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+---- Thread: Thinking (/Thread-Thinking)
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Thinking - John Nicholson - 29-12-2008
NEW THINK FROM A BRAIN SCIENTIST
ALISON GOPNIK
Psychologist, UC-Berkeley; Coauthor, The Scientist In the Crib
Imagination is Real
Recently, I've had to change my mind about the very nature of knowledge because of an obvious, but extremely weird fact about children - they pretend all the time. Walk into any preschool and you'll be surrounded by small princesses and superheroes in overalls - three-year-olds literally spend more waking hours in imaginary worlds than in the real one. Why? Learning about the real world has obvious evolutionary advantages and kids do it better than anyone else. But why spend so much time thinking about wildly, flagrantly unreal worlds? The mystery about pretend play is connected to a mystery about adult humans - especially vivid for an English professor's daughter like me. Why do we love obviously false plays and novels and movies?
The greatest success of cognitive science has been our account of the visual system. There's a world out there sending information to our eyes, and our brains are beautifully designed to recover the nature of that world from that information. I've always thought that science, and children's learning, worked the same way. Fundamental capacities for causal inference and learning let scientists, and children, get an accurate picture of the world around them - a theory. Cognition was the way we got the world into our minds.
But fiction doesn't fit that picture - its easy to see why we want the truth but why do we work so hard telling lies? I thought that kids' pretend play, and grown-up fiction, must be a sort of spandrel, a side-effect of some other more functional ability. I said as much in a review in Science and got floods of e-mail back from distinguished novel-reading scientists. They were all sure fiction was a Good Thing - me too, of course, - but didn't seem any closer than I was to figuring out why.
So the anomaly of pretend play has been bugging me all this time. But finally, trying to figure it out has made me change my mind about the very nature of cognition itself.
I still think that we're designed to find out about the world, but that's not our most important gift. For human beings the really important evolutionary advantage is our ability to create new worlds. Look around the room you're sitting in. Every object in that room - the right angle table, the book, the paper, the computer screen, the ceramic cup was once imaginary. Not a thing in the room existed in the Pleistocene. Every one of them started out as an imaginary fantasy in someone's mind. And that's even more true of people - all the things I am, a scientist, a philosopher, an atheist, a feminist, all those kinds of people started out as imaginary ideas too. I'm not making some relativist post-modern point here, right now the computer and the cup and the scientist and the feminist are as real as anything can be. But that's just what our human minds do best - take the imaginary and make it real. I think now that cognition is also a way we impose our minds on the world.
In fact, I think now that the two abilities - finding the truth about the world and creating new worlds-are two sides of the same coins. Theories, in science or childhood, don't just tell us what's true - they tell us what's possible, and they tell us how to get to those possibilities from where we are now. When children learn and when they pretend they use their knowledge of the world to create new possibilities. So do we whether we are doing science or writing novels. I don't think anymore that Science and Fiction are just both Good Things that complement each other. I think they are, quite literally, the same thing.
---- http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=conv/gopnik
READ MORE ABOUT THIS SCIENTIST
A VITAL SITE http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v89/k0802jen.htm
Hi papertalker i suffer with you the lack of responce to your main purpose in life the promotion of Pupets in teaching with me its the abacus and teaching every child to read well and enjoy it,
full mentall involvement with the story and concentration involved is where the massive teaching bennifit comes from, your remarks on new thinking are very relevent , just keep kicking and one day we will walk through the door to the future together. :pcprob: :pcprob:
Thinking - John Nicholson - 08-01-2009
[SIZE="5"]PSI
Parents Showing Initiative
Building ability and IQ
Six tricks for six
Maths Reading & the Skeleton of Geography
Chess Piano & Table Tennis (start with hands)
These activities need starting around four years of age, but I take on the point as regards kumin the older they are when they start the faster they will learn.
These six activities between 4 & 6 should be the basis of all early education should it be the child educated at home in a bush school provision with young volunteer teachers, or as we are trying to achieve: the basis of our common sense assistance to our own children within the standard UK primary education.
This is a new format for presenting our
“Showing Is Knowingâ€
The natural way we teach and learn.
IE Starting point “Show me†a capital L, Show me your left arm, show me your left eye shut, show me how you turn to the left. After one week of this combined procedure under the “Show me your left hand†command the combined routine would become a permanent memory fixed for life at four years old.
On to show me Mr Five Show me Mr Six
Show me ten show me eight show me four
Every thing can become a series of Show me routines.
The physical routines build the permanent memories, which provide the child with automatic ability.
I think you can make a start, and then we could be both be recognised for creating this easy learning routine which will obviously become international standard practice.
LEFT TO RIGHT IS THE WAY WE READ
REMEMBER THIS ONLY TO SUCEED
In all initial internal memos it is best to include every original ideas for mutual consideration, as the above two lines and below.
We could imprint left by insisting every child only put up its left hand in primary schools, for an odd week ok.
Always, Murder, to regimented I think.
But on the basis of good Habits?
WHAT IS A PRIMARY SHOOL
It is by far the most important school any child will ever attend
Its practical purpose is that of software installation.
The major part of that installation is being committed quite naturally, daily mental realisations are being absorbed continually throughout our primary school life.
The human mind is like an iceberg, two thirds of it is invisible and during the five years in primary schools the major part of our software ability is being laid down quite naturally.
The visible software is in providing the child with the essential working tools for teaching itself everything that has to be committed to the human mind during a life time.
The two major parts of brain processing are, mathematics for the basis of calculation and reading/writing for the means of information exchange, a geography skeleton can be easily acquired by familiarisation with the world map, where every child can acquire a good working knowledge of the position of every one of the two hundred or so independent countries in our world.
Once the world skeleton is in place, committing the awareness of physical features, the rivers mountains and seas, alongside the cities towns and land usage, is assisted greatly by the practical reality of having committed the structure of our land and sea mass early in our education.
The second line of our showing tricks, chess piano playing and table tennis are all parts and parcel of improving our neural structure, essential in building instantaneous natural thinking ability and keeping those thinking abilities at their highest possible level throughout our lives.
How do we teach these three essential skills to very young children?
They are best taught by means of physically showing as we expand this essential, early and easy learning system, detailed instruction information will no doubt become ever more available.
What do we know about teaching chess? We already have a realisation that the very young learner/student copies exactly the movements of the master, during this process the showing of practical moves are being laid down as permanent memory.
[/SIZE]
Parents Showing Initiative
Building ability and IQ
Six tricks for six
Maths Reading & the Skeleton of Geography
Chess Piano & Table Tennis (start with hands)
These activities need starting around four years of age, but I take on the point as regards kumin the older they are when they start the faster they will learn.
These six activities between 4 & 6 should be the basis of all early education should it be the child educated at home in a bush school provision with young volunteer teachers, or as we are trying to achieve: the basis of our common sense assistance to our own children within the standard UK primary education.
This is a new format for presenting our
“Showing Is Knowingâ€
The natural way we teach and learn.
IE Starting point “Show me†a capital L, Show me your left arm, show me your left eye shut, show me how you turn to the left. After one week of this combined procedure under the “Show me your left hand†command the combined routine would become a permanent memory fixed for life at four years old.
On to show me Mr Five Show me Mr Six
Show me ten show me eight show me four
Every thing can become a series of Show me routines.
The physical routines build the permanent memories, which provide the child with automatic ability.
I think you can make a start, and then we could be both be recognised for creating this easy learning routine which will obviously become international standard practice.
LEFT TO RIGHT IS THE WAY WE READ
REMEMBER THIS ONLY TO SUCEED
In all initial internal memos it is best to include every original ideas for mutual consideration, as the above two lines and below.
We could imprint left by insisting every child only put up its left hand in primary schools, for an odd week ok.
Always, Murder, to regimented I think.
But on the basis of good Habits?
WHAT IS A PRIMARY SHOOL
It is by far the most important school any child will ever attend
Its practical purpose is that of software installation.
The major part of that installation is being committed quite naturally, daily mental realisations are being absorbed continually throughout our primary school life.
The human mind is like an iceberg, two thirds of it is invisible and during the five years in primary schools the major part of our software ability is being laid down quite naturally.
The visible software is in providing the child with the essential working tools for teaching itself everything that has to be committed to the human mind during a life time.
The two major parts of brain processing are, mathematics for the basis of calculation and reading/writing for the means of information exchange, a geography skeleton can be easily acquired by familiarisation with the world map, where every child can acquire a good working knowledge of the position of every one of the two hundred or so independent countries in our world.
Once the world skeleton is in place, committing the awareness of physical features, the rivers mountains and seas, alongside the cities towns and land usage, is assisted greatly by the practical reality of having committed the structure of our land and sea mass early in our education.
The second line of our showing tricks, chess piano playing and table tennis are all parts and parcel of improving our neural structure, essential in building instantaneous natural thinking ability and keeping those thinking abilities at their highest possible level throughout our lives.
How do we teach these three essential skills to very young children?
They are best taught by means of physically showing as we expand this essential, early and easy learning system, detailed instruction information will no doubt become ever more available.
What do we know about teaching chess? We already have a realisation that the very young learner/student copies exactly the movements of the master, during this process the showing of practical moves are being laid down as permanent memory.
[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 06-03-2009
[SIZE="4"]
“What we demonstrate is that we can change the way the brain works,”
Rosemary you are a special person not only because you are the first person in the world to join me in the most exiting journey I have ever undertaken, but you are as exited at the prospect of easily achieved universal education as I, and to what it will mean to the individual lives of millions of children with little hope without reading and counting skills. There is no expectation of a peaceful world without sufficient food and adequate power, no hope of that without Education, research, and motivation which is dependant on individual knowledge and effort.
My journey started thirteen years ago, when I saw Chinese Children of five years of age instantly shouting answers to sums a European child of eight years of age could not manage. (They had been taught arithmetic on a Chinese Abacus.) Their outstanding ability was obvious, I taught my four year old daughter to read (Interpret) a five strand ten bobbin abacus the next day. I had made an amazing discovery, that we can change the way the brain works,”
[SIZE="5"]I was already on the hook, how did we learn everything we do know, where did we learn everything we know, when did we learn everything we know, why did we learn everything we know and the most important question of all, what do we know.[/SIZE]
Why was I so exited by the abacus, my hypothesis was thus, if we can teach arithmetic so easily, it is most likely that we can teach everything quickly, and so I began my journey of brain research, using my five friends, how, when, where, why and what. I consult with them on every occasion. They tell me the mind works far faster then we can think, thinking about thinking is what I do. What else are our minds for other then to reason with. We cannot reason without language, but we can learn without language, most of what we learn is from experience, but to reason we can call on the words of others, as I called on Socrates to explain to us all how little we shall ever know.
Dyslexia Studies Catch Neuroplasticity at Work
Researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, have detected which parts of the brain become stronger as children with dyslexia develop their ability to read. As reported in the journal Neuropsychologia, follow-up scans one year after the children received 100 hours of remedial reading from teachers showed that this increase in activation continued, reaching normal levels in the left parietal lobe.
These fMRI scans reveal the vigor of neuroplasticity, the process by which neurons create new connections among themselves.
[SIZE="7"]“What we demonstrate is that we can change the way the brain works,” [/SIZE]
says Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon, who conducted the research.
[SIZE="5"]“The study shows that we can make a brain area more active through remedial training.”[/SIZE]
New connections among neurons preserve memories and make learning possible, but they also fortify brain functions. Research has shown that a pianist, for example, through practice, develops neural pathways in the motor cortex that make subtle finger movements possible. Blind people who read Braille actually expand the region of the somatosensory cortex devoted to processing input from their reading finger.
[SIZE="5"]And children with dyslexia, according to Just’s findings, can strengthen connections in parts of the brain that enhance their ability to read. Teachers have long recognized that children with dyslexia can improve their reading ability, but imaging is just beginning to provide evidence of the changes in the brain that make this possible.[/SIZE]
Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, along with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, performed fMRI scans on 22 children with dyslexia and 23 normal readers, all about 10 years old, while they listened to typical speech sounds. She found that normal readers showed activation in the frontal lobe in response to rapid changes of sound, while children with dyslexia did not.
[COLOR="red"]
“We are currently using fMRI to look for neural pre-markers for reading,” Gaab says. “We hope we will be able to identify these markers prior to the onset of reading in order to identify children at risk.”[/COLOR]
Gaab’s findings support research conducted by Paula Tallal, who, more than 35 years ago, identified dyslexia as a problem involving the processing of speech sounds.
“When you start to read, you have to learn how to go inside of a word and recognize smaller, faster units of sound,” says Tallal, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at Rutgers University.
Sally Shaywitz, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention, has used fMRI to compare brain activity in dyslexic children and in normal readers while they sound out nonsense words such as “jeat” and “lete.” The large differences she found constitute what she calls a “neurological signature” for dyslexia.
For example, she found that normal readers displayed greater activity on the left side of the brain, especially the parieto-temporal region—the same region that got stronger in the students Just studied after they worked with remedial reading teachers.
