B09 – Brain Rules for Successful Finals

This week marks the middle of finals for Term A classes.  For some, it’s a time to freak out, cram for the classes they didn’t pay attention to, and employ all the last minute procrastination methods that landed them in a top graduate program.  Don’t get me wrong, I may be part of one (or more) of these groups.

For others, it’s a time to travel, relax, forget about the consequences for now and enjoy the lightened week’s load until the night before.

Regardless if you study all week or not, here are some tips from studies in neuroscience written by John Medina in his book Brain Rules:

Exercise boosts brain power

  • Even as little as 30 minutes of walking 2x a week — I walk to class, check
  • Exercise increases blood volume in dentate gyrus: part of hippocampus: aka memory formation
  • Helps with brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF): keeps neurons young and healthy and ready to connect with each other and neurogenesis (creation of new cells – we like new cells right?)

So get some exercise.

Sleep well, think well

  • When we are asleep our brain is not resting at all, we replay what we learned that day 1000s of times to consolidate what we learn
  • Embrace naps:
    • 26 minutes naps led to 34% increase in function
    • 30 minute nap before all-nighter improves mind in wee-hours
  • Sleep loss = brain drain = decrease ability to utilize food consumed by 33%
    • Plus, Every brain skill declined with loss of sleep

So sleep well and take naps

Stressed brains don’t learn the same way

  • Stress: a measurable (visible) physiological response in which there is a desire to avoid the situation and/or a loss of control
    • Body built to only handle stress for seconds but now stressors last days, weeks, months (aka exam week)
      • Adrenaline and cortisol is released: adrenaline scars blood vessels and plaque builds up, hurts immune system by ravaging antibodies (get common cold)
    • Cortisol: hippocampus has cortisol receptors (a little is good) but too much harms learning and concentration
      • To much cortisol can be part of cause that disconnects neural networks (aka the webbing of brain cells with the most precious memories)

So relax and do relaxing things in between studying sessions

Every brain is wired differently

  • When you learn something, wiring in your brain changes
  • As neurons learn, swell, sway, split, form connections with new neighbor
  • Brain like muscle: more activity you do, larger and more complex it can become
  • Depending on how much you learned during class or at previous job, things like Regression may come easy to you…or not

So you may have to spend more time studying a subject that you’re not strong in (I think this is a duh one)

We don’t pay attention to boring things

  • People give 10 minutes attention and then drop, at 9:59 have to revamp them
  • Millions of sensory neurons are competing for attention with messages and most will be ignored (like Cobb-Douglas function equations)
    • But, you can easily alter what is focused on
    • Messages that do grab your attention are connected to memory, interest, and awareness
  • Memory: what you pay attention to is influenced heavily by memory
    • Different environments create different expectations
    • Emotionally charged events are remembered more and longer
      • Amygdala: releases dopamine at emotional event: helps aid memory and info processing
      • Certain events have certain emotional charges for different people (who <3’s accounting?)
  • Meaning before details: brain focuses on gist and then go into the details, otherwise won’t pay attention
    • Present info in a hierarchical format: allow people to derive meaning before going into detail
    • Brain can’t multitask attention: in every attentional test do worse, can’t filter out and focus on just the important points
      • If interrupted: forces you to start thinking/focusing all over again
      • Which is why takes 50% longer with 50% more errors when multitask
      • “Good Multitaskers” have good switching memories capable of changing focus faster
    • Brain needs a break: many teachers overstuff students with not enough time for students to be able to connect the dots
  • Lectures: segments of 10 minutes
    • 1 minute to explain concept, and 9 to provide detail description
    • Add “where we are slides” for students to know
    • 600 seconds to earn the right to be heard for another 600 seconds
    • At end of segment phase: hook them with emotional trigger
      • Relevant to presentation (otherwise seem disjointed)
      • Put 1 at very beginning to tie in “big picture” and then at end of each 9:59
      • Can skip 4th and 5th one for a 50 minute segment

