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+---- Thread: Thinking (/Thread-Thinking)
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Thinking - John Nicholson - 19-09-2009
A HISTORY LESSON AND AN ASSUMPTION.
[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.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
[COLOR="Green"]A VITAL PASSAGE
"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. [/COLOR]_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"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.
{[COLOR="Red"]CONSIDER THAT WE MUST HAVE AN AVERAGE OF FIVE GENERATIONS EVERY HUNDRED YEARS (NO BIRTH CONTROL) TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS TIMES FIVE GIVES US ONE MILLION GENERATIONS. I READ THAT, AS RESULTING IN EVERY HUMAN CHILD BORN IN NORMAL HEALTH AS HAVING OUR SPECIES POWERFUL HUMAN BRAIN.
WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT EVERY ONE OF US, APART FROM THE OBVIOUS PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES HAS TO BE OUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. GIVEN THAT WE ARE CAPABLE OF DOING EVERYTHING WE SEE OTHERS DOING, SHOULD WE HAVE THEIR DETERMINATION AND EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND WHAT LIMITS HAVE WE ON WHAT WE CAN ACHIEVE.
MY BELIEF IS THAT GIVEN A BROAD CONCENTRATED EARLY EDUCATION STARTING WITH COUNTING AND READING PERFECTION, BEING TAUGHT TO PLAY CHESS, TABLE TENNIS, PLAYING THE PIANO, LEARNING TO TYPE, TAUGHT TO DRAW AND PAINT AND WRITE WELL, WE CAN LOOK FORWARDS TO BEING TAUGHT CONSISTENTLY THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES WITHOUT SPENDING YEARS IN SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES SIMPLY BY LEARNING THE PRACTICAL SKILLS WE ALL NEED TO SURVIVE WITH. GROWING AND COOKING OUR OWN FOOD, DESIGNING AND BUILDING OUR OWN HOUSES, DOING EVER PRACTICAL THING WE CAN DO FOR OURSELVES. LEARNING SIMPLY BY DOING SOMETHING, SITUATIONS SIMILAR TO HOW EVERY PRACTICAL FARMER FINALLY LEARNS HIS OR HER TRADE. JN [/COLOR]} [/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 08-10-2009
[SIZE="7"]
[COLOR="Red"]“ The brain expects the environment to influence its evolving circuitry,â€
“ These circuits are literally shaped by personal experience.â€[/COLOR]
[/SIZE]J“ These circuits are literally shaped by personal experience.â€[/COLOR]
[SIZE="6"]J P Shonkoff, M D Professor of Child Health and Development and director of the Centre on the Developing Child at
Harvard University.[/SIZE]
[SIZE="7"][SIZE="7"]The developing brain[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"]At the time of birth, the architecture of the human brain is underdeveloped. The brain, as it grows, is constantly wiring and refining the connections among its trillions of nerve cells and the synapses through which messages are sent throughout the brain. In early childhood, the brain is genetically programmed to develop many more synapses than it will ever use, with different circuits being formed in different areas of the brain at different times. This brain circuitry is influenced by a blend of genetics and experience.“The brain expects the environment to influence its evolving circuitry,†says Shonkoff. “These circuits are literally shaped by personal experience.†This process of circuit building results in what some scientists call biological embedding; that is, experience gets built into our bodies and has physiological effects on the brain as well as other developing organ systems. Language interaction between parents and children create stronger brain circuits. Likewise, sound early arithmetic and reading ability are essential for the healthy development of brain circuitry.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 22-10-2009
[SIZE="7"][COLOR="Red"]Kinesthetic learning is a teaching and learning style in which learning takes place by the student actually carrying out a physical activity,[/COLOR][/SIZE] [SIZE="6"][COLOR="Black"]rather than listening to a lecture or merely watching a demonstration. Some people are visual learners, some kinesthetic learners, and some are auditory learners. Students associated with this predominant learning style are thought to be natural discovery learners; they have realizations through doing, as opposed to having thought first before initiating action. The evidence on kinesthetic learners benefiting from specialized instruction or targeted materials appears mixed, because the diagnosis of learning preference is itself problematic.
[SIZE="7"]THIS IS OBVIOUSLY PULLED STRAIT FROM WIKA WHATS IT.[/SIZE]
[SIZE="7"]because the diagnosis of learning preference is itself problematic.[/SIZE]
[SIZE="6"][COLOR="DarkRed"]SO WE ARE THINKING ABOUT OUR OR A CHILDS LEARNING STYLE IS THIS WAY OR THAT WAY
ARE WE TO BE LOCKED INTO A MYTH CREATED BY HOWARD GARDINER YEARS AGO. GARDNERS WORK WAS GROUND BREAKING HE IDENTIFIED THE DIFFERENT MANNERS OF LEARNING WE ALL NATURALLY USE.
BUT WHEN WE ARE ONLY THREE FOUR FIVE AND SIX KINISTHETIC LEARNING IS KING
AND OF COURSE COMMON SENSE SAYS WHERE EVER WE ARE AND WHATEVER WE ARE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WE ARE USING EVERY SENSE WE HAVE IN OUR VERY PERSONABLE BEST COMBINATION OF THE WORLDS MOST POWEFUL SPECIES BRAIN.
[/COLOR][/SIZE] However researchers on both sides of the debate agree that there is data showing "that a teaching strategy based on a ‘programmed learning sequence’ and designed to favour visually- and tactilely-oriented students increased attainment for all students in the experimental group." Other studies also show that mixed modality presentations, for instance using both auditory and visual techniques, improve results for subjects across the board.[1]
Kinesthetic learning is when someone learns things from doing or being part of them. They make up about 15% of the population and struggle to pick things up by reading/ listening to things. Many people mistake themselves for kinesthetic/ tactile learners because they have not used the full variety of learning options, which means they cannot find the right learning state for them. The kinesthetic learner usually does well in things such as chemistry experiments, sporting activities, and acting. They also may listen to music while learning or studying. It is common for kinesthetic learners to focus on two different things at the same time. They will remember things by going back in their minds to what their body was doing. They also have very high hand-eye coordination and very quick receptors. They use phrases such as "I can see myself doing that" and "It's starting to come alive".[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 22-10-2009
[SIZE="4"]In Frames of Mind, Howard Gardner presents the theory that there is no general "intelligence" of the kind purported to be measured by IQ tests. Instead, the human mind is organized around several distinct functional capacities, which he calls "intelligences." Using an elaborate set of criteria, he identifies the seven intelligences listed in Table 1. Though these intelligences overlap with the two-brain theory that distinguishes the functions of left and right hemispheres, Gardner sets aside the two-brain model in order to investigate thinking at a deeper level of complexity. Each intelligence combines elements that may have evolved separately. Though certain functions are highly localized in the brain and can be eliminated by brain damage to that site, the intelligences are surprisingly flexible and can make use of various senses, parts of the brain, and chance opportunities. (Even the blind can develop spatial intelligence.) [SIZE="6"]The intelligences follow characteristic patterns of development in childhood, yet those patterns are diverse enough to prohibit one from prescribing a set pathway by which children should develop. While these intelligences appear in cultures all over the world, different cultures value them differently. Each of the seven intelligences is relatively independent of the others, but they do not often appear separate, because they usually work together and may be understood as separate only after observing many instances of their combined effort.[/SIZE]
Gardner suggests how several different intelligences might work together in a concert violinist. In addition to the obvious musicial ability, she will display kinesthetic skills in fingering and bow movement; interpersonal intelligence in communicating with an audience; intrapersonal intelligence in feeling the emotions of the music; logical-mathetmatical skills in analyzing musical structure, planning performances, and making a profit; and so on (xii).
