problems to avoid confronting the pain of dealing with the real causes. The book is not oriented around schools, but it certainly could have been, because schools are prime examples of misplaced blame.

For example, the movie places blame on George Bush for the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) law. Many, perhaps most, teachers share in this perverse belief that standards and accountability testing are the cause of poor schools. Nobody wants to remember that schools were just as bad during Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton eras when there was no NCLB. SAT scores, for example, were just as low then as they are now. The real problem with NCLB is "No Child Pushed Forward." The emphasis in schools I know about is on the lowest common denominator of getting the lowest performing students to meet standards. Students who really care about learning and those who have talent are being cheated by NCLB. We have to rely on the U. S. Army to inspire our kids to "be all they can be."

Progressives also falsely blame insufficient funding for education. The evidence is abundantly clear that there is no correlation between spending per pupil and academic achievement. Time magazine, not noted for conservatism, points out in an article last December that spending on public schools more than doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars between 1970 and 2007. Moreover, up to 44% of school expenditures today are kept "off budget," so the real expenditures are grossly under reported

Few people, especially teachers, blame the teachers. And few parents or teachers blame the kids. Kids are considered victims of an over-demanding education establishment. Nobody seems to admit that kids might be spoiled with indulgences of all sorts, which includes having their poor performance blamed on anything but them. Anybody who thinks there are not large numbers of lazy, unmotivated kids who are uninterested in learning hasn't been in a classroom lately. Dedicated teachers knock themselves out trying to get such kids up to standard. The problem is not the standards or NCLB.

A lot of kids think they are smarter than they really are. They get this inflated view reinforced from doting parents and anybody over 50 gushing over how smart kids are to multi-task with all their electronic gizmos. I have explained before in earlier posts that experts have shown multi-tasking to be educationally destructive. Other studies show that kids over-estimate what they know for upcoming tests and undervalue added study.

Here's a paradox. Nobody blinks or complains when school athletic coaches get in the kids' faces to upbraid them when they are being lazy, unmotivated, and under performing. But let a teacher do that and he/she would likely be fired on the spot. Teachers can make excuses for their students. But coaches know that excuse-making won't cut it on the playing field. Why should classrooms be any different?

To return to the point of progressives that school is too hard, I have examined state science standards in great detail because I write middle-school science curriculum. The standards do not demand too much emorization. They don't demand enough, especially the kind of memorization where students have to know how to use knowledge in their thinking. I think that the low-level of memorization required of students today is a main reason why so many students have under-developed thinking skills. Too many of them mouth platitudes and parrot what others have said. They can't think on their own because they don't know enough to generate original and rigorous thought. Yet, too many educators dismiss the importance of memorization, assuming falsely that kids can think with an empty head. Educators tried that a few years back with "new math," which failed miserably. Now, it appears the same ill-begotten beliefs are re-surfacing in the context of state standards and accountability testing.

Critical and creative thinking skills are best honed when students are expected to think for themselves, have opinions they can defend with facts and reason, and can persuade others to recognize flaws in their knowledge and thinking. But public schools have a politically correct culture where conformity is valued and individuality is suspect and anti-social. Conformity and tolerance of ignorance and irrationality are considered the virtues to seek, because all belief systems and views are typically considered equivalent (unless they are conservative). Unequal outcomes are just not fair. So standards have to be set low enough so everybody can master them. We therefore don't expect much and we don't get much.

Those who are bent on placing blame on public schools are often looking in the wrong places.Their blame game should target real causes, such as:

misguided education professionals
dumbed-down curricula and lowered expectations of students
teachers who make excuses
students and parents who make excuses
political correctness and the philosophy that unequal outcomes are unacceptably unfair
devalued memorization.

Don't hold your breath waiting for any this getting corrected soon. In the meanwhile, urge the kids in your life to read my e-book on learning how to learn: Better Grades, Less Effort, available at Smashwords or Amazon.

A New Way to Fix Ailing Schools

2011-04-02T16:44:00.000-05:00

Most people may be tired of hearing about failing schools, because it has been so frustrating trying to get our schools fixed. It’s hard to find any good news about U.S. public schools. Public schools in the U.S. should embarrass us. As arguably the most advanced nation in the world, the U.S. ranks near the bottom of first-world nations in the education of its children.

Examples of student ignorance include survey results showing that two thirds of American teens can’t begin to identify when the Civil War occurred. A poll I read the other day stated that 40% of young adults didn’t know who the U.S. fought in the Revolutionary War! Unbelievably, 20% of students don’t know who the enemies of the U.S. were in World War II. A third do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion. Just half know that The Federalist Papers were written to encourage ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The percentage of 17-year-olds who report reading for fun daily declined from one in three in 1984 to one in five in 2004. The middle-school teachers I work with say that most of their students are below grade level in reading.

College students are not impressing either. Less than half of college seniors know that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution or that NATO was formed to resist Soviet expansion. Overall, freshmen averaged 50.4% on a wide-ranging civic literacy test; seniors averaged 54.2%.

If you are still sanguine about U.S. student competence, you should read Frederick Hess’ book, “Still at Risk. What Students Don’t Know, Even Now.”

So what’s the fix? Politicians and teacher unions say we don’t spend enough money. They ignore the many formal studies showing there is no correlation between how much money a school district spends and the academic achievement of its students. Nor can money explain this: the Washington, D.C. school district spends more per student than any district in America, yet its students rank at the bottom. Still not convinced that we spend enough of education? Explain this: cost per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled between 1975 and 2005, while test scores remained flat.

There is a new way that is actually the old fashioned way of restoring the pre-eminent role that memorization has in academic success.

I recently read Josh Foer’s provocative new book on memory, “Moonwalking With Einstein.” Foer is a journalist, who once had the same fallible memory as the rest of us until he discovered memorization techniques. He got interested in memory improvement while covering the U.S. Memory tournament. He learned the tricks used by “memory athletes,” and within one year of training, he became the U.S. Champion.

The techniques he learned were not new. They were actually perfected by the poet Simonides and others back in 5th Century B.C. Greece when everything had to be memorized because there were no written places to look up information. These techniques allow “memory athletes” to do such astonishing feats as memorize the precise order of 1,528 random digits in less than an hour or memorize the sequential order of two decks of cards in less than five minutes. A memory champion from Malaysia memorized the entire 56,000 word, 1,774 page Chinese-English dictionary. Foer himself learned how to memorize the sequence of playing cards in one minute and 40 seconds, setting a U.S. competition record. Foer spent many days visiting with, as well as competing against, these memory athletes. What he learned was that he and the other memory athletes had just average memories when they didn’t use their special techniques.

Memory training can have major impact on school systems. Foer cites the example of Raemon Matthews, an award-winning teacher in a minority-enrollment vocational high school in South Bronx. His students come from a neighborhood where nine out of ten are below average in reading and math, four out of five live in poverty, and nearly half don’t graduate from high school. Students and visitors entering the building must pass through a metal detector and their bags inspected by a policeman.

Matthews teaches memory techniques. His students stay after school for an extracurricular class in memory. Every class begins with a three-minute memorized recitation. Students memorize every important fact, date and concept in his history class. He requires every essay to contain at least two memorized quotations. A group of his African-American students competes every year in the adult U.S. Memory championships. His corps of elite, all-minority, students have all passed the New York state academic skills test each of the last four years, and 85% of them had a grade of 90 or higher.

Memory techniques obviously increase one’s knowledge. Perhaps even more important, memorization promotes mental discipline. Kids could use a lot more of both knowledge and mental discipline.

So why don’t we teach memory techniques to school children in every school? Of course, you will say there is no practical reason to remember long strings of numbers or card sequences like they do in memory tournaments. Even in Vegas, they know how to neutralize card counters. But the principles of memory techniques have great practical value for learning history, math equations, geography, science — anything academic. I had pretty good success academically using these techniques when I was in school, finishing as valedictorian and making A in every class every year since the 6th grade, despite having an IQ only slightly above average. One teacher snorted that I had no right to make such good grades: I was just an over-achiever. This was some 60 years ago when teachers didn’t give away grades to stroke student self-esteem or to avoid whining over grades. The techniques I used in school, plus others I didn’t know about then, are shared in my current e-Book for students, “Better Grades. Less Effort.”

At numerous science teacher meetings over the past four years, I have given presentations on memory principles and techniques in the hope that teachers will teach memorization skills to their students. But I don’t think I am getting through. Teachers don’t seem to show much interest and the number of e-Book sales is miniscule, despite being priced at a very affordable $2.49 in any format.

I scratch my head in astonishment. I jumped all over these ideas when I was a student. Why don’t others do it?

It could be a combination of things. For one, we have a progressive educational culture that regards memorization as old fashioned and out-dated. After all, we can just Google what we want to know. Nobody seems to believe or understand that a good memory contributes to IQ and thinking productivity. Memory is critical to thinking. You think with what you know and you can’t think in an information vacuum. I doubt that many teachers know that a good memory enhances thinking ability (I have an earlier post on that). Teacher Matthews is quoted as reminding us that “You can’t have higher-level learning — you can’t analyze — without retrieving [memorized] information.” He adds, “You can’t learn without memorizing, and if done right, you can’t memorize without learning.”

The educational establishment dismisses Matthews’ philosophy, which they regard as a conservative throwback to the days when it was standard practice for students to memorize things like the Gettysburg Address, the Bill of Rights, famous poems, and other classics of our cultural heritage. Today, unfortunately, at all levels of the educational system, the role of memory in learning is under appreciated, and even disparaged.

In science teaching, in particular, it is common for teachers to actively disparage memorization. Part of the reason is the long tradition of old-fashioned science teaching in which pointless memorization was demanded of students. I was subjected to a lot of that in my student days: memorizing all the bumps on bones, classification details of plant species, biochemical pathways, and so on. Too much of this still goes on in the college science courses that pre-service science teachers have to take. No wonder so many college students steer away from science. No wonder so many science teachers hate memorization.

The buzz word in science teaching these days is “inquiry.” When I try to tell teachers how important it is to teach kids how to memorize, they look at me as if I don’t understand real science. Pardon me, lady/sir, your ignorance is showing, I AM a scientist. Trust me when I say understanding and knowledge are fundamental pre-requisites to meaningful inquiry. And without knowledge, the results of research are just data.

No, today, we must be progressive, not old-fashioned. Modern educational theory gained traction from the dominant educational philosopher, John Dewey, who challenged the value of memory, asserting that what is important in education is not knowledge but experience. Currently, mainstream educational theory embraces such attributes as insight, creativity, inquiry learning, and self expression. But these emphases, laudable as they are, lead to a bias against the role of memory in learning.

The bias against memorization may be even worse at the college level. A faculty colleague chastised me for my emphasis on memorization. This colleague thinks education should be all about understanding and using knowledge to solve problems. We need, he says, to teach students how to think. This colleague is like so many teachers these days who emphasize insight, creativity, inquiry learning, communication skills, and the like without appreciating the role of memory.

I agree wholeheartedly with these higher aims of education. But in the process of educational reform, the progressives discount the importance of memory. Paradoxically, increasing emphasis is being placed on end-of-year high stakes testing, and successful student performance depends heavily on how much they remember from instruction earlier in the year. The teachers I know all complain about having to repeat the same material over and over. They think “one-try” learning is not possible.

My dealings have been with science teachers. They confront another new problem of the fad of “inquiry learning.” Science seems to progressive educators as the natural home for the Dewey’s experiential philosophy. As a successful scientist for over 50 years I can tell you that Dewey certainly did not fully understand science (nor do many teachers today). Science is all about creativity and discovery, but that does not spring from an untutored mind. Creativity comes from a mind that knows, and remembers, a lot.

Consider how Darwin constructed the theory of evolution. He amassed, and remembered, volumes of factual observations over decades, and using this information he was able to put together a coherent theory that had baffled scholars dating back to St. Augustine and earlier. This point is not realized by many science teachers, many of whom teach Creationism instead of the scientific evidence for the origin of species.

In biological sciences, it is no accident many biologists make their most important contributions when they are older, after they have learned a lot. Do you think I could have written this book when I was performing public memory stunts at 16? I may have known the memory techniques, but did not yet have the knowledge.

Scientific illiterate educators like to point to Einstein who many believe was a poor student. What they apparently don’t know is that when Einstein worked on his research, he was a master learner and memorizer. He read and learned virtually everything written by Newton, Galileo, Bohr, Planck, Doppler, Reimann, Boltzman, Faraday, Maxwell, Poincare, Lorentz, dePretto, Bose, and numerous other scientists over the centuries. He learned Minkowski’s mathematics and curved geometry. He even knew Ben Franklin’s electricity research and cited one of his papers. In short, Einstein’s was so creative because he remembered and built upon the knowledge of numerous predecessors and contemporaries. If he were going to school in 21st century America, the 22nd century world would never hear of Albert Einstein.

Mastering the classical memorization techniques requires creativity. Foer’s book shows how he used creativity to become a memory champion. My book gives other examples of how I used creativity to succeed in school. The ability to be creative requires a “proper inventory, a bank of existing ideas to draw on,” as Foer puts it. The Einstein example above is a classic illustration of the point.

Another possible explanation for neglect of memory skills is that many people, teachers and students alike, think their memory ability is fixed and can’t be improved. This view is false. Formal studies reveal that people can even increase their working-memory span and in the process increase IQ. Other studies show that students preparing for exams erroneously believe that their performance on the test will not be improved by further study beyond what they think is the best they can do. Also, students know less than they think they know and therefore stop studying for an exam too soon.

Underperforming students have an understandable lack of faith in their academic ability. They don’t try to succeed, because past efforts have failed. They come to believe they are stupid, with mediocrity as their destiny. There is a psychological term for this: learned helplessness.

Teachers need convincing that the more students know, the more they can know. Teacher Matthews makes the point, “Even if facts don’t by themselves lead to understanding, you can’t have understanding without facts.”

Educational fads come and go, yet nothing seems to do much good. Why not try what used to work in education: old fashioned memorization? By the way, the best memorization techniques require learners to think.

B vitamins and Brain Shrinkage

2011-03-21T10:45:00.000-05:00

Did you realize that after age 70, the average person’s brain shrinks more than 1% a year? At this rate, serious mental deterioration can become evident by age 80. Scientists have few clues about why this shrinkage occurs, nor why it is less in some Seniors than in others.

One of the few leads involve B vitamins. Certain B vitamins can reduce brain shrinkage and memory loss in people over 70, according to a randomized, double-blind clinical trial study in Britain of the effect of the B vitamins folic acid, B6 and B12.

All 168 volunteer participants were over age 70 and all had mild memory problems. Half of the subjects received daily a placebo, and the other half got a tablet containing 0.8 mg folic acid, 20 mg pyridoxine HCl (B6), and 0.5 mg cyanocobalamin (B12).

Brain shrinkage was measured by MRI scans. The mean rate of brain atrophy per year was 0.76% in the active treatment group and 1.08% in the control subjects who took placebo pills

The investigators also measured mental function, and the highest test scores occurred in the subjects that had the least brain shrinkage.

The mechanism of the beneficial effect is not known, but these vitamins are known to reduce blood levels of homocysteine, which has been correlated with the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. Of course, that is not proof that homocysteine causes the disease or that these vitamins will help prevent it. Homocysteine is an amino acid, but is not found in food. It is a metabolite of the amino acid, methionine, which does occur in food. We do know that deficiency of folic acid, B6, an B12 causes increase in homocysteine, so it is possible that older people are deficient in these vitamins. But while we await further research, it seems prudent for Seniors to take these B vitamins daily.

Source:

Smith, A. D. et al. 2010. Homocysteine-lowering by B vitamins slows the rate of accelerated brain atrophy in mild cognitive impairment: a randomized controlled trial. PLoSOne. 5(9): e12244. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0012244.

How Sleep Helps Memory

2011-02-22T14:33:00.000-06:00

There is no longer any doubt. Sleep does improve the gelling or consolidation of memory for recently encoded information. Research is now focusing on how this happens and what other factors interact with the sleep effect. At least two processes seem to be at work: 1) sleep protects new memories from disruption by the interfering experiences that are inevitable during wakefulness, and 2) sleep consolidates memories according to their relative importance and the learner’s expectations for remembering.

A good illustration of reducing interference comes from a study of napping at the University of Lübeck in Germany. The researchers knew about the extensive evidence that in wakefulness, new situations and stimuli can readily prevent new memories from consolidating. This is even true when learned material is recalled, because at that point the memory has to be reconsolidated and is therefore again vulnerable. The authors assumed that similar interference with memory formation could occur even after a sleep interlude.

To test the idea, they asked 24 volunteers to memorize the two-dimensional location of 15 pairs of cards with pictures of animals and everyday objects. During the study time, they were also exposed continuously to a slightly unpleasant odor, which was intended to be an associational cue.

Forty minutes later, the volunteers were asked to learn a second, slightly different set of card pairs. This second task was to act as an interfering disruptor of the initial learning. The difference is that after the first memorization session, half of the group stayed awake and the other half took a nap. For 20 minutes during the break after the first study session, the odor cue was presented with the intent of helping to reactivate the memory of the first session. The awake group got the odor cue for 20 minutes just before starting the second learning session, while the sleep group got the odor cue during the last 20 minutes of the nap (dreaming did not occur, because it normally requires more than 40 minutes of sleep to start appearing).

When both groups were tested for recall of the first set of cards, the sleep group remembered much better (85% correct versus 60% for the awake group). The explanation begins with the knowledge that when temporary memories (as for the first card set) are recalled, they are vulnerable to being destroyed by new mental activity (as with the second card set). In this study, memory was reactivated in both wakefulness and sleep by the odor cue. Yet, the memorization processes that apparently persisted during sleep made the original memories more resistant to disruption. By the time of the second interfering task some 40 minutes later, much of the initial learning had gelled during sleep, but less so during wakefulness.