[SIZE="5"]But dyslexia is not a problem confined to a single area of the brain, and explanations of the disorder implicate several brain functions.[/SIZE]
In the 19th century, dyslexia was known as “word blindness,” a phrase that suggests visual difficulties as the cause. A small percentage of children with dyslexia do have problems seeing words. Deaf children with the disorder, for example, cannot hear phonemes—the one-syllable sounds that make up spoken words—which are believed to confuse dyslexic children with normal hearing, so their reading difficulties must be visual. And in 1982 physiologist John Stein of Oxford found that some children with dyslexia have trouble focusing on words and scanning text smoothly. Some researchers also suspect problems in the cerebellum, which might help explain the balance and coordination difficulties of some children with dyslexia.
[SIZE="5"]But a rapidly growing body of research suggests that the vast majority of children with dyslexia have trouble distinguishing among phonemes. They may have trouble hearing the difference between “ba” and “pa,” for example, or “mif” and “tif.” While they can say “cat,” they may have trouble distinguishing the three phonemes that make up the word: “kuh,” “aah,” and “tuh.”[/SIZE]
As a result, children with dyslexia have trouble with the fundamental task of reading, which involves translating letters on the page into phonemes and then building those phonemes into words.
Tallal has applied this hypothesis to develop effective, computer-based remedial reading programs. She also would like to see neuroplasticity used to improve memory, attention, processing speed and sequencing skills, which are vital to all learning.
[SIZE="5"]“In our schools we’ve focused on improving the curriculum, the teachers and the medications we give children, but we’ve never focused on improving the brain the child brings to the classroom,” Tallal says. “That brain can be modified.”[/SIZE]
And those modifications are not limited to children.
Ways of Changing the Brain
Not so long ago, scientists viewed the brain as a form of concrete—soft and easily shaped in youth, but gradually hardening over the years into a rigid organ highly resistant to change.
But scientists now recognize that the brain remains surprisingly plastic and resilient throughout life, which creates opportunities for adults to make positive changes in their neural connections through focused attention and practice.
“Neurology, psychology, speech therapy, education, sports, music—all of these domains will be improved as we apply the laws of neuroplasticity,” says Norman Doidge, a faculty member at Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, and author of The Brain That Changes Itself.
Doidge presents many examples in his book of how neuroplasticity can change brain function dramatically.
Doidge also tells of a woman whose sense of balance was destroyed by an antibiotic, making it almost impossible for her to walk. She regained her balance, however, with the help of the late University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita, who devised a helmet that sent signals about the orientation of her head to a device on her tongue. By learning to keep the signals centered on her tongue, the woman trained her brain to recognize when her head was upright.
[COLOR="red"]He believes fMRI evidence of neuroplasticity can be used to diagnose dyslexia and other brain problems, and to test proposed therapies.
“We can use fMRI to evaluate educational approaches and see which ones are getting us to the desired brain end state,” says Just. “There were these endless phonics wars, for example. It was like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.[/COLOR]
Now, with fMRI, you can see which methods work best. Plus you can see what kinds of problems with reading children are having, which would provide a better idea of how to remediate.”
This without any doubt the best written article on brain research i have read in thirteen years research J--N and this will help any parent teaching their own child to read
http://www.riggsinst.org/BrainPower.aspx[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 11-03-2009
I AM OUT OF SPACE ABOVE PLEASE READ THE RIG INSTITUTE READING WEBSITE ABOVE
[COLOR="Blue"]"If we teach our children early enough, it will affect the organization, or 'wiring,' of their brains."
Michael Phelps, UCLA biophysicist[/COLOR]
[SIZE="7"]WHY MUSIC
PSI
Parents Showing Initiative
Building ability and IQ
Six tricks for six
[/SIZE]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5362670.stm
[SIZE="5"]Music training boosts the brain
Music appears to have a profound effect on the brain
Music lessons can improve memory and learning ability in young children by encouraging different patterns of brain development, research shows.
Canadian scientists compared children aged four to six who took music lessons for a year with those who did not.
They found the musical group performed better on a memory test also designed to assess general intelligence skills such as literacy and maths ability.
The study, by McMaster University, is published online by the journal Brain.
It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development
Dr Takako Fujioka
The researchers also measured changes in the children's brain responses to sounds during the year.
They found changes developed in the musical group in as little as four months.
Previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons recorded greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons.
But lead researcher Professor Laurel Trainor said: "This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year."
Brain measurements
The researchers focused on 12 children, six of whom attended a Suzuki music school, using a Japanese approach which encourages children to listen to and imitate music before they attempt to read it. The other six had no music lessons outside school.
They measured brain activity using a technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG) while the children listened to two types of sounds: a violin tone and a white noise burst.
All the children recorded larger responses when listening to the violin tones compared with the white noise - indicating more brain power was being deployed to process meaningful sounds.
In addition, all children responded more quickly to the sounds over the course of the year of the study - suggesting a greater efficiency of the maturing brain.
However, when the researchers focused on a specific measurement related to attention and sound discrimination, they found a greater change over the year among the Suzuki children.
Professor Trainor said this difference, coupled with the better performance of the Suzuki children in the memory test suggested musical training was having a profound impact.
He said: "It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention."
Dr Takako Fujioka, of the Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute, also worked on the study.
He said: "It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development and that music should be part of the pre-school and primary school curriculum."
The next phase of the study will look at the benefits of musical training in older adults.
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
SEE ALSO
Music 'aids the healing process'
19 Jul 06 | Health
Music 'can reduce chronic pain'
28 May 06 | Health
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28 Sep 05 | Health
RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Brain
McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind
Rotman Research Institute
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites [/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 11-03-2009
PSI
Parents Showing Initiative
Building ability and IQ
Six tricks for six
Maths Reading & the Skeleton of Geography
Chess Piano & Table Tennis (start with hands)
These activities need starting around four years of age, but obviously the older they are when they start the faster they will learn.
These six activities between 4 & 6 should be the basis of all early education should it be the child educated at home in a bush school provision with young volunteer teachers, or as we are trying to achieve: the basis of our common sense assistance to our own children within the standard UK primary education.
This is a new format for presenting our
“Showing Is Knowing”
Chess permits freedom of permutations within a framework of set rules and prescribed movements. Because a chess player cannot move absolutely as he likes, either in terms of the rules or in terms of the exigencies of the particular game, has he no freedom of move? The separate games of chess I play with existence has different rules from your and every other game; the only similarity is that each of our games always has rules. The gifts, inherited and acquired, that are special to me are the rules of the game; and the situation I am in at any given moment is the situation of the game. My freedom is the choice of action and the power of enactment I have within the rules and situation of the game. (Fowles, 1964. The Aristos)
[SIZE="5"]CBBC Newsround - Why I love table tennis
Skills required To play table tennis you need good hand and eye coordination. Top tips If you want to play table tennis then you should find out about your local table tennis club.[/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"] CHESS? YES CHESS
MATHS IN ITS EARLY STAGES IS ALL PERFECT MEMORY
AS IS CHESS
Surely every child will learn many games in its lifetime, but we need a standard product, one game that every child in the world can learn and benefit from.
Teaching and playing chess daily will provide the time to mix ever child with the maximum number of its fellow pupils, at the same time as it improves its chess, it will improve its speaking ability its confidence in working and meeting others. Developing growing awareness of the differences and similarities within the widest possible sense of their school associates.
Their personal and interpersonal abilities will develop quite naturally under teacher supervision, as to chess we need to make them to play quickly, speed just as in mathematics is where natural thinking meets intellectual thinking.
Unlike arithmetic we can make mistakes in bundles, playing chess with a school full of fellow pupils, lose every game for a month and still learn many things quite naturally about our school friends quite safely.
Sport - Table Tennis Guide
A short guide to table tennis with tips on style and how to get involved
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/table_tennis/4752356.stm
Results from "CBBC Newsround"CBBC Newsround - Why I love table tennis
Skills required To play table tennis you need good hand and eye coordination. Top tips If you want to play table tennis then you should find out about your local table tennis club.
-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4740000/newsid.../4746550.stm
CBBC Newsround - Paul Drinkhall - Table tennis
But now I've been playing table tennis for quite a few years so now most of my friends are in the sport so that helps a lot when I travel.
--- http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6100000/newsid.../6103412.stm
More results from "CBBC Newsround"
Humber - Telling Lives Hull Sports Workshops- Table Tennis, Bilal Qassab,
Telling Lives, Hull Sports Workshops, Table Tennis, Bilal Qassab Table Tennis by Bilal Qassab Tell us about yourself: I am Kurdish and I play table tennis in Hull.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/humber/telling_lives/59_more_from_humber.shtml
South East Wales Streets of Cardiff - Cardiff 2005 - Stories from Roath & Penylan
I remember Helen Witty, Phillip Squires, Peter Williams, Alan Dukes, Ann Donovan, Angela Beams.I used to play in the table tennis team which was coached by Peter Clarke.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeas.../stories_roath_and_penylan.shtml
BBC Wales - Raise Your Game - Nathan Stephens
He saw me doing some bench presses and playing table tennis and asked me to come along to try out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/raiseyourgame/pages/nathan_stephens.shtml
Dorset - People
A Dorchester bodybuilding champ has a unique way of keeping fit - playing table tennis.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/people/profiles/
Results from "Sport - Table Tennis"Sport - Table Tennis - Teen star making 'ping pong' cool . Last updated: 9 Oct 2007
Table tennis is like my baby," Knight told BBC Sport. Everybody has played table tennis, for fun or seriously, but we have to take it to the next level.
-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/table_tennis/7018334.stm
Sport - Table Tennis - Table tennis tactics . Last updated: 4 Aug 2008
All the different styles of play in table tennis.. There are a wide variety of shots used in table tennis.
-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/table_tennis/7541936.stm
More results from "Sport - Table Tennis"
Sport - Sport Guide - Beginner's guide to table tennis . Last updated: 24 Apr 2004
All you need to know about table tennis ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympics.. There will be four table tennis events in Athens, men's and women's singles and doubles.
-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics_2004/table_ten.../3107665.stm
Mid Wales Sport - My route to Beijing
Whilst in hospital I started playing table tennis, after some gentle persuasion. This was held down in Stoke Manderville Hospital and I competed in the bowls and table tennis.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/sites/sport/pages/robertdavies.shtml[/SIZE]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thinking - John Nicholson - 12-03-2009
[SIZE="4"][SIZE="4"]How to Teach Your Child Geography
Low case country names for political boundaries
Geography best demonstrates the technique of mind maps, layer after layer of information is visually being assembled. We are starting with the political boundaries of every country in the world, the name of each country is identified by name, written in low case. Over 200 different countries and the major seas are written in low case and also all placed on a special tick board in alphabetical order above the map of the world, in order to identify each country quickly and register the fact that the child has identified that particular country from reading its name and knowing its position in the world.
We can clearly see that each country is being identified in one layer of knowledge
this technique clearly demonstrates how a child or adult builds up their knowledge, layer after layer, in reality we hardly notice how we are assembling knowledge. It is only when we systemise the acquisition of knowledge, that we can come to understand, how knowledge is built up within the mind. Having identified this process from research carried out on the development of Abacus One, I have applied the same mental disciplines in reading and geography. The effect of treating reading as essential layers of knowledge has a dramatic effect on how best we can learn to read quickly and easily. Techniques within the assimilation of knowledge learned from the Abacus are being applied throughout education with massive benefits to all the pupils.
In using an actual map it allows instant comprehension of the technique, there is nothing special about the subject, it is in fact how we learn every subject that we need to understand throughout our lives.
Our abilities in speech are the first of three Basic skills, reading and mathematics are not learnt naturally, but we must imitate the natural acquisition of speech if we are to be able to use those two skills, as efficiently and as easily as we use speech.
Once a Child has fluent ability in all three Basic skills, it has the ability to gather knowledge which is available in abundance throughout the Western world, the Third World is more difficult, but once children have gained thorough abilities in primary education it is a relatively simple matter to guide them to libraries, newspapers, the best of TV documentaries, radio and of course the Internet.
And so to geography.
Chanting and singing are well known and well researched techniques for quickly establishing rapid memory lock in. Contingent in this it is in geography I have developed the concept of a young Eskimo boy called Zig Zag, who travels around the world chanting the differing countries of the world has he takes an imaginary journey.
ZIG ZAG
Zigzag is an Eskimo boy. He is just twelve years old. He is the first person to graduate from The Bush School. From when he was born until his twelfth birthday, he has never met a schoolteacher. His twelfth birthday was on the 13th September 2001.
In the morning his father told him about the twin towers in New York. He had heard it on the radio in his snowmobile.
“It is a dreadful thing†said his father, Wise Owl “There is no real reason why people should fall out and behave in such a way.
Wise Owl explained to Zigzag that thousands of years ago human beings needed to protect themselves and the instinct to think of themselves as tribes had remained within them. He said it could be seen at a football match or in wars between countries, but it was less trouble at a football match.
Zigzag’s mother, Irene, who had taught him to speak and read, told him that she believed only politicians should be allowed to fight. If they were to risk their own lives first, there would soon be no wars. She told him about the different countries in the world and about the different religions.
She explained to him about other forces and ideas. She told him about humanity, she explained that the world was full of people with many different ideas, but she believed that there were forces of natural behaviour and common sense that would eventually affect the way the world was run. She explained to Zigzag that there were many different religions in the world and that they appeared to be fighting a losing battle betwee the modern way that young children behaved and the old ideas. She explained to him that within human behaviour the good things should be developed and the bad things about human nature understood and managed.