Table 2 summarizes this paper by extrapolating the seven intelligences to suggest how they might manifest in a writer. The framework sketched in Table 2 also suggests a new way to consider a piece of writing or a student writer: Where are the writer's strengths and weaknesses in terms of this model? Research questions arise: Can the stimulation of one intelligence, such as kinesthetic awareness, produce predictable changes in writing style? Will the stimulation of one modality of one intelligence (such as the visual aspect of the spatial intelligence) stimulate other modalities of the same intelligence (the metaphoric aspect of the spatial intelligence)? Flower and Hayes' model of writing suggests how complex the interactions may be between mental functions. What are the interrelationships between the different intelligences during writing--say, between verbal and spatial thought?
Gardner's model is not a unified field theory of mind. It does not attempt to account for some important factors --such as motivation, attention, creativity, inspiration, practical intelligence, and persistence. But Frames of Mind is one of the central texts in the nature of human diversity. It is an intellectual adventure--wide-ranging, deeply thought, and dazzlingly speculative. While conveying a tightly-defined core of concepts, it radiates out into the forefront of many fields of knowledge. Self, others, symbol, brain, and culture blend with a remarkable harmony in this theory. It is a view that honors "innate intellectual proclivities," individual differences, the crucial role of tools and symbol systems, the social nature of knowledge, and the way cultures shape the minds that shape culture.
The lesson of Gardner's book (and of this article) is that people are smart in many different and often surprising ways, and that some of those ways are rarely recognized in our system of schooling. The framework presented by the theory of multiple intelligences can bring new ideas to the writing classroom, and it can add theoretical depth to some existing pedagogical practices. Conversely, a writing classroom can be used as a forum in which students discover multiple intelligences at work in themselves and in others. With a theory such as Gardner's, we might be more able to see beyond the limits of current theories of human ability to find other forms of intelligence permeating all human activities.[/SIZE]
[COLOR="DarkRed"]I WILL WRITE MY OWN OBSERVATIONS IN CAPITALS AND OTHER RELEVANT ARTICLES IN OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVES.
PREVIOUSLY I HAVE USED THESE PAGES TO DEVELOP MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE HUMAN MIND
BUT MY TIME IS SHORTER NOW I AM NEARLY SEVENTY AND I HAVE LEARNT ALL I NEED TO ARGUE EFFECTIVELY FOR CHANGES IN EARLY EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE.
I WILL NEVER CEASE TRYING TO DEVELOP MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE HUMAN MIND.
BUT THE TIME FOR ME SPEAK ABOUT THE OBVIOUS USE OF COMMON SENSE HAS ARRIVED AND FROM NOW ON
I SHALL RELY MORE ON THE WORDS OF THE WORLD’S PHILOSOPHERS THAN ANYTHING ELSE.
John Nicholson[/COLOR]
Thinking - Zoe - 04-11-2009
John Nicholson Wrote:[SIZE="4"][FONT="Arial Narrow"]
“What we demonstrate is that we can change the way the brain works,â€
Hello,
I just registered on this site and am finding your very interesting posts. I am especially interested in finding information on what type of training is available to improve working memory and attention span other than Cogmed that was developed by Torkel Klinberg. I do some freelance writing and want to do some articles on this topic.
Also, is this a good forum in which to bring up some questions to discuss about issues related to ADHD? I've written some articles about it and would like to be able to discuss some questions about it, especially as a learning disorder. Thanks,
Zoe
p.s. In regards to the article in the post from which you were quoted; why would anyone these days think the brain can't be rewired?
Thinking - John Nicholson - 07-11-2009
[SIZE="6"]Hi Zoe
[SIZE="6"][/SIZE]
The simple answer to your inquiry lays in the fact that not many people are as well informed of the latest brain research as you obviously are.
Proven by
[SIZE="7"]Dr. Klingberg’s is quoted saying that the most important discovery that his research group has made is that cognitive functions like working memory can be improved through training.[/SIZE]
---- http://cogmednews.com/?p=367
Thank you for the lead and welcome to the future.
John Nicholson[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 08-11-2009
[SIZE="6"]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 we all poses in the simplest and most precise use of words i can manage to convey these ideas in.
we are all born with a tremendous brain power but no spelling ability
written badly with my speech recognition system for you to think about.
[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 26-11-2009
[SIZE="5"]Corrected start to the final roundup
[SIZE="5"]Mathematics taught perfectly can be regarded as the starting point of reading in conjunction with any language used in the world. My observation is this. The word kinaesthetic simply means see and do. Maria Montessori found out that simply by teaching children to copy letters, where they obviously learnt the sounds of those letters, that they were then able to read without being taught anything else, they started to put the sounds of the letters into automatic memory simply by appreciating words in shop windows were the sounds they had been taught were augmented by alternative sounds which were created by automatic memory from the simple realisation of physical meaning when associated with familiar objects, alternative phonetic awareness is part and parcel of every ones learning of a language, no two children can ever learn at exactly the same time the sound of any letter combination, unless they are taught it specifically.
My belief is that if we teach mathematics perfectly, and then proceed to teach the child the alphabet in the sound in which we have all been taught the alphabet in the past and then proceed to teach the child the alternative phonetic sounds in letter combinations in syllables or within short words, then these perfections, established perfectly, bring about the child’s own natural ability to teach its self to read with some assistance.
My observations and hypotheses as regards counting and reading is that they are inevitably combined in developing every child’s neurological pathways, when I say we are all born with a powerful brain, I understand that to mean that there is very little we can fail to understand if we are taught properly. In the development of System One eight years ago, I created a word wheel where a child could use syllables to create words, but my reading, thinking and observation led me to the realisation that the problems started earlier, by the child's inability to recognise the letters perfectly in alphabet sound and then the alternative phonetic sounds created as we use words. Some schools have been so obsessed with phonetic sounds of letters, that the children cannot use the alphabetic sounds of those letters naturally. No two children anywhere develop a final perfect memory of anything at the same time,
Only by concentrating on repetition until perfection is established, can we stop teaching these essential totally perfect realisations.