These authors also performed brain imaging that showed that the nap group had mostly completed a shift in activity from the temporary processing area (in the hippocampus) to storage areas in the cortex. This was not true for the awake group. You might say that sleep enabled the information to be “uploaded from RAM to the hard drive” better than in the constant awake condition. Of course this computer metaphor breaks down in other respects. Biological memory is dynamic, readily degraded over time or changed by new experience. Also, recall of biological memory launches a reconstructive process whereby the memory can be reinforced or drastically altered.

The practical application, as I see it, is to take a short nap as soon as possible after trying to memorize something really important. For example, during a study session for a school exam, take a nap right away so that it has a better chance to consolidate than if you stayed awake and got exposed to many new interfering situations and stimuli.

Two new studies shed some light on prioritization of memory formation during sleep. We all have had the experience of improved memory if we know others expect us to remember. I guess such improvement occurs because we work harder at it, using more intensive rehearsal and perhaps using deliberate association strategies..But we now find out from a recent study that the sleep effect on improving memory formation benefits from the relevance of the learned information. Since sleep usually occurs significantly later than the learning and original encoding, this effect must arise from the consolidation process during sleep.

A recent study from this same German research lab has revealed that sleep helps memory formation the most if you know you will need the information later. That is, it seems that the brain prioritizes its consolidation operations during sleep to favor consolidation of information that is most important. The study tested 193 volunteers for recall of a variety of memory tasks. Some subjects were exposed to the learning material early in the day, when there would be no sleep involved. The others were exposed to the same material late, just before the night’s sleep. When subjects were told they would be tested later, they were more likely to remember if they had slept immediately after the learning. This was true for both procedural tasks (like finger-tapping sequences) or declarative tasks such as word matching or stating card-pair locations. Moreover, subjects who were told they would be tested later spent more total time in the deepest stage of Sleep (Stage IV) than did comparable subjects who were not told they would be tested later. Presumably, the brain is using Stage IV to accomplish this differential consolidation process.

In a recent study from a French group, the study focus was on sleep’s apparent ability to prioritize memory formation based on prior instructions to remember or forget items in a learning task. In the learning task, volunteers were shown 100 French words, one at a time. Fifty of these had accompanying instruction “to be remembered” and the other 50 “to be forgotten,” presented in a pseudorandom sequence that prevented more than three words of the same type being presented consecutively. After the training session, subjects were divided into two groups, one which was sent home to continue their normal activities and to sleep on their usual schedule for the next three nights. The other group was denied the first night’s sleep after training, where they stayed up all that night watching movies or playing games. Otherwise, this group was treated the same. On the fourth day, both groups were tested for recall with presentation the 100 of the original words and 100 new ones to serve as distracters. The task was to identify which words were in the original list.

Questionnaires revealed any strategies the subjects used in trying to remember “to be remembered” words and trying to ignore “to be forgotten” words. No subject intensively rehearsed the original items during the three-day interval, but of course casual rehearsal was going on. Generally, subjects made associations of “to be remembered” words with memories of personal events or with short stories or sentences. Mental images were much less used. Of course, no such rehearsals occurred with “to be forgotten” words.

Upon testing, both groups had about the same degree of correct recall for “to be remembered” words. But the sleep-deprived groups remembered more of the words they were not supposed “to be forgotten.” Thus, it would seem that during sleep, the brain preserved its ability to remember words that were expected to be remembered and discriminated against remembering words that were unimportant. Recall that the instructions to remember or forget were given at the time of initial encoding. Thus, the brain must have preserved these instructions and followed them in the consolidation process during sleep. Though the authors did not mention it, the poor ability of sleep-deprived subjects to discriminate between the two categories of words could have arisen because being awake for a whole day after learning interfered with remembering and following instructions at the time of encoding.

Don’t forget, if you have students in your life, have them check out my new eBook, “Better Grades, Less Effort.”

Sources:

Diekelmann, S., Büchel, Born, J., and Rasch, Björn. 2011. Labile or stable: opposing consequences for memory when reactivated during wakefulness and sleep. Nature Neuroscience. Jan. 23. doi: 10.1038/nn.2744

Rauchs, G. et al. 2011. Sleep contributes to the strengthening of some memories over others, depending on hippocampal activity at learning. J. Neuroscience. 31 (7): 2563-2568.

Wilhelm, I. et al. 2011. Sleep selectively enhances memory expected to be of future relevance. J. Neuroscience. 31 (5): 1563-1569.

Memory Image-mapping Technique for One-try Learning

2011-02-03T09:59:00.000-06:00

Are you as smart as a rat? A rat can learn a lot of things with just the first attempt. For example, in the old days, exterminators used to use poisons such as strychnine. What they discovered was that some rats who ate the bait were never killed. If they survived the seizures of the first exposure, they learned not to eat that particular bait again. It’s called “bait shyness.” As a result, exterminators now use a different poison, Warfarin, that does not kill right away. The rat slowly bleeds to death over many days and does not realize any connection between eating that bait and getting sick. The explanation for the difference is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. One-try learning by rats being fed poison. In the top example, using strychnine, the rat gets sick soon after eating the bait. If it survives, it remembers an association between eating that particular kind of food and getting very sick, and it won’t eat the poison ever again. If, however, it takes a while to become sick, as with the anti-coagulant Warfarin, the rat is unable to make a connection between being sick and eating the bait. So, it keeps eating the bait every time it gets hungry.

Similar one-try learning has been demonstrated in two common types of experiments. In one type, the test apparatus is a large box, the floor of which is an electrified grid. In the middle of the floor, there is a safe-island platform that is not electrified. When an untrained rat is placed on this platform, it immediately runs to the walls, because rats feel vulnerable out in open spaces. But of course, the rat gets a learning experience of having its feet shocked. If you take the rat out, put it back in the home cage and re-test it the next day, the rat stays on the safe platform. Despite its natural inclination, it stays on the platform because it learned —in just one try —not to step off that platform.

Another example is a water maze. Put a rat or mouse in a tub of water and it swims desperately about hoping to find some escape. If there is a platform at one end it can climb up on, the rat, once it sees it, swims immediately to the platform and climbs up on it. If there is some kind of indicator of where the platform is, such as a light above it, and you fill the tub with a milky liquid where the platform cannot be seen, an untrained rat swims around until it accidentally finds the platform. Take the rat out, put it in the home cage, and re-test the next day, and the rat swims immediately to where the light and the safe platform is. Learning has occurred in just one try.

In all such learning situations there is one huge caveat. That deals with what happens immediately after the one-try learning. If some new learning situation occurs at that time, the learning will be disrupted and not formed into a lasting memory. For example, the memory will not form if in the foot shock or swim maze case immediately after the learning the investigator puts the rat in another learning situation or even just some distracting situation, such as putting the rat into a cage with strange rats rather than returning it to the home cage. Re-testing the next day will indicate that the rat never learned. Actually, it just forgot, because new stimuli immediately after learning interfere with forming a lasting memory.

This is the most common explanation of failure for humans to remember new learned events. After all learning events, a certain amount of uninterrupted time is needed to “consolidate” the short-term memory into a more lasting one.

Now consider how the rats might learn these things in one try. They have no language. The must surely rely on what they see. That is they must be making an association with something they see out in space: a certain kind of food that made them sick, a grid of bars that shocked their feet, a light cue showing where a safe platform was located. So, objects and where they are in space are powerful memory aids.

Memory gimmicks often use some kind of mapping technique, such as associating what you want to remember with location of objects in a room. I have discussed these in my book, Thank You Brain for All You Remember. Now I have a new and better image-mapping technique for one-try learning. I include it free in a revision of my e-book for students, Better Grades, Less Effort. The technique can be applied to most anything, is easy to use, and the maps are adjustable for any number of objects or ideas to be remembered. Moreover, sequential ordering is built-in. You can get the ebook for only $2.49 in all formats from Smashwords.com (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/24623).

Attention Deficit Returns As You Get Older

2011-01-01T11:15:00.000-06:00

"PAY ATTENTION!" is a phrase teachers have to repeat again and again to youngsters. Whether or not attention deficit is of clinical magnitude, most kids have to learn how to pay attention. What you may not know is that this problem returns for most people as they become Senior Citizens.

Does any of this sound familiar: “Where did I put those keys?” “What was it I wanted when I opened the frig door?” "What was that phone number I just looked up?” These memory problems happen because you get distracted and lose attention.

A brain-scan study at the University of Toronto found that older people, compared to young adults, have decreased brain activity in brain areas that enable concentration This means that older brains can’t focus well, because the parts of the brain that enable concentration don’t get active enough.

To compound the problem, older people show increased activity in parts of the brain that don’t normally get activated during memory tasks in younger people. The explanation for this is that the brains of older people need to assign the attentiveness and memory work to more parts of brain. That is, they have to recruit more circuitry to do the same job young brains can do with fewer brain resources. However, you look at it, the findings document an age-related decline in the brain's ability to focus its neural resources on memory tasks. What may be most worrisome is that the brain shows such signs of decline around age 40.

Another study at the University of Illinois examined age-related increase in distractibility. Researchers recorded brain electrical responses in young adults and old subjects (65-78) who were listening to distracting bursts of sound. In young people, brain responses to repeated, irrelevant tones were quickly suppressed but responses to distracting sound were more persistent in older adults.
Yet another study, this one from the U. California at San Francisco, confirmed that older people tend to have difficulty in ignoring distractions and irrelevant stimuli. Subjects performed a memory task of ignoring a previous stimulus that was still in working memory. In other words, the subject had to suppress the memory of irrelevant stimuli. The results showed that older individuals could focus on pertinent information but had difficulty in ignoring irrelevant or distracting information that was contained in working memory. However, about half of the older adults did not have this problem. So let us not come away with the conclusion that memory deficits in the elderly are inevitable.

Enough already! What you would really like to know is what to do about attention deficit if you have it.

One general approach is to keep your brain working hard as you age. Good examples include chess or learning a new language or a musical instrument. Think of it like exercise for the brain, which strengthens the neural circuits in those parts of the brain that have to do the memory work and distinguish irrelevant from relevant information.

Another general strategy is to reduce the distractions in our life, at least distractions that are present when we are trying to remember something. Multi-tasking is hard enough to do when you are young. On those occasions when I forget why I opened the refrigerator door, it is always because I let myself get distracted between the time I decided what I wanted and the time when I opened the door.

Focus, focus, focus. We older people need to work at paying attention. Here are some tips on how to do that:

· Assign importance to paying attention and remembering. If you don’t think something is important, your brain won’t commit enough circuitry to handle the information.

· Expect and demand of yourself successful remembering. Make forgetting unacceptable.

· Work with small chunks of information at any one time. By lowering the memory load, the brain’s limited resources can deal with it more effectively.

· Be interested in what you are trying to remember. Don’t let it be boring. Boring is a state of mind that you can do something about.

· Get engaged with the information. Ask yourself or others questions about it. Think about it in different ways.

· Try to stay rested, alert, and sharp. Nobody focuses well when they are tired.

To summarize, the best way to pay attention is through force of will. To remember, you have to want to remember and accordingly force yourself to pay attention.

Here is a note you might want to know about if you have children or grandchildren in school. I just published an e-book, Better Grades. Less Effort. It is priced so all kids can afford it. There are now three reviews, and all vigorously endorse the book. See my Web, thankyoubrain.com for the reviews and more information.

Nice review of "Better Grades. Less Effort."

2010-11-28T12:27:00.000-06:00

I just saw a nice review was just posted at the Barnes and Noble site.

Bill

Learning In School. The "Problem with No-child Left Behind"

2010-11-26T14:18:00.000-06:00

I see two main problems, one with the philosophy and one with the means of learning assessment.

As for philosophy, it sounds good, but like many social engineering efforts by the government, there are major unintended consequences that are too destructive. In this case, leaving no child behind has the effect of "no child pushed forward." In order to save kids who don't care about learning or whose parents don't care, we manipulate the whole system so that kids who are conscientious and who have talent are neglected. These kids don't pull down the schools' average scores on high-stakes testing, so they are left mostly to fend for themselves. The emphasis, which borders on compulsive, is on bringing up the bottom, so the school and teachers won't look so bad.

Worse yet is the unavoidable tendency to teach to the state standards and the test that is based on them. This not only engenders a "drill and kill" negative attitude among students, but many teachers just leave out most other enriching instruction that is not likely to get tested. For years, all of science was largely ignored in my state of Texas, because the high-stakes testing was restricted to English and math.

Also, the state standards are not infallible. In Texas, I know many educators who think the standards lack adequate rationale and coherence, especially across grade levels. States develop their standards by putting together a committee to write them. Such committees can be very opinionated, driven as much by ideology as by logic.

Then there is the assessment process of high-stakes testing. The President of the U.S. National Academy of Education, Professor Lorrie Shepard, recently argued that scores on these tests can be increased without any corresponding increase in learning or skills. This has been verified by use of other independent measures of the same content.

There is also the assumed necessity of using multiple-choice testing because so many schools and kids are involved. As an expert on memory, I can assure you that multiple-choice tests are the least reliable way to assess knowledge and understanding. More complex indicators of learning are needed, and this is recognized by the new, but very limited new program of "Race to the Top."

Shepard says if you really want to know whether education is being improved, especially in math and science, you have to evaluate such things as solving non-routine problems, to assess the reliability and meaning of evidence, apply knowledge in different contexts, and to communicate their learning effectively, both orally and in writing, In general, our schools don't do that.

Good teachers know how to assess learning without multiple-choice testing. They know how to structure student work requirements so that meaningful assessment is possible. In the old days, that is what teachers were expected to do. Today, they are expected to make sure the class scores high-enough on the state tests. A better approach, I submit, is to require students to create portfolios that reflect their ability to solve non-routine problems, evaluate evidence, and to apply and communicate their understanding. Then, these portfolios could be reviewed anonymously by an outside group, perhaps by educators in other schools, who in turn subject in reciprocal manner the portfolios of their own students to similar review.

Source:
Shepard, L. A. 2010. Next-generation assessments. Science. 330: 890.

Neuroscience research working for you

2010-11-18T10:48:00.002-06:00

I just attended the 40th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego. There were over 31,000 scientists there, about 20,000 of whom presented research findings.Attendees come from all over the world. I an a Charter member of the Society and attended the first and most of the other annual meetings. It is hard for "outsiders" to appreciate just how much has changed in brain research over that time. The first meeting had less than 1,000 attendees. Now the meeting is so big that only a handful of U.S. cities can host such a large meeting.

There were many papers on memory presented. Most, however, were focused on how the brain achieves memory, and a lot of that has no immediate practical application for everyday life. I keep an eye out for such papers and report them in this blog when I find it.

One paper confirmed what I already knew about teaching "old dogs new tricks." It showed that learning of a series of items was impaired in Seniors compared to younger people, but the deficiency was overcome if the experimenters just increased the interval between presentation of items. In other words, you CAN teach old dogs new tricks, it just takes longer.

I was really excited to see that I am on the right track on my new book, due out from Springer next Spring. The book is titled "Atoms of Mind. The 'Ghost in the Machine' Materializes." A few scientists are starting to do the kind of research I advocate in the book for the study of consciousness. While at the meeting, I got a new idea nobody has considered yet. I'll tell people about it in the book, which I am mailing off to the publisher in a week or so..

I presented a paper on why people dream. A commonly accepted idea is that we dream to consolidate memories of the preceding day's events It is true that memory consolidation does occur in sleep, both dream and non-dream sleep. But that is not the CAUSE of either dreaming or non-dreaming sleep. It is the consequence.

The simple answer is that we dream because the brain becomes activated in what is called REM sleep. Activated brains want to think, and thinking during sleep is expressed as dreams. So the real question I addressed is why do we have REM sleep. It's a long story, but the short answer is that REM helps to re-boot a sleeping brain so that we can become awake and conscious again. My presentation was well received. I had 50 copies of handouts, and they were scarfed up in the first 30 minutes of my poster session. Lots of people left their e-mail address so I could mail them copies of the poster. Over 100 people came by the poster. And they weren't window shopping. They stayed, read it all, and discussed it with me during the time when I was attending the poster. Nobody could punch any holes in the theory. I think I have the best explanation anybody has every presented.

It has been a stimulating four days. I will need some time to unwind.

B Vitamins, Brain Shrinkage, and Memory

2010-11-11T11:50:00.002-06:00

I have discussed nutritional effects on memory and warned readers that many claims are just so much undocumented hype. Here is a study, apparently very well done by a group at Oxford University, that shows supplementing diet with B vitamins can help prevent mental decline in the elderly.

As people age, the brain tends to atrophy, even in healthy people, and this of course can contribute to mental decline and senility. A risk factor for brain atrophy in the elderly is homocysteine, an amino acid best known as being a risk factor for coronary heart disease, stroke and peripheral vascular disease. B vitamins (folic acid, B6 and B12) reduce the blood level of homocysteine. In the Oxford study, 271 people over 70 years old with mild cognitive impairment were given a mixture of the B vitamins daily for two years. Brain size changes were monitored with brain scans.

During the test period, brains shrunk 1.08% in the non-supplemented controls and 0.76% in those that got the B vitamins. There were correlated changes in blood homocysteine levels and performance on mental tests. Daily doses used were folic acid: 0.8 mg; B6: 20 mg; and B12: 0.5 mg.(I just checked my own brand-name one-a-day multi-vitamin pills, and they have a lot less of B6 and B12.)

If brains shrink at this rate (actually shrinkage probably accelerates over time), the difference by age 90, for example, would be substantial. Shrinkage would be even greater if there were other factors such as large alcohol consumption or Alzheimer's disease. One could also expect B vitamins to provide some benefit for the cardiovascular system, though this was not evaluated in this study.

Source:

Smith, A. D. et al. 2010. Homocystein-lowering by B vitamins slows the rate of accelerated brain atrophy in mild cognitive impairment: a randomized controlled trial. PLoS ONE. doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012244

Better Grades. Less Effort

2010-09-25T13:00:00.000-05:00

What can be more important to a student than to have good memory skills? The same is true for working professionals in information-dense specialties (like law, medicine, science, engineering, etc.). Memory ability helps workers master their field and become more competent -- and more likely to be successful.