Zigzag took out his Kayak and went fishing, which he did most days. He enjoyed himself, sometimes on his own and sometimes with his friends.
He liked to find the fish that fed the family and many years ago his father had shown him how to fish. His father had built for him a kayak and shown him how to build one. They had built it from animal skins and the short trees that grew by the beach. His father told him that he needed a kayak for two in order for him to take his friends around and show them how to fish.
As it was his birthday Zigzag was excited and rushed down to the sea on his own. He caught three large fish. There was some sun shining over the water and as he had risen early in his excitement the warmth of the early day at the end of the Northern Summertime allowed him to sleep.
During his sleep he dreamt of the countries his mother had told him about.
She had told him about her imaginary journeys that she had made in her head after reading about all the countries in the world. As he dreamt he wished he could follow her journey around the world, he wished it so hard suddenly he imagined his two-seater kayak had wings! Instead of paddling he was steering his little two-seater kayak aeroplane gently around the world remembering the chant that his mother had used to teach him about where the countries were.
She said first there was the BIG SIX – two of them he knew well, because he lived in the Arctic Circle – 2 A’s for Alaska and The Arctic, a C and a G for Canada and Greenland. South to U and M, for the United States and Mexico.
South through the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN G – B – E and H – N – C and on to Panama. From Panama to The Caribbean, North to South – The Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Dominica – down through nine islands.
To South America, the lucky thirteen, four threes and big Brazil. ECV and GSF and across the PBP, down to Chile, Argentina and out from Uruguay.
From the Falkland Isles to Europe, through the Atlantics – North and South, to the Islands, Iceland and Ireland two I’s and another E England.
Cross the North Sea First, Norway, Sweden, Finland and down through ELL, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and back to Portugal. There’s nine in a line, take Portugal,Spain, France, little Belgium, Holland , Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway.
GPBR
Germany, Poland Bella Russia and Russia
To Czechs Slovak and grain in the Ukraine.
Then ski with me in the I.S.A. ( Italy, Switzerland and Austria) onto Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldavia.
Through the four at war, Croatia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia and Macedonia.
Albania and Kosova, then to the Islands of Greece, travel East through The Mediterranean to Cyprus and Malta, Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, Corsica, Balearics, through the Straits of Gibralter to Madiera, and the Canaries
Step into North Africa,
First Line 5 for MATLE
Second line W double M N C S double E E Six plus one E
Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan and Eritrea and Ethiopia
Third line S triple G S L I Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory coast
Fourth line G T double B N triple C
Ghana, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso, Nigeria, e.g. and 4 C’s Equatorial Guinea Gabon and 4 C’s Cameroon, Central Africa Republic and the 2 Congo’s
Fifth line U K S D R B T give us Uganda, Kenya, Somali and Djibouti and Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania
Sixth line A double Z 2 M’s and Madagascar, N B S with Lesotho and Swaziland
Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar. Namibia, Botswana and South Africa plus L S
Madgascar and Mauritius and North to the Seychelles to Yemen, Oman, U.A.E. (United Arab Emirates) Quator and Saudi Arabia , Kuwait to Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Iran, Syria and Lebanon , Turkey, Georgia , Armenia and Azabajhan . Over the Caspian Sea to the seven STANS
Turkistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzestan, Kazakhstan and two old STANS– Afghanistan and Pakistan.
NIS and the three B’s Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Burma and Bangladesh.
Go North to China and Mongolia, East to Korea and Japan
South again to T.C. & L.V. - Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and the Vietnam
Down to Malaya and Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines
We start in the North and end in the South zig-zagging from Papua New Guinea and the island states of The Pacific, to Australia, Tasmania , New Zealand – North and South
Finally South to the Antarctic
West to East
Zigzag woke quickly when he felt the chill of The Antarctic winter in his dream.
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="Red"]Combined sound and sight memory
Every parent is best qualified to teach their own child
phonetic reading arithmetic and two layers of Geography[/COLOR][/SIZE]
THESE LESSONS COMBINE RECOGNITION OF LETTERS AND COUNTRIES[/SIZE][/SIZE]
Low case country names for political boundaries
Geography best demonstrates the technique of mind maps, layer after layer of information is visually being assembled. We are starting with the political boundaries of every country in the world, the name of each country is identified by name, written in low case. Over 200 different countries and the major seas are written in low case and also all placed on a special tick board in alphabetical order above the map of the world, in order to identify each country quickly and register the fact that the child has identified that particular country from reading its name and knowing its position in the world.
We can clearly see that each country is being identified in one layer of knowledge
this technique clearly demonstrates how a child or adult builds up their knowledge, layer after layer, in reality we hardly notice how we are assembling knowledge. It is only when we systemise the acquisition of knowledge, that we can come to understand, how knowledge is built up within the mind. Having identified this process from research carried out on the development of Abacus One, I have applied the same mental disciplines in reading and geography. The effect of treating reading as essential layers of knowledge has a dramatic effect on how best we can learn to read quickly and easily. Techniques within the assimilation of knowledge learned from the Abacus are being applied throughout education with massive benefits to all the pupils.
In using an actual map it allows instant comprehension of the technique, there is nothing special about the subject, it is in fact how we learn every subject that we need to understand throughout our lives.
Our abilities in speech are the first of three Basic skills, reading and mathematics are not learnt naturally, but we must imitate the natural acquisition of speech if we are to be able to use those two skills, as efficiently and as easily as we use speech.
Once a Child has fluent ability in all three Basic skills, it has the ability to gather knowledge which is available in abundance throughout the Western world, the Third World is more difficult, but once children have gained thorough abilities in primary education it is a relatively simple matter to guide them to libraries, newspapers, the best of TV documentaries, radio and of course the Internet.
And so to geography.
Chanting and singing are well known and well researched techniques for quickly establishing rapid memory lock in. Contingent in this it is in geography I have developed the concept of a young Eskimo boy called Zig Zag, who travels around the world chanting the differing countries of the world has he takes an imaginary journey.
ZIG ZAG
Zigzag is an Eskimo boy. He is just twelve years old. He is the first person to graduate from The Bush School. From when he was born until his twelfth birthday, he has never met a schoolteacher. His twelfth birthday was on the 13th September 2001.
In the morning his father told him about the twin towers in New York. He had heard it on the radio in his snowmobile.
“It is a dreadful thing†said his father, Wise Owl “There is no real reason why people should fall out and behave in such a way.
Wise Owl explained to Zigzag that thousands of years ago human beings needed to protect themselves and the instinct to think of themselves as tribes had remained within them. He said it could be seen at a football match or in wars between countries, but it was less trouble at a football match.
Zigzag’s mother, Irene, who had taught him to speak and read, told him that she believed only politicians should be allowed to fight. If they were to risk their own lives first, there would soon be no wars. She told him about the different countries in the world and about the different religions.
She explained to him about other forces and ideas. She told him about humanity, she explained that the world was full of people with many different ideas, but she believed that there were forces of natural behaviour and common sense that would eventually affect the way the world was run. She explained to Zigzag that there were many different religions in the world and that they appeared to be fighting a losing battle betwee the modern way that young children behaved and the old ideas. She explained to him that within human behaviour the good things should be developed and the bad things about human nature understood and managed.
Zigzag took out his Kayak and went fishing, which he did most days. He enjoyed himself, sometimes on his own and sometimes with his friends.
He liked to find the fish that fed the family and many years ago his father had shown him how to fish. His father had built for him a kayak and shown him how to build one. They had built it from animal skins and the short trees that grew by the beach. His father told him that he needed a kayak for two in order for him to take his friends around and show them how to fish.
As it was his birthday Zigzag was excited and rushed down to the sea on his own. He caught three large fish. There was some sun shining over the water and as he had risen early in his excitement the warmth of the early day at the end of the Northern Summertime allowed him to sleep.
During his sleep he dreamt of the countries his mother had told him about.
She had told him about her imaginary journeys that she had made in her head after reading about all the countries in the world. As he dreamt he wished he could follow her journey around the world, he wished it so hard suddenly he imagined his two-seater kayak had wings! Instead of paddling he was steering his little two-seater kayak aeroplane gently around the world remembering the chant that his mother had used to teach him about where the countries were.
She said first there was the BIG SIX – two of them he knew well, because he lived in the Arctic Circle – 2 A’s for Alaska and The Arctic, a C and a G for Canada and Greenland. South to U and M, for the United States and Mexico.
South through the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN G – B – E and H – N – C and on to Panama. From Panama to The Caribbean, North to South – The Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Dominica – down through nine islands.
To South America, the lucky thirteen, four threes and big Brazil. ECV and GSF and across the PBP, down to Chile, Argentina and out from Uruguay.
From the Falkland Isles to Europe, through the Atlantics – North and South, to the Islands, Iceland and Ireland two I’s and another E England.
Cross the North Sea First, Norway, Sweden, Finland and down through ELL, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and back to Portugal. There’s nine in a line, take Portugal,Spain, France, little Belgium, Holland , Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway.
GPBR
Germany, Poland Bella Russia and Russia
To Czechs Slovak and grain in the Ukraine.
Then ski with me in the I.S.A. ( Italy, Switzerland and Austria) onto Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldavia.
Through the four at war, Croatia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia and Macedonia.
Albania and Kosova, then to the Islands of Greece, travel East through The Mediterranean to Cyprus and Malta, Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, Corsica, Balearics, through the Straits of Gibralter to Madiera, and the Canaries
Step into North Africa,
First Line 5 for MATLE
Second line W double M N C S double E E Six plus one E
Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan and Eritrea and Ethiopia
Third line S triple G S L I Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory coast
Fourth line G T double B N triple C
Ghana, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso, Nigeria, e.g. and 4 C’s Equatorial Guinea Gabon and 4 C’s Cameroon, Central Africa Republic and the 2 Congo’s
Fifth line U K S D R B T give us Uganda, Kenya, Somali and Djibouti and Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania
Sixth line A double Z 2 M’s and Madagascar, N B S with Lesotho and Swaziland
Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar. Namibia, Botswana and South Africa plus L S
Madgascar and Mauritius and North to the Seychelles to Yemen, Oman, U.A.E. (United Arab Emirates) Quator and Saudi Arabia , Kuwait to Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Iran, Syria and Lebanon , Turkey, Georgia , Armenia and Azabajhan . Over the Caspian Sea to the seven STANS
Turkistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzestan, Kazakhstan and two old STANS– Afghanistan and Pakistan.
NIS and the three B’s Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Burma and Bangladesh.
Go North to China and Mongolia, East to Korea and Japan
South again to T.C. & L.V. - Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and the Vietnam
Down to Malaya and Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines
We start in the North and end in the South zig-zagging from Papua New Guinea and the island states of The Pacific, to Australia, Tasmania , New Zealand – North and South
Finally South to the Antarctic
West to East
Zigzag woke quickly when he felt the chill of The Antarctic winter in his dream.
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="Red"]Combined sound and sight memory
Every parent is best qualified to teach their own child
phonetic reading arithmetic and two layers of Geography[/COLOR][/SIZE]
THESE LESSONS COMBINE RECOGNITION OF LETTERS AND COUNTRIES[/SIZE][/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 12-03-2009
[SIZE="4"]How to Teach Your Child Basic Numeracy
Even Albert Einstein used his fingers to count with. To teach you’re child to count to ten using their fingers from left to right. Put the numbers, on a sticker, on the nails, hold your own hands over a table and firmly bang on the table each finger in rhythm one to five and six to ten counting aloud (shout for ten) The child will always relate the fingers to the ABACUS
Before a child enters primary school, most learning is taking place naturally (unconsciously between the parents, the environment and the child.) From an informal learning environment, the child is pitched directly into formal education.
[SIZE="5"] "Abacus One" Can Benefit Your Child...[/SIZE]
It ensures educational equality.Introduction to the abacus at the earliest possible age, even before formal primary school provides a link between natural education (awareness) and (formal) lessons being given to the child within a group or classroom situation.
The abacus is easily understood, natural awareness allows the child to relate it directly to the fingers. Assessment of the child's maths ability is easily accomplished alongside that of their peers. Unless the child is mathematically competent, and continually improving it's basic reading standards, neither the abacus nor initial phonetic instruction in reading should be abandoned. The more difficult that the child finds learning, the more important these two teaching modes become.
Children can be introduced to the Abacus at any age obviously the teaching methods vary according to the capability of the child, their age and the number of children being taught at any one time. The web site Abacus and alphabet is primarily to inform parents how to teach their own children in mathematics and how to assist on a one-to-one basis in helping their own children, to understand the phonetic variation involved in the differing combinations of letters. Basic reading at an early age.
For the purposed explanations, as regards the web site, we are considering that children are being introduced to the Abacus as early as three years old, it is not harmful to introduce a young child at any age purely to understand the mechanical facilities that it offers in teaching.
Chance Encounter.
Is a variation of Abacus one, it is a clearly laid out counting board with numerals one to 10 in place at either end of the board, virtually all of the words that a child will use in early mathematics are written on it, three jumbo ten sided dice in differing colours are at used to play the game. Each colour represents the column being used for instance, you would start a child with one dice and one column, obviously a second column and an alternative colour marker have to be used in order to comprehend the technique of transfer ten TT. Working with a very young child that has already learnt to count on it’s fingers to ten, it is easily possible to transfer that concept to Abacus One and the Chance Encounter Score Board.