I see the school day in two parts, the first two hours of any school day should be devoted to formal teaching, the aim of that teaching, is to achieve perfection. Let us all be aware that we have not scratched the surface within the use of kinaesthetic demonstration at the present time within education. Clearly every one of us understands that computers will be the most vital teaching instruments in the future. With a realisation of this and also the realisation that no child will ever use a computer proficiently if they have failed to reach a satisfactory level of mental arithmetic and are clearly unable to read independently utilising a dictionary efficiently, being guided towards the level of reading where they are developing their natural love of reading,
Every one of us can only have a limited understanding of brain function, but I am disappointed with neurological research failing to appreciate just how perfect memory is created, I am trying to link these separately produced papers explaining System One in words, words clear enough for both parents, teachers and highly committed neurological researchers to understand that we need to call for united action in ensuring that everyone of us understands that creating knowledge is
“simply a matter of familiarisation with whatever we require knowledge of.â€
“Every child in the world can count and read perfectlyâ€, if a child can speak relatively clearly by the time it is five years old and many can do this years before that. That child is capable of being educated to the highest level that any other child is capable of. Obviously concentration and determination play the biggest part in developing personal knowledge on any subject, after thirteen years of considering our appalling failure to recognise the potential of the human brain to learn quickly. I clearly recognise that no one would wish to prevent children learning quickly, and therefore in reality I am kicking at an open door, but I need assistance from others especially in regards to trials and development of System One, alongside the secondary development concerning the reinforcement of essential lessons.
Children in their final year of primary school are quite capable of assisting younger children to read and count, therefore part of everyday should be dedicated to the development of children teaching each other, as for instance learning to play chess, training younger children to play table tennis, training younger children to naturally understand where each country in the world is physically situated, most probably by simple demonstrations of model ships carrying goods between countries on a floor based map of the world or a world chart utilising small magnetic shipping models.
Considering the difficulties that I found in writing, turning words physically into print even with the occasional assistance of the Dragon Speech when it is working perfectly, I believe that every child should be taught to touch type at the earliest point possible. In the same manner that every child should be taught to play the piano, these two exercises are developments of pure brain function, alongside a greater development of the human mind created by reading and reasoning, developed through physical realisation easily as much, as by imagination. Every child should be able to cook their own food by the time they leave primary school. The list of valuable physical experiences, in regarding the development of brain function is virtually unlimited and the development of primary education has got to be dedicated to the further development of our powerful human brain.
Why should our children sit still in schools when they can learn so much from building essential awareness from thrilling physical activity? Even learning the alphabet correctly can be brought about by changing large letters between pupils on a daily basis, most classes have 26 children at least in them and where there are less than 26 children the bright ones are capable of carrying two letters.
The end of every perfect school day for a primary school child can be brought about quite easily by listening to someone reading, in today's world that someone can be created usefully by mechanical means, children's attention and concentration is naturally built to its highest level when their imaginations are stimulated by a story. Our whole evolution is based on the story.
Hopefully you will understand this story of my own enlightenment, bringing logical reasoning into developing your awareness of how powerful our human brain is. You will have found many connections within your own experience. Every child in the world has the right to the very best education the world can provide. This provision for education is as much the responsibility of the parents as it is of the state, provided we all recognise the possibilities quickly and put the most obviously correct measures into practice directly, dyslexia and dyscalculia will become part of history.
If you have suffered under these two easily corrected problems and overcome them, you more than anyone else will see the benefits of using system one, if you are a primary teacher struggling to teach thirty children to read? will you benefit from thirty sets of parents reading this. If you are a parent and want the very best for your children, can you help them far better after reading this? If you are a Politian and want your party to win the next election will you need to adopt system one to win?
If you have managed to read as far as this congratulations. The primary [/SIZE]education of the world's children is a clear responsibility for everyone.[/SIZE]
[SIZE="7"]
THAT MEANS YOU
[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 26-11-2009
If you have arrived at this point, in reading this lengthy set of instructions and reasoning it is important that you understand why it has been put together at this moment. Only recently have I made a contact with Jon Driver the director of UC London a neurological research scientist with the ability to understand and appreciate the work I have been doing. Also in the last few weeks a number of individuals, Jackie Stewart being one of them expressing his own difficulties as a dyslexic person, alongside a number of other individuals who lately have expressed similar views, these individuals were unable to take a full part in their class`s as young people learning within normal primary education. Their individual schooling was a very unhappy and unsatisfactory experience. This situation can easily be corrected.
I am making the statement that no child in the world can read any language in the world without understanding the relationship between the symbols being used and the meaning of the words. In China words are single symbols. This may seem more difficult to learn than our own written language, but any person described in the United Kingdom as dyslexic, would be just as quick to learn the language has anyone else. The Chinese language can be understood better if we consider the single symbols we use to count with. The ten symbols which we clearly need to understand if we are ever to understand mathematics where give us the meaning of ten. As far as the child is concerned the meaning of the words we use to describe number can be understood by one symbol only and the repetitive pattern of numbers. As far as Chinese reading is concerned the meaning of a word is contained within one symbol. In Chinese writing obviously the symbols will be slightly different but the complications of sound will be represented through the joint picture construction of the symbols not in the manner by which we build the sounds our words are in.
Naturally a child will learn the meaning of a variable quantity of words, within any one days teaching, just in the same manner as a child will learn the meaning of numbers by associating the representation of a number relating it to a meaning with the physical visual appreciation of its hands. This may seem complicated but I can assure you that it is not, simply hold your hands in front of you and create the meaning of every number one to 10 you are presenting a physical demonstration of number. When we want to deal with larger numbers we simply utilise the pattern of the same numbers in the form of simple multiplication by 10 as we advanced towards one million, or as a simple division by 10 as we advanced towards producing one millionth of one.
---------:autumn: ------------------:autumn::autumn: --------------------
Thinking - John Nicholson - 27-11-2009
[SIZE="5"]Psychologists have found that thought patterns used to recall the past and imagine the future are strikingly similar. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain at work, they have observed the same regions activated in a similar pattern whenever a person remembers an event from the past or imagines himself in a future situation. This challenges long-standing beliefs that thoughts about the future develop exclusively in the frontal lobe.
Remembering your past may go hand-in-hand with envisioning your future! It's an important link researchers found using high-tech brain scans. It's answering questions and may one day help those with memory loss.
For some, the best hope of 'seeing' the future leads them to seek guidance -- perhaps from an astrologist. But it's not very scientific. Now, psychologists at Washington University are finding that your ability to envision the future does in fact goes hand-in-hand with remembering the past. Both processes spark similar neural activity in the brain.
"You might look at it as mental time travel--the ability to take thoughts about ourselves and project them either into the past or into the future," says Kathleen McDermott, Ph.D. and Washington University psychology professor. The team used "functional magnetic resonance imaging" -- or fMRI -- to "see" brain activity. They asked college students to recall past events and then envision themselves experiencing such an event in their future. The results? Similar areas of the brain "lit up" in both scenarios.
"We're taking these images from our memories and projecting them into novel future scenarios," says psychology professor Karl Szpunar.