I have just released a short new e-book, Better Grades, Less Effort. The book explains the memory tips and tricks I used to become valedictorian, an Honors student in three universities (including graduating with a D.V.M. degree), and to secure a PhD in two-and-a-half years. I also share what I have learned about student learning over 47 years as a professor.

The ideas in the book are directed to students in high school or college. Parents are urged to explain these ideas to their elementary-school children. My experience with students leads me to conclude that poor memory is what holds most students back from superior achievement. I claim that the ideas in this book can change a student’s future, as indeed has been validated in my own life.

The other thing I have learned as a Professor is that most students think they know more about how to learn than they really do. In elementary and secondary schools, the emphasis of teaching is on WHAT to learn, not HOW to learn. By the time students get to college, professors mistakenly assume they already know how to learn.

My relevant experience also includes being a researcher and teacher of neuroscience, an interdisciplinary field focused on how the brain works, including how it learns and remembers. I have actually conducted memory research, on lab rats and college sophomores. The principles are the same. Sometimes, the rats do better than the people. Unlike lab rats, which are really pretty good at learning and remembering, humans have a huge repertoire of behaviors and experiences that interfere with remembering. Many of the tips explain what I mean.

Better Grades explores 20 core ideas about improving memory in a few pages for each idea. The book’s structure is itself an example of some core ideas. For example, ideas are grouped according to common category: Attitudes and Approach, Classroom and Study Environment, Memory Principles and Processes, plus a General Tips section with three ideas that don’t fit into the above categories. At the end of each group, there is a “tying it all together” section that uses mental-image mnemonics to help readers remember what they just read in the preceding section. At the end of the book, a similar approach helps the reader remember the whole book.

I claim that If readers do what this book says, they will be able to memorize:

all the key ideas of this book,
any list up to 100 items,
dates and numbers,
the essence of what is on every page — by page number — of any short book,
a class presentation or speech without notes,

plus, as promised, they will get better grades with less effort.

The book is priced at $2.49 so that every student can afford it. My whole point in creating the book is to help as many people as possible. Access to information and a free chapter can be found at http://thankyoubrain.com. All e-reader formats are supported, including pdf for reading on computers.

Top 100 learnng web sites

2010-09-14T13:02:00.000-05:00

My blog has just be listed on a "Top 100 Education Advice" sites web page . Among the other 99 site links you will find many useful sites.

New Treatments for Post-traumatic Stress

2010-09-13T09:21:00.000-05:00

A new therapeutic approach is in sight for treatment of traumatic memories, including memories that cause PTSD. Two lines of memory research have converged to produce a treatment, and sometimes even a cure, for the most serious need to forget, PTSD. This may not be generally known or accepted, but at least two research groups have shown there is a blood pressure drug, propranolol, that helps us to forget overwhelmingly stressful memories and thus reduces the stress that goes with those memories. The latest treatment being investigated by some researchers is based on using a common blood pressure drug, propranolol, which has a side effect of blocking the re-consolidation of emotions associated with old memories when those memories are recalled.

One reason it is possible to forget or at least edit memories is that when even well-formed memories are recalled, they are put back on the scratch pad of working memory where they are accessible to “editing” and re-consolidation. As I explained in a previous blog column, each time a memory is retrieved, it can get changed and re-stored in a different way.

While memories reside on the scratch pad of working memory, either for the first time or during any recall episode, they can be changed by drugs. Also relevant here is that memory consolidation is greatly influenced by the impact of the experience, which is magnified by strong emotion and the hormones such emotions release. During re-consolidation, under conditions of proper talk therapy, the emotional impact need not duplicate the original and a more benign version will be stored in memory.

The rationale for testing propranolol was developed in the seminal work by Roger Pitman and colleagues. They noted earlier studies showing that adrenalin (epinephrine), either injected or released naturally under stressful conditions, strengthens memory formation and fear conditioning. Adrenalin helps you to remember the bad event and hopefully you can avoid facing that threat again by being alert and prudent. Adrenaline acts on a class of molecular receptors called beta-adrenergic receptors. Certain drugs, among them propranolol, block beta receptors and thus might theoretically disrupt fear-induced memories. Several groups have confirmed that propranolol does impair fear-conditioned memory in both animals and humans.

Pitman’s group sought to extend this notion to PTSD in a pilot study of 41 patients. They conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled study in which a single 40 mg oral dose of propranolol was given as soon as possible (within 6 hours) after a traumatic event experienced by patients who had been rushed to a hospital emergency room. Patients then continued the medication four times a day for 10 days followed by a 9 days when the dose was progressively reduced to zero.

One and three months later, patients returned for psychological testing aimed at measuring PTSD. At one month post trauma, the number of patients with PTSD in the propranolol group was almost half that of placebo controls. Not tested was the possibility that a larger dose, especially if given early or prior to the unpleasant experience, might be even more effective, since there probably is a narrow window of opportunity for the drug to be beneficial in impairing the consolidation of bad memories.

A similar result was obtained in a later study by Guillaume Vaiva and colleagues. Their hospital emergency room patients were given propranolol or a placebo 2-20 hours after experiencing an auto accident or physical assault. The patients tested were also selected for having abnormally fast heart rates, because propranolol is a common therapeutic for that condition. Propranolol was given in a dose of 40 mg three times daily for seven days, followed by gradual reduction to zero over 8-12 days.

Under the common situation where emotional trauma has already been consolidated, the obvious treatment approach for PTSD might be to have patients recall the traumatic event later while under the influence of propranolol. The idea is that during recall, the memory and its associated emotion have to be reconsolidated, and this is disrupted by the drug. Indeed, this idea is being hailed in some quarters as a possible major breakthrough in treatment of PTSD. Many positive results are being reported by physicians, and the Army is considering using this approach for combat-related PTSD. The National Institute of Mental Health is now recruiting patients for a Phase IV Clinical trial.

One obvious conclusion is that propranol might be a good PTSD preventive drug if given before an anticipated traumatic event. For example, I wonder if D.O.D. psychiatrists have thought about giving propranolol to combat troops just before they engage in battle.

Another issue that nobody seems to consider is the possibility that people on this kind of blood pressure medication might be suffering impairments of emotional memories that they don't want to lose. Does this drug cause a general dulling of emotions? Could it magnify the failing memories of the elderly?

Copyright 2010, W. R. Klemm. Dr. Bill Klemm is a Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University. Visit his book site and blog at ThankYouBrain.com for more help on improving memory.

Zombies Learn Too, But Not Well

2010-09-07T15:22:00.000-05:00

I recently had a scholarly paper on free-will research published in a cognitive psychology journal. This experience has caused me to think about the role of free-will in learning and memory. Though it might seem like a stretch, how one approaches learning affects how well it is done. If you learn subconsciously, as in being conditioned like Pavlov's dogs or trained seals, the learning is primitive and limited because it is hidden from consciousness. I call this zombie learning (anybody who has lectured to students has seen this happening throughout the room). On the other hand, when one consciously and freely wills to learn, he becomes engaged as an active learner. Such learning, being mediated in the consciousness, is available for refinement, expansion, application, and integration into other learning, past and future.
   Let me explain the point of reference. Ever drive a route so familiar you don’t remember getting there? It is as if your brain was on autopilot. Many scientists think this zombie-like behavior is the norm. They say that even when we are aware of having done something, it was willed subconsciously, and we only became consciously aware after the fact. This has led to a common notion among scholars that free will is an illusion. At least that is the argument promoted long ago by scholars like Darwin, Huxley, and Einstein. Many modern scientists also hold that position and have even performed experiments they say prove it.
   These experiments supposedly show that the brain makes a subconscious decision before it is realized consciously. Well, I am not intimidated by science’s giants, past or present. In a paper in the current issue of Advances in Cognitive Psychology (Vol. 6, page 47-65), I challenge a whole series of experiments performed since the 1980s purported to show that intentions, choices, and decisions are made subconsciously, with conscious mind being informed after the fact.
   But these experiments do not test what they are intended to test and are misinterpreted to support the view of illusory free will. In the typical experiment, a subject is asked to voluntarily press a button at any time and notice the position of a clock marker when they think they first willed the movement. At the same time, brain activity is monitored over the part of the brain that controls the mechanics of the movement. The startling observation typically is that subjects show brain activity changes before they say they intended to make the movement. In other words the brain issued the command before the conscious mind had a chance to decide to move. All this happens in less than a second, but various scientists have interpreted this to mean that the subconscious mind made the decision to move and the conscious mind only realized the decision later.

My criticisms focus on three main points: 1) timing of when a free-will event occurred requires introspection, and other research shows that introspective estimates of event timing are not accurate, 2) simple finger movements may be performed without much conscious thought and certainly not representative of the conscious decisions and choices required in high-speed conversation or situations where the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do, and 3) the brain activity measures have been primitive and incomplete.

I identify 12 categories of what I regard as flawed thinking about free will. Some of the more obvious issues that many scientists have glossed over include:

Decisions are not often instantaneous (certainly not on a scale of a fraction of a second).
Conscious realization that a decision has been made is delayed from the actual decision, and these may be two distinct processes.
Decision making is not the only mental process going on in such tasks.
Some willed action, as when first learning to play a musical instrument or touch type must be freely willed because the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
Free-will experiments have relied too much on awareness of actions and time estimation of accuracy.
Extrapolating from such simple experiments to all mental life is not justified.
Conflicting data and interpretations have been ignored.

In the real world, subconscious and conscious minds interact and share duties. Subconscious mind governs simple or well-learned tasks, like habits or ingrained prejudices, while conscious mind deals with tasks that are complex or novel, like first learning to ride a bike or play sheet music.

We do act like zombies driven by our subconscious when we act out of habit, prejudice, or prior conditioning. But we should and can be responsible for what we make of our brains and for the choices in life we make. In a free-will world, people can choose to extricate themselves from many kinds of misfortune — not to mention make the right choices that can prevent misfortune.

An earlier book of mine on personal responsibility, Blame Game, How To Win It (http://blamegame.us) provided the inspiration to explore why people are not more responsible. It is not that we lack the capacity for free will. Rather, we fail to exercise it.

Relating these ideas to learning, we should strive to become active learners, consciously thinking about what we are learning, not trying to memorize it by rote. Rote memory doesn't work very well anyway, and it puts us in a zombie mode that prevents us from full understanding and capability to use the learned material.

Traumatic Memories, Part 1

2010-08-19T11:13:00.000-05:00

Most of the time, most of us wish we could remember things better. But some of the time all of us have things we wish we could forget. Traumas, emotional upset, grief — all can be more than we can wish to bear.
     When anxiety becomes too intense and persistent, the level of stress becomes de-bilitating. There are many negative effects on the adrenal gland and its production of hormones that are designed to cope with stress. Beyond that, the brain is also affected. These effects are the hallmark of what is commonly called “Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome” (PTSD), which seems to be a common and growing problem with American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. While older people are in the wrong age bracket to have this problem, they are very likely to know about PTSD in soldiers and may even have children or grandchildren who have PTSD.
     You don't have to be a combat soldier to develop anxiety disorders such as PTSD. Everyone has probably had some kind of traumatic experience that caused a serious emotional trauma. Such experiences are always associated with a host of cues, many subconscious, that are part of the original learned traumatic experience. The learned association may be remembered at some unconscious level long after the conscious memory is lost.
      Sensory cues, even if not recognized consciously, can trigger recall of disturbing memories or even just the negative emotions that went with the original bad event. Sometimes this is the basis for so-called “anxiety attacks,” which seem to come out of nowhere.
      Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health problems and are often treated with so-called extinction therapies. That is, therapy is geared toward unlearning (extinguishing) our fears by deliberately re-living the disturbing event under safe conditions and thereby learning we can cope.
Modern psychotherapy for phobias, anxiety, and PTSD often involves recalling the original bad event under reassuring conditions. But this has to be done with conscious re-assessment and realization that the original negative emotions and fear are no longer applicable because the re-living is a simulation in a safe environment. One creates a new learning substitute for the original emotional trauma.
      The re-living must include dealing with the negative emotions in the light of reason and new emotional experience. Therapy requires critical thinking about thoughts and feelings, especially those that are unhelpful and unrealistic. The patient is gently led to face memories anew and to learn new ways of thinking and behaving. This re-creation of the bad event allows us to extinguish memory of the original bad situation and its negative emotions.
      I recently got an up-date in this area of research at a seminar by Gregory Quick from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Puerto Rico. As Pavlov showed, memory extinction is a basic phenomenon even in simple animals. If you repeatedly ring a bell and then stress a rat, it soon learns to become distressed the next time it hears that bell, even after you stop the stress. In the lab, this is manifested by the rat showing freeze behavior. But, if you repeat the bell enough times without the stress, the conditioned response (CR) (freeze behavior) eventually becomes extinguished.
     At first, scientists thought that extinction erases the memory of the CR. But extinction really creates a new memory that competes with memory of the original CR. Both memories co-exist. Over time the extinction memory may be lost, and the CR can return. The implication is that, just as ordinary learning needs rehearsal, so does extinction learning.
     Therapy for emotional trauma and PTSD might be more effective if therapy were approached like a conventional learning experience whose memory is affected in all the usual ways. Recall what was said about extinction being a case of new learning. Re-learning of an extinguished response occurs much more readily than it does for an initial extinction learning. This is an example of priming. It’s like re-learning a foreign language. It goes easier the second time and the memory might be even more dependable.
      Since memory of an emotional CR learning experience and its extinction can co-exist, these two memories compete for which one is strong enough to survive long-term. Sadly, the CR memory is often stronger. Cues are extremely important to both forming and retrieving all kinds of memory. It seems likely there are many more explicit cues for CR memories than for extinction memories. Therapy should be aimed at enriching the number and variety of cues associated with extinction learning. Rehearsal is likewise important. So far, nobody seems to have given that much thought.
     There is another aspect to emotional learning: learning to learn. If you have multiple anxieties, they may generalize and "spread" to facilitate learning new anxieties. The corollary would be that learning how to promote extinction could also generalize and thus increasing the general ability to cope with emotional trauma. Obviously, for one's brain to learn how to do that, one would need to begin with a single relatively easy extinction learning task.

     Dr. Bill Klemm is a Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University. Visit his book site and blog at ThankYouBrain.com for more help on improving learning and memory. Copyright 2010, W. R. Klemm

Music Training Helps Learning & Memory

2010-07-31T12:21:00.000-05:00

Music training is good for the brain. Nina Kraus, a prominent brain researcher at Northwestern University, says that "music training leads to changes throughout the auditory system that prime musicians for listening challenges beyond music processing." The research in her laboratory and that from other labs suggests music training does for brain what exercise does for body fitness. She says "music is a resource that tones the brain for auditory fitness."

Musicians are commonly studied models for neural plasticity, which refers to the ability of learning experiences to change the brain chemically and physically. Musicians have more brain grey matter volume in areas that are important for playing an instrument and in the auditory cortex, which processes all kinds of sound. Of course, the effects of music training are most robust for processing of music. But benefit transfers to speech, language, emotion, and general auditory processing.

In general, auditory learning requires formation of efficient sound-to-meaning relation-ships, which in turn require attending to sensory details (fine-grained properties of sound such as pitch, timing and timbre), but also thinking skills related to integrating sensory input and operating on it in working memory.

Music training confers ability to assess the relevance and predictability of information-bearing elements in an auditory signal. So, even in non-musical contexts, such as listen-ing to a speech, lecture, or sound track in a movie for example, musicians should learn and remember more of the content than non-musicians. Musicians also have an advan-tage when it comes to learning the sounds of a new language.

Music training imposes a high working-memory load. That can be a good thing, in that it helps you expand your working memory capacity, and thus reduces the impairing effects on memory of working memory overload. Increasing working memory capacity also improves the ability to think, as manifest in IQ scores. Since musicians usually have greater working memory capacity, it doesn’t mean they are smarter than anybody else. But it probably does mean they are smarter than they would be if they were not musicians.

Music training also helps improve certain memory capabilities outside of music. For example, musicians show improvements in auditory verbal memory and auditory attention, but not in visual memory or visual attention. This brings up the matter of learning styles: auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learning. Most people are visual learners, but to the best possible learners they need to develop all three styles. Music training should help their auditory learning style, especially under conditions where the sounds to be learned are embedded in conflicting sound stimuli, such as noisy rooms or learning a new language.

All fine and good, but how does this apply to the masses who are not musicians? Would listening to a lot of music help the brain? I doubt it, for listening does not make rigorous task demands on the brain. Would music training for non-musicians help the brain? Maybe, especially if the training occurred at a young age when the brain is ma-turing.

One study of children showed that fifteen months of intense music training induced structural changes in the primary auditory and primary motor areas. These structural changes were associated with improved auditory and motor skills, respectively. Other studies show children who are musically trained, compared with non-trained children, have a better vocabulary in their native language and a greater reading ability. Pre-sumably, they would be better at learning other languages.

When and how much music training should be provided to children? Formal studies suggest that greatest benefit occurs if training begins before age 7. The benefits also cor-relate with the amount of music practice. However, much remains to be learned about effects of age and duration and nature of the music training.

Nina argues for more and better music education in the early grades of schools. She be-lieves music training may benefit academic achievement by improving learning skills and listening ability, especially in challenging listening environments, which are all too common in classrooms which are usually very noisy, despite research proving that classroom noise impairs learning. Noise not only creates problems of discerning salient sounds embedded in the over-all noise, but also creates a major distraction that impairs focused attention, information registration and memory consolidation.

I have summarized earlier research showing IQ in children improves when they are taught to have larger working memory capacity. Since working memory is apparently increased by music training, and music training also apparently enhances auditory learning, it seems like a no-brainer to suggest that more music training needs to occur in elementary school.

Source:
Kraus, N. and Chandrasekaran, B. 2010. Music training for the development of auditory skills. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 11: 500-505.