Abacus One
After exploring all the possibilities that chance encounter offers in relation to learning mathematics, along with the rules of the game provided by a working mathematician a theoretical physicist Winston Hagston, an Emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Hull university, and everything you can develop yourself to Illustrate as many mathematical concepts as you can possibly find, developing the child's ability at all stages. At approximately four years of age the child is ready to Read the written words on Abacus one, should the child find this difficult at first, it is possible to mark with a red felt pain one to ten in numerals for the short time it will take for the child to learn to read the written words for numbers. With Abacus one it is possible for the child to count through all the times table, reinforcing the chanting of the times table, which is so easily learnt especially when it is reinforced by an actual demonstration of the transferring of numbers. Instant memory recall of the times table, will be absorbed and retrained for life by utilising these two resources, Abacus one and the chanted times table.
From four years of age a child will be able to do mathematics on the Abacus working either from left to right or right to left understanding and retaining all the methodology needed to add and subtract numbers on the three columns. Once these concepts have been fully understood in relation to numbers up to 100, the concepts can easily be transferred to thousands and millions. Multiplication and division can be demonstrated on Abacus one all concepts are interchangeable.
Once children have been given a full background in mathematics using the Abacus's they can start to work on mathematics using the systematically based primary mathematics written entirely with accelerated comprehension in mind by Professor Hagston utilising all the concepts that have been reinforced and absorbed by children learning their basic arithmetic on the Abacus.
The Abacus One
Benefits of the Abacus one
First of all it teaches a child to count
It teaches a child to recognise the numbers in written English
It teaches a child maths at the child’s own pace
It gives a child a mathematic map for life
A child will understand the arrangement quickly
It develops short cuts in mental arithmetic
It gives a child confidence in their own ability
It develops four concepts in mathematics, counting, speaking counting, reading counting, comprehending counting in Arabic numerals
If the sum is stated correctly, it cannot be wrong
It encourages a child to experiment in maths and to answer many sums quickly
No matter how difficult a child finds arithmetic, it will gain speed and confidence at its own rate
It allows parents to help the child in understanding school maths at home
Because of the physical movement, it distracts the child from thinking it as a formal lesson
It allows the original teacher (Mother) to continue to teach after the most important lesson that she has already bestowed on her child, speech
It is not intended to replace the calculator, only to understand it
It makes arithmetic interesting
It makes maths easy after establishing the rules
Abacus One is essential for high speed comprehension (accelerated learning)
Either parent or teacher or older child can demonstrate Abacus One (children teach children)
Boredom is the enemy in education in both child and adult
How many half numbers in ten, how many quarter numbers in ten, how many eighths in ten and how many tenths in ten?
The child moves naturally from fractions to division
From division to decimal
It gives an instant answer
The three stemmed version is for children aged 2 to 5
The seven stemmed version is for children aged 5 plus
Once the child has gained the preliminary concept, it’s rate of learning leaps beyond the normal Western educational expectations
[COLOR="Green"]http://www.abacusandalphabet.com/abacus.htm
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forum...read.php?t=597
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forum...splay.php?f=23
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forum...splay.php?f=26
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcb8nT0QC6o
SCROLL DOWN TO SE MY
THREE DEMONSTRATIONS ARE UNDER THIS YOUTUBE[/COLOR]
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forum...read.php?t=597
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forum...splay.php?f=23
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forum...splay.php?f=26
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcb8nT0QC6o
SCROLL DOWN TO SE MY
THREE DEMONSTRATIONS ARE UNDER THIS YOUTUBE[/COLOR]
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For further information please contact John Nicholson on +44 (0)1964 551945
Abacus House, The Green, Bishop Burton, East Yorks, England, HU17 8QF
[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 28-04-2009
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="DarkRed"]INTODUCTION TO PARENTS TEACHING
THEIR OWN CHILD TO READ AND COUNT
WHY ARE OUR BRAINS FAR MORE INTELIGENT THEN WE ARE?[/COLOR][/SIZE]
THEIR OWN CHILD TO READ AND COUNT
WHY ARE OUR BRAINS FAR MORE INTELIGENT THEN WE ARE?[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="Navy"]Simply because brain function, has been developed by trial and error over millions of years, where only perfection was acceptable.
The first lesson a parent must learn, is the concept of perfection. Your baby is perfect. Your baby and every baby is born with massive abilities, whatever nationality or colour, our species have one thing in common, that make us all equal. We are as one in the manner in which we think, this realisation will lead eventually to a peaceful world where our individual talents will provide for all.
We are born with a massive capability to learn anything and everything, only failure to develop our individual natural abilities, stands between a troubled unequal world or a peaceful coexistence, with the provision of adequate food and housing for a stable world population.
The first realisation we all must be clear about, is that we are programmed quite naturally to copy both our natural language sounds, which enable us to speak to each other, but we are also programmed to copy human activity, just from watching and doing what those around us are doing. Those ancient skills we needed to survive have been exchanged for what we all recognise as the vital basic skills, that every one of us needs, to survive and prosper in today’s world.
Obviously all children need to be cared for, by both the family and the state, in case of the first few years of a Childs life it is the parents, grandparents and close family members that are best suited for care in these early years in later years there are play groups and infant schools, The real truth however, is that when a child needs to be taught to count and read, it is in the care of its mother. It is my contention that to simplify this early teaching, we must create a universal model, that is rigorously tested, proven to be totally effective , consistently under review, well publicised and adopted by every country. Teaching every child to count read and think effectively is best achieved by the child’s parents provide they are made aware of these facts.
The earlier we are taught to read count and think, the better we can read count and think for life.
In order to insure this is possible I have developed simple effective demonstrations which every three/four year old child can follow simply turning these demonstrations into ability in counting reading and thinking.
Our two hands provide numeric meaning, an abacus provides that every arithmetic process can be visualised and committed to every child’s mental awareness.
CREATING
“ The perfect memory of every physical mathematic process for life.â€
Counting precedes reading by providing the neural pathways vital in memory linking.
For reading we simple turn chanting into visual memory, and the visual memories into the alternative sounds of letters, by using three dimensional objects every child can name all ready. So creating automatic subconscious permanent memories of the appropriate sounds in the differing word and letter combinations we use to read with.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 06-05-2009
[SIZE="7"][COLOR="DarkRed"]THINKING OF THINKING
[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="Blue"]thinking of thinking, our awareness zone is obviously our conscious mind where we do our reasoning.
but our subconscious mind which is obviously far more powerful will not use words it will only use images ( THINK OF YOUR early LIFE ) their will not have been a word in that instant thinking
[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="Black"]so as I believe we turn whatever we learn into images and then we store it among our real visual images, where what we have learnt becomes mixed up with what we have seen, a massive hidden box of information, as we search for knowledge we draw down on what we need translating some of it into our consciousness where we can use it in whatever we are reasoning about.
When we speak we teach, so we create our best interpretation (instantaneously within natural speech) in words to describe whatever our reasoning process considers, unless of course we want to deceive those we are speaking to.
and so our subconscious mind delivers at will our best interpretation as words which are of course then interpreted back into visual images by those people we are speaking to.
an aside (you see what I mean) the most common expression used only to naturally.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]WE YOU AND I HAVE NOT TO BE OVERSHADOWED BY ANY ONE NOR NEED ANY ONE ELSE EVER CONSIDER THEMSELVES GREATER THEN ANOTHER OR LESSER THEN ANOTHER
WE CONFIRM THIS INDIVIDUAL EQUALITY WITH OUR BIRTH BRAIN AN EQUALITY IN EVEN THE SIMPLEST OF HUMAN LIVES.
I NEVER HAVE ALLOWED ANY ARROGANT BASTARD TO GRIND ME DOWN NOR SHOULD ANY ONE OF US EVER ALLOW IT.
[/COLOR]
only experience divides any human being with anotherWE CONFIRM THIS INDIVIDUAL EQUALITY WITH OUR BIRTH BRAIN AN EQUALITY IN EVEN THE SIMPLEST OF HUMAN LIVES.
I NEVER HAVE ALLOWED ANY ARROGANT BASTARD TO GRIND ME DOWN NOR SHOULD ANY ONE OF US EVER ALLOW IT.
[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Plum"]“I quote from others only the better to express myself”
Montaigne's stated goal is to describe man, and especially himself, with utter frankness.
AS IS MINE
We are exactly what we think we are jn. Sat2nd May 2009 [/COLOR]
Montaigne's stated goal is to describe man, and especially himself, with utter frankness.
AS IS MINE
We are exactly what we think we are jn. Sat2nd May 2009 [/COLOR]
[COLOR="DarkRed"]
If I die without being included within books that list the most outstanding philosophers of all times it will only be because I failed.
I shall never be forgotten, simply because my work is to prove that every one of us is formed in the spirit of human equality and my intention is to prove it. I only need your help
John Nicholson, his book, his proverbs,
some his own and some he loves more than his own.
[/COLOR]I shall never be forgotten, simply because my work is to prove that every one of us is formed in the spirit of human equality and my intention is to prove it. I only need your help
John Nicholson, his book, his proverbs,
some his own and some he loves more than his own.
We think quite naturally at the speed of light but we reason quite slowly at the speed of life, our individual mind is where we live within.
As humans we only have three natural modes, teaching by speech or physical demonstration, learning by inquiry or listening reading and watching, but the most important mode of all is our human ability to reason, what is philosophy other then the eternal search for truth.
Our parents gave us life, we had no hand in it, in five weeks a puppy can imitate its mother, in five years our parents can fail to teach us to read and count. Universal innate abilities allow every one of us to read and count within five years.
Our parents owe each and every one of us the duty of teaching every one of us these basic skills, after all we teach ourselves to speak, but it is impossible to read and count without assistance.
AND SO I SHALL SHOW YOU HOW
We can teach our children to count first, simply because it is easier. Let us regard the teaching of counting as a father’s duty, his first vital link in his own child’s education, once a child can count efficiently its brain is ready for reading. Counting efficiently can be achieved in six months once the child can speak, the only reason we can fail them is because we have no realisation of just how easy it is, when we make it a universal practice.
So fathers and mothers I will show you JUST HOW now.
The method is in our own hands. [/COLOR][/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 29-06-2009
[SIZE="3"]Conversing helps language development more than reading alone
UCLA study finds that activities that get children 2 months to 48 months talking are most conducive to language acquisition
By Sarah Anderson| 6/29/2009 9:15:00 AM
Adult-child conversations have a more significant impact on language development than exposing children to language through one-on-one reading alone, according to a new study in the July issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
"Pediatricians and others have encouraged parents to provide language input through reading, storytelling and simple narration of daily events," explains study's lead author, Dr. Frederick J. Zimmerman, associate professor in the Department of Health Services in the UCLA School of Public Health. "Although sound advice, this form of input may not place enough emphasis on children's role in language-based exchanges and the importance of getting children to speak as much as possible."
The study of 275 families of children ages 0-4 was designed to test factors that contribute to language development of infants and toddlers. Participants' exposure to adult speech, child speech and television was measured using a small digital language recorder or processor known as the LENA System. This innovative technology allowed researchers to hear what was truly going on in a child's language environment, facilitating access to valuable new insights.
[COLOR="Red"]The study found that back-and-forth conversation was strongly associated with future improvements in the child's language score. Conversely, adult monologueing, such as monologic reading, was more weakly associated with language development. TV viewing had no effect on language development, positive or negative.
Zimmerman adds, "What's new here is the finding that the effect of adult-child conversations was roughly [SIZE="6"]six times as potent at fostering good language development[/SIZE] as adult speech input alone."[/COLOR]
Each day, children hear an average of some 13,000 words spoken to them by adults and participate in about 400 conversational turns with adults. More conversations mean more opportunities for mistakes and therefore more opportunities for valuable corrections. Furthermore, they also provide an opportunity for children to practice new vocabulary.
Parents should be encouraged not only to provide language input to their children through reading or storytelling but also to engage their children in two-sided conversations, the study concludes.
"Talk is powerful, but what's even more powerful is engaging a child in meaningful interactions — the 'give and take' that is so important to the social, emotional and cognitive development of infants and toddlers," says Dr. Jill Gilkerson, language research director at LENA Foundation and a study co-author.
"It is not enough to speak to children," Zimmerman adds. "Parents should also engage them in conversation. Kids love to hear you speak, but they thrive on trying speech out for themselves. Give them a chance to say what's on their minds, even if it's 'goo goo gah.'"[/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="DarkRed"]All research identifies the interaction between child and adult from very early days in the Childs life, as having the most effect on children’s uptake of language as against watching television or simply listening to an adult voice alone, obviously the older the child the more it can benefit from listening to a story. In our most advanced economies children are being consistently left watching television programs they do not really understand but appear to be fascinated by. If close mother child relationships are not possible grandparents or older siblings are valuable but interaction under supervision with older children needs to be considered as part and parcel of a modern education.