Most scientists believed thinking about the future was a process occurring solely in the brain's frontal lobe. But the fMRI data showed a variety of brain areas were activated when subjects dreamt of the future.[/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"][SIZE="7"][COLOR="DarkRed"]WHAT IS SURPRISING ABOUT THIS PIECE OF RESEARCH RESULT EXACTLY NOTHING. WE CAN ONLY USE IDEAS WE ARE CONSCIOUSLY AWARE OF TO CREATE IMAGINARY SCENARIOS IN THE FUTURE
BUT
WHEN WE LOOK AT OUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND WE FIND MAMMOTH UTILISATION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS BRAIN CREATING TRULY IMAGINATIVE SOLUTIONS CREATED CONSISTENTLY ON A DAILY BASIS AND LINKED QUITE NATURALLY WITH THE IDEAS WE HAVE UNDER CONSCIOUS CONSIDERATION AT ANY PARTICULAR MOMENT
WE DESCRIBE THIS PHENOMENA AS DREAMING[/COLOR][/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"][FONT="Comic Sans MS
"]"All the regions that we know are important for memory are just as important when we imagine our future,"
Szpunar says.Researchers say besides furthering their understanding of the brain -- the findings may help research into amnesia, a curious psychiatric phenomenon. In addition to not being able to remember the past, most people who suffer from amnesia cannot envision or visualize what they'll be doing in the future -- even the next day.
BACKGROUND: Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have used advanced brain imaging techniques to show that remembering the past and envisioning the future may go hand-in-hand, with each process showing strikingly similar patterns of activity within precisely the same broad network of brain regions. This suggests that envisioning the future may be a critical prerequisite for many higher-level planning processes in the brain.
WHAT IS fMRI: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses radio waves and a strong magnetic field rather than X-rays to take clear and detailed pictures of internal organs and tissues. fMRI uses this technology to identify regions of the brain where blood vessels are expanding, chemical changes are taking place, or extra oxygen is being delivered. These are indications that a particular part of the brain is processing information and giving commands to the body. As a patient performs a particular task, the metabolism will increase in the brain area responsible for that task, changing the signal in the MRI image. So by performing specific tasks that correspond to different functions, scientists can locate the part of the brain that governs that function.
ABOUT THE STUDY: The researchers relied on fMRI to capture patterns of brain activation as college students were given 10 seconds to develop a vivid mental image of themselves or a famous celebrity participating in a range of common life experiences. Presented with a series of memory cues -- such as getting lost, spending time with a friend, or attending a birthday party -- participants were asked to recall a related event from their own past; to envision themselves experiencing such an event in their future life; or to picture a famous celebrity (specifically, former U.S. president Bill Clinton) participating in such an event.
WHAT THEY FOUND: Comparing images of brain activity in response to the 'self-remember' and 'self future' event cues, researchers found a surprisingly complete overlap among regions of the brain used for remembering the past and those used for envisioning the future. The study clearly demonstrates that the neural network underlying future thoughts is not only happening in the brain's frontal cortex. Although the frontal lobes play an important role in carrying out future-oriented operations -- such as anticipation, planning and monitoring -- the spark for these activities may be the process of envisioning yourself in a specific future event. And that's an activity based on the same brain network used to remember memories about our own lives. Also, patterns of activity suggest that the visual and spatial context for our imagined future is often pieced together using our past experiences, including memories of specific body movements: data our brain has stored as we navigated through similar settings in the past.
[/SIZE][/FONT]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 15-12-2009
[SIZE="7"]
On the Nature of Human Plasticity:
[/SIZE][SIZE="5"]In the human brain…there are approximately 1 trillion neurons, and each single neuron typically engages in 100-1000 synaptic contacts with other neurons. This means that the number of synapses in the human brain is between 1014 to 1015, or about 1 quadrillion. Yet the number of possible synaptic connections is still greater. "If we assume that each neuron can contact 100 other neurons and then compute all the possible combinations among the 1012 neurons, we end up with a number that is larger than the total number of atomic particles that compose of the entire known universe
[SIZE="7"][SIZE="7"]
…as the brain develops, the possibilities for connections among neurons are virtually limitless…suggesting the capacity for the human brain may be almost without limit"
[/SIZE][/SIZE]While some may realize the importance of our body's plastic nature, nobody, not even those who devote their entire lives to uncovering the mysteries of neural plasticity, completely understands the incredibly complex and variable process. Does the brain have the ability to fully understand something as intricate as itself? The contents of this paper attempt to shed some light on the complexity underlying neural plasticity by reviewing some of its basic principals. Within the last few years, some neural plasticity researches have turned much of their attention towards the apparent promise of stem cells and the profound physiological consequences of stress. For this reason, their application concerning neural plasticity will also be discussed. Finally, this paper also provides information on factors that may influence recovery from neuropsychological impairments.
With the tremendous amount of research aimed at revealing the mysteries of neurogenesis, there was an unexpected finding: Not only does the brain engage in neurogenesis, but it also appears to have a small reserve of stem cells located in various tissues of the body. Stem cells come in two varieties: embryonic and adult. As their first names imply, embryonic stem cells are retrieved from embryos and adult stem cells derive from adults. Basically, stem cells, regardless of their original source, have three general properties that make them unique. First, stem cells are capable of dividing and renewing themselves for long periods. Secondly, they are unspecialized, meaning that they are not confined to becoming only acertain type of cell. Finally, and arguably most important, stem cells posses the ability to become any type of mature cell, called totipotental. Stem cells have the capacity to"…give rise to itself (self-renewal) and can also give rise to any or all of the three main cell lineages of the brain:
Although there have been many studies that claim neurogenesis occurs in multiple regions in the brain, there have only been a few reports that have been substantiated. The substantiated reports showing neurogenesis in the brain state that it only occurs robustly in two areas of the brain: the forebrain and the hippocampus. It appears a significantly large number of neurons migrate from the forebrain to the olfactory bulb using ventricles positioned on the forebrain. The evidence pointing to neurogenesis in the hippocampus states that it occurs within the denate gyrus of the hippocampus (Macher, 2004). The olfactory bulb is involved in our interpretation of smell, and the hippocampus plays a crucial role in forming new memories. The fact that both of these structures are essentially forced to adapt, be it because of a combination of new smells or memories, leads to a general theory regarding plasticity, specifically neurogenesis. The theory states that the possible significance of neurogenesis could be that it provides the plasticity necessary to process and code the novel information processed by the olfactory bulb and hippocampus (Macher, 2004). A study by Emory University researchers in 2001 produced results, in adult rats, that showed newly generated neurons in several forebrain structures,"including the parenchyma (gray mater) of the striatum, septum, thalamus and hypothalamus"; areas that serve a multitude of cognitive and vital neurological functions" (Growth factor, 2001, p.1). Researchers were able to generate these results by inducing the growth factor BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic growth factor) into the lateral ventricle of adult rat brains for a period of two weeks. They waited for two weeks before examining the brains. Previous studies had detected only a very limited level of neurogenesis in the thalamus, septum and striatum. This study also produced some interesting evidence involving the unique existence of progenitor cells in a region of the subventricular zone and therostal migratory stream (Growth factor, 2001). These results are important because these progenitor cells are able to divide and produce progeny, also known as daughter cells. In every other part of the brain the neurons appear to be post-mitotic, cells that are unable to divide. The presence of these progenitor cells leads researchers to believe that the adult forebrain has a more profound capacity for neurogenesis than previously thought.
There are currently three theories as to how neurons and axons grow and reorganize themselves with their respective position. The Blueprint Hypothesis states that the correct location is found by following "chemical landmarks" along the path. The Topographic Gradient theory proposes that neurons and axons grow and essentially travel in a group to their correct location.