Multi-tasking and Memory, One More Time

2010-06-25T09:59:00.000-05:00

I have talked about the problems of multi-tasking before. But this trend among youg people is so pernicious and damaging, I just have to bring it up again.

A whole new generation of multi-taskers is upon us. These young people know how to use cell phones, text messages, the Web, video games, IPods, and assorted other electronic gizmos, often at the same time. Sometimes, driving a car is thrown in for good measure (until an accident occurs).

I work with secondary school teachers, and most of them are in awe of these kids. I have seen teachers brag about how talented their own kids must be because they are such impressive multi-taskers. Increasingly, however, teachers come to realize that multi-tasking intereferes with learning. Some teachers are particularly upset with cell phones, which they try to ban, with little success. Talk about trying to take candy from a baby! In the old days, we kids tried to hide reading of comic books during class. Today, the game is to hide text messaging on cell phones. Ah, such is progress.

Multi-tasking is certainly a talent, but one that exacts a high price on learning. Formal brain research has shown that the brain can only do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is accomplished much in the manner of "multiplexing," an engineering term denoting doing one thing for an instant, then another, and another, and finally returning to the next step of the first task. All this switching is distracting and interferes with memory formation and what memory reseasrchers call "consolidation" into lasting memory.

Memory consolidation is often prevented when one event follows too soon after an initial learning event. There is a whole theory about this, called the Interference Theory of Learning. Memory of initial learning events can be blocked if you try to learn two things at once. In fact, learning may be disrupted for both things.

In a recent test of this phenomenon, a group of 29 people (17 to 30 years of age) was trained to discriminate two sound pips that differed in length by a fraction of a second. In one group of subjects, the training occurred consecutively, which ordinarily produces some inefficiency with learning because the second task interferes with remembering the first. Moreover, results from another group of subjects revealed that when practice on the two tasks was interleaved in multi-task fashion, there was no learning on either condition.

Another recent study should get your attention: a group of study participants, divided into those that were heavy multi-taskers and those that multi-tasked only infrequently. All participants were probably at the higher end of general mental capabilities, given that they were Stanford college students. Each participant was tested in a series of thinking tests to check for any difference in the way the two types of people processed information and disciplined their attentiveness. Heavy multi-taskers were less able to sustain focus in the presence of distractions. The heavy multi-taskers performed worse even though their experience and presumed skill at multi-tasking should have made them more effective at these tasks. The heavy multi-taskers believed they were good at multi-tasking, when in fact they were bad at it.

Nor is intelligent thought likely to benefit from multi-tasking. Multi-tasking bombards working memory with scrambled and unfocused information and probably keeps the brain from learning how to optimize focus and orderly sequence thoughts. Several studies show that intelligence correlates with working memory capacity, which under the best of circumstances is limited. Working memory is the platform on which you think.Over-loading this small-capacity thinking platform just makes it harder to think straight.

So, now tell me again why multi-tasking is a good ability. While you are at it, try to convince me that it has no deleterious effect on ability to focus, sustain attention, and think.

Sources:

Banai, K. et al. 2010. Learning two things at once: differential constraints on the acquisition and consolidation of perceptual learning. Neuroscience. 165: 436-444.

Ophir, E., Nass, C. and Wagner, A. D. 2009. Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Aug. 24. doi: 10.1073/pnas0903620106

Magnesium: a mineral you need and may lack

2010-05-28T14:45:00.000-05:00

The only time I ever thought about magnesium, before I became a scientist, was the summer I swept magnesium shavings off the floor at the Kaiser helicopter-engine factory. When I went to college, I learned that magnesium was an essential mineral in human and animal bodies. As a veterinary medical student, I learned that a magnesium deficiency caused "grass tetany" in cattle that ate lush, heavily fertilized grass growing especially in soils high in potassium or aluminum; these conditions reduce availability of magnesium.

Recently, a MIT scientist, Inna Slutsky reported a five year study showing that magnesium improved learning abilities, working memory and both short- and long-term memory in rats. The improvements were produced in both young and old rats. They fed rats a synthetic magnesium supplement, magnesium-L-threonate (MgT), which improved the ability of magnesium to get across the blood-brain barrier and into nerve cells.

How magnesium benefits brain function is probably related to the fact that magnesium is a cofactor for enzymes that convert adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to adenosine pyrophosphoric acid (ADP), with the subsequent release of energy. The brain is a real energy hog.

How much MgT would humans need to take is not known, but presumably somebody is working on that. The recommended daily amount of magnesium is 400 milligrams for men and 310 milligrams for women. It is estimated that only 32% of Americans get this amount in their diet. Primary food sources are green veggies, fruits, and certain nuts. Traditional nutritional supplements are not a solution. The researchers found that the magnesium in common dietary supplements does not readily enter the brain.

A commercial product, when it becomes available, may not have been tested for safety (nutritional supplements are not government regulated), On the other hand, healthy kidneys are pretty good at getting rid of excess blood magnesium. The possibility of excess magnesium in the brain from use of MgT has not been investigated.

Source:
Slutsky, I. et al. 2009. Enhancement of learning and memory by elevating brain magnesium. Neuron. 65 (2): 165-177.

Copyright, 2010, W. R. Klemm

Can Exercise Help Kids Do Better in School?

2010-05-10T15:53:00.000-05:00

Even when I was a kid, people said that being physically active could help you perform better in school. But this was mostly anecdotal, with very little research evidence. Now there is some evidence.

Charles Hillman and colleagues at the University of Illinois recently reported a study on the effects of exercise on cognitive function of 20 preadolescent children aged 9 to 10. They administered some stimulus discrimination tests and academic tests for reading, spelling and math. On one day, students were tested following a 20-minute resting period; on another day, students walked on a treadmill before testing. The exercise consisted of 20 min of treadmill exercise at 60% of estimated maximum heart rate. Mental function was then tested once heart rate returned to within 10% of pre-exercise levels. Results indicated improved performance on the tests following aerobic exercise relative to the resting session. Recordings of brain responses to stimuli suggested that the difference was attributable to improved attentiveness after exercise.

Note that this is just from a single aerobic exercise experience. How can that be beneficial? The most obvious explanation is that exercise generates more blood supply to the brain, but I don't know that this has been documented with MRI studies, for example. Actually, what is known is that exercise diverts blood to the muscles. The generally accepted view is that the body tightly regulates blood flow to the brain and that the brain always gets what it needs. Another possibility is that exercise relieves anxiety and stress, which are known to disrupt attentiveness and learning. Maybe the repetitive discipline of exercises like treadmill walking help entrain the brain into a more attentive mode. We need a study that compares tradmill walking with a different kind of exercise regimen (like a vigorous and competitive basketball game, for example).

As for what goes on in a typical school recess, I doubt that such activities as shooting marbles, gossiping, or whatever else goes on these days with kids at recess, really helps school work. Gym class might be another matter, but unfortunately many schools do not provide a meaningful gym class. Some of the authors' suggestions don't seem to be supported by this particular research. For example, they advocate:

• scheduling outdoor recess as a part of each school day (recess does not typically provide aerobic levels of exercise)

• offering formal physical education 150 minutes per week at the elementary level, 225 minutes at the secondary level (again, the beneficial effects likely come from aerobic levels of exercise, not just any exercise)

• encouraging classroom teachers to integrate physical activity into learning (this almost certainly will not be at aerobic levels of exercise.)

There is the also the issue of a continuing aerobic exercise program, which presumably could produce long-lasting beneficial effects in young children. My own prejudice is that schools and parents ought to get serious about requiring an aerobic exercise program for kids. It should not only improve the quality of school work but also help combat the epidemic of obesity and diabetes. One caveat: running to achieve aerobic levels of exercise may not be advisable in children. My own experience with jogging, for example, might have been great for my heart and brain, but I now have two artificial kness to show for it.

If exercise is so good for academic performance, why do varsity athletes generally make poorer grades than their classmates? Well, there are many other factors, of course. One prevailing attitude among athletes is that academics are less important to them than their sport. Their peers idolize athletic stars. Students who make all As are not considered heroes; they are considered nerds or otherwise abnormal. Athletes devote their time and energy to their sport, not school work.

Reference:

Hillman, C. H., et al. 2009. The effect of acute treadmill walking on cognitive control and academic achievement in preadolescent children. Neuroscience. 31;159(3):1044-54.

The Multi-tasking Scatterbrain

2010-04-19T10:43:00.002-05:00

Nobody should be surprised that people who multi-task a lot are easily distracted. It could well be that they multi-task a lot because they are so distractable and less able to focus.

A recent rigorous study of this matter evaluated a group of study participants, divided into those that were heavy multi-taskers and those that multi-tasked only infrequently. All participants were probably at the higher end of general mental capabilities, given that they were Stanford college students. Each participant was tested in a series of thinking tests to check for any difference in the way the two types of people processed information and disciplined their attentiveness.

Heavy multi-taskers were less able to sustain focus in the presence of distractions. The researchers concluded that light multi-taskers "find it easier to attentionally focus on a single task in the face of distractions."

The study did not directly examine ability to memorize, but there surely must be a significant difference, given that memory formation is enhanced by sustained attentiveness and focus. There may be some undiscovered benefits of multi-tasking, but memorizing cannot be one of them.

Nor is intelligent thought likely to benefit from multi-tasking. Several studies that I have summarized elsewhere show that intelligence correlates with working memory capacity, which under the best of circumstances is limited and easily over-loaded by multiple simultaneous informational input.

The study did not test whether distractibility is a cause or a consequence of multi-tasking behavior. But the data clearly support the notion that people whose work or study requires concentration should not multi-task.
There is also the potential problem that frequent multi-tasking could be teaching the brain to become more distractible.

Source:

Ophir, E., Nass, C., and Wagner, A. D. 2009. Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings National Academy of Science. 106 (37): 15583-15587. doi/10.1073/pnas.0903620106

Vitamin D: the wonder vitamin

2010-04-18T16:27:00.000-05:00

Everybody knows that vitamin D is good for healthy bones. That is why they fortify milk with it. You may not know it is good for certain skin conditions, such is the one I have that appears every Winter when I don’t get enough sunlight, even though I live in Texas. Taking 2,000 IU vitamin D3 daily has stopped this problem. I read also that vitamin D stimulates the immune system. I am now surprised to learn it might be helpful for memory.

A research group in the United Kingdom, recognizing that many people are vitamin D deficient there because they don’t get much sunlight to help the skin generate vitamin D, pursued the question of why there are molecular receptors for vitamin D in the brain. What is that all about?

Some previous studies by other groups had shown vitamin D has protective effects on the brain and enhances its activity. Other studies had shown that low serum levels of the 25 (OH) form of vitamin D were associated with poor cognitive test performance among patients with mild Alzheimer disease, and a study of older adults revealed a positive correlation between 25(OH) D blood levels and scores on a mental function test.

This British study looked at a large population (3,133) of middle-aged and older men to evaluate the association between vitamin D levels and cognition. Specifically, the investigators tested blood levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D in non-institutionalized European men, aged 40–79 years, and compared those levels with performance on three mental-function tests, one of which was a specific test of memory. High blood levels of vitamin D were associated with better performance on a test for analyzing complex visual images and a recognition memory test.

Studies like this are exceedingly complex, because there are many hard-to-control variables (the paper had more than 21 authors). Not surprisingly, depression, physical activity, physical performance, and smoking were all consistently associated with both cognitive test scores and 25(OH) D concentrations. Some mental-test scores, together with 25(OH)D levels, were additionally associated with drinking one or more alcoholic drink per week. Also, as expected, 25(OH) D levels varied markedly by season, peaking in the summer and reaching bottom in the winter.

After additional adjustments for age, education level, depression, basal metabolism, physical activity, physical performance, smoking, alcohol consumption, season, higher 25(OH) D concentrations were found to be associated more specifically with psychomotor speed and visual scanning.

Vitamin D exists in two common forms; vitamin D2 and D3. The form mainly produced in the skin and derived from natural dietary sources is vitamin D3, whereas the primary source of vitamin D2 is multivitamin preparations and some fortified foods. There have been conflicting reports as to whether vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 are equally effective at maintaining 25(OH) D levels,

Nobody knows why vitamin D affects brain function, but the existence of specific molecular receptors inside the nucleus of neurons cannot be dismissed. Possibilities include direct effects on promoting synthesis of the alertness-producing neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, or more indirect effects on intracellular calcium (calcium is a signaling molecule in nerve cells). Other possible ways vitamin D might help brain function include its ability to stimulate synthesis of nerve growth factor. Vitamin D is neuroprotective against stroke and, by its ability to attenuate neurotoxic insults, could have a major impact in preventing neurodegenerative diseases. Vitamin D has the potential to increase glutathione which helps with detoxification and protection against free radical stress.

It is still an open question whether vitamin D helps memory. But I will keep taking my vitamin D3 to help my skin condition. Any benefit to my memory will be a much-appreciated bonus.

Source:

Lee, David M. et al. 2009. Association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and cognitive performance in middle-aged and older European men. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry. 80:22-729. Doi: 10.1136/jnnp.2008.165720.

Resveratrol: the red wine magic chemical

2010-04-02T17:45:00.000-05:00

I try not to get too excited about memory benefits of supplements. Certainly, I only have any level of faith in formal scientific studies that are well controlled and peer reviewed. I now think that resveratrol may be one of the few supplements that could have beneficial effects on brain function.

You no doubt have heard about the French red-wine drinkers, who are more healthy than they ought to be, given that they drink too much, exercise too little, and eat too much fat (as in goose liver and cheese). In trying to figure out how this can be, scientists have homed in on a major anti-inflammatory chemical in red wine, known as resveratrol. At this writing, over 2,000 scientific papers have been published. Don't worry, I am only going to tell you about a few. Most of the protective biological actions associated with resveratrol have been associated with its intrinsic radical scavenger properties and the protective effects that it confers on the heart.

Most of this research focuses on the compound's beneficial effects on heart and blood vessels and diabetes. The compound targets multiple enzymes in multiple organs. What I am summarizing here is recent research that suggests resveratrol might be beneficial for thinking ability in general and memory in particular.

A diabetes research group in Brazil recently reported a beneficial effect of resveratrol on diabetic rats. An earlier study by another group showed that resveratrol improved glucose metabolism and promoted longevity in diabetic mice. Other research groups had reported neuroprotective effects for resveratrol. The Brazil group focused on brain damage produced by diabetes. They induced diabetes in a group of rats, observing that this impaired their ability to memorize. The cause, as indicated by other studies, is that diabetes lowers the level of a major brain neurotransmitter that promotes alertness, attentiveness, and general cognitive function, acetylcholine. As an aside, the major treatment for Alzheimer's disease is Aricept, which enhances acetylcoline function. The Brazil group found that resveratrol suppressed activity of the enzyme that destroys acetylcholine, thus tending to restore more normal acetylcholine function. Resveratrol (in a modest rat dose of 10 and 20 mg/kg per day for 30 days) prevented the impairment of memory induced by diabetes.

Added to this finding about the brain enzyme, there are other reasons to think the anti-oxidant properties of resveratrol might be beneficial to the brain. The brain has more oxygen consumption than any bodily organ, about 20% of all the body's consumption. The brain therefore produces more free-radical damage, but the brain has especially low levels of antioxidant defense enzymes.

One recent study has revealed that resveratrol had protective effects against brain damage caused by a chemical that kills acetylcholine neurons. Injection of this toxin into the brain of rats impaired their memory performance in two kinds of maze tasks. The impairment was significantly reduced by repeated injection of resveratrol (10 and 20 mg/kg) pr day for 25 days, beginning four days before the toxin injection.

Another recent study examined the effect of dietary supplement on working memory in mice. Groups of young adult and aged mice were put on a resveratrol-supplementd diet for four weeks before being injected with a cytokine to induce inflammation and accelerate aging. Mice were then tested for their ability to remember what they learned in a commonly used spatial memory task in a water maze. The dietary supplement significantly reduced memory impairment in the aged group, but not in the young adults. The lack of benefit in young adults was a little misleading, in that there was a "ceiling effect" in that the young adults, even though given cytosine, were already performing at near-mazimum levles. Cytosine had clear impairing effects in the contol aged mice, but much less so in the resveratrol-treated aged mice. In other words, aging makes an animal more susceptible to toxic chemicals, and thus there is more opportunity for any beneficial treatment to become manifest.

The memory studies have appeared only in the last year or so and are confined to laboratory animals. The beneficial effects may occur only in preventing damage, as with diabetes or other kinds of brain injury. Benefits may also be imperceptible in the young.

The open question is whether resveratrol will help cognitive function in humans, especially healthy humans.But you can be sure that research on humans will become intense. Positive memory-enhancing results in humans have alredy been published for consumption of blueberries, in which resveratrol is a major ingredient.

One of the first such randomized controlled trials of resveratrol effects on memory in normal older adults.has been launched in 2010 by Todd Manini and Steven Anton at the University of Florida's Institute of Aging.

What foods besides red grapes have resveratrol? The most likely other sources you would eat or drink are blueberries, cranberries, and peanuts. It is not likely that you could drink or eat enough of such substances to get enough resveratrol to do any good. Highly concentrated supplements are coming on the market. I haven't given up my two glasses of red wine each day, but I have started taking one of the supplements. I haven't seen any reports that these high doses of resveratrol are toxic.

Sources:

Abraham, J., and Johnson, R. W. 2009. Consuming a diet supplemented with resveratrol reduced infection-related neuroinflammation and deficits in working memory in aged mice. Rejuvenation research. 12 (6): 445-453. DOI: 10.1089/rej.2009.0888

Harkiumar, K. B., and Aggarwal, B. B. 2008. Resveratrol.. A multitargeted agent fo age-associated chronic diseases. Cell Cycle 7:8, 1020-1035.

