This link has been bookmarked by 10 people . It was first bookmarked on 05 Aug 2006, by Lynn Marentette.
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14 Oct 10
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29 Apr 08
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Brain Based Learning and Brain Development – About the Brain
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26 Nov 06
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It's nature, then nurture.
Genes provide each brain's basic building materials. The environment builds it through trillions of brain-cell connections made by sight, sound, smell, touch and movement. Positive experiences enhance brain connections, and negative experiences damage them. -
Another stark example of this use it or lose it phenomenon is language learning.
By 6 months of age, infants develop a map in the auditory cortex of the phonetic sounds in the native language their mother or caretaker speaks.
By 12 months, infants lose the ability to discriminate between sounds that are not made in their native language. -
While subtle phonetic distinctions might be lost in the first year, children have the ability to learn a second, third and fourth language quickly until about age 10.
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How fast brain signals travel along these dendrites depends on how well their axons are coated with myelin, a fatty coating similar to plastic insulation around an electrical wire.
Myelin sheaths enable brain signals to travel 100 times faster.
Babies are born with few myelinated axons. That's one reason infants can't see well and can't do much with their hands other than grasping and batting at objects.
As children get older, different areas of the brain become myelinated on a genetically determined timetable. These periods of mylenization are critical periods for learning. For instance, the first axons to be myelinated in the language area of the brain are those that enable language comprehension. Six months later, myelination extends to the language-production area. -
The extraordinary development of the human brain begins a few weeks after conception. Neurons - the brain cells that store and send information - begin multiplying at 50,000 per second, a frenzy that continues throughout gestation.
From that point on, environment begins to play its starring role in the way the brain is wired for emotion, behavior and learning.
Neurons send signals to other neurons through axons, a thin fiber that relays electrical messages. Once an axon finds its target cell, it develops dendrites, or branches, which receive a wide variety of information from other brain cells. The more dendrites a nerve cell has, the better and quicker it is at learning. -
At birth, the infant brain has few of these branches. Its neurons look like saplings. Adult neurons resemble trees with hundreds of branches formed through experience and learning.
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An infant's brain can form new learning connections at a rate of 3 billion per second. A child's brain uses twice as much glucose, the brain's fuel, as that of a chess master plotting three moves in advance.
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05 Aug 06
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19 Jun 06
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Lynn MarentetteWebsite from Educationa Cyber Playground
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