The Chemoaffinity Hypothesis states that chemical signals at the target zone attract neurons and axons to their proper location. Each of the above theories has been tested experimentallyand proven to occur. However, it appears that the "chosen" method of re-organization may be dependent on the type of system, be that visual or tactile, that needs to be reorganized. The fundamental key allowing PNS plasticity, in this case, regeneration, is the Schwann cells.
By the1990's, scientists had clearly proved neurogenesis does indeed occur in certain areas of the adult brain (Macher, 2004). This exciting news sparked a whole new array of questions about the abilities and methods of the CNS with regard to plasticity.
The extraordinarily complex processes involved in neuronal plasticity may cause the basics to appear not so basic, and indeed, they are not. The term neural plasticity encompasses many different ideas and processes. Basically, it refers to the ability of neurons within our bodies to adapt. These methods include but are notlimited to: neural degeneration, neural regeneration, neural reorganization and neural transplantation.
In order to understand how neurons and axons grow, it is first necessary to understand how they die. Neural degeneration occurs in two ways: Anterograde degeneration and retrograde degeneration. Anterograde refers to the degeneration of the distal segment, or the section of a cut axon between the cut and the synaptic terminals. Retrograde refers to degeneration of the proximal segment, or the portion of a cut axon between the cut and the cell body.
Within the past thirty or so years, great strides have been made in the field of Neuroscience. These great strides have also provided an increased understanding of plasticity. As with most incredibly complex problems, our increased knowledge has given rise to yet more questions concerning the processes underlying neural plasticity.
Researchers now know that neurogenesis is possible in the CNS given the perfect experimental conditions. Yet they have yet to pin down the exact conditions that permit re-growth in multiple tissues. Research on stem cells indicates that they have a profound potential to help millions of people in a variety of ways. However, our current level of knowledge and comprehension on these issues prevents us from using them to their greatest potential.
Questioning the possible consequences of unbalancing the equation, leading to an increase of neurons, leads one to ponder how our cognitive abilities might be enhanced by such a change. Now that researchers have proven that the adult human brain does engage in neurogenesis, they have another problem to solve.
For researchers to understand the complex dynamics of neurogenesis, they must uncover the factors that control cell proliferation, their creation, cell migration, moving to where they are needed, and cell differentiation, turning into the type of cell that is needed.
When scientists have a true in-depth understanding of these three processes, only then will they begin to understand the true possibilities of neurogenesis.
[/SIZE][COLOR="DarkRed"]“AS THE BRAIN DEVELOPS, THE POSSIBILITIES FOR CONNECTIONS AMONG NEURONS ARE VIRTUALLY LIMITLESS…SUGGESTING THE CAPACITY FOR THE HUMAN BRAIN MAY BE ALMOST WITHOUT LIMIT"
HOW ARE WE TO USE THESE VERY COSTLY BUILT AREAS OF RESEARCH, SOME OF THE INFORMATION WE NEED TO UTILISE EVEN WITH THE PRESENT PROVEN RESEARCH HAS TO BE OF A PHILOSOPHICAL NATURE. FOR MY OWN HYPOTHESIS I CONSIDER THAT THE POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR HUMAN BRAIN IS WITHOUT ANY OBVIOUS RESTRICTIONS OTHER THAN THE INDIVIDUAL HUMAN INTEREST NEEDED TO PURSUE ANY AREA OF RESEARCH HAVING THE TIME AVAILABLE AND THE CO-OPERATION OF THE DEVELOPED WORLD’S GOVERNMENTS.
SOMETHING THEY APPEAR TO BE UNABLE TO GET THEIR HEADS AROUND, IN MY THIRTEEN YEARS OF CONSIDERING HUMAN BRAIN FUNCTION I HAVE YET TO SEE ONE DEMANDED CHANGE WITHIN EDUCATION, NEURO RESEARCH HAS TO BECOME THE LEADING EDGE OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE IF IS TO BE CONTINUED, TO BE FUNDED AT THE LEVELS IT HAS BEEN. [/COLOR]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 15-12-2009
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****** http://www.childrenofthecode.org/Tour/c3b/nat_nurt.htm
THIS IS VERY GOOD
Thinking - John Nicholson - 23-12-2009
[COLOR="DarkRed"][SIZE="7"]Playing chess helps children excel in maths
Why play chess [/SIZE][/COLOR]
[SIZE="6"]Chess is a thinking game. It is a fair game in that the player is responsible for the fate of the game and there is no other intervention in the game either in the form of luck or in the form of chance. One thing that can be said to be a chance or luck is nothing but the mistake of the opponent.
In general, the player needs to think, analyze, visualize, plan, decide and execute a series of moves applying tactics and strategies to say “checkmate†to the opponent.
If children were taught this noble game at their tender age and encouraged to play the game, they will perform better in their academic career and outshine others – this is a finding of a research study.
Many countries have introduced the game of chess as part of their school curriculum and have made it a subject or game that each child should learn and play regularly.
How the game of chess will help children perform well in mathematics?
One of the most important subjects that a child is taught in school is the subject of mathematics. This is a vital subject and everyone needs to master it in order to fully understand quantity and to pursue all science subjects.
The importance of mathematics is that it cannot just be learnt by memorizing it by heart, like history or literature, where it can be easy to memorize the lessons and reproduce those memories for exams.
But that is not case with maths. You cannot just memorize the formulas of algebra, reproduce it in examination without thinking it through. The basics of mathematics such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division needs to be understood thoroughly and will be used during your lifetime.
Memorizing the nuances of mathematics and making use of them, at times of necessity should become possible. One needs to understand the concepts thoroughly and apply thinking, to solve the problems of mathematics.
Thinking, concentration, problem-solving and analytical abilities are the pre-requisites for the game of chess as well. And the good thing is that these reasoning skills are taught in a fun way. Children enjoy the game and as part of their play, they learn these essential skills.
Understanding the concepts, applying concentration, attention and analyzing the various types of problems is what is required in mathematics.
Playing chess will not only help children perform better in mathematics, but also teach very important and invaluable lessons to the children. According to research, it has been found that playing chess helps children to develop and enhance their:
• visual memory
• attention span
• spatial reasoning skills
• capacity to anticipate events
• capacity to predict events
• ability to use analytical skills to make decisions, and
• ability to evaluate alternatives.
Most of these things are used to learn and excel in the subject of mathematics and also to face the problems with confidence and lead a successful life.
Now, teaching children the game of chess and encouraging them to play the game with fun has become much easier, thanks to the advancement of technology and the increased use of the Internet. Online chess helps children learn the game in a intresting way with innumerable puzzles and tutorials.
Children should be taught to play at an early age. Involving them in physical exercises, games, and sports activities make their body stronger and healthier. If the game of chess is also taught to children, their brains will also be exercised and the children will become both physically and mentally confident.
Chess has one further benefit when introduced to any school as a regular subject, it can become a vital safe way of intermixing both age and sex groups, older girls in particular would be extremely valuable in teaching younger children chess rules and assisting children who may benefit from reading assistance. Shyness could be easily overcome in a primary school where regular supervised intermixing takes place between the differing age groups.