Kumar, A. et al. 2007. Neuroprotective effects of resveratrol against intracerebroventricular colchicine-induced cognitive imapirment and oxidative stress in rats. Pharmacology.79 (1): 17-26. DOI: 10.1159/000097511

Schmatz R, et al. 2009. Resveratrol prevents memory deficits and the increase in acetylcholinesterase activity in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Eur J Pharmacol. 2009 May 21;610(1-3):42-8. Epub 2009 Mar 19.

Inaccurate and Biased Beliefs About Learning and Memory

2010-03-31T15:15:00.000-05:00

A very sophisticated and comprehensive set of 12 experiments confirms what experienced teachers have long known: students over-estimate how much they know and under-estimate the value of repeated study of the same material. This bias may apply to everyone, but the study was performed on college students. UCLA researchers studied the reliability of people's ability to judge how well they had remembered something just studied and to predict how well they could remember if they went over the same material in several sessions.

They asked the students to look at a list of word pairs and make two estimates: one a judgement of how well they remembered what they just studied and the other a prediction of how well they would be able to remember the words after subsequent study of those same word lists.

When asked after a given study trial to judge how well they thought they remembered, students' judgment of their knowledge was not confirmed by actual performance on the test.That is, they over-estimated how much they had learned.

Amazingly, students predicted little or no learning improvement would occur with repeated study sessions, yet they actually showed large increases in actual learning with repeated study. The change in predicted performance was about the same, irrespective of whether the word pairs were deemed easy or hard to remember. However, the actual performance benefit of extra study was especially marked for the hard-to-remember words.

Other studies have shown that people fail to predict accurately how much their memory of specific learning will deteriorate over time after the intiial learning.

Why does this matter? Well, it affects how well one manages learning tasks; that is, choosing the best activities that will create lasting memories, as for example, students choosing how and when to study. The implication is that students don't study as much as they should because they don't appreciate the value of extra study, especially for hard-to-learn material. They also don't study as much as they need to because they think they have learned more than they really have.

Is the problem that students are generally not as smart as they think they are? Or do they fail to study more because they don't correctly realize how much it would help? The ultimate consequence is that students tend to study too little and give up too quickly.

The authors suggest that these inaccurate beliefs and the negative consequences just reflect normal psychology. They do not consider that mental laziness could be a factor. Nor do they consider that this effect might be age-specific.

This may also relate to an observation that has puzzled me ever since I wrote my original book on memory improvement. Students have not been as interested in what the book had to say as I expected. Nor do they show as much interest as I anticipated in attending my lectures on the subject. At one unversity where I recently gave a well-advertised talk on how to improve memory, not one student showed up -- only faculty. Older adults, in general, seem to realize they need to work on their memory. Students tend to think they are either just fine as they are or can't improve.

A related matter is that students don't appreciate the value of testing in enhancing memory. This value was confirmed in the present study, and I have elsewhere discussed similar findings. Testing forces retrieval of stored information and that retrieval is a strong rehearsal process that reinforces the memory.

Source:

Kornell, N. and Bjork, R. A. 2009. A stability bias in human memory: overestimating remembering and underestimating learning. J. Exp. Psychol. 138 (4): 449-468.

Vitamin D and Memory

2010-03-15T10:08:00.003-05:00

A general rule regarding memory and nutrients is that most dietary supplements are without effect unless a person has an inadequate diet. One nutrient of special interest is vitamin D. Vitamin D is synthesized in the skin from exposure to sunlight, but many people don't get enough sunlight every day. Sun-tan lotions, designed to reduce the risk of skin cancer, also reduce the likelihood that the skin can make enough vitamin D. Particularly vulnerable populations include Blacks and elderly who are confined indoors. Also the ability of skin to synthesize vitamin D declines with age.

Vitamin D and its receptors are found throughout the body. In recent years, scientists have learned that it contributes to normal cognitive function, including memory. Vitamin D increases the brain neurotransmitter chemical called acetylcholine, which is the most important transmitter for creating conscious arousal and attentiveness. Vitamin D also stimulates synthesis of nerve growth factor, which can promote growth of nerve terminals.

A recent study has confirmed results from another lab suggesting that normal brain function requires vitamin D. Participants, 1,766 adults aged 65 years and older, were evaluated to compare blood levels of vitanim D precursor and cognitive ability. Lower levels occurred in the subset of people who were cognitively impaired, compared to the normal subjects.

Another independent study reports similar findings. The study examined 3,133 men aged 40 to 79 at eight test centers across Europe. Men who had a better memory and were quicker to process information had higher levels of vitamin D. Men with 35 nanomoles per litre or less of vitamin D in their blood performed poorly.

These are only correlational studies, but they do suggest that increasing dietary vitamin D can improve memory in people who are vitamin D deficient. This idea awaits experimental verification. In the meanwhile, taking modest doses of vitamin D (use the D3 version, about 1,000-2,000 I.U. per day) is probably a good idea.

Sources:

Llewellyn. D. J. 2009. Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, Vol. 22, No. 3, 188-195 OI: 10.1177/0891988708327888

Lee, D. M. et al. 2009. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2009;80:722-729 Published Online First: 21 May. doi:10.1136/jnnp.2008.165720

A Handy List of Memory Tips

2010-03-08T13:54:00.004-06:00

One of the followers of this blog called my attention to a useful web site that has a list of 100 things you can do to facilitate memory. Several items deal with remembering names, and others with remembering numbers and lists. Much of this information is also in my book.

I have some quibbles with some of the material, such as recommended foods. The hoopla over gingko balboa, for example, has not been replicated by research. Certain other foods are only beneficial if you are nutritionally deficient.

I particularly like the lists of things you can do to organize information, and even store it conveniently (as with sticky notes, Evernote, etc.) so you don't have to memorize everything.

Check it out: http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/100-amazing-memory-hacks-to-maximize-your-brain/

By the way, if you have been following my blog, you will have noticed that it is starting to attract a following. I even get fan mail.

More Bad News for Multi-tasking

2010-03-07T16:11:00.003-06:00

Memory formation is often prevented when one event follows too soon after an initial learning event. It is also true that memory of initial learning events can be blocked if you try to learn two things at once. In fact, learning may be disrupted for both things.

In a recent test of this phenomenon, a group of 29 people (17 to 30 years of age) was trained to discriminate two sound pips that differed in length by a fraction of a second. In one group of subjects, the training occurred consecutively, which ordinarily produces some inefficiency with learning because the second task interferes with remembering the first. In this study, some learning did occur, in spite of the sequential tasks. However, results from another group of subjects revealed that when practice on the two tasks was interleaved, there was no learning on either condition.

This indicates that acquistion (initial learning) is vulnerable to multi-tasking, perhaps even more so than when learning of one task is followed too soon by another learning task. In other words, multi-tasking can interfere with initial learning, just as it does with formation of memory.

Source: Banai, K. et al. 2010. Learning two things at once: differential constraints on the acquisition and consolidation of perceptual learning. Neuroscience. 165: 436-444.

More Evidence that Naps Help Memory

2010-02-22T09:33:00.001-06:00

I have mentioned before the value of naps for improving the formation of memories. Another recent student confirms this conclusion. Matthew Walker and colleagues an the University of California at Berkeley divided 39 young adults into two groups. At noon, all the participants took part in a memory exercise that required them to remember faces and link them with names. Then the researchers took part in another memory exercise at 6 p.m., after 20 had napped for 100 minutes during the break.

Those who remained awake performed about 10 percent worse on the tests than those who napped, Walker said. Students take note: 10% can be the difference between an A and a B.

Source: Walker, Mathew. 2010. Current Models of Mechanisms of Sleep-Dependent Memory Presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, San Diego, Feb. 21.

More on the Benefits of Blueberries

2010-02-11T13:30:00.004-06:00

In several earlier posts, I discussed experiments that indicate blueberries can improve memory. There is a more recent study in 9 older adults (average age was 76) who were showing early signs of deterioration in memory capability. For 12 weeks, the subjects were given daily doses approximately 2.5 cups (exact amount adjusted according to body weight) of juice made from commercially available frozen wild blueberries. Berries were thawed, pressed, filtered, pasteurized, and then bottled. A comparison group drank the same amount of fake blueberry juice.

The subjects were instructed to refrigerate the juice at home and to take prescribed daily quantities in equal, divided dosages with the morning, midday, and evening meals. Memory tests (word-pair association, word list) were given before and after the test period. Significant gains in memory ability were seen in the blueberry group. Scores on both kinds of memory tests increased about 33%.

Additionally, there was suggestive evidence that blueberry juice reduced signs of depression and lowered blood glucose levels. This needs to be pursued in future research.

In an earlier post I had summarized a study that showed that milk protein interfered with the blueberry effect. Presumably other proteins could also interfere. In other words, I am suggesting that even better results might be obtained if the juice is taken on an empty stomach (assuming of course that this does not cause upset stomach).

The beneficial effects of the blueberries are thought to be linked to their flavonoid content - in particular anthocyanins and flavanols. The exact way in which flavonoids affect the brain are unknown, but they have previously been shown to cross the blood brain barrier after dietary intake.

Source:
Krikorian, R. et al. (2010) Blueberry supplementation improves memory in older adults. J. Agricultural and Food Chemistry. doi: 10.1021/jf9029332

What's the Right Amount of Homework?

2010-01-25T15:46:00.001-06:00

When I ran for election to my local school board, one of my campaign planks was to promote homework. I lost. Many parents objected to my platform, often because homework would interfere with their kids' extracurricular activities or with their part-time job. One parent said to me, "We don't want any homework. My son needs that time to work at his job." I asked, "Why does he need to work?" She said, "Well, to pay for his truck for one thing." "Why does he need a truck?" I asked. Her reply: "Well, you dufus, to get to his job!"

A Duke University neuroscientist, Harris Cooper, posted in The Sacremento Bee on Jan. 17, 2010 some of his findings from research on this topic. He pointed out that an earlier Associated Press poll found that 57% of parents thought their kids got about the right amount of homework. Another 23% thought there was too little homework and 19% thought there was too much.

Harris was interested, not so much in parent opinion, but about the question of whether or not homework helps test performance. When he and his helpers looked at various published homework studies, they found that the effect varied by grade level. Comparing students who were assigned homework with students assigned no homework but who were similar in other ways suggested that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in second grade did better on math, third- and fourth-graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, fifth-graders on social studies, ninth- through 12th-graders on American history and 12th-graders on Shakespeare.

He finds that practice assignments do improve scores on class tests at all grade levels. A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits. Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night. For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2 1/2 hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish.

What nobody seems to have studied is the question of what kind of homework is most effective. Options include busy work such as filling out work sheets, problems to solve, projects to complete, Web quests, essays to write, and various other kinds of tasks. I would expect that the nature of the homework makes a big difference in the effectiveness of learning and in attitude about school.

All forms of homework can help memory formation. Rehearsal of learned material soon after it is learned is a key to efficient memory formation. In my opinion, failure of a teacher to assign homework is educational malpractice.

Unreliable Memory

2010-01-19T09:55:00.003-06:00

It is one thing to forget. It is quite another to remember, but remember wrongly. Everyday experience reveals how commonly people remember things wrongly. Discuss with most anybody what each party said in a past argument or controversy, and it typically happens that people remember things differently. Somebody has to have it wrong. Such "false memories" commonly contaminate eye-witness reports of accidents and crimes.

This possibility came up in a recent a court case in Massachusetts, where a Catholic priest was convicted of sexual molestation of a child. The accuser, now an adult, ostensibly had suppressed the memories, which surfaced later in psychological counseling. On the basis of this resurrected memory, the priest was convicted and the conviction was upheld on appeal by the Massachusetts' Supreme Court. Scholarly literature supporting the notion that real memories can be suppressed and later retrieved provided the basis for believing the charges against the priest.

However, there is other scholarly literature, apparently not persuasive in this case, that asserts that this is "junk science" and that false memories are common. I concur with the news release's statement: "Experiments have shown that false memories can be created that feel just as valid as real ones and cannot be distinguished from real memories."

Our legal system has not really come to grips with false memory. But there is a growing trend to be skeptical of eye-witness testimony. It is increasingly hard to get a conviction if the only evidence against the accused is a single eye-witness report. Perhaps, in the interests of justice, that is best. There is a whole scholarly literature on false memory, including books, and I reviewed much of this in my memory book.

So, the real issue in court cases like this is that the resurrected memory may or may not be true. If there is no other evidence and it is only one person's word against another, how can you tell what the truth is? The same problem exists when people have differing recollections of something that happened in the past. Somebody got it wrong. Who got it right?

Source: UPI press release, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/01/17/Repressed-memory-conviction-upheld/UPI-93911263709673/

Learning Versus Memory

2010-01-15T10:40:00.003-06:00

Versus? Learning and memory are different, but like two sides of the same coin. What is the difference? Learning is the acquiring of new information or skills. Memory is the remembering of what was learned. You can’t have memory without learning. You can, of course, have learning that you forget.

Learning involves at least four major processes. It all begins with registering new information. This is the stage when information is detected and encoded in brain. Paying attention obviously facilitates the registration process. Multi-tasking can create an information overload in which much of the information never gets registered. Example: a car driver who is all wrapped up in a cell phone conversation may not realize she just ran a stop sign or cut off the driver behind her in the next lane. Another example comes with reading. Reading comprehension (learning) depends heavily on the eyes actually seeing each cluster of words. The reader needs to focus on words, not letters, and needs to think about what the words mean. Likewise in images, what you learn from an image depends on the details in it that you actually notice and think about.

Next is integration. The brain likes to classify, categorize, and organize its information. Thus, new information has to be fitted into existing learned schema. This is the stage where associations are made with existing memory. Brains are really good at detecting and constructing relationships. If a given relationship is not immediately obvious, the brain may figure it out and remember it. Constructing such relationships is an integral part of the learning process.

Associations can be constructed subconsciously. If two things happen at the same time or go together in some other way, even the simplest of brains can learn the association. Moreover, cueing of relationships can produce what is called conditioned learning. We all have heard about Pavlov’s dogs. But even animals as primitive as flatworms can exhibit conditioned learning. If worms are shown flashes of light, not much happens. If they are given mild electrical shocks to the body, the body contracts. If then a flash of light is delivered just prior to an electrical shock, after enough repetitions, the worm starts contracting when it first detects the light, before any electrical shock is delivered.

Associations are still more powerful when they are consciously constructed. This is the stage where you ask yourself such questions as: Where does this information fit with what I already know? How does this relate to other things I could learn about? What value do I place on this information? How invested in using or remembering it should I be?

Then there is understanding. You can, as I did, pass college calculus by using the right formulas for given problem types, and yet not really understand what is going on with the equations. To understand, you need to answer such questions as: Is this consistent with what I thought I knew? What is missing or still confusing? What can I do with this information? What else does it appoly to, how can it be extended? What is predictable?

Learning is not complete without understanding. Understanding also creates a basis for generate insights and creative syntheses, and these in turn advance the depth and rigor of the original learning. Insights typically come from deduction or induction. Deduction is the Sherlock Holmes process of using one fact or observation to lead logically to another. Induction is the Charles Darwin process of using multiple, apparently unrelated, facts or observations to make a synthesis that accommodates them all.

Finally, there is learning to learn. This is the process of learning the paradigm, the “rules of the game,” that allows you to transfer one learned capability to new learning situations that are related. At this point, one has reached a threshold where the more you know, the more you can know.

One of the first experimental demonstrations of this phenomenon was by H. C. Blodgett in 1929. He studied maze behavior in rats, scoring how many errors they made in running the maze to find the location where a food reward was placed. Rats ran the maze once per day on successive days. The control group ran the maze and found the food, with number of errors decreasing slowly on successive days as they learned where in the maze the food was. Experimental groups ran the maze daily for three or seven days without any food reward. Naturally, they made many errors because there was nothing to learn. However, when they subsequently were allowed access to a food reward, the number of errors dropped precipitously on the very next day’s trial. In other words, the rats had been learning about the maze, its layout, number of turns, etc. during the initial explorations when no reward was available.
Blodgett called this “latent learning,” an idea expanded and formalized some 20 years later in the “Learning Set” theory of Harry Harlow. Harlow studied visual discrimination learning in monkeys and observed that visual and other types of discrimination problems progressed more quickly as a function of training on a series of different, but related problems.

These discoveries were born of necessity, arising from the need to use the same monkeys over and over in a wide variety of experiments because the Harlow lab was so under-funded. Increasing the number of problems on which monkeys were tested led to the observation that the monkeys’ general learning competence improved over time. This of course parallels the general common experience of maturation of children.

Harlow developed the prominent theory that learning any task is associated with implicit learning capabilities that can generalize to other related learning situations. The concept relates simpler trial-and-error learning to more advanced insightful-like learning, which he regarded as a mental ability that depended heavily on prior learning sets. Ability to form learning sets varies with species. Monkeys do it better than dogs or cats, and humans do it best of all.The reasons for human superiority in learning no doubt include the rich connections among various brain areas that can support and integrate more learned associations.

"Catch Them Doing Something Right"

2009-12-19T14:12:00.005-06:00

Savvy teachers use an operant conditioning technique known as “catch them doing something right.” It works for training seals and pony-and-dog shows in circuses-—why not kids? Well, it does work for kids. The idea is for the teacher to be more aware of what students do, and when students accidentally show some extra effort or accomplishment, they are immediately rewarded in some way. I don’t mean to trivialize the process, but it is not unlike when you are trying to house-break a puppy: when enough time has elapsed that urination is imminent, you take the pup outside. When it urinates, you pat him on the head and say “good dog.” After several such repetitions, the pup learns that the place to urinate is outdoors.

In a school environment, “doing something right” might be when a kid does a little extra on an assignment, or suddenly figures out a problem without prompting, or goes out of her way to make a useful comment in class discussion, etc.

How could this work for an individual? How can you catch yourself doing something right that you want to learn to repeat? First, be more aware of what you are doing. Self-awareness requires also introspection, so that you not only know what you are doing, but think about what is good for you and what attitudes and behaviors you want to develop (i.e., learn). The trick is to find ways to reward yourself when you accidentally do something new that is worth learning on a permanent basis.