Clearly there are advantages in both directions from mixing children with older or younger children, something that happened quite naturally with larger families before effective birth control and economic necessity restricted the size of the western worlds families.. [/COLOR][/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 04-07-2009
HUMAN grown for perfection
THINK SLOW TO THINK FAST
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/07/evolutionary_origins_of_the_nervous_system.php#commentsArea
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Thinking - John Nicholson - 16-07-2009
[SIZE="6"]
THE RATIONALE REGARDING THE HUMAN MIND
[/SIZE][SIZE="6"]We have scientific proof that the modern mind is 50,000 years old.[/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"]Quite obviously human beings have moved around the Earth into different situations utilising different climates, developing different systems of working and living. Let us though, consider the possibility that we may all share exactly the same human brain, is it not obvious that we all think and utilise language. Languages have diversified over fifty thousand years, but this does not mean that we think any differently to those people that do not live in our society. There is now scientific evidence that the origins of human brain development began over 600 million years ago. With human evolution having such an extended period of development, is there any wonder that we may now consider that each and every person inhabiting the earth is now in the possession of a powerful brain having the common visual ability to remember the majority of events within our lives. Test your own visual image memory by thinking about your childhood remember your schooldays, University life or the professional and the industrial training we have had and the jobs that we have individually. Do we not all remember virtually everything important we have seen done and heard. Of course we cannot remember everything exactly, but we have' the facility to remember a great deal about our lives instantaneously. This instantaneous memory is quite natural. Adult instantaneous understanding. As the greater part of our thinking ability is visual' we consider images at the a speed of light, Within our individual human mind we consider ideas rapidly, my research and observations bring me to a realisation about human behaviour, our individual minds are never without consideration of the individual situations we find ourselves dealing with. I clearly recognise that we are either teaching in the manner of showing speaking and explaining, or we are making inquiry, listening learning and observing, then reasoning about what we have been told. Of course there are many things we know a great deal about, or on the other hand it could be something we know very little about, but we are consistently utilising our whole life experience to analyse the information we are given, in order to create within ourselves an opinion, and then consider any proposed actions that may be necessary.
With the development of the Internet we are all able to share information immediately, providing that we are able to read and count efficiently. It is vital in today's world that educational research proves and develops accelerated and improved learning techniques, which are available free to all on an international basis.
My personal dominant realisation is that parents teachers, educational experts on every subject alongside politicians and any one charged with delivery of education in any manner whatsoever need to consider that in normal health we are all born with a powerful brain. Loading that powerful brain with the essential software to utilise it correctly is time consuming.
[COLOR="Red"]I have devoted more than a decade of my life to the concept that we are all born with a near perfect brain. My personal instantaneous realisation, led me to understanding just how quickly we can all learn, when our individual brain software is established perfectly. My instant awareness that the abacus represents our formal pattern of numbers, where every child can easily grasp a visual realisation of every arithmetic principle we have to deal with. (The basis of every branch of mathematics and science) Not only does Abacus One provide any and every child that has it available to it with a perfectly able mental arithmetic ability at the highest natural level, it can also acquaint and perfect every child using it with the reading ability of all numbers in its natural language.
My research and reasoning abilities now lead me to believe, that without a standard formula backed up by international trials we shall consistently fail millions of children that could be simply taught to read count and think logically. Only parent power, using personal trials of my methods, will prove that step by step loading of perfect brains, with a standard formula for every brain works. A world standard for loading the software vital to enable every child, in counting reading and thinking logically, assisting their personal “instantaneous realisation abilities” further development from reading and arithmetic quantity awareness.
A perfected system for every child on earth.
EDD BALLS SUCK IT AND SEE please
.[/COLOR]
EDD BALLS SUCK IT AND SEE please
[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 17-07-2009
[SIZE="4"]A VERY GOOD ARTICAL ON A BABY BRAIN REGARDING NUMBER
[FONT="Arial Narrow"][SIZE="4"]Dr. S Dehaene
Not only is the capacity to associate a quantity meaning to a number automatic but it is also a
good example of an innate skill as Dr. Gopnik described. For instance some experiments have shown (THROUGH The intraparietal sulci situated in the parietal lobes.)
that children as young as four and a half months old are able to understand the difference between 1, 2,and 3. “Not only can they discriminate between 2 and 3 objects or 2 and 3 sounds but they can even combine them, so for instance if you show them a visual analogue of the operation 1 + 1, one object then the second object, they can expect that the result will be two objects and will show surprise if you present them with the impossible outcome of a single objectâ€.
These elementary numerical expectations can be observed in experiments where 2 objects are
shown to an infant of 4 to 5 months and then hidden behind cardboard. Then one of the objects is taken away from behind the cardboard without the infant noticing it. When the cardboard is removed, the infant manifests surprise behaviors such as staring for a longer time at the sole remaining object or other facial display of surprise (raising eye brows or eyes going wide). This experience is a visual analog to the operation “2 minus 1â€. The expression of surprise shows, at least, that children this young are capable of numerical expectations with respect to simple operations. In line with what Dr. Gopnik said about children constantly forming and evolving a theory about their surrounding environment, Dr. Dehaene states that these elementary numerical abilities could constitute an “elementary number theoryâ€. What is important and noteworthy for infants here are quantity and the differences between “a lot†and “a fewâ€. For instance, infants (as adults) will probably succeed at distinguishing between 28 and 56 objects whereas they will surely fail to discriminate between 55 and 56 objects. This is referred to as the _ which states that the ability to discriminate between two quantities increases with their numerical difference. Another feature of this theory is that it is easier for infants to distinguish between 2 and 3 objects than between 5 and 6 and it is very probably impossible for them to distinguish between 15 and 16 objects. This is referred to as
The higher the number of objects, the lower is infants’ performance at discriminating
between the two numbers (keeping equal the numerical distance between the two quantities to compare).
[COLOR="DarkRed"]As with any innate skill, elementary numerical abilities evolve with an infants’ development
and education. Learning mathematics pushes the children to exceed their innate approximation skills.
That is, they become able to discriminate between 56 and 57, whether presented as visual symbols (i.e.
Arabic numbers) or written words (fifty-six and fifty-seven), they learn to perform arithmetic
operations and manipulations.
Dr. Dehaene introduced a simple brain model, one that he referred to as the “triple code
modelâ€. This describes a system of brain areas active when children are learning or performing
arithmetical operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication or division20. The basic idea is that when
manipulating a number, a child does one of three actions:
_ Performs some visual manipulation (like seeing the number as a visual digit i.e. “3â€);
_ Performs some linguistic manipulation (like hearing or reading the number as a word
i.e. “threeâ€);
18 Dr. Dehaene, New York Conference.
19 Longer time than when, in a control experiment, the two objects remain behind the cardboard.
20 As Dr. Dehaene explained during the conference, the Triple Code model is a simplified model, a work in
progress, of what’s happening in the brain during mathematical operations.
16
_ Represents it as a quantity (3 is bigger than 1).
Each of these processes involves a different region of the brain (see Figure):
_ A visual subsystem localized on both sides of the brain behind the ear and under the brain;
_ A verbal subsystem situated in distributed regions of the left hemisphere;
_ The quantity subsystem situated on both sides of the brain diagonal to the ear.
This model attempts to show that depending on which arithmetic processes are undertaken,
information moves back and forth within these subsystems and recruits one, two, or all of them.
Dr. Dehaene cited an example of two seemingly similar calculations that recruit different
subsystems of the triple code model, one relying on the verbal system and another relying on the
quantity system. He presented subjects with exactly the same addition problem (4 + 5) but in two
different contexts. In one case they had to find the exact result, choosing between two results that were
both close to the correct result (they were obliged to do the exact calculation). In the other situation
they were given two false results, one grossly false and the other approximately correct. The evidence
showed that despite the superficial similarity between these two tasks, different brain regions were
21 Areas corresponding to the fusiform gyrus.
22 The perisylvian area
23 Areas corresponding to the interparietal lobes
17
recruited. The region most active for the approximation task was the quantity subsystem whereas the
region most active when performing the exact calculation task was the verbal subsystem.
One interesting and important educational
consequence coming from this model is
that it provides a possibility for explaining
the difficulty that almost all children have
when starting to learn math at school. As
Dr. Dehaene explained, “There could be
two causes for mathematical difficulties.
One possible cause is that some network,
like the quantity subsystem, might be
impaired or disorganized and as a result,
the person might lack access to information about the inclusion of numbers. Another cause, and one
which is much more common, is that they have to learn to connect a quantity representation with both
verbal and visual symbols.
This connection is long to be established, and it is difficult because it involves symbolic
transformations that come with experience, both educational and cultural. The process of quickly and
flexibly moving from one representation system to another appears to be a source of difficulty for many children.
[COLOR="Red"]This model goes beyond simply indicating the probable origin of mathematical difficulty
because it validates two very general properties of mathematical reasoning that support mathematical pedagogy research:
1. The possibility of thought without language.
2. The existence of unconscious processing in mathematics.
The feature of the triple code model that supports this “thought without languageâ€
property is that the quantity representation system is independent from language and
provides a purely non-verbal representation of quantity. Dr. Dehaene gave the example
of a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in which bilingual subjects were trained with facts of arithmetic in one language during one session. They were then tested in the two languages they were familiar with to see whether there was a processing cost of being questioned in a different language to the one they had been trained in initially. What was observed was that tasks that imply exact calculation, partly based on the rote storing of the arithmetical facts, in the verbal subsystem, were dependent on language and were time delayed when languages were switched. However, tasks that relied on approximation showed no time delay when the language was switched.
In terms of educational pedagogy, the possibility of mathematical thought without language
emphasises the use of activity that favors the recruitment of the quantity representation system when teaching the number sense to children. One of the participants in a discussion group related to Dr.Dehaene’s research, added that, “that kind of concrete quantity subsystem is exploited in Montessori schools and also in Asian countries, where mathematical teaching is based on moving physical objects around, like the Abacusâ€, suggesting that, “this kind of a system works because numbers are presented nonverbally, that is, within the quantity subsystem, using sets of concrete objects and manipulating them.â€
Dr. Dehaene further explained that the possibility of mathematical thought without language
emphasises that rote verbal learning is not sufficient. He also suggests that pedagogical material that emphasises a spatial or concrete objects metaphor for numbers, such as the metaphor of a number line, the Asian abacus or Maria Montessori’s number rods, may be particularly well adapted to teach number sense. This is already in use in several schools.
As an illustration of the efficacy of teaching mathematics by accessing the quantity
representation system, the Right Start program teaches basic arithmetical skills like counting,
correspondence between number and quantities, and the concept of the number line. This program teaches children a spatial analogue of numbers using physical objects like the game of “Snakes and Laddersâ€. This type of training has been successful in remediating children to such an extent that after going through 40 sessions of 20 minutes each, some of these kids started to bypass normally developing children in mathematical class. Interestingly the remediation occurred even if these kids could hardly read, confirming the dissociation between the number sense and language.[/COLOR]
[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 17-07-2009
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="DarkRed"]The feature of the triple code model that supports the property of unconscious
mathematical reasoning is the fact “that the access to quantity meaning of a number is a
completely automatic procedure in the human brain, that it is extremely fast, and that it can occur even if you have absolutely no awareness of it occurring.†In proof of this property, Dr. Dehaene described an experiment where the brain scans of subjects showed that they were processing quantity without being consciously aware of this type of processing.
He knew that the system was accessed unconsciously because in some experiments they used subliminal masking.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
On a computer screen he presented a sequence of visual stimuli placed at the same location, which terminated with a clearly displayed digit, like the digit 9, visible for about 200 ms. The subjects were told that they have to decide whether this digit is larger or smaller than 5 by
University Press, Getty Center for Education in the Arts
Dr. Dehaene, New York Conference pressing the right or the left hand key. Prior to this, they only see rapid flashing of some letters. Unknown to the subject, another number is hidden within the sequence of letters. This number is presented during a short period (43 ms) and because the letters mask it both forward and backwards they cannot see it. Even though subjects do not report seeing this number, it is registered by the brain. He repeats the masked number twice. Using a brain scanning technique called “functional Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (fMRI)â€, Dr. Dehaene noted that in the left and right parietal regions exactly the areas which are active when processing the quantity meaning of a number—there is more activation when the hidden number represents a different quantity than the visible one than when it represents the same quantity. Dr. Dehaene states that when the item is repeated twice, there is a reduction in activation (due to habituation), in both the left and right areas of the brain.
An important question that one might focus on is what neuroscience research can offer
educators in terms of setting realistic goals for education. Several seminars have introduced the
concept of the emotional brain and its relationship to education._
One response in regards to the goals of education included not only achieving cognitive literacy that
is, ensuring that children assimilate and master more knowledge and skills on traditional subjects like
arithmetic or grammar, but also acquire emotional competency.
_
Why this analysis is important is due to the existence of what Dr. David Servan–Schreiber
refers to as the “emotional brainâ€26, which is a set of brain structures deeply buried within the brain in
charge of processing emotions. As Dr. Masao Ito explained, we share these emotional structures with
other mammals. However, what distinguishes us from other mammals is that our cortex, which is
responsible for higher-order information processing like planning, action, attention, etc. is much more
developed. That development, however, should not overshadow the functional importance of the
emotional brain in our life and during child development and education.