We are all programmed to rapidly evaluate the new people we come into contact with and where children are used to meeting both adults and other children regularly their social skills are always easily recognized benefitting them throughout their lives.
Supervised association would not only prevent bullying of any nature and total school awareness on a personal level would eliminate conflict in any primary school that was not to gigantic. [/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 26-12-2009
[SIZE="7"]THE LETTER[/SIZE]
[SIZE="7"]
[COLOR="darkred"]What is system one
[/COLOR]
[/SIZE] [/COLOR]
Abacus House
The Green
Bishop Burton
East Yorkshire
HU17 8QF
The Green
Bishop Burton
East Yorkshire
HU17 8QF
[SIZE="6"]My Dear Friend
You are a human being, I do not know you personally but I know if you can read this letter you are just as responsible for the problems the word has, as I am.
What is system one?
System One Is my personal response to sorting out the link between parents their children and state schools.
I am British, my natural language is English, but my universal system of early education can be adapted into any language.
I am composing this letter, as of the twenty sixth day of December Two Thousand and Nine. Boxing day. Reading my watch I is see it is Six Am, I have already been awake two hours thinking about the solutions to all the problems the world has, alongside the individual problems each one living in it has, and of course the problem I myself have, in giving explanation to my Universal solution of Early And Easy Education.
For More than thirteen years of my life, I have woken up to virtually the same problem, or minute parts of my universal solution
“System Oneâ€
How could something absorb anyone to committing so much time to anything as simple as teaching a child to count read and write and think logically.
I was seven Years into a legal dispute between myself and two universal Businesses Midland Bank and Unilever, learning about business law and the practical frailties of it, regarding ever reaching a legal solution through the British courts, eventually I lost my Commercial Case against them. Since then I have discovered they actually broke the civil law. Combining together to impose a solution on a third party is actual illegal within British law and now that my
“System Oneâ€
Is virtually complete, I plan to reengage those two Companies in a criminal action which has no time limit within British Law. Individual Justice is what I am most concerned about, how does individual justice come into universal education, our species is dependent on it, naturally we have the right to share ever piece of information that is of value to our human family.
Personally I see no probability of any other form of intelligent life anywhere other than our own planet.
Our human existence on a continuing basis will be entirely dependent on shared knowledge, we cannot take advantage of that shared knowledge without the ability to count efficiently and estimate quantity quite naturally, we cannot share our ideas without the ability to read and write at will. Without these two major abilities no one will be able to think logically.
Individual Justice is being denied to any normal healthy child that is not taught to read and count efficiently.
Utilising one system of early learning; “THE BESTâ€
My own “System One†which can be taught by demonstration to any normal adult in one day. This means no child being denied the ability to educate itself at will, with the guidance of others.
My instantaneous realisation of just how intelligent we are came about through watching a television programme. That has become the predominant means of human learning, seeing something and realising how it is done and what the benefits of doing it are on a global basis, has taken us from learning everything on tribal and then national basis to a universal basis.
One properly made and widely shown television programme in ever language, commissioned by every national government once our chosen political leaders have been made to understand the benefits of using one simple system for counting reading and thinking logically.
SYSTEM ONE will insure that we may start to make the rapid progress within the individual ability to teach ourselves everything we need to KNOW personally.
We are creatures of habit, and regular reading and thinking sessions can quickly become part of our daily lives once we have been taught efficiently just how to do that.
My instantaneous realisation was that Asian children being taught mathematics on an abacus had no difficulty whatsoever in visualising arithmetic process at a very early age and quickly developed a thorough knowledge of mathematics.
This letter is intended to introduce you to my early and easy learning “System Oneâ€
I am a farmer who built up an efficient farming business that had cost over Four Million pounds to establish, which now would be worth over ten million pounds should the same business be in place.
I shall be seventy years old on the fifteenth of September and in the year two thousand and ten I intend to leave education research to those who still have much to learn, returning to my interest in feeding people and looking after my own family.
John Nicholson
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Thinking - John Nicholson - 31-12-2009
[SIZE="7"]Scientists Discover a Controller of Brain Circuitry[/SIZE]
[SIZE="6"]ScienceDaily (Dec. 30, 2009)
— By combining a research technique that dates back 136 years with modern molecular genetics, a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist has been able to see how a mammal's brain shrewdly revisits and reuses the same molecular cues to control the complex design of its circuits.
Details of the observation in lab mice, published Dec. 24 in Nature, reveal that semaphorin, a protein found in the developing nervous system that guides filament-like processes, called axons, from nerve cells to their appropriate targets during embryonic life, apparently assumes an entirely different role later on, once axons reach their targets. In postnatal development and adulthood, semaphorins appear to be regulating the creation of synapses -- those connections that chemically link nerve cells.
"With this discovery we're able to understand how semaphorins regulate the number of synapses and their distribution in the part of the brain involved in conscious thought," says David Ginty, Ph.D., a professor in the neuroscience department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "It's a major step forward, we believe, in our understanding of the assembly of neural circuits that underlie behavior."
Because the brain's activity is determined by how and where these connections form, Ginty says that semaphorin's newly defined role could have an impact on how scientists think about the early origins of autism, schizophrenia, epilepsy and other neurological disorders.
The discovery came as a surprise finding in studies by the Johns Hopkins team to figure out how nerve cells develop axons, which project information from the cells, as well as dendrites, which essentially bring information in. Because earlier work from the Johns Hopkins labs of Ginty and Alex Kolodkin, Ph.D., showed that semaphorins affect axon trajectory and growth, they suspected that perhaps these guidance molecules might have some involvement with dendrites.
Kolodkin, a professor in the neuroscience department at Johns Hopkins and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, discovered and cloned the first semaphorin gene in the grasshopper when he was a postdoctoral fellow. Over the past 15 years, numerous animal models, including strains of genetically engineered mice, have been created to study this family of molecules.
Using two lines of mice -- one missing semaphorin and another missing neuropilin, its receptor -- postdoctoral fellow Tracy Tran used a classic staining method called the Golgi technique to look at the anatomy of nerve cells from mouse brains. (The Golgi technique involves soaking nerve tissue in silver chromate to make cells' inner structures visible under the light microscope; it allowed neuroanatomists in 1891 to determine that the nervous system is interconnected by discrete cells called neurons.)
Tran saw unusually pronounced "spines" sprouting willy-nilly in peculiar places and in greater numbers on the dendrites in the neurons of semaphorin-lacking and neuropilin-lacking mice compared to the normal wild-type animals. It's at the tips of these specialized spines that a lot of synapses occur and neuron-to-neuron communication happens, so Tran suspected there might be more synapses and more electrical activity in the neurons of the mutant mice.
The researchers tested this hypothesis by examining even thinner brain slices under an electron microscope.
The spines of both semaphorin-lacking and neuropilin-lacking mice were dramatically enlarged, compared to those of the smaller, spherical-looking spines in the wild-type mice. In wild types, Tran generally noted a single site of connection per spine. In the mutants, the site of connection between two neurons was often split.