For example, suppose you are trying to break a bad habit. You could note how long you can go without doing the habit. Then reward yourself. Using the idea I have described in my book about successive approximations, gradually raise the stakes so that you must go a little longer without a reward. The same idea applies to learning a new habit. When you do the thing you want, like smile more, or spend more time studying, or whatever--reward yourself. Then up the ante before reward.

Rewards can be most anything that pleases you. That is one of the best parts of this method. You get to pick your own reward. Maybe it is “time off for good behavior.” Maybe, you accept some indulgence, like cooking yourself a special meal, or taking yourself to the movies or a ballgame. For small successive approximation rewards, you might give yourself a small piece of candy, or some other treat. You can even create yourself a little “gold star” chart, like adults use with little kids, where you can see your progress in a very obvious way. After so many gold stars, you can give yourself a real treat. Silly? Yes, but it can work.

Sleep Learning -- A New Perspective

2009-12-13T14:08:00.002-06:00

A couple of decades ago, many people thought you could learn while you sleep. I remember as a college student playing audio tapes of information I wanted to learn while I slept. This idea turned out to be a fraud, perpetrated by people who sold sleep learning materials and equipment. Most "early adopters" found that all it did was disrupt sleep.

But as I have discussed elsewhere, modern research has compellingly shown that the brain is consolidating memories of the day's events during sleep. So, maybe the sleep learning idea is not completely dead. Maybe the right kind of stimulus input while you sleep could promote learning, at least in terms of promoting memory consolidation of the information you already learned during the day.

So, the idea would be to see if sleep can promote memory consolidation of things you recently learned, but have not yet formed into lasting memory. How might you do that? Since memory is largely associative, maybe it would work to provide during sleep the cues that were associated with the original learning. This might have a better chance of working during the dream stage of sleep, because it is well documented that external sound stimuli (like storms, rain, etc.) are documented as capable of becoming incorporated into and changing the course of a dream. Thus, the question becomes: can audio presentation of learned association cues during dreaming promote the memory formation for the original learning items or events. The idea is that the cue might reactivate a latent memory and thus constitute a memory rehearsal.

Partial testing of this idea has recently been reported. Northwestern University scientists trained human subjects to recognize the location of 50 different objects on a computer screen. Each object had an associated sound. For example, the cat image was associated with a meow sound, a kettle with a whistle, etc. Then people took a nap, during which sound cues were presented (unobstrusively at 62 decibels) for half of the images they had previously been exposed to. After the nap, subjects had no conscious recollection of the sound cueing.

The cues were presented oddly enough only during the deep stages of sleep, not during dreaming. Maybe the researchers were unaware that external stimuli can get incorporated into dreams. Even so, the original objects were re-presented after waking and subjects tested for recall of the location of the 50 images.

Measuring the location errors in terms of distance from correct position indicated that accuracy was greater for images that had associative cues presented during the nap than for those images for which cues were not re-presented. Simultaneous recording of brain waves (EEG) showed that the brain was responding to the sensory cues during sleep.

Tests in control subjects, who were tested without the intervening nap, showed that the cues provided no improvement in recall.

The principle seems sound. What remains is for clever entrepreneurs to develop memory-enhancing strategies that are specific for specific learning tasks.

The old ideas of sleep learning are dead, but here is a new opportunity for finding ways to get sleep to work for us. Learning protocols have to be developed for specific learning tasks, and these have to have relevant sound cues. Finally, I suspect that such external learning "reminders" will be more effective when presented during dream sleep, not the deep stage of sleep in which people "fall into a pit" of oblivion. The challenge is to find ways to provide appropriate reminders while we sleep (or dream).

Source: Rudoy, J. D. et al. 2009. Strengthening individual memories by reactivating them during sleep. Science. 326: 1079.

Kids Can Be Damaged by Excessive Cell-phone Use

2009-11-27T11:05:00.003-06:00

As I have explained in my book, almost any activity that is interspersed between learning events, is an interference that can reduce learning efficiency. When children constantly interrupt study (even classroom work) by talking on their cell phones or text messaging, they reduce the efficacy of registering and remembering what they are supposed to learn. This often occurs in an environment of multi-tasking (listening to IPod or MP3 players, playing videogames, blogging, posting on MySpace or Facebook, etc.). These activities create a brain that has a short attention span and difficulty in focusing.

Now comes new scientific evidence that cell phone use may actually change brain chemistry. Some scientists say that cellphone use does have a biological effect on the brain. A recent study at Örebro University in Sweden reported that physical changes occur in brain from the radiation emitted by cell phones. Cellphone use increases the amount of a protein called transthyretin, which is a carrier of thyroid hormones in serum and is part of the ceberospinal fluid that cushions and protects the brain. But the researchers did not comment if the change is good or bad for the brain. But in any case, this should give us pause.

Children are more likely to be affected by cell-phone radiation than adults. Children have much thinner skull bones and their brains have a lot more fluid, so their brain tissues would likely absorb much more radiation compared to an adult’s brain.

The Swedish study found that children and teenagers who were heavy cell phone users were indeed more likely to report health problems. These included headaches and impaired concentration. This impaired concentration may have a biological cause in addition to the poor habits of mind that develop from excessive multi-tasking.

Source: Adapted from materials provided by The Swedish Research Council, via AlphaGalileo.

Music Stirs the Emotions. Emotions Stir the Memories

2009-11-21T11:40:00.004-06:00

Numerous anecdotal reports are suggesting that stroke or dementia patients benefit from listening to music. For example, Everett Dixon, a 28-yearold stroke victim, apparently learned to walk and use his hands again from daily listening to the kind of music he liked. Ann Povodator, an 85 year-old Alzheimer's patient, perks up when she listens to her beloved opera and Yiddish songs; her daughter says "It seems to touch something deep within her."

Caregivers commonly report that stroke or dementia patients can recall and sing songs from long ago, even when most other memories are lost. Moreover, the music can help retrieve memories that were associated with the music, not just the music itself.

Formal music therapy programs are sprouting up. Best known is the non-profit Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, directed by Concetta M. Tomaino, who lives in Garrison, New York. The Institute claims that music can help premature infants gain weight, autistic children communicate, stroke patients re-gain speech and mobility, surgical patients alleviate pain, and psychiatric patients relieve anxiety and depression. The most effective music seems to be that which the patient experienced and liked in their youth. Few of these observations come from controlled studies that rule out the possibility that the improvement was going to occur anyway without the music. Nonetheless, there are apparently 5,000 certified music therapists in the U.S. (I have no idea how one gets certified as a "music therapist.")

I do believe that there is some scientific basis for some of the claims. I have discussed elsewhere how emotions help to consolidate experiences into long-term memories as well as to retrieve such memories. Some of the same brain areas that generate emotions are also the ones involved in forming memories. Moreover, when a person initially hears a song, there may be powerful associations of other events and situations. We all know that associations help create robust memories.

Many students like to listen to music while they study. I think my frenquent listening to jazz helped me memorize all the required stuff in veterinary school. Others claim that classical music aids study. I would point out that both jazz and classical music are instrumental. I am convinced that songs with lyrics would be counterproductive, for the linguistic content serves as a distraction and could easily distrupt memory consolidation processes.

As for recall of already formed memories, music, if it is music you have learned to love, will at a minimum improve your emotional state, particularly in relieving stress. This alone can facilitate memory retrieval. Depression, anxiety, and stress are well known inhibitors of both memory formation and memory retrieval. Being happy not only feels good, it is also good for memory.

Sources:

http://www.bethabe.org/music_institute55.html
Beck, Melinda. 2009. A key for unlocking memories. Wall St. Journal, Tuesday, Nov. 17, p. D1.

Daytime Naps Promote Skilled-movement Learning

2009-11-09T11:28:00.002-06:00

Whether you are learning to play the piano or learning to throw a football to a fast-breaking receiver, the necessary muscle movements have to be memorized. Converting the memory of movements into long-lasting form takes several hours or more for the brain to "consolidate" the learned movements. This process can be disrupted by trying to learn a different movement during this vulnerable period. For example, consolidation of the memory for a few chords on the piano can be disrupted by trying to learn finger movements on a computer keyboard during this consolidation period.

Another feature of motor learning is that delayed gains in skill performance can occur after a latent period of several hours after an effective learning experience. This delayed performance gain depends on the first post-training night's sleep (I have explained the role of sleep on other kinds of memory in my book on improving memory.

Now comes a study that shows that daytime naps condense the time course of motor- memory consolidation. In the experiment, subjects learned a five-element finger-to-thumb opposition sequence with their non-dominant hand. Then the experimenters tested the effect of a post-training nap. Compared to no-nap controls, a 90-minute daytime nap immediately after training markedly reduced the susceptibility to post-training interference effects and produced a much earlier expression of delayed gains within 8 hours post training. Thus, both memory-enhancing effects were produced by the nap.

Would a shorter nap produce the same effect? We don't know. It wasn't tested. Another untested possibility is that the daytime nap might enhance the memory consolidation that is normally produced by a night's sleep after a motor learning experience, especially if the task is rehearsed that same day after the nap.

Source:

Korman, M. et al. 2009. Daytime sleep condenses the time course of motor memory consolidation. Nature Neuroscience. 10 (9): 1206-1213.

Memory Peg Systems

2009-10-29T10:30:00.003-05:00

Memory peg systems provide a systematic way to use visual image "pegs" with material you are trying to remember. Peg systems are used by all memory wizards who put on shows exhibiting their extraordinary memory ability. They are also used by Las Vegas "card counters."

The basic idea in these systems, typically called “peg” systems, is to have a set of pre-memorized mental image “pegs” on which you hang images of items that you need to remember. A popular version of this is a room system. The process begins with picturing in your mind a room where certain conspicuous objects are unchanging, both in type and location. Then you use images of these objects as pegs for making associations. Suppose, for example, you want to memorize a to-do list and the sequence in which things have to be done: send e-mail to boss, call your dentist office for an emergency appointment, have lunch with a client, send a check to the water company, and a host of other things that I won’t list to keep this from being tedious. You might then use your bedroom pegs this way: you enter the door, which has an image of your e-mail system, Then your turn left to see your dresser, which has dentures sitting conspicuously on the top. Then you see the lamp on the dresser, which was turned off but now switches on to reveal a lunch plate. Next you see your bookcase with your checkbook falling off the shelf into a bucket of water. You continue this peg-linking process as you mentally move around the room from object to object and the mental images you need to associate with them.

You can use any room in your house, as long as the anchor pegs don’t change (such as furniture that you move periodically). You can also use other familiar rooms (garage, office, church, restaurant. I describe this and other peg systems, including a system for remembering numbers, in my book.

I recently came across a peg system by Dean Vaughn that I like. His system uses an imaginary numbered room system. This relies on an image of a cube, representing an empty room. Locations in the room are identified by number, beginning at one corner and moving around the room (wall to corner to next wall, etc.). Including the top and bottom of the cube, this gives peg anchor locations for 10 items. And if you need more than 10 items, you can create other rooms for 11-19, 20-21, etc.

You can start numbering at any point as long as you are consistent. I like to start with the wall facing me as point #1, because this is the center of the overall image. Here is an example of how I used this system this week to memorize a speech about writing as a career: to an English club at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas. After creating my mental images, I had them all memorized after about two to three rehearsals, and gave a 45 minute talk without notes and without even my hard copy of the numbered cube--not bad for somebody my age.

Here is how I did it: I made a numbered-cube template and saved it to use any time I want to develop a talk. Then for a given talk, I load the template in PowerPoint and read in appropriate icons to act as pegs. For example, my writing talk was on the subject “The Who, What, Where, Why, When, and How of Writing.” Icons are picked on the basis of what comes to my mind when I think of the word. For example, “who” makes me think of a hoot owl; “how” makes me think of an Indian. Many of the icons are sound-a-likes, or “audionyms.” For example, for “what,” I picked “hat,” for “where” I picked “hair,” for “when,” I picked hen.

For each topic icon, I write beside or underneath it in pencil a few key words and create mental images to represent the ideas associated with those key words. When I rehearse, if I can't recall all the images for a given peg, I look at the key words and reinforce the image or make one that will work better for me.

As the talk's preface, I decided to talk about my writing life, which I represented with the icon of a person (me) typing. Then I attached associated mental images (not real ones put on the template) to that icon (my high school, my college newspaper, a sample of my research papers, and a sample of my books). Next in the talk, I wanted to cover the topic of who do you write for. First, I discuss that a true writer writes because he must, that is he writes for himself. So I picture the owl looking at me. Then, I cover the theme that writers should know their audience and market, so I imagined the owl rotating its head as owls do to look away from me to look at a crowd of people. Well, I could go on with elaborations to the point of tedium. I assume you get the drift. The basic idea is to use images that make sense to you and associate them with your pegs.

Source: Vaughn, D. 2007. How to Remember Anything. St. Martin’s Griffin, New York.

Multi-tasking May Damage the Brain

2009-10-15T10:08:00.004-05:00

We older adults tend to be awed at how young people today can multi-task. They seem to text message on cells phones, watch TV, listen to music, play a video or computer game, carrying on a conversation, and maybe even study their school lessons all simultaneously with apparent ease. Many adults, and even teachers, encourage multi-tasking because they think it is good stimulus for the brain and that learning how to multi-task is a useful skill. But I have already identified many research reports that show multi-tasking to impair formation of memory. Multi-tasking prevents the focused attention and reduction of distractions that are necessary for good memory.

Now there is a research report suggesting that the brain itself may be damaged by multi-tasking. Investigators at Stanford University gave questionnaires to their subjects to identify how much multi-tasking each person did. Nineteen subjects were "heavy multi-taskers" and 22 were "light multi-taskers." Comparison of how these two groups in thinking control tasks revealed that heavy media multi-taskers were more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory.In other words, they were more distractible. Then researchers tested the subjects for ability to filter relevant information from the environment and from their memories and to switch thinking tasks. A typical filtering test, for example, required subjects to detect changes in red triangles on a screen while ignoring blue triangles in the same pictures.

The heavy multi-taskers performed worse, even though their experience and presumed skill at multi-tasking should have made them more effective at these tasks. The heavy multi-taskers believed that they were good at multi-tasking, when in fact they were bad at every task that required multi-tasking.

It is not clear how much physical deterioration has occurred in brain from chronic multi-tasking. But at a minimum, multi-tasking is likely to reduce the brain's ability to develop concentration and thinking skills. Why do I suggest diminished thinking skills? Thinking is done with an orderly progression of items in working memory. Multi-tasking bombards working memory with scrambled and unfocused information and probably keeps the brain from learning how to optimize focus and orderly sequencing of thoughts through what I call the brain's "thought engine."

Source: Ophir, E., Nass, C. and Wagner, A. D. 2009. Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Procedings of the National Academy of Science. Aug. 24. doi: 10.1073/pnas0903620106

Stress and Competence

2009-10-12T13:56:00.003-05:00

When challenge exceeds competence we get stressed. As stress increases, our ability to overcome challenges decreases--creating a vicious cycle. How can we deal with this reality? Two approaches are obvious: we can either reduce the challenge or increase our competence.

The college students I deal with confront this dilemma regularly. Their response follows predictable patterns. They can lessen the challenge in several ways: reduce the demands on their time from social activities or other commitments. They can plan better what courses to take, when to take them, and how many credit hours they take in any one semester. They often fail to account, however, for the reality that many employers and graduate/professional school admission decision makers put major emphasis on a student's ability to handle large course loads of difficult courses.

So, it would seem prudent to emphasize development of competence. Students, for example, should study harder and study smarter. They should aim to remember important ideas and skills long after the test, so they can grow their competence base for use in later courses and in a career. Stress will then go down and success will go up. Now the cycle changes from vicious to positive.

Making Mistakes Over and Over

2009-10-05T14:02:00.002-05:00

I was always told to learn from my mistakes. Actually, I found it was more efficient (and less painful) to learn from the mistakes of others.

Anyway, learning from mistakes, your own or those of others, is called "adaptive learning" in which decisions are made in anticipation of expected consequences. Habitual responses don't satisfy this definition because they occur indepently of the consequences. In fact, repeating bad choices and behaviors is a common personal and social problem. Why do we do that?

A new research report shows that stress may be the culprit by causing a bias in decision-making strategies. Chronically stressed rats diminished their ability to make decisions based on expected consequences. After a standardized chronic stress procedure, rats were tested to see if there was any change in their ability to perform actions based on consequences of their behavior. In one experiment, control, non-stressed rats trained to press a lever for a particular reward drastically reduced their lever pressing when the basis for rewards was changed to eliminate a clear relation of lever pressing to delivery of reward. When the same contingency changes were made with the stressed group, the rats resorted to a habitual response pattern. A second test was given to a second group of rats in which one action (pressing the left lever) would yield a reward (food pellet) and another action (pressing the right lever) would lead to a different kind of reward (sucrose solution). Responses in both normal and stressed rats showed progressive learning gains with repeated training. Then on the last day of training one of the lever press action conditions was changed so that the lever did not have to be pressed to get a reward. Rats in control group quickly reduced their press rate on the lever that did not have to be pressed to get reward. But stressed rats pressed both levers the same, showing they were making choices out of habit rather adapting to the changed situation.

Stressed rats showed structural changes in the cerebral cortex, which would predict that dysfunctional decision capability may be impaired for a long time.

Thus, it appears that chronic stress created dysfunctional decision making in rats. Is chronic stress the reason that some people continue to make one bad choice after another? If so, their bad choices often have their own bad consequences that add to the stress. It sounds like a vicious circle to me. Maybe there is also a role for stress in "learned helplessness," which I have written about in my book. That is, when you fail at something, the failure itself is stressful. Too frequent failure leads to chronic stress, which in turn impairs your ability to learn from your mistakes and continue to make bad choices.

Source: Dias-Ferreira, E. et al. 2009. Chronic stress cause frontostriatal reorganiztion and affects decision-making. Science 325: 621-625.