One important function from the point of view of education is that “emotional valenceâ€
enables the child to evaluate a given situation. Our emotional brain makes us more than “mere
computers processing information†because it allows us to deal with and to take into account
of this information enabling us to have, according to Dr. Ito, “Feelings or a sense for the beautiful.â€
Located in the limbic system of the brain.
In its interplay with the cortex, the emotional brain also contributes to a “social judgmentâ€, and what Dr. Servan-Schreiber called “successâ€. In the large sense, success can be defined by a set of loose but meaningful criteria such as the ability to define and engage in a proactive and rewarding professional career, life satisfaction, establishment of meaningful friendly and intimate relationships and lack of self-provoked life trauma. That is, the maturation process of becoming a responsible citizen.
A striking example of the critical contribution of the interaction between the emotional and the cognitive parts of the brain to social judgment is given by the story of a previously very successful and intelligent (IQ 130) accountant in Iowa, studied by Dr. Antonio Damasio. After removal of a part of his brain due to a lesion, the communication between the cognitive and the emotional parts of his brain were severed. Following the surgery he continued to have an IQ well above average for several years during which he was under medical observation. However, his social judgment became so impaired that he lost his job, failed to keep another job, got involved in a number of shadowy business ventures and eventually divorced his wife of 17 years only to remarry a wealthy woman considerably older than him whom he described as “an aging socialite.â€
This example describes an extreme case of the total loss of social judgment. More importantly
to the process of education is the fact that this individual still had an IQ well above average the
operation. Dr. Servan-Schreiber used this story to highlight his concern with the use of IQ measures,
and “Their limited capacity to predict ‘social success’. The skills measured by IQ are not a sufficient
condition of social judgementâ€. He cited a study28 of Harvard students whose intelligence scores while
they were undergraduates were not predictive of what they would become 30 years later in terms of
salary, productivity, status, life satisfaction, friendship, and intimate relationships. A similar study
conducted in a suburb of Boston where all children were from families on welfare showed that their
emotional childhood abilities were much better predictors of adult success than their IQ scores.
The emotional brain not only has
connections to the cognitive parts of the
brain as seen in the above example but also
to the perceptive areas of the brain as well.
This part of the brain according to Dr. Kosslyn not only is engaged in perception but also with
mental imagery or visualization. Dr. Kosslyn reports that research has shown that it has much of the
phenomenology of perception in that many brain areas are activated during visual perception as in
imagery. Because of this, mental images have been found to have the same effect on the body, as do
27 What was removed was the orbito-frontal cortex, a part of the cortex situated between the two eye orbits and which
has extensive connections with the emotional brain, especially with the amygdala. For more information on this case
Including the areas in the occipital lobe that first register visual input from the eyes.
actual images. In Dr. Kosslyn’s research, subjects were asked to mentally visualize aversive stimuli,
such as a battered face or a burned body. This caused skin conductance and heart-rate changes,
especially in those individuals that reported ease in visualizing. This ability, he states, will differ
dramatically among individuals depending upon how easily they naturally imagine and retain visually
produced mental images.
In fact, Dr. Kosslyn showed that visualizing aversive stimuli activated certain brain areas more
than did visualizing neutral stimuli (such as a lamp or chair). Interestingly enough, one of the brain
areas activated was the anterior insula (within the limbic system), known to be involved in registering
autonomic or hormonal activity in the body. As Dr. Kosslyn points out, research is just beginning to
demonstrate that visualizing aversive events not only affect the body, but also appears to be registered
by the brain.
What these findings suggest is that people can alter their emotional state by forming specific
images that affect bodily functions including the endocrine and immune systems. Given these
findings,
[SIZE="7"][COLOR="Red"]Dr. Kosslyn posits that there are three possible applications of imagery to education:
_ Imagery as a memory aid. It is well known that objects are remembered better than words, so visualizing objects named by words makes the words more memorable;[/COLOR][/SIZE]_ Imagery as a hormone regulator. This, in turn can then affect cognitive abilities. For example, it is known that the level of the hormone testosterone affects spatial ability. It is known that winning a competition raises this level and losing a competition lowers it, thus, it is possible that visualizing such situations can also affect this hormone, which in turn would affect spatial abilities;
_ Imagery as used in psychotherapy. The techniques employed in this field can be used to overcome anxieties, such as math and reading phobias. In concluding, Dr. Kosslyn emphasized that the efficacy of imagery in modulating or changing an emotional state depends on the person’s ability to form and then use imagery. He was careful to add that it was not yet clear whether practice or training in imagery could make changes in self regulation and that further research was needed in this area.
Thinking - John Nicholson - 16-08-2009
[SIZE="7"][COLOR="Blue"]WHAT IT IS memory formation in the brain[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"][COLOR="DarkRed"]First direct visualization of memory formation in the brain
UCLA and McGill scientists image memory formation at the level of a single synapse in the brain
By
Mark Wheeler
| 6/22/2009 4:25:00 PM[/COLOR][/SIZE]FINDINGS:
[SIZE="5"]UCLA and McGill University researchers have, for the first time, "photographed" a memory in the making. The study clarifies one of the ways in which connections in the brain between nerve cells, called synapses, can be changed with experience. The phenomenon is called "synaptic plasticity," and is the foundation for how we learn and remember. As we learn, the memories are stored in changes in the strength and/or number of synaptic connections between nerve cells in our brain. Long-lasting changes in synaptic connections are required for long-term memories. This is the first study to use fluorescent imaging to directly visualize protein synthesis - the making of a memory - at individual synapses during learning-related synaptic plasticity.
IMPACT:
Understanding how synapses can change with experience is critical to understanding behavioral plasticity and to understanding diseases in which learning and experience-dependent behaviors are impaired. Such diseases include mental retardation and Alzheimer's disease and anxiety and mood disorders. It also can elucidate potential strategies for improving normal cognition and behavioral plasticity.
JOURNAL:
The research appears in the June 19 edition of the journal Science.
AUTHORS:
Senior author Kelsey Martin, associate professor of psychiatry and biological chemistry; Dan Ohtan Wang, Sang Mok Kim, Yali Zhao, Hongik Hwang, Satoru K. Miura, all of UCLA; and Wayne S. Sossin, McGill University.
HOW:
The researchers used sensory and motor neurons from the sea slug Aplysia Californica that can form connections in culture. The neurons were stimulated with serotonin, which strengthens the synapses, and allowed them to detect new protein synthesis using a "translational reporter," a fluorescent protein that can be easily detected and tracked.
MORE:
This is the first study to directly visualize protein synthesis at individual synapses during a long-lasting form of synaptic plasticity. The studies revealed an exquisite level of control over the specificity of regulation of new protein synthesis. "While this was not really surprising to us given the complexity of information processing in the brain," said Martin, "visualizing the process of protein synthesis at individual synapses, and beginning to discern the elegance of its regulation, leaves us, as biologists, with a wonderful sense of awe."
FUNDING:
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The authors report no conflict of interest.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 17-08-2009
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="DarkRed"]Illustrating the complexity of the human brain here is a piece of advanced technical research almost beyond our imagination as being possible to carry out.
My reasoning at using it here is to demonstrate the complexity of the human brain rather than the obvious advantages that will be gained from useful spin offs from this research [/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"]ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2008) — Scientists from Maastricht University have developed a method to look into the brain of a person and read out who has spoken to him or her and what was said. With the help of neuroimaging and data mining techniques the researchers mapped the brain activity associated with the recognition of speech sounds and voices.
In their Science article "'Who' is Saying 'What'? Brain-Based Decoding of Human Voice and Speech," the four authors demonstrate that speech sounds and voices can be identified by means of a unique 'neural fingerprint' in the listener's brain. In the future this new knowledge could be used to improve computer systems for automatic speech and speaker recognition.
Seven study subjects listened to three different speech sounds (the vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/), spoken by three different people, while their brain activity was mapped using neuroimaging techniques (fMRI). With the help of data mining methods the researchers developed an algorithm to translate this brain activity into unique patterns that determine the identity of a speech sound or a voice. The various acoustic characteristics of vocal cord vibrations (neural patterns) were found to determine the brain activity.
Just like real fingerprints, these neural patterns are both unique and specific: the neural fingerprint of a speech sound does not change if uttered by somebody else and a speaker's fingerprint remains the same, even if this person says something different.
Moreover, this study revealed that part of the complex sound-decoding process takes place in areas of the brain previously just associated with the early stages of sound processing. Existing neurocognitive models assume that processing sounds actively involves different regions of the brain according to a certain hierarchy: after a simple processing in the auditory cortex the more complex analysis (speech sounds into words) takes place in specialised regions of the brain. However, the findings from this study imply a less hierarchal processing of speech that is spread out more across the brain.
The research was partly funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO): Two of the four authors, Elia Formisano and Milene Bonte carried out their research with an NWO grant (Vidi and Veni). The data mining methods were developed during the PhD research of Federico De Martino (doctoral thesis defended at Maastricht University on 24 October 2008).[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 17-08-2009
[SIZE="7"]The brains natural ability to link those natural realisation abilities in order to improve abilities vital in learning to read[/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"]ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009) — The sense of touch allows us to make a better connection between sight and hearing and therefore helps adults to learn to read. This is what has just been shown by the team of Édouard Gentaz, CNRS researcher at the Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition in Grenoble (CNRS/Université Pierre Mendès France de Grenoble/Université de Savoie).
These results, published March 16th in the journal PloS One, should improve learning methods, both for children learning to read and adults learning foreign languages.
To read words that are new to us, we have to learn to associate a visual stimulus (a letter, or grapheme) with its corresponding auditory stimulus (the sound, or phoneme). When visual stimuli can be explored both visually and by touch, adults learn arbitrary associations between auditory and visual stimuli more efficiently. The researchers reached this conclusion from an experiment on thirty French-speaking adults. They first compared two learning methods with which the adults had to learn 15 new visual stimuli, inspired by Japanese characters, and their 15 corresponding sounds (new auditory stimuli with no associated meaning). The two learning methods differed in the senses used to explore the visual stimuli. The first, "classic", method used only vision. The second, "multisensory", method used touch as well as vision for the perception of the visual stimuli. After the learning phase, the researchers measured the performances of each adult using different tests (1). They found that all the participants had acquired an above-chance ability to recognize the visual and auditory stimuli using the two methods.
The researchers then went on to test the participants by two other methods (2), this time to measure the capacity to learn associations between visual and auditory stimuli. The results showed that the subjects were capable of learning the associations with both learning methods, but that their performances were much better using the "multisensory" learning method. When the subjects were given the same tests a week after the learning phase, the results were the same.
These results support those already found by the same team, in work done with young children. The explication lies in the specific properties of the haptic sense (3) in the hands, which plays a "cementing" role between sight and hearing, favoring the connection between the senses. What goes on in the brain remains to be explored, as does the neuronal mechanism: the researchers plan to develop a protocol that will let them use fMRI (4) to identify the areas of the cortex that are activated during the "multisensory" learning process.
(1) The first two tests respectively measured the learning capacity for visual and auditory stimuli using recognition tests. In a visual test, a visual stimulus had to be recognized among 5 new visual stimuli. In an auditory test, the target had to be recognized among 5 new sounds.
(2) In the "visual-auditory" test, the subject was presented with a visual stimulus and had to recognize its corresponding sound among 5 other sounds. In the "auditory-visual" test, the opposite was done.
(3) Or tactile-kinesthetic. "Haptic" corresponds to the sense of touch, used to feel the letters.
(4) Functional magnetic resonance imaging: the application of magnetic resonance imagery to study the function of the brain.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 18-08-2009
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="DarkRed"]This is at the very heart of my personal belief regarding human intelligence.
From very early consideration of intelligence I made a comparison, between an individual interested in horse racing, where we could then compare his knowledge with that of a professor of ancient history.
Who knows more the horse racing chap or the professor of ancient history, who would survive best on a desert island?
Obviously we have underestimated the potential of the human brain for years. My personal environment was on a five hundred acre farm in East Yorkshire, where my father kept my brother and myself very involved with what was going on and we were also mixing with adult farm workers and casual workers from Ireland, German and Italian prisoners of war, miners taking holidays, soldiers coming home on leave, an exiting environment for two young boys growing up in the early nineteen forties. [/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"][COLOR="Red"]Training Can Increase Fluid Intelligence, Once Thought To Be Fixed At Birth
Plastic Brain Outsmarts Experts:
ScienceDaily (June 6, 2008) — Can human beings rev up their intelligence quotients, or are they stuck with IQs set by their genes at birth? Until recently, nature seemed to be the clear winner over nurture.
But new research, led by Swiss postdoctoral fellows Susanne M. Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, working at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, suggests that at least one aspect of a person's IQ can be improved by training a certain type of memory.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"]Most IQ tests attempt to measure two types of intelligence--crystallized and fluid intelligence. Crystallized intelligence draws on existing skills, knowledge and experiences to solve problems by accessing information from long-term memory.
Fluid intelligence, on the other hand, draws on the ability to understand relationships between various concepts, independent of any previous knowledge or skills, to solve new problems. The research shows that this part of intelligence can be improved through memory training.
[SIZE="7"]"When it comes to improving intelligence, many researchers have thought it was not possible," [/SIZE]says Jaeggi. "Our findings clearly show this is not the case. Our brain is more plastic than we might think."