So make whatever you’re studying not boring–which may be really really hard, if too hard, break into 10 minutes sessions

Repeat to remember

  • Studying utilitizes declarative memory which entails: encoding, storing, retrieving and forgetting
    • Memories have different life spans, 90% though are forgotten after 30 days
    • Your brain either consolidates or forget (I’d choose consolidate)
  • Info coming into brain is immediately fragmented and sent to different regions of the cortex
  • Environment and mood boosts chances of remembering something so recreate the state you were in (study sober)
  • The events that happen the first time you are exposed to information plays a disproportionately greater role in your ability to accurately retrieve it at a later date
    • Create “stations” where you learn things (go stand in the Italian Room and remember your conjugations)
  • Previously stored info is brought out of long term storage and reconsolidated when rethought, aka reviewed
    • Talking about event immediately after it happens enhances memory of that event
      • Repeat at fixed time intervals and not crammed
      • If info is not rethought, it eventually disappears
    • LTP: long term potentiation: increasingly limited exposures can result in increasing responses (study in short periods and review)
    • Teach: review 3x a day subject matter, adding onto it, review at end of week, review 1-2x per year

So share your learning with your mom, roommate, checkout person at Sweetgreen–anyone who will listen to you tell the story of LIFO and FIFO

Stimulate more of the senses at the same time

  • One of brain’s major jobs is to handle all the inputs that our senses pick up and allows us to perceive the world
    • Every sense must send signal to thalamus to get approval to connect to higher level thinking except smell
    • Smell directly stimulates amygdala: emotion center and straight to decision making part of brain
    • Stimulating multiple senses at once stimulates each sense more: aka makes more meaning for your brain
      • Means learn best if stimulate several sense at once
    • Smell evokes memory: get best performance if mirror congruent smell and memory related to emotion (can I bring cinnamon scones to the final?)
  • Better presentations: multimedia with words and pictures
    • Present them at the same time, not successively
    • Remove extraneous information
    • Animation + narration is better than animation and typed text (2 senses vs. 1)
    • Sales soar when associate a smell to area/clothes
      • Men: rose maroc; women vanilla
      • Less complex the smell the better
      • Associate a smell with each lesson

Mozart and Cinnabun smell for Accounting. Clementi and orange scent for Stats.

Vision trumps all other senses

  • We don’t see with our eyes, we see with our brains
    • Visual processing dominates all other senses
    • We actually experience our visual environment as a fully analyzed opinion about what the brain thinks is out there
  • Process nerves film tiny segments called tracks that focus on particular things like motion, outlines (up to 12 of them) and send off to thalamus where sent in thousand of different parts of brain and ultimately back to occipital lobe’s visual cortex where they get specifically parceled, then start reassembling and send to higher brain functions and you see something with an attached meaning
  • Brain hallucinates all the time: makes things up or ignores them
    • Blind spots in optic disk and brain calculates what should be there and fill in
    • Each eye has visual field and then brain makes calculation on what should be there based on prior events
  • Text and oral presentations far less effective and efficient without imagery
    • 10% retained after 72 hours, 65% when add a picture
  • Brain sees words as bunch of tiny pictures and we have to independently verify before moving on to the next so no matter how experienced a reader you are, will stop and read each feature of the letter
  • We pay lots of attention to: color, size, orientation, and especially if object is in motion
    • Huge power in animation/moving image in communicating complex info to students

So study and make pictures/diagrams that summarize what you’re trying to learn.

 

So there you have it, some brain rules to get you through the week and understand why some classes….just are not the easiest to get through.

If you don’t have finals, you are lucky in that regard.  You also have some pointers on how to give better presentations, teach class better, and setup your learning schedules.  Think some of the more boring professors will read this post?

Any of these brain rules new to you?

 

*Disclaimer: I’m not a neuroscientist, nor a scientist, so take with a grain of salt if you will