Remembering the Bad Along With the Good

2009-09-24T10:04:00.002-05:00

In my Sept. 15, blog I surveyed an experiment that showed people learning more from their successes than from their failures. In so doing, I raised the possibility that the learning gain was promoted by the release of the "reward transmitter," dopamine. Now I find a new research report on the effect of dopamine on the long-term storage of bad memories. The process studied was the long-term memory of fear and pain. Rats were trained to remember a strong foot shock, which lasted at least 14 days. Injecting a dopamine blocker into the hippocampus erased the long-term memory if given 12 hours after the original foot-shock experience. This suggests that the normal release of dopamine can promote memory, which is not surprising since dopamine promotes the formation of proteins used in synaptic junctions of neurons.

However, foot shock is certainly not rewarding and probably does not release dopamine. But the end of the foot shock pain is a rewarding relief. Also, rewarding things do happen even to rats after a nasty foot shock (like sex with mates, eating, drinking, sleeping, etc.). The ongoing release of dopamine in the course of just living may help rats form lasting memories, regardless of the nature of memory. This raises questions that scientists have not studied yet. But it may be that dopamine helps us remember both the good and the bad. And maybe is one reason why bad memories are hard to erase.

Source: Rossato, J. et al. 2009. Dopamine controls persistence of long-term memory storage. Science. 325: 1017-1020.

Why The Rich Get Richer

2009-09-15T10:49:00.006-05:00

... (and the Smart Get Smarter)

This old saying also has a corollary: the poor get poorer (at least relative to the rich). Of course there are exceptions, but these correlations happen often enough to indicate there is some truth to the saying. I never heard anybody explain this, other than to conclude that life is just unfair. But there is an explanation.

The reason is that the rich learn from their successes, while the poor, who don’t have many successes, fail to learn from their failures. And the reason for that is that the human brain is wired to learn better from success than from failure. It all has to do with the positive reward system in the brain. Practically speaking, the most obvious example is how animals are trained for circus performances, how dogs are trained to sniff out drugs or corpses, and the like. Positive reinforcement when they do things right promotes learning more effectively and faster than punishing them when they do things wrong. Apparently, the same principle holds for people.

A report of a study of nerve cell activity in monkeys showed sustained, persistent outcome-related responses in both prefrontal cortex and in the basal ganglia, areas known to participate in learning stimulus-response associations. These neurons keep track of successes and failures over many seconds, which is long enough to form a semi-permanent memory that can affect the response the next time such a learning opportunity arises. The neural response improves after a recent success, but doesn’t improve as much after a recent failure. Not surprisingly, monkeys that were rewarded for the right resonse to a cue learned quickly how to respond the next time they saw the cue. But monkeys that responded incorrectly weren’t any better able to deal with the same cue the next time they saw it.

The authors speculate that successes are more informative than failures. When you fail, you typically already know why and there is not much new to learn. Why then do we keep making the same mistakes? I suspect that habit and emotional factors have a lot to do with it. Compulsive gambling and drug abuse are classic examples of repeatedly doing what you already know is wrong. I remember when I tried many times to quit smoking I only succeeded long term when I took up jogging, which is accompanied by the positive reinforcement of endorphins.

I also suspect that a major reason you learn more from success than from failure is the power of the brain’s dopaminergic and endorphin reward systems. Not only does positive reinforcement feel better emotionally than punishment, there is a real possibility that the dopamine release associated with reward has a direct biological influence on memory formation.

Source:
Histed, M. H., Pasupathy, A., and Miller, E. K. 2009. Learning substrates in the primate prefrontal cortex and striatum: sustained activity related to successful actions. Neuron. 63 (2): 244-253.

Motivation Comes In First

2009-09-15T09:43:00.003-05:00

Laura, of "Dr. Laura" fame posted in her blog an item about how some students are paid money for doing well in school. Her blog referred to a Fox News item about a school district that was using financial rewards to motivate students to get good grades. ... Why would MONEY make the difference, and not the appreciation of their parents, the respect of their peers, the approval from their teachers, or the mere burst of pride in doing well? The answer is simple: kids these days are not raised to care about appreciation, respect, approval and pride…period! They are brought up to care about celebrity, extravagance, notoriety, freakish attention (think reality shows), infamy as a positive experience, and extreme non-conformity to traditional values. What happens to these kids when the money isn’t there, but there is still the expectation of profound effort and commitment? Certainly teachers, police, firefighters, those in the military, and small shop owners (to name just a few) aren’t putting out their best efforts for the financial reward. A police officer who “collars” a serious bad guy gets a lot of thumps on the back, a night of some beers with fellow colleagues, and a notch toward an eventual promotion in rank. Mostly, he has pride in doing his job well. ... Schools have been eliminating accolades such as high honors at graduation (e.g., valedictorian) so as not to hurt the self-esteem of those who won’t or can’t rise to that occasion. Yet, they want to give money, money, money to those who do. What is THAT message? No one’s feelings are going to be hurt because they didn’t get the money, money, money. Ugh."

I say "Ugh" too. At the heart of the school problem is that so many kids do not take pride in their work. How do you suppose that translates when they get out of school and on the job? I would argue that the most valuable lesson one can learn in school is to take pride in one's work. This story reminds us all that when it comes to learning, motivation may not be everything, but it is way ahead of whatever is in second place (which is probably poor memory skills). I have been teaching for almost 50 years, and I can tell you that positive motivation can overcome bad teachers, bad textbooks, boring subject matter, and almost any obstacle to learning you can think of. Conversely, no matter how hard a school or teacher may try to provide a good learning environment, good student performance is not going to happen without motivation. If people want to learn badly enough, they will surely find a way. True, a few academic subjects may be too advanced for a given level of IQ or pre-requisite learning. But even the slow of wit can learn a lot more than most people think. It may just take longer.

Source:Readin’, ‘Riting, and ….Bribing? June 11, 2009 on 10:32 am In Children, Education, Parenting, Values . Dr. Laura's Blog

Naps Promote Learning of Movement Skills

2009-08-27T15:09:00.004-05:00

Whether you are learning to play the piano or learning to throw a football to a fast-breaking receiver, the necessary muscle movements have to be memorized. Converting the memory of movements into long-lasting form takes several hours or more for the brain to "consolidate" the learned movements. This process can be interrupted by trying to learn a different movement during this vulnerable period. For example, consolidation of the memory for a few chords on the piano can be disrupted by trying to learn finger movements on a computer keyboard during this vulnerable period.

Another feature of motor learning is that delayed gains in skill performance can occur after a latent period of several hours after an effective learning experience. This delayed performance gain depends on the first post-training night's sleep (I have explained the role of sleep on other kinds of memory in my book on improving memory).

Now comes a study that shows that daytime naps condense the time course of motor memory consolidation. In the experiment, subjects learned a five-element finger-to-thumb opposition sequence with their non-dominant hand. Then the experimenters tested the effect of a post-training nap. Compared to no-nap controls, a 90-minute daytime nap immediately after training markedly reduced the susceptibility to post-training interference effects and produced a much earlier expression of delayed gains within 8 hours post training. Thus, both memory-enhancing effects were produced by the nap.

Would a shorter nap produce the same effect? We don't know. It wasn't tested. Another untested possibility is that the daytime nap might enhance the memory consolidation that is normally produced by a night's sleep after a motor learning experience, especially if the task is rehearsed that same day after the nap.

Source:

Korman, M. et al. 2009. Daytime sleep condenses the time course of motor memory consolidation. Nature Neuroscience. 10 (9): 1206-1213.

Here's Why Marijuana Impairs Memory Formation

2009-08-10T17:41:00.002-05:00

Scientists have known for some time that marijuana impairs the ability to convert short-term or working memories into lasting form. Now they know why. The protein synthesis machinery in the hippocampus is necessary to accomplish lasting memory formation, and a study of mouse hippocampus revealed that marijuana impairs the protein synthesis pathway responsible for memory consolidation.

Source:
Puighermannal, E. et al. 2009. Cannabinoid modulation of hippocampal long-term memory is mediated by mTOR signaling. Nature Neuroscience. On-line edition, Aug. 2; doi:10.1038/nn.2369

Increasing Working Memory Makes Even Adults Smarter

2009-08-05T16:24:00.003-05:00

I have pointed out a study in an earlier post a study that showed the IQ of children around age six can be increased by training them to increase their working memory capacity. This ability of working memory training to improve intelligence has now been demonstrated in young adults (mean age = 25.6 years). Subjects were trained on a so-called dual n-back test in which subjects were asked to recall a visual stimulus that they saw two, three or more stimulus presentations in the past. The task was dual in the sense that two stimuli were presented simultaneously for a half second, followed by a 2.5 second delay until the next stimulus. One stimulus type was a square in which another smaller square was shown in one of eight possible positions within the larger square. At the same time one of eight consonants were presented through headphones. A response was required every time one of the presented stimuli matched the one that had been presented n positions back in the sequence. As performance improved with each block of trials, the task demands were increased my shifting from two-back to three, then three to four, etc. Daily training took about 25 minutes.

Intelligence tests were periodically given that were based on visual analogy problems of increasing difficulty. Each problem presented a matrix of patterns in which one pattern was missing. The task was to select the missing pattern among a set of given response alternatives. This kind of testing measures what is called "fluid" intelligence, which refers to the ability to reason and solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge. What the investigators found was that working memory training improved scores on the intelligence test. Moreover, the effect was dose-dependent, in that intelligence scores increased in a steady straight-line fashion as the number of training sessions increased from 8 to 12 to 17 to 19. Working memory capacity presumably transfers to visual analogy tasks because you have to hold many visual features in working memory while you try to identify which pattern is missing in the matrix.

These results also challenge a widely held view that intelligence becomes fixed at a young age and cannot be increased by experience.

Source: Jaeggi, S. M. et al. 2008. Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory. Proc. Natl. Acad. Science. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0801268105

Txting Is Dangerous 4 U

2009-07-17T11:27:00.003-05:00

"Dr. Laura" has written a very interesting blog item about text messaging on cell phones. She reminds us all of just how distracting texting is.

And when it comes to memorizing, texting is devastating for learning, unless of course you are texting about the content you are learning.

Computer Game May Help ADHD - Guest Blog

2009-07-16T12:23:00.002-05:00

An ongoing study that is being conducted by the University of Wollongong in Australia has so far found that a computer game can help improve children’s memory and attention span, especially children with ADHD. The University of Wollongong study is based on a pilot program conducted in 2007 that discovered that the use of cognitive training in children could improve brain function for those with ADHD. The new study at the University of Wollongong has introduced the computer game for purposes of cognitive training and requires children between the ages of seven and fourteen to play two computer games for just fifteen minutes a day for four weeks. Children with and without ADHD are being asked to participate in the study.
In addition to asking the students to play the computer games each day, scientists at the University of Wollongong monitor the children’s memory, impulse control, and attention span for 1.5 hours before and after they play the games. The scientists at the university believe that playing the computer games will help the children with ADHD improve their basic cognitive skills including memory and attention span, and will also heighten the skills of the children without ADHD, including learning and comprehension skills. The university has not revealed the exact nature of the computer games, only referring to them as “simple.” Children are allowed to play the games on their computers at home, and only report to the university if they choose to complete their 1.5-hour skills assessment at the university. Otherwise, they can be monitored at home for the entire four weeks.
Although the study has not been completed yet, scientists at the University of Wollongong do report that they have noticed improvements in “several” children’s attention span, memory and impulse control.
This post was contributed by Tara Miller, who writes about the online psychology degree. She welcomes your feedback at TaraMillerr00 at gmail.com

50 Tips to Improve Memory

2009-06-29T12:18:00.002-05:00

One of the followers of this blog sent me a link to her blog that recently posted an article, "50 Ways to Make Your Memory More Like an Elephants" (http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2009/06/50-ways-to-make-your-memory-more-like-an-elephants/).

The tips are not documented, but they do seem consistent with what I know about the research literature. Ten tips deal with diet, and these generally advocate foods that are high in omega 3s and antioxidants. Few of these have ever been shown to have memory-specific effects, but they all promote general health.

Another large batch of tips deal generally with lifestyle, but some ideas are not very profound, such as "don't get too drunk."

Five tips suggest ways to be more organized, such as using Evernote and using Google Calendar, both of which I find to be useful.

The list closes with some brain exercises. These are not memory specific, but they are good for the brain and thus good for memory.

Can Exercise Help Kids Do Better in School?

2009-06-19T16:14:00.001-05:00

A New Treatment for Phobias and Emotional Trauma?

2009-05-30T12:06:00.003-05:00

I have mentioned earlier the recent discovery that when a memory is recalled, it is then re-saved ("consolidated," as researchers llke to say). During that reconsolidation time window, which in rats is about 6 hours, the memory becomes vulnerable to new information and interference, and can become distorted or even abolished.

Researchers have discovered that injecting a beta blocker drug during this reconsolidation period can prevent re-consolidation of the memory that was recalled, and this is an effective therapy for some patients. The problem is that this is a prescription drug and is potentially toxic.

Another approach is to use extinction therapy. Most phobias and emotional traumas arise from a conditioned association between a neutral stimulus and the traumatic event, much like the conditioning discovered by Pavlov and his dogs. If one repeats the conditoning cue, without re-presenting the bad event, the patient may develop a new memory in which the cue becomes innocuous because it is no longer associated with the bad event. The problem here is that the effect can wear off over time, because the original fear memory was never erased.

A new approach has been devised by Marie Monfils, Joseph LeDoux, and colleagues at several neuroscience and psychiatric institutions. Their idea capitalizes on the differences between reconsolidation and extinction. They reasoned that if the non-threatening conditioning stimulus were given deuring the reconsolidation window, a new memory that the situation was safe would be formed. Use of a drug could be avoided.

They tested this idea in rats that were trained to be fearful by pairing a tone cue with electric shock to the feet.This was done three times. The intervention therapy consisted of testing for recall with the tone cue, followed by a series of extinction trials in which the cue was repeatedly delivered without accompanying foot shock. Some rat groups were given the intervention during the window and others outside it, like the next day. The behavioral response of fear was movement freezing. That is, when the tone was sounded, rats indicated their memory of the training by freezing out of fear.

The day after the extinction session, all groups showed a similar abolition of freeze behavior. Extinction worked, but did it last? A month later, the same rats were tested again, and the freeze behavior had returned in all rats except those that had received the neutral cue and extinction training during the reconsolidation window. Multiple other experiments supported the value of this intervention approach.

The investigators are now exploring clinical implications in human psychotherapy. There is a possible negative consequence. Erasing the phobia may be accompanied by the conditioning stimulus acquiring the status of being safe and not just neutral. Studies on humans can also allow experimenters to study not just the behavioral expression of fear but also allow them to examine the thought processes. The fear memory may still be there, with the major change being in the behavioral expression.

Source:
Monfils, M.-H. et al. 2009. Extinction-reconsolidation boundaries: key to persistent attentuation of fear memories. Science. 324: 951-955.

There's a Reason for School Recess

2009-05-16T13:53:00.003-05:00

Three Ways to Slow Brain Aging

2009-04-22T09:39:00.000-05:00

Moderate physical exercise, dietary restriction, and enriched environment stimulation are all known to be good for the brain in general and memory in particular. However, few studies have directly compared these three factors all in the same study, as has been done in the lab of Alois Strasser in the University of Veterinary Medicine in Austria. Moreover, Strasser examined also a brain chemical that is likely to cause some of the brain improvement, the so-called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BNDF), which sustains neuron life and promotes growth of neuronal processes and synapse formation.

As brain ages, the levels of BNDF typically decline. Several studies have demonstrated that BNDF is important for memory function. Research prior to that of Strasser’s lab showed that exercise “up-regulates” BNDF; that is, exercise stimulates its production. And there had been some indication that environmental enrichment (stimulation, social interactions, etc.) had a similar effect. Therefore, Strasser and colleagues examined the tissue concentrations of BDNF in the cerebral cortex of old rats.

Rats were divided randomly into six groups, living from 5 months up to 23 months. In each age group, rats were divided into those that were given free access to running wheels (RW), forced running on treadmills, food restriction, and sedentary controls with no food restriction. Rats were either either housed individually or in groups of 4 to provide social enrichment. At the end of experiments, BDNF concentrations were determined.

Researchers found higher BNDF concentrations in the 5-month-old animals than in the 23-month-old-animals, suggesting that decline in BNDF accompanies old age and probably accounts for some of the mental decline. Within the older group of rats, sedentary rats that were housed in groups had significantly higher BNDF concentration compared to the old individually caged groups. Their BNDF concentrations were even higher than those of the young baseline group. The results suggest that housing and social interactions have more influence on BDNF concentrations in the cerebral cortex of aging rats than do physical exercise and food restriction.
There was some benefit of the exercise, but only from forced running on the treadmill, not voluntary activity. However, other studies had established that even voluntary exercise by old animals increased BNDF in other parts of brain, including the area so crucial to memory formation, the hippocampus.

The lack of beneficial effect of caloric restriction in sedentary rats to weight levels matching those of the voluntary exercise group was somewhat unexpected. Prior studies in other labs had shown that such restriction does promote synaptic plasticity and even birth of new neurons. Thus, there are no doubt multiple influences that can be beneficial to brain that are not mediated by BNDF. So, to the extent that these results can be extrapolated to aging humans, it would seem like a good idea to:

Exercise regularly and vigorously (assuming you don’t have heart trouble or other conditions that would prevent it)
Lose weight
Get out of the house and socialize.

Source:

Strasser, A. et al. 2006. The impact of environment in comparison with moderate physical exercise and dietary restriction on BNDF in the cerebral parietotemporal cortex of aged Sprague-Dawley rats. Gerontology. 52: 377-381.

