Morning Nugget – Optimizing Brain Fitness

This brain was brought to you by my 9-yr-old son
This brain was brought to you by my 9-yr-old son

*This post contains an Amazon affiliate link (not Great Courses link as they don’t offer affiliate options). As you can imagine, there are fees involved for me to keep this website up and running, and if you chose to order from the link at no extra cost to you, the small amount that trickles back this way will help with my costs. Thanks a bunch!*

Good morning!

It may not be morning when you are reading this, but it is morning for me as I write this. It’s a cool, gray Monday morning; just the right setting to begin the topic on GRAY MATTER.

So let’s begin! For the next undetermined number of days, maybe weeks, I am going to be going through a series of lectures called Optimizing Brain Fitness, by Professor Richard Restak of The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. These lectures have been produced and published by The Great Courses, under The Teaching Company. I have included a link for this product on Amazon, but I would also recommend looking into the Great Courses website where you can find great sales and countless other topics that may interest you.

My primary goal is to concentrate on understanding the human brain more closely, especially in a insight that reveals the way children’s brains operate since educating children is my passion and my life’s work as a homeschooling parent, at least in this chapter of my life.

To give you an idea of what this week will look like, I will define the topics on which I’ll share nuggets from by day:

Monday (today)- General notes on how the brain works

Tuesday- How the brain changes

Wednesday- Care and Feeding of the Brain

Thursday (number of days are TBD; this is where the GOLD is, at least for me!)- Creativity and the Playful Brain

And then other topics will follow such as focusing our attention, enhancing our memory, and so forth.

OK, enough of the introduction . . . Let’s dig in for some nuggets of knowledge!

We might assume that our brains are fully developed by adulthood, but in reality, this jiggly matter inside our noggins continues to change throughout our lives; this is called plasticity. The primary factors involved with shaping the changes are experiences and choices, and the richer and more diverse the experiences, the more enhanced the brain function. This is GOOD NEWS because it means we have a say in the health and function of our brain! The brain circuits that will endure the longest throughout our lifespan are the ones that are maintained and enriched.

The following are important functions:

Attention – focusing the mind on one thing at a time, determining level of performance in math, reading, and auditory and visual memory. It also coordinates the networks involving sensation, movement, emotions and thinking.

General Memory – by exercising our memory, we stimulate and maintain circuits throughout the brain.

Working Memory – holding multiple things “in mind’ and mentally manipulating them at the same time.

Here are the general areas of the brain responsible for brain operation:

Frontal lobes – these are responsible for controlled processing and set us apart from other animals, including anticipating consequences of our actions, sequencing, and executive control.

Occipital, Parietal, and Temporal lobes – responsible for automatic processing like directing the actions that don’t require specific concentration such as eating, routine driving to common places, etc…

Even though there are varying areas and functions of the brain, cognition involves the whole brain, experiencing the world as a total unit.

There is a quick review on terminology of the brain that I will build on during future posts.

Thanks for stopping by for this nugget. Have a great day!

Truly yours,

Hosanna

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