Next, the team recorded the electrical output of mutant and wild-type neurons and found that the mutants, with more spines and larger spines, also had about a 2.5-times increase in the frequency of electrical activity, suggesting that this abnormal synaptic transmission is due to an increase in the number of synapses.
What causes synapses to form or not form in appropriate or inappropriate places is an extremely important and poorly understood process in the development of the nervous system, Kolodkin says, explaining that the neurons his team studies can have up to 10,000 synaptic connections with other neurons. If connections between neurons are not being formed how and where they're supposed to, then miscommunication occurs and circuits malfunction; as a result, any number of diseases or disorders might develop.
"Seizures can be interpreted as an uncontrolled rapid-firing of certain neural circuits," Kolodkin asserts. "Clearly there's a deficit in these animals that has a human corollary with respect to epilepsy. It's also thought that schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders have developmental origins of one sort or another. There likely are aspects to the formation of synapses -- if they're not in the correct location and in the correct number -- that lead to certain types of defects. The spine deficits in these mice that are lacking semaphorin or its receptor appear very similar to those that are found in Fragile X, for instance."
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Johns Hopkins authors of this paper are Tracy S. Tran, Alex L. Kolodkin, David D. Ginty, Richard L. Huganir, Roger L. Clem, and Dontais Johnson. Other authors are Maria E. Rubio of the University of Connecticut; and Lauren Case and Marc Tessier-Lavigne, of Stanford University.[/SIZE]
Thinking - John Nicholson - 06-01-2010
[SIZE="7"][COLOR="DarkRed"]By ALISON GOPNIK
Published: August 15, 2009
Berkeley, Calif.
Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think [/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE="6"]GENERATIONS of psychologists and philosophers have believed that babies and young children were basically defective adults — irrational, egocentric and unable to think logically. The philosopher John Locke saw a baby’s mind as a blank slate, and the psychologist William James thought they lived in a “blooming, buzzing confusion.â€
Even today, a cursory look at babies and young children leads many to conclude that there is not much going on.
New studies, however, demonstrate that babies and very young children know, observe, explore, imagine and learn more than we would ever have thought possible. In some ways, they are smarter than adults.
Three recent experiments show that even the youngest children have sophisticated and powerful learning abilities. Last year, Fei Xu and Vashti Garcia at the University of British Columbia proved that babies could understand probabilities. Eight-month-old babies were shown a box full of mixed-up Ping-Pong balls: mostly white but with some red ones mixed in. The babies were more surprised, and looked longer and more intently at the experimenter when four red balls and one white ball were taken out of the box — a possible, yet improbable outcome — than when four white balls and a red one were produced.
In 2007, Laura Schulz and Elizabeth Baraff Bonawitz at M.I.T. demonstrated that when young children play, they are also exploring cause and effect. Preschoolers were introduced to a toy that had two levers and a duck and a puppet that popped up. One group was shown that when you pressed one lever, the duck appeared and when you pressed the other, the puppet popped up. The second group observed that when you pressed both levers at once, both objects popped up, but they never got a chance to see what the levers did separately, which left mysterious the causal relation between the levers and the pop-up objects.
Then the experimenter gave the children the toys to play with. The children in the first group played with the toy much less than the children in the second group did. When the children already knew how the toy worked, they were less interested in exploring it. But the children in the second group spontaneously played with the toy, and just by playing around, they figured out how it worked.
In 2007 in my lab at Berkeley, Tamar Kushnir and I discovered that preschoolers can use probabilities to learn how things work and that this lets them imagine new possibilities.
We put a yellow block and a blue block on a machine repeatedly. The blocks were likely but not certain to make the machine light up. The yellow block made the machine light up two out of three times; the blue block made it light up only two out of six times.
Then we gave the children the blocks and asked them to light up the machine. These children, who couldn’t yet add or subtract, were more likely to put the high-probability yellow block, rather than the blue one, on the machine.
We also did the same experiment, but instead of putting the high-probability block on the machine, we held it up over the machine and the machine lit up.
Children had never seen a block act this way, and at the start of the experiment, they didn’t think it could. But after seeing good evidence, they were able to imagine the peculiar possibility that blocks have remote powers. These astonishing capacities for statistical reasoning, experimental discovery and probabilistic logic allow babies to rapidly learn all about the particular objects and people surrounding them.
Sadly, some parents are likely to take the wrong lessons from these experiments and conclude that they need programs and products that will make their babies even smarter. Many think that babies, like adults, should learn in a focused, planned way. So parents put their young children in academic-enrichment classes or use flashcards to get them to recognize the alphabet. Government programs like No Child Left Behind urge preschools to be more like schools, with instruction in specific skills.
But babies’ intelligence, the research shows, is very different from that of adults and from the kind of intelligence we usually cultivate in school.
Schoolwork revolves around focus and planning. We set objectives and goals for children, with an emphasis on skills they should acquire or information they should know. Children take tests to prove that they have absorbed a specific set of skills and facts and have not been distracted by other possibilities.
This approach may work for children over the age of 5 or so. But babies and very young children are terrible at planning and aiming for precise goals. When we say that preschoolers can’t pay attention, we really mean that they can’t not pay attention: they have trouble focusing on just one event and shutting out all the rest. This has led us to underestimate babies in the past. But the new research tells us that babies can be rational without being goal-oriented.
Babies are captivated by the most unexpected events. Adults, on the other hand, focus on the outcomes that are the most relevant to their goals. In a well-known experiment, adults saw a video of several people tossing a ball to one another. The experimenter told them to count how many passes particular people made. In the midst of this, a person in a gorilla suit walked slowly through the middle of the video. A surprising number of adults, intent on counting, didn’t even seem to notice the unexpected gorilla.
Adults focus on objects that will be most useful to them. But as the lever study demonstrated, children play with the objects that will teach them the most. In our study, 4-year-olds imagined new possibilities based on just a little data. Adults rely more on what they already know. Babies aren’t trying to learn one particular skill or set of facts; instead, they are drawn to anything new, unexpected or informative.
Part of the explanation for these differing approaches can be found in the brain. The young brain is remarkably plastic and flexible. Brains work because neurons are connected to one another, allowing them to communicate. Baby brains have many more neural connections than adult brains. But they are much less efficient. Over time, we prune away the connections we don’t use, and the remaining ones become faster and more automatic. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls the directed, planned, focused kind of intelligence, is exceptionally late to mature, and may not take its final shape until our early 20s.
In fact, our mature brain seems to be programmed by our childhood experiences — we plan based on what we’ve learned as children. Very young children imagine and explore a vast array of possibilities. As they grow older and absorb more evidence, certain possibilities become much more likely and more useful. They then make decisions based on this selective information and become increasingly reluctant to give those ideas up and try something new.
Computer scientists talk about the difference between exploring and exploiting — a system will learn more if it explores many possibilities, but it will be more effective if it simply acts on the most likely one. Babies explore; adults exploit.
Each kind of intelligence has benefits and drawbacks. Focus and planning get you to your goal more quickly but may also lock in what you already know, closing you off to alternative possibilities. We need both blue-sky speculation and hard-nosed planning. Babies and young children are designed to explore, and they should be encouraged to do so.