Increase Working Memory and Increase IQ

2009-04-22T09:34:00.001-05:00

A key research report on working memory was summarized in a recent guest column in the New York Times by Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt. Below is a summary of what they said in the article:

J. R. Flynn first noted that standardized intelligence quotient (I.Q.) scores were rising by three points per decade in many countries, and even faster in some countries like the Netherlands and Israel. For instance, in verbal and performance I.Q., an average Dutch 14-year-old in 1982 scored 20 points higher than the average person of the same age in his parents’ generation in 1952. These I.Q. increases over a single generation suggest that the environmental conditions for developing brains have become more favorable in some way.

What might be changing? One strong candidate is working memory, defined as the ability to hold information in mind while manipulating it to achieve a cognitive goal. Examples include remembering a clause while figuring out how it relates the rest of a sentence, or keeping track of the solutions you’ve already tried while solving a puzzle. Flynn has pointed out that modern times have increasingly rewarded complex and abstract reasoning. Differences in working memory capacity account for 50 to 70 percent of individual differences in fluid intelligence (abstract reasoning ability) in various meta-analyses, suggesting that it is one of the major building blocks of I.Q. (2-4). This idea is intriguing because working memory can be improved by training.

A common way to measure working memory is called the "n-back" task. Presented with a sequential series of items, the person taking the test has to report when the current item is identical to the item that was presented a certain number (n) of items ago in the series. For example, the test taker might see a sequence of letters like

L K L R K H H N T T N X

presented one at a time. If the test is an easy 1-back task, she should press a button when she sees the second H and the second T. For a 3-back task, the right answers are K and N, since they are identical to items three places before them in the list. Most people find the 3-back condition to be challenging.

A recent paper reported (5) that training on a particularly fiendish version of the n-back task improves I.Q. scores. Instead of seeing a single series of items like the one above, test-takers saw two different sequences, one of single letters and one of spatial locations. They had to report n-back repetitions of both letters and locations, a task that required them to simultaneously keep track of both sequences. As the trainees got better, n was increased to make the task harder. If their performance dropped, the task was made easier until they recovered.

Each day, test-takers trained for 25 minutes. On the first day, the average participant could handle the 3-back condition. By the 19th day, average performance reached the 5-back level, and participants showed a four-point gain in their I.Q. scores.

The I.Q. improvement was larger in people who’d had more days of practice, suggesting that the effect was a direct result of training. People benefited across the board, regardless of their starting levels of working memory or I.Q. scores (though the results hint that those with lower I.Q.s may have shown larger gains). Simply practicing an I.Q. test can lead to some improvement on the test (6), but control subjects who took the same two I.Q. tests without training improved only slightly.

Since the gains accumulated over a period of weeks, training is likely to have drawn upon brain mechanisms for learning that can potentially outlast the training. But this is not certain. If continual practice is necessary to maintain I.Q. gains, then this finding looks like a laboratory curiosity. But if the gains last for months (or longer), working memory training may become as popular as and more effective than games like sudoku among people who worry about maintaining their cognitive abilities.

Now, some caveats. The results, though tantalizing, are not perfect. It would have been better to give the control group some other training not related to working memory, to show that the hard work of training did not simply motivate the experimental group to try harder on the second I.Q. test. The researchers did not test whether working memory training improved problem-solving tasks of the type that might occur in real life. Finally, they did not explore how much improvement would be seen with further training.

Sources:

1. Flynn, J. R. 1987. Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure. Psych. Bull. 101 (2) 171-191.

2. P.L. Ackerman (1987) Individual differences in skill learning: An integration of psychometric and information processing perspectives. Psychological Bulletin 102:3–27.

3. M.J. Kane, D.Z. Hambrick, and A.R.A. Conway (2005) Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are strongly related constructs: comment on Ackerman, Beier, and Boyle (2005). Psychological Bulletin 131:66–71.

4. H.-M. Süss, K. Oberauer, W.W. Wittmann, O. Wilhelm, and R. Schulze (2002) Working-memory capacity explains reasoning ability—and a little bit more. Intelligence 30:261–288.

5. S.M. Jaeggi, M. Buschkuehl, J. Jonides, and W.J. Perrig (2008) Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105:6829-6833.

6. D.A. Bors, F. Vigneau (2003) The effect of practice on Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices. Learning and Individual Differences 13:291–312.

Visual Memory Has Astounding Capacity

2009-04-20T12:42:00.002-05:00

My book on memory improvement presents much anecdotal evidence that people with outstanding memories use mental images of what they are trying to remember. Now, a formal scientific study validates the conclusion that ordinary humans have astounding memory capacity for visual (but not auditory) memories.

In this study, young adults (20-35 yrs) were shown a succession of object images, one every three seconds. They were told to remember as much as they could. After about each block of about 300 images, they were given a 5-minute rest break. After 10 such blocks (total images seen = 2,500; total time about 5.5 hours), they were tested with probe images and asked for each one if it had been seen before. Probe object images were paired in three ways: objects that were in a different category, the same category, or the same object but in a different state or pose. Performance accuracy was remarkably high for all conditions, respectively 92%, 88%, and 87% accuracy. Remembering 2,500 images with this level of recongition accuracy is truly astounding.

As comparison, a related study by another research group showed that auditory memory was markedly inferior. When subjects listened to sound clips (conversation, animal sounds, music, etc.) and then asked to distinguish new from old clips, under all conditions performance was systematically inferior to visual-memory performance.

Apparently, everyone has a degree of photographic memory. Certainly, the odds of recognizing that you have seen something are very high, at least under conditions where the image is a simple object. The storage capacity is huge. Does this apply to complex images that contain multiple details? Who knows for sure? The details can serve as useful cues or could even become confusing distractors. It is also not clear, if the visual-image capacity is limited to recognition or whether it applies to generating a recall without an image probe.

Even so, it is a good bet that memory performance will be optimized if memory items are converted to mental images.

Sources:
Brady, T. F. 2009. Visual long-term memoryh has a massive storage capacity for object details. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 106: 6008-6010.

Cohen, M. A. et al. 2009. Auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 106 (14): 6008-6010.

Do Our Schools Teach "Cognitive Tools?"

2009-03-19T10:35:00.002-05:00

In this age of high-stakes testing, schools focus on telling students WHAT to learn. How well do they teach students HOW to learn? ... not very well in my experience both as a middle-school curriculum developer and as a university science professor. I ran across a review of a new book entitled "The Future of Education. Re-imagining Our Schools from the Ground Up." The book apparently focuses on three goals of education: 1) socialization, 2) mastery of information, and 3) promotion of mental development. The book's author emphasizes a need to re-orient these goals around teaching "cognitive tools." Neuroscience is expected to reveal what those tools are, and it is the job of the school to teach those cognitive tools. Have schools even identified a set of cognitive tools? I know they don't explicitly appear in the national science standards. Communication between neuroscientists and school teachers is limited--they live in two different worlds. Moreover, the educational culture is not amenable to major change, especially one that requires teachers to re-orient their basic approach to teaching.

An example that I have mentioned before is the need to teach students how to memorize more effectively, using for example, the principles in my book. Few teachers teach memorization skills, and many have a prejudice against doing so. Also, it is increasingly clear that teaching students to increase the span of their working memory will raise student IQ and problem-solving skills. Yet I know of no school system or teacher that does that. Memorization skills are not tested on standardized tests and therefore are not taught. Real reform is a long way off. Many politicians and teachers think the solution for school reform is more money. Wrong!

Source: Egan, K. 2008. The Future of Education. Reimagining Our Schools from the Ground Up. Yale University Press. New Have, Ct. 203 p.

The Ethics of Drug Enhancers of Memory

2009-03-02T09:59:00.001-06:00

Few people would argue against using drugs like Aricept to help Alzheimer's patients. Few would complain about using propranolol to assist in treatment of post-traumatic stress syndrome. But what about using memory-enhancing drugs for normal people?

For now, the question is moot, because there are no drugs that have been proven to help normal people. But such drugs are on the horizon. Several drug companies are working on such drugs. One drug was recently discovered in animals to have a positive side effect of improving memory. The drug, Fasudil, increases blood flow in the brain of rats and has potential for treating stroke in humans. This drug has now been found by Matthew Huentelman, an investigator at the non-profit Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. to affect a gene that promotes memory, and when tested in 18-month old (middle-aged) rats, enabled the rats to perform better in water-maze learning and memory tests. The older rats performed as well as young rats. I don't know if this work is published yet (it is widely reported in the lay press), and it certainly has not been replicated.

But for the sake of argument, let us assume that it is correct. Are there ethical issues for normal people taking it to improve their memory, to get better performance at work, or for students to get better grades? Some students already take Ritalin or amphetamines to improve their performance. Is this like doping in sports? Or will we come to accept use of such drugs as preventive medicine, forestalling or preventing dementia, Alzheimers's or even normal mental decline with age?

Erasing Fear Memories

2009-02-28T17:02:00.005-06:00

I have discussed elsewhere a new idea for treating unpleasant memories, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome. The latest treatment being investigated by some researchers is based on using a common blood pressure drug, propranolol, which has a side effect of blocking the re-consolidation of emotions associated with old memories when those memories are recalled.

The original idea was first confirmed in rats. Now a study indicates that the approach can work in humans and might become a clinically valuable treatment. In this human study, subjects were given a mild shock when shown pictures of spiders on the first day of the study. Their fear response was measured as the eyeblink startle reflex to a loud noise. On day 2 of the study, the memory reactivation phase, the study volunteers exhibited the same response to the fearful stimuli (the spider pictures) as on day 1. On day 3, 20 of the subjects were given 40 mg of propranolol, and the remaining 20 were given a placebo. Next, the entire group was exposed to the fearful stimuli. The propranolol group did not exhibit the same startle response as on previous days. The placebo group showed no change in startle response compared to days 1 or 2. In other words, the drug reduced the emotional response, yet did not reduced the memory of the learned event.

Thus, it seems that if propranolol is in the body at the time when one recalls a bad memory, the emotional impact of the memory can diminish without impairing the ability to remember the item. Psychiatric treatment protocols remain to be worked out. Notice that in this situation the learned fear response was recent. Nobody knows if this effect occurs with old, well-entrenched fear memories. Another issue that nobody seems to be asking is the possibility that people on this kind of blood pressure medication might be suffering impairments of emotional memories that they don't want to lose. Does this drug cause a general dulling of emotions?

Source:

Merel Kindt, Marieke Soeter, Bram Vervliet (2009). Beyond extinction: erasing human fear responses and preventing the return of fear Nature Neuroscience DOI: 10.1038/nn.2271

Training Working Memory May Be Rewarding

2009-02-25T12:23:00.002-06:00

Biological reward comes from the release of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. Performing working memory tasks promotes dopamine release. In the study of human subjects by Fiona McNab and colleagues in Stockholm, human males (age 20-28) were trained on working memory tasks with a difficulty level close to their individual capacity limit for 35 minutes per day for 5 weeks. After such training, all subjects showed increased working memory capacity. Functional MRI scans also showed that the memory training increased the cerebral cortex density of dopamine D1 receptors, the receptor subtype that mediates feelings of euphoria and reward.

Students who make good grades feel good about their success. Likewise, people who are "life-long learners" have discovered that learning lots of new things makes them feel good. Though this present study did not rigorously test the idea, it is possible that learning how to improve your working memory capacity can also make you feel good.

Source: McNab, F. et al. 2009. Changes in cortical dopamine D1 receptor binding associated with cognitive training. Science. 323: 800-802.

Eat Your Blueberries - But Not With Cereal.

2009-02-11T09:28:00.004-06:00

I have reported earlier on a study indicating that blueberries are good for memory. Actually, there are several studies indicating that blueberries are good for mental function in general. Blueberries contain polyphenolics, the levels of which are indicated by the amount of two compounds, ferulic acid and caffeic acid. Ferulic acid helps to stabilize cell walls and protects the nervous system. It lowers blood pressure. Caffeic acid also protects neurons and may even prevent neural degeneration. Both compounds are powerful antioxidants.

Blueberries are potent anti-inflammatory agents. One study in rats fed a diet including a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or a 2% blueberry diet showed that within just two weeks the blueberry supplement activated anti-inflammatory genes in the brain much more than did the anti-inflammatory drug.

Now, a recent report indicates that the health benefits of blueberries are blocked by milk. Phenolics have a high affinity for protein, and the binding to milk protein prevents phenolics from accessing body cells. The study that demonstrated this effect involved measuring blood levels of the blueberry phenolics at various times after human volunteers consumed 200 gms of blueberries with 200 ml of either water or milk. Levels of phenolics rose sharply when water was consumed, but there was no increase when milk was consumed.

Heat destroys blueberry phenolics. So even though blueberry pie tastes great, it won't help your health. Only fresh blueberries provide useful levels of phenolics.

So, the recommendation is to consume blueberries without proteins. It should suffice to eat blueberries either one hour before eating other foods or two hours afterwards. For me, I will eat my blueberries alone an hour before my milk and cereal.

Sources:

Serafini, M. et al. 2009. Antioxidant activity of blueberry fruit is impaired by association with milk. Free Radical Biology and Medicine. doi:10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2008.11.023

Shukitt-Hale, B. et al. 2008. Blueberry polyphenols attenuate kainic acid-induced decrements in cognition and alter inflammatory gene expression in rat hippocampus. Nutr. Neuroscience. 11 (4): 172-182.

The Love Hormone and Memory for Faces

2009-01-23T12:06:00.004-06:00

When you see an attractive face, a warm glow may ensue. When you see an ugly or threatening face, just the opposite occurs. Studies in animals have made it clear that a hormone from the pituitary gland, oxytocin, modulates such responses. In animals, oxytocin helps them decide whether to shun another animal or to approach for such purposes as socialization and mating. Oxytocin promotes approach behavior and suppresses avoidance.

If the same processes occur in humans (we use oxytocin too), then it should be reflected in how we react emotionally to others. Well, it does, and that is why it is sometimes called the “love hormone.” The best documentation for such action is that oxytocin is released in great amounts when a mother gives birth and increases the mother-infant bond. How robust this effect is in people is not clear.

Oxytocin could be important for remembering other people. In an experiment in Switzerland, men received a single nasal-spray dose of oxytocin and tested for their ability to recognize previously seen faces. The hormone improved recall of faces seen the day before, but had no effect on remembering non-social objects such as houses, landscapes, or sculptures. The study involved 44 male volunteers who were given three puffs of spray in each nostril of either oxytocin or a placebo. After a 40-minute delay to let the drug reach the brain, subjects were shown photos of 84 faces (half male, half female; 1/3 emotionally positive, 1/3 emotionally negative, and 1/3 neutral) and 84 images of inanimate objects for 3.5 seconds each. One day later, they were shown the same 84 pictures mixed randomly with other pictures they had not seen and asked to identify which photos they remembered and which were new from the previous day.

During the initial exposure (encoding) no differences were found in ratings for approachability (likeability) of either the faces or inanimate objects. Likewise, no oxytocin-related differences were seen for the emotional subcategories of positive, negative, or neutral, although everyone had more difficulty in remembering emotionally neutral faces. Gender of the faces did not seem to make much difference. Maybe this lack of effect was due to insufficient dosage (a single spray of three puffs may not be enough).

Where the drug effect was evident was in recognition memory of the faces. Oxytocin also increased the ability to realize that a new face had not been in the initial encoding group on the learning day.

Other studies have shown that oxytocin has a general pro-social effect, such as trust, for example.Take home message? One thought is the next time you want to attract someone, you might make yourself more memorable if you offered them some nasal spray laced with oxytocin. Of course that is too socially awkward. But one thing that is more practical is to take a few snorts of spray before going to a meeting or conference where you need to remember the new people you meet. Novartis already makes such a spray (Syntocinon). However, the drug’s medical use is to induce labor in pregnant women.

My second thought is there may something to the old saying about “love at first sight.” Certain faces may, for unknown reasons, cause a surge in endogenous secretion of oxytocin in the brain of the viewer and thus give that face a greater impact. Women knew all along the importance of having a memorable face; that’s why they wear makeup and fuss over their hair.

Source:

Rimmele, U. et al. 2009. Oxytocin makes a face in memory familiar. J. Neuroscience. 29 (1): 38-42.

Talking Makes It Memorable

2009-01-14T11:32:00.004-06:00

Students learn better when they can discuss test items with their peers. A group of professors at University of Colorado, Boulder, reported a study in which they tested the value of allowing peer discussion of questions during lecture. To break up the monotony of traditional lecture in a genetics course, the lecture was periodically interrupted with a paired set of similar multiple-choice questions (Q1 and Q2) for any given concept was asked back to back. For each question, each student voted for the correct answer with a "clicker," and tallies of votes were automatically posted on the instructors podium computer. After the vote on Q1, students were allowed to discuss possible answers (without being told what the right answer was) and then allowed to vote again. Then, they were asked a second question on the same concept (Q2) and voted without discussion.

Performance results were markedly enhanced on the second vote on Q1. For example, pooled over 16 sets of questions, the average correct response to Q1 without discussion was 52%. But 92% got the question right after they were allowed to discuss it with peers (usually 3-4 classmates). Of this same group, 90% then got Q2 right.

Gains were also seen in the group the gave the wrong vote the first time they saw Q1 (48%). Of these, 42% got the answer correct after they discussed it with peers and 77% got Q2 right. Of those who missed Q1, even after discussion, 44% got Q2 right. This indicates that the understanding gained from discussing Q1 helped them with Q2.

The advantage seen here of discussion is primarily one of improved understanding, not necessarily improved memory. But memory should also be improved because peer discussion engages students in thinking, and thinking promotes consolidation. The sound feedback from talking also reinforces memory. Students recognized a memory benefit, as exemplified in the comment "the answer almost sticks better (italics mine) because we talked through it instead of just hearing the answer." What I would like to have seen is a controlled study of two classes, one that got their lecture interrupted with questions in this way and another class that did not, with a final exam given to both groups in which half the questions were the same as those used in class and half that were new but related.

Source:

Smith, M. K. et al. 2009. Why peer discussion improves student performance on in-class concept questions. Science. 323: 122-124.