Mind and Brain

I must admit that having decided to come to the US to pursue a Master’s degree is actually putting my brain through the toughest test of my life. Understanding brain development and mechanisms of learning will definitely have implications in my future as an educator. I know now that there have been some concepts that I have been incorrectly adopting with respect to the brain such as the instruction of the left and right hemispheres, the way the brain grows and how much is actually used (20%).

For several years, before coming to the US, I have felt that the environment in which I was in was not complex enough to allow me to engage in challenging learning. The quality and amount of information that I have been acquiring has been good enough to help me succeed in my country. However, I decided to step aside and engage in new learning experiences that would help me increase the life-long processes of synapse addition and modification as well as the overall quality of functioning of my brain. I just hope the weight and thickness of the cerebral cortex of my brain suffers no alteration, otherwise nobody will recognize me when I return to Peru.

After reading the section on the comparison of animals performed by Black, I could say that I identified myself with the second group of rats that did mandatory exercises. When humans do routinely activities over and over again, they don’t learn much. People need to be exposed to enriched environments in order to find new learning opportunities. Furthermore, the presence of a social group in these environments will definitely contribute to enhance the learning experience.

There are also localized changes in the areas of the brain appropriate to learning specific tasks. I once broke my wrist playing basketball and spent a few months with a cast on my right arm. Due to the fact that I started using my left hand for writing, I now know that structural changes occurred in the motor region of the cerebral cortex of my brain and in the cerebellum. I truly don’t know how these changes could have affected the functional organization of my brain.

Studies of human behavior and human potential can help understand the kinds of information that the brain can store. The development of language in humans can clearly show how the brain organizes information. Children’s brains may be more ready to learn different things at different times, making it easier for them to acquire a new language. On the other hand, adults struggle to learn a language, but on the long run, they do it because learning adds new synapses as the wiring diagram of the brain is reorganized. This is true for anything that we adults learn throughout our life. Other examples come from the deaf and people who suffer from strokes or brain portion removals. They experience a replacement in the nervous system processes, resulting in the formation of new brain connections to help them communicate or move.

It has been demonstrated that memory is neither a single entity nor a phenomenon that occurs in the brain. The mind is actively at work storing and recalling information. The brain is a dynamic organ. We shape it by the things that we do and also by those that we have done.