Jaeggi, Buschkuehl and Walter Perrig from Bern University, Switzerland, along with Jon Jonides, their National Science Foundation-supported colleague from the University of Michigan, reasoned that just as crystallized intelligence relies on long-term memory, fluid intelligence relies on short-term memory, or "working memory," as it is more accurately called. This is the same type of memory people use to remember a phone number or an e-mail address for a short time, but beyond that, working memory refers to the ability to both manipulate and use information briefly stored in the mind in the face of distraction.
Researchers gathered four groups of volunteers and trained their working memories using a complex training task called "dual n-back training," which presented both auditory and visual cues that participants had to temporarily store and recall.
Participants received the training during a half hour session held once a day for either eight, 12, 17 or 19 days. For each of these training periods, researchers tested participants' gains in fluid intelligence. They compared the results against those of control groups to be sure the volunteers actually improved their fluid intelligence, not merely their test-taking skills.
The results were surprising. While the control groups made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, the trained groups improved considerably more than the control groups. Further, the longer the participants trained, the larger were their intelligence gains.
"Our findings clearly show that training on certain memory tasks transfer to fluid intelligence," says Jaeggi. "We also find that individuals with lower fluid intelligence scores at pre-test could profit from the training."
The results are significant because improved fluid intelligence scores could translate into improved general intelligence as measured by IQ tests. General intelligence is a key to determining life outcomes such as academic success, job performance and occupational advancement.
Researchers also surmise that this same type of memory training may help children with developmental problems and older adults who face memory decline. But, that remains to be seen, because the test results are based on assessments of young, healthy adult participants.
"Even though it currently appears very hard to improve these conditions, there might be some memory training related to intelligence that actually helps," says Jaeggi. "The saying 'use it or lose it' is probably appropriate here."
Since it is not known whether the improvements in fluid intelligence last after the training stops, researchers currently are measuring long-term fluid intelligence gains with both laboratory testing and long-term field work. Researchers say it will be some time before a complete data set is available to draw any conclusions.
University of Bern professor Walter J. Perrig also co-authors this study along with University of Michigan professor John Jonides. The Swiss National Science Foundation funds Jaeggi and Buschkuehl's visiting scholar status.
________________________________________
Adapted from materials provided by National Science Foundation.
Email or share this story:[/SIZE]
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Thinking - John Nicholson - 09-09-2009
[SIZE="5"]Humans might not be walking the face of the Earth were it not for the ancient fusing of two prokaryotes — tiny life forms that do not have a cellular nucleus. UCLA molecular biologist James A. Lake reports important new insights about prokaryotes and the evolution of life in the Aug. 20 advance online edition of the journal Nature.
Endosymbiosis refers to a cell living within another cell. If the cells live together long enough, they will exchange genes; they merge but often keep their own cell membranes and sometimes their own genomes.
Lake has discovered the first exclusively prokaryote endosymbiosis. All other known endosymbioses have involved a eukaryote — a cell that contains a nucleus. Eukaryotes are found in all multicellular forms of life, including humans, animals and plants.
"This relationship resulted in a totally different type of life on Earth," said Lake, a UCLA distinguished professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and of human genetics. "We thought eukaryotes always needed to be present to do it, but we were wrong."
In the Nature paper, Lake reports that two groups of prokaryotes — actinobacteria and clostridia — came together and produced "double-membrane" prokaryotes.
"Higher life would not have happened without this event," Lake said. "These are very important organisms. At the time these two early prokaryotes were evolving, there was no oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Humans could not live. No oxygen-breathing organisms could live."
The oxygen on the Earth is the result of a subgroup of these double-membrane prokaryotes, Lake said. This subgroup, the cyanobacteria, used the sun's energy to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. They have been tremendously productive, pumping oxygen into the atmosphere; we could not breathe without them. In addition, the double-membrane prokaryotic fusion supplied the mitochondria that are present in every human cell, he said.
"This work is a major advance in our understanding of how a group of organisms came to be that learned to harness the sun and then effected the greatest environmental change the Earth has ever seen, in this case with beneficial results," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., which co-funded the study with the National Science Foundation.
"Along came these organisms — the double-membrane prokaryotes — that could use sunlight," Lake said. "They captured this vast energy resource. They were so successful that they have more genetic diversity in them than all other prokaryotes.
"We have a flow of genes from two different organisms, clostridia and actinobacteria, together," he said. "Because the group into which they are flowing has two membranes, we hypothesize that that was an endosymbiosis that resulted in a double membrane. It looks as if a single-membrane organism has engulfed another. The genomes are telling us that the double-membrane prokaryotes combine sets of genes from the two different organisms."
For this study, Lake has looked back more than 2.5 billion years. He conducted an analysis of the genomics of the five groups of prokaryotes.
Lake is interested in learning how every organism is related.
[SIZE="6"]"We all are interested in our ancestors," he said. "A friend at UC Berkeley, Alan Wilson, was the first person to collect DNA from large numbers of people around the world. He showed that we are all related to a woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. Some in the media called her Eve. He called her the Lucky Mother, the mother of us all. [/SIZE]
"In our field, we have enormous amounts of data but cannot make sense of it all. Endosymbiosis allows us to start to understanding things; it tells us that many genes are exchanged.
"We have been overlooking how important cooperation is," Lake said. "If two prokaryotes get together, they can change the world. They restructured the atmosphere of the Earth. It's a message that evolution is giving us: Cooperation is a way to get ahead."
Actinobacteria have an unusual DNA composition, with a very high amount of "G" and "C" nucleotides — chemicals whose patterns carry the data required for constructing proteins. Nucleotides are designated by the letters G (guanine), C (cytosine), A (adenine) and T (thymine); the sequence of nucleotides serves as a chemical code.
Some actinobacteria are pathogens, including ones that cause tuberculosis and leprosy. Some clostridia can photosynthesize, which no other single-membrane prokaryote does. Photosynthesis may have been developed in clostridia.
Double-membrane prokaryotes include the pathogens that cause ulcers, as well as the organisms that led to the creation of the chloroplasts that are in all green plants and which make plant growth possible.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 09-09-2009
[SIZE="5"]Humans might not be walking the face of the Earth were it not for the ancient fusing of two prokaryotes — tiny life forms that do not have a cellular nucleus. UCLA molecular biologist James A. Lake reports important new insights about prokaryotes and the evolution of life in the Aug. 20 advance online edition of the journal Nature.
Endosymbiosis refers to a cell living within another cell. If the cells live together long enough, they will exchange genes; they merge but often keep their own cell membranes and sometimes their own genomes.
Lake has discovered the first exclusively prokaryote endosymbiosis. All other known endosymbioses have involved a eukaryote — a cell that contains a nucleus. Eukaryotes are found in all multicellular forms of life, including humans, animals and plants.
"This relationship resulted in a totally different type of life on Earth," said Lake, a UCLA distinguished professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and of human genetics. "We thought eukaryotes always needed to be present to do it, but we were wrong."
In the Nature paper, Lake reports that two groups of prokaryotes — actinobacteria and clostridia — came together and produced "double-membrane" prokaryotes.
"Higher life would not have happened without this event," Lake said. "These are very important organisms. At the time these two early prokaryotes were evolving, there was no oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Humans could not live. No oxygen-breathing organisms could live."
The oxygen on the Earth is the result of a subgroup of these double-membrane prokaryotes, Lake said. This subgroup, the cyanobacteria, used the sun's energy to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. They have been tremendously productive, pumping oxygen into the atmosphere; we could not breathe without them. In addition, the double-membrane prokaryotic fusion supplied the mitochondria that are present in every human cell, he said.
"This work is a major advance in our understanding of how a group of organisms came to be that learned to harness the sun and then effected the greatest environmental change the Earth has ever seen, in this case with beneficial results," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., which co-funded the study with the National Science Foundation.
"Along came these organisms — the double-membrane prokaryotes — that could use sunlight," Lake said. "They captured this vast energy resource. They were so successful that they have more genetic diversity in them than all other prokaryotes.
"We have a flow of genes from two different organisms, clostridia and actinobacteria, together," he said. "Because the group into which they are flowing has two membranes, we hypothesize that that was an endosymbiosis that resulted in a double membrane. It looks as if a single-membrane organism has engulfed another. The genomes are telling us that the double-membrane prokaryotes combine sets of genes from the two different organisms."
For this study, Lake has looked back more than 2.5 billion years. He conducted an analysis of the genomics of the five groups of prokaryotes.
Lake is interested in learning how every organism is related.
[SIZE="6"]"We all are interested in our ancestors," he said. "A friend at UC Berkeley, Alan Wilson, was the first person to collect DNA from large numbers of people around the world. He showed that we are all related to a woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. Some in the media called her Eve. He called her the Lucky Mother, the mother of us all. [/SIZE]
"In our field, we have enormous amounts of data but cannot make sense of it all. Endosymbiosis allows us to start to understanding things; it tells us that many genes are exchanged.
"We have been overlooking how important cooperation is," Lake said. "If two prokaryotes get together, they can change the world. They restructured the atmosphere of the Earth. It's a message that evolution is giving us: Cooperation is a way to get ahead."
Actinobacteria have an unusual DNA composition, with a very high amount of "G" and "C" nucleotides — chemicals whose patterns carry the data required for constructing proteins. Nucleotides are designated by the letters G (guanine), C (cytosine), A (adenine) and T (thymine); the sequence of nucleotides serves as a chemical code.
Some actinobacteria are pathogens, including ones that cause tuberculosis and leprosy. Some clostridia can photosynthesize, which no other single-membrane prokaryote does. Photosynthesis may have been developed in clostridia.
Double-membrane prokaryotes include the pathogens that cause ulcers, as well as the organisms that led to the creation of the chloroplasts that are in all green plants and which make plant growth possible.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 09-09-2009
[SIZE="5"]An Explanation Of The Possibilities Within The Working Brain.
For myself, no attempt to explain my personal interest in the human brain, can be given without the explanation, as to just how my fanatical interest in it came about.
My research began over thirteen years ago. I was watching a television report from Hong Kong. Chinese children of four to five years of age were shouting out answers to a master writing sums across the top of a blackboard, just as quickly has he wrote the maths questions, they shouted out the answer, the whole class were totally absorbed with it.
All the children were copying the sums, all the children were taking part in this maths lesson, it did not matter whether they had worked out the answer or not. Individually they were all learning the answers any way. Most of them appeared to me to be able to answer all the questions quite easily.
I was dramatically shocked to see these very young Chinese children, obviously answering arithmetic questions so accurately and so quickly. My first instinct was that these children were fifty points ahead of our British children of the same age, in IQ.
I simply could not believe what I was seeing. Then I had some slight relief as to their advantage, they were copying the sums on to a Chinese Abacus a Sour pan a traditional Chinese counting frame. The Chinese Abacus has seven bobbins on each column, separated by a dividing bar beneath the top two bobbins representing five in each bobbin and the five bobbins below representing single digits of the appropriate column below. For example the right hand column represents one to five the adjacent column would be ten twenty and so on. the bobbins below the bar represent the numbers one to five, they are counted by pushing them up to the bar, counting one to five then exchanged for one bobbin above the bar pushing up a single bobbin for six and so on. When all the bobbins are counted towards the centre of the Abacus they represent number 15. The Chinese Abacus is very useful simply because it can be rearranged to show up ten or fifteen on each of the columns.
The Japanese Abacus represents 10 when one pushes up a counter on second column left of the right hand starting point, the Japanese Soroban has one counter representing the number five, on top of the bar, with four counters underneath the bar, each column can represent up to nine, the modern Japanese Abacus a Soroban is manufactured with older children and adults in mind, one small accidental shake effectively wipes out any figure.
I want to go no farther than this simple explanation at this moment, other than to say that the modern Japanese Abacus is unsuitable for children of a very early age, one simple shake will dislodge any representation of number. The older and more simply manufactured Chinese Abacus is more useful for young children as a starting point in early arithmetic.
Any Abacus can be explained quite easily to a five-year-old child in a one day tutorial, but to consolidate that knowledge, regular lessons need to be continued until the child is perfect in mental arithmetic, equivalent to the maths that has been demonstrated on the abacus.
My real shock came when the master collected all the children's individual Abacus leaving them without any physical ability to put pen on paper or use an Abacus. From that point on children followed the sums being written on the blackboard, they were still able to shout out the answers, then my real shock occurred, all the children were able to answer quickly and accurately their individual understanding of numbers just as perfect as their individual understanding of process was also perfect.
My instantaneous realisation was that every child in the class had learnt to visualise all the arithmetic they were doing, but not only that, to be so accurate mentally at such an early age meant that they were perfect in understanding the meaning of every number.
The next day I bought an Abacus not Chinese or Japanese Abacus but a simple counting frame with five columns each column containing ten counters after less than one hour's tuition my four-year-old daughter was able to divide the counters in half, and read the answer 55555, she was also able to subtract and add any other numbers.