The learning that babies and young children do on their own, when they carefully watch an unexpected outcome and draw new conclusions from it, ceaselessly manipulate a new toy or imagine different ways that the world might be, is very different from schoolwork.
Babies and young children can learn about the world around them through all sorts of real-world objects and safe replicas, from dolls to cardboard boxes to mixing bowls, and even toy cellphones and computers. Babies can learn a great deal just by exploring the ways bowls fit together or by imitating a parent talking on the phone.
(Imagine how much money we can save on “enriching†toys and DVDs!) [/SIZE]
[SIZE="6"]But what children observe most closely, explore most obsessively and imagine most vividly are the people around them. There are no perfect toys; there is no magic formula. Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play.[/SIZE]
OK HERE WE ARE BACK TO MARIA SO WHAT ARE WE TO DO NOW?
IT IS EVEN MORE VITAL THEN WE EVER THOUGHT TO REBUILD EARLY LEARNING INTO EASY LEARNING SO LET US PLAY ON PURPOSE
Thinking - John Nicholson - 26-01-2010
[SIZE="6"]Single cells in the monkey brain encode abstract mathematical concepts
Category: Neuroscience
Posted on: January 21, 2010 11:50 AM, by Mo
OUR ability to use and manipulate numbers is integral to everyday life - we use them to label, rank, count and measure almost everything we encounter. It was long thought that numerical competence is dependent on language and, therefore, that numerosity is restricted to our species. Although the symbolic representation of numbers, using numerals and words, is indeed unique to humans, we now know that animals are also capable of manipulating numerical information.
One study published in 1998, for example, showed that rhesus monkeys can form spontaneous representations of small numbers and use them to choose containers with more pieces of fruit. More recently, it was found that monkeys can perform basic arithmetic on a par with college students. Now, German researchers report that not only do rhesus monkeys understand simple mathematical rules, but also that these rules are encoded by single neurons in the rhesus prefrontal.
Animal experiments and neuroimaging studies performed with humans have implicated the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the processing and execution of numerical operations. In humans, this part of the brain is engaged during tasks involving mathematical rules, and it has long been known that damage to the PFC can lead to impaired quantitative reasoning. Sylvia Bongard and Andreas Nieder of the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Tubingen therefore hypothesized that PFC neurons are involved in encoding aspects of numerosity, and designed a numerical task based on simple numerical rules to test this.
Two rhesus monkeys were shown pairs of visual stimuli consisting of sets of dots and trained to compare them by applying two simple mathematical rules. In each trial, they were shown a sample set of dots followed, after a short delay, by a test set with a different number of dots. The 'greater than' rule required the monkeys to release a lever if the test set contained more dots than the sample set, whereas the 'less than' rule required them to release the lever if it contained fewer dots. During the interval between each pair of stimuli, a cue was presented, indicating which of the two rules should be applied.
While the monkeys performed this task, microelectrodes were used to record the activity of approximately 500 individual and randomly selected PFC neurons. The response of each cell was determined during four different time periods in each trial: the time during which the sample set of dots was displayed, the delay between the sample and the cue indicating which rule to apply, the time during which thecue was displayed, and the delay between presentation of the rule-related cue and the monkeys' response to it.
Significantly, the monkeys immediately applied the mathematical rules to all the stimuli pairs they were shown, even when the sample sets contained numerosities that had not been previously presented.
Selective responses were recorded during the interval between the cue and the response. 90 rule-selective neurons (~19% of the total from which recordings were made) were detected, which fired independently of the number of dots presented or the sensory properties of the rule-related cue. Of these, 50 fired exclusively when the monkeys produced 'greater than' responses, and the remaining 40 fired exclusively when they produced 'less than' responses. Rule selectivity was not encoded immediately, but emerged in the cells after a short period of time.
Across hundreds of trials, the monkeys had a minimum success rate of 83%. The researchers compared the neuronal responses of individual rule-selective neurons during trials in which the monkeys gave correct responses with trials in which they made errors. The firing rates were found to decrease significantly when the monkeys made the wrong choices. The selectivity of the responses also enabled the reearchers to predict which rule the monkeys were applying during each trial, from the cellular activity they recorded.
Thus, single neurons in the lateral PFC of the rhesus monkey can flexibly encode abstract mathematical rules which guide greater than/ less than decisions.
Each session involved large numbers of unique trials, so it was impossible for the monkeys to solve the task by learning. Instead, they were required to understand relationships between numerosities in each pair of stimuli, and to apply these principles to make their decisions. These findings are consistent with a model which proposes that the PFC contains a network of distinct rule-coding neuron clusters, each of which receives input from a corresponding internal memory cluster and sends its output to a dedicated downstream cluster.
The findings also add to a body of evidence suggesting that humans and other primates process numbers using common cognitive skills with a shared evolutionary origin.
________________________________________
Bongard, S. & Nieder, A. (2010). Basic mathematical rules are encoded by primate prefrontal cortex neurons Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0909180107.
Cantlon, J. F. & Brannon, E. M. (2006). Basic math in monkeys and college students [Full text]
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Thinking - John Nicholson - 26-01-2010
Human Brain Uses a Grid to Represent Space
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2010) —
[SIZE="7"]'Grid cells' that act like a spatial map in the brain[/SIZE]
[COLOR="Black"][SIZE="6"]have been identified for the first time in humans, according to new research by UCL scientists which may help to explain how we create internal maps of new environments.
The study is by a team from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and was funded by the Medical Research Council and the European Union.
Published in Nature, it uses brain imaging and virtual reality techniques to try to identify grid cells in the human brain. These specialised neurons are thought to be involved in spatial memory and have previously been identified in rodent brains, but evidence of them in humans has not been documented until now.
Grid cells represent where an animal is located within its environment, which the researchers liken to having a satnav in the brain. They fire in patterns that show up as geometrically regular, triangular grids when plotted on a map of a navigated surface. They were discovered by a Norwegian lab in 2005 whose research suggested that rats create virtual grids to help them orient themselves in their surroundings, and remember new locations in unfamiliar territory.
Study co-author Dr Caswell Barry said: "It is as if grid cells provide a cognitive map of space. In fact, these cells are very much like the longitude and latitude lines we're all familiar with on normal maps, but instead of using square grid lines it seems the brain uses triangles.
Lead author Dr Christian Doeller added: "Although we can't see the grid cells directly in the brain scanner, we can pick up the regular six-fold symmetry that is a signature of this type of firing pattern.
Interestingly, the study participants with the clearest signs of grid cells were those who performed best in the virtual reality spatial memory task, suggesting that the grid cells help us to remember the locations of objects."
Professor Neil Burgess, who leads the team, commented: "The parts of the brain which show signs of grid cells -- the hippocampal formation and associated brain areas -- are already known to help us navigate our environment and are also critical for autobiographical memory.
This means that grid cells may help us to find our way to the right memory as well as finding our way through our environment.
These brain areas are also amongst the first to be affected by Alzheimer's disease which may explain why getting lost is one of the most common early symptoms of this disease."[/SIZE][/COLOR]