I now realise those early arithmetic abilities need to be reinforced by regularly practise from simple counting, to adding and subtracting anything the Abacus is capable of, alongside demonstrations of times tables and any clear examples of division the abacus is capable of showing. Short regular sessions are preferred if arithmetic is ever to become an instantaneous realisation built into the Childs mentality, very much in the same manner as we are able to teach someone how to drive a car in one day by using short-term memory, it is vital to reinforce all those initial memories for a number of days in order to transfer those short term memories into long term memory so building automatic ability in driving a car. Virtually every normal adult can be trained to drive a car, so can every normal child of four years of age, learn to count and understand numbers to one hundred and sometimes more.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 09-09-2009
[SIZE="5"]The ability built when you are using an Abacus, is exactly like driving a car, you may be able to drive it in one day with a good tutor, but you must build into your mind many automatic abilities to be able to do it for the rest of your you may keep yourself and others safe for a lifetime. The results of not being taught to drive a car properly are clear for all to see. One failure in concentration can result in tragedy in some circumstances.
These Chinese children were being taught perfectly to comprehend the value of numbers and the manner in which we manipulate numbers in order to calculate quickly and accurately.
So in less than ten minutes I saw very young Chinese children performing mental arithmetic way beyond the capabilities of any average European child, also understanding the manner in which they were being taught the basic principles of early arithmetic, “from this I have developed a near perfect early maths training program which can be easily carried out by any parent and which is also suitable, for standard international use anywhere in the world.
Thirteen years of reading researching and reasoning have given me some answers to the question that I have consistently asked myself after that ten minute realisation.
“HOW ON EARTH DO WE HUMAN BEINGS DO ALL THE WONDERFUL THINGS WE ARE ABLE TO DO,”
I used Kipling’s five friends, What? When? Why? Where? And How? to assist me, also the words of many others. Neurological research is still in its infancy, many misleading conclusions are being drawn up consistently but not every conclusion is wrong.
(The impossibility of reading someone’s visual thinking by recording areas of stimulation within the brain is not acceptable to me.)
Clearly the human mind works in an harmonious manner, with conscious and unconscious ideas being formulated utilizing all areas of reasoning ability in harmony. In danger the mind takes automatic action without regard to a lengthy reasoning period. I find this reasonable evidence to prove harmonious brain working, just as important as the translation from words into visual ideas, producing the visual understanding and memory from where we draw down on our unconscious ability to instantaneously and without apparent aforethought, produce language giving explanation or making enquiry at will.
I feel that I have learnt as much and more about the brain by reading and considering philosophy then I have learnt from reading and considering the very latest reports and initial conclusions from the leading neurological research teams of Today.
We are obviously at the leading edge of neurological research, but we have barely begun, to understand the possibilities of the human brain. The biggest problem we have is to reconcile the instantaneous abilities we all quite naturally posses, for instance normal speech created by the deeper or whole mind, giving the very best reasoning we are capable of, without in depth conscious thought , with the unrealisable concept of independent subconscious reasoning ability. These are inbuilt automatic skills developed over thousands of years of evolutionary change most likely connected with an acute sixth sense giving us a mental preparation of danger; our minds are consistently on subconscious guard duty.
Any hesitation in speech may be regarded as a special attempt to influence the listener or listeners clearly alerting the sixth sense to probable inconsistencies.
Concentration and perfection
Every one of us thinks is that we are very good at thinking, but we have little comprehension of just how good we are at thinking, it is simply because the majority of our thinking takes place quite independently from our conscious thinking abilities. We are totally unaware of the majority of our thinking processes simply because it would interfere with our concentration, the use of words are vital in giving explanation when we are considering concepts we have never considered before. How can we consider something when we do not know anything about it, we have simply no natural understanding of just how our minds work.
The Conscious area of your working brain, the area we know most about, is simply the smallest part of your working brain, That area is unconsciously utilising every area of your brain, it is being supplied by many areas of your brain working collectively to provide the conscious area of your mind with the specific information that is required to reason with, so before we talk about teaching, or learn anything at all about teaching, we have to have some understanding of just how our own brain works, teaching and learning are the most natural human habits we all posses, but without the automatic abilities we posses we would have no language ability, limited memory, and very little hope of surviving as a species on our planet, language is perfectly natural to us, I am using language to give you explanations of human abilities none of us could be ever aware of without deep philosophical thought or scientific exploration, or simply being told about those natural human abilities that we all poses, in the simplest and most precise use of words I can manage to convey these ideas in.
It is virtually impossible to identify at the moment child or an adult knows something perfectly and permanently. The very best physical awareness of automatic memory building, which we can only acquire naturally, is the ability we all have, to identify the sound of our friends and those familiar to us, instantly and accurately when we talk to them on the telephone.
We cannot teach anyone to recognise the individual sound of someone’s voice, this is clearly a perfect ability the mind is capable of independently. Repetition and familiarity build near perfect awareness.
Having given a perfect example of near perfection being built quite naturally into human memory, simply through regular association, from that proposition comes the realisation, that we can all become familiar with anything, over time, we are now ready to examine education in detail.
In what manner of learning are we most generally faced with?[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 09-09-2009
[SIZE="7"]
Seeing, hearing and doing.†Learning is as natural to a human as breathing.
[/SIZE][SIZE="5"]We copy sound to learn our natural language and copy behaviour to build the abilities necessary for survival. These survival skills were originally developed individually and in groups. Our modern human requirements are vastly different, but we still have only one mode of human behaviour. Teaching by speech or example, learning by listening reading and watching but finally building our own understanding through reason and consideration of what see hear and think.
When we are considering the human mind, we are considering something unique. Within each mind, are individual memories, containing all the unique information regarding our personal lives and experiences, all the knowledge gained from experience, reading and reasoning, and the emotional package individually created from the unique lifestyle each and every one of us lives. However we try, we can never replicate our individual mind. Individually each and every one of us is physically different, but within the content of our mind brought about by our unique experience within our individual lives, it is inevitable that we are even more unique mentally then we are on the outside physically.
Our individual human capabilities came about quite naturally, let us consider the evolution of our species, looking at all the different situations animals have evolved into, using a broad meaning of the word animal, insects, fish, reptiles, rodents every species of bird all four-legged animals, all species once they are perfected are regarded as products of their environment. Although most four legged animals and mammals can make sounds we humans are the only ones that can speak. Through observation the broad meaning of those animal sounds can only be regarded as expressions of love contentment or fear. This makes us, a unique species, the only species on the planet to be able to share our thinking; we share massive abilities within memory, natural perfection within sound recognition being only one of many brain facilities we are born totally unaware of.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]We need to consider our extended period of human development, where most scientists consider that man, as he is mentally and physically cast as of today, came about some 50,000 years ago after some millions of years of initial animal development obviously we were originally a four-legged creature that developed into a walking on two legs sort of person or monkey , but we turned out to be the smartest monkey of all, the only monkey to develop language ability and everything that means to us.
When we look backwards 50,000 years most probably we were not as perfected as we are today but we were using language developing tools and living a communal existence. Let us consider the number of generations that have gone into those last fifty thousand years, using the decimal system to calculate the number of generations considering five generations each hundred years brings us to 50,000 generations every 10,000 years.
One quarter of a million pairs of ancestors within our last 50 thousand years, but even more important, are the millions of evolutionary years before that, where our human species was developing into modern man, clearly developing speech a long time before, the 50,000 years old nearly perfected man, in our hunter gatherer circumstances. Our individual tribal existence and the physical environment we lived in, is responsible for creating the looks and characteristics we humans have, but speech ability is the one characteristic we all possess in common, besides the two, of most things and the perfected brain developed in order to manage our difficult circumstances, existing between animals that were stronger, faster and more savage, than we the human species, are by nature.
Only our species developed language and the highly developed brain facilities we rely on to share knowledge, where every human being in normal health is the possessor of a powerful human brain. Consider just how widely spread our highly developed brain is and the generations of development that went into it, I consider the high probability that every one of us has been born with a near perfect brain.
Considering the lengthy development of our human species, it is nearly impossible for us to be born without a near perfect brain, with that in mind we have to consider just why the full potential of the majority of those brains are never realised.
WHAT IS THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE HUMAN BRAIN[/COLOR]
Investigating the potential of the human brain, obviously with 6 billion of us inhabiting the planet, modern man as a species needs to reorganise the manner in which we may continue to inhabit the planet.
OUR HUMAN STRUGGLE WITH LIMITED KNOWLEDGE
Within this review of our human brain, we are consistently learning more as individuals, or within the groups that we naturally associate ourselves with. Most probably as individuals we belong to many different groups, first of all there is the country that we reside in, then our original nationality, or maybe the two nationalities that we may belong to. The farmer, the teacher, the doctor, the candlestick maker, we belong quite naturally to many different groups. Much personal influence is exerted also quite naturally. Personally one of the most important things I was ever told, an essential life tool, was told to me by a farm worker, that “I needed to listen to everyone, everyone knows something that you do not know†following on from my grammar school education I had at last learn something useful. Something which every one of us needs to be aware of, we are most unlikely to be right about anything until we have given it a large amount of thinking time. The picture of this early lesson on a summer's day fifty three years ago, has never left my mind, only a few words, but such an important concept. Our visual memory divides directly in to two distinct categories, visual memories of vital importance which we can remember forever, and memories in a visual manner which we can recall when we see them again, or sometimes after much thinking and associated recollection. At the back of my own mind, I feel it may be probable that in normal health that we may all have near perfect visual memory. For my own mental consideration I think my visual memories are in two categories, first memories which I use regularly I consider as positive, and the memories that I recall when I see them again as negative pictures, recallable on deep reflection or when the visual memory is renewed.
This natural recollection ability, I consider to be an evolutionary necessity built in to prevent us overloading our working memory.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 10-09-2009
When we are considering the vital aspects of early learning, it is vital that we consider the natural abilities we all have. Creating an exciting memory is a major part of early learning. Using the thumbs up and identifying them as Mr five and Mr six is a perfection.
Only by extreme measures, utilising our compound intelligence resources can we hope to survive So science and the application of science is our natural way forward, it is only one hundred years since we started to fly, but just look at what we have accomplished by utilising science and technology.
It is also only one hundred years since Maria Montessori discovered many vital facts about the human brain and about the advanced possibilities of human learning capabilities. As regards the application of science within education itself we are not even able to match the results achieved by Maria Montessori over one hundred years ago, as a general rule within our state schools. The lack of sustainable procedures within education prevents the expansion of science generally. This has to be the time of science to rule within education procedure itself.
Let us look at knowledge transfer in today's world, visual awareness of everything happening in the world is instantly available to everyone in the world through a combination of television and computers, but our children are finding reading and arithmetic are more difficult to learn then ever previously in the developed world, with the exception of the Asian countries we are missing out on early educational possibilities simply because we unaware of our human mental capabilities and the perfection of our human brain.
Yes we have the ability to teach ourselves our natural language.
No we do not have the ability to teach ourselves to read, quickly and efficiently or to understand the language of mathematics at an early age.
Looking at the perfection of the human brain with its evolutionary ability to do anything we ask of it, provided we understand it at least with the clarity of Maria Montessori 100 years ago.
Taking a closer look at the human brain I have never felt that the mind of a newborn can be stated any more clearly than the words of John Lock describing the mind of a baby as a blank page.
I see all the facilities to manage our bodies and minds are already in place but the child cannot see and maybe not even hear within the womb. The necessity is, for the Childs senses to play their part immediately in learning about the world they are born into. Informal teaching starts initially with the natural teaching abilities that most mothers possess.
MY SIMPLE PROCEDURES WILL ENSURE PERFECTION IN EARLY ARITHMETIC AND BUILDING THE NEURAL PATHWAYS THAT RESULT FROM READING NUMBERS AT SUCH AN EARLY AGE PROVIDED WE ADOPT A STANDARD SYSTEM INTERNATIONALLY
UTILISING A WRITTEN IN WORDS ABACUS PROVIDES FAMILIARITY WITH NUMBERS DESCRIBED IN ANY WRITTEN LANGUAGE READING THOSE WORDS STIMULATES THE CHILDS NEURAL PATHWAYS
PERFECTION IN CONNECTING LETTER SOUNDS AND SYMBOL RECOGNITION TOGETHER ARE BEST TAUGHT EARLY BY THE CHILDS PARENTS OR SPECIALIST EARLY LEARNING CENTRES IN COMBINATION WITH THE PARENTS
UTILISING A WRITTEN IN WORDS ABACUS PROVIDES FAMILIARITY WITH NUMBERS DESCRIBED IN ANY WRITTEN LANGUAGE READING THOSE WORDS STIMULATES THE CHILDS NEURAL PATHWAYS
PERFECTION IN CONNECTING LETTER SOUNDS AND SYMBOL RECOGNITION TOGETHER ARE BEST TAUGHT EARLY BY THE CHILDS PARENTS OR SPECIALIST EARLY LEARNING CENTRES IN COMBINATION WITH THE PARENTS
Some hundreds of thousands of generations have ensured perfection in building powerful human brains. Only perfected teaching systems will enable ever child to reach their full potential in reading and mathematics which need to become automatic abilities in every human brain.
Thinking - John Nicholson - 11-09-2009
I must be getting closer to an understanding.
this something I found on the net after I wrote the above stuff
-------------- http://farmingforum.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=243919#post243919
I posted it onto a farming website just to clear the file for myself but left it there because the intellectuals are on my heals.
---------------:dazed: ------------------:dazed: -----------------:dazed: