The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Structural Memory

The human brain is made up of three major mainframes, a number
of smaller processing centers, dozens of sensory input devices (to
process what you see, smell, taste and touch), and an unusual
collection of chemical messengers that affect who we are, what we
perceive, what we believe, how we react, and how we remember.

1. Mainframe I: The “Autopilot” Brain (Medulla) The brain stem, or medulla,
is the non-thinking part of your brain. It automatically (autonomically) maintains
and regulates your pulse, blood pressure, temperature, and other vital signs. You
can get to this autopilot through meditation, and other focusing techniques, but it
takes great concentration and practice to tell it what to do and how to behave. The
easiest way to adjust it is through the cadence and beat of music.

2. Mainframe II: The “Emotional” Brain (Cerebellum) The cerebellum sits
above the automatic portion of your brain and takes care of your instincts,
emotions, and feelings. Your genuine smile or frown comes to you sponsored by
this brain. So do ritualized movements like serving a tennis ball, driving a car,
or signing a song. Over the last decade, scientists have learned that emotions fire
along the same brain circuits that govern social relationships and the processes of
making meaning. Emotions are integrated with cognition, perception, and physical
action. They affect not only the state of your body and mind, but they also enhance or impede your memory. Music has a profound power to set moods in
place in this center of the brain.
3. Mainframe III: The “Thinking” Brain (Neo Cortex) Crowning the top of
you head is a wrinkled ½ inch maze of overlapping wiring called the cognitive or
cerebral neo cortex. This mainframe takes in most of your sensory information
and controls the majority of higher thoughts. It decides whether or not it is
appropriate to feel as bad as you do; whether or not you should act or refrain from
acting based on your best interest; and whether or not you give a rip about what
the teacher is saying if doesn’t appear to have relevance or meaning. This brain
serves as the long-term memory hard drive and retrieval system for all that you
think you know, and much of what you actually do.
The neo cortex is made up of two halves (hemispheres). The left brain works
faster than any computer in the world and loves to process details. It controls
complex voluntary movement and calculations, while the more artistic and
intuitive functions are performed better by the right half. The right carries with it a
sense of the whole as seen separately from its parts. It is spontaneous, creative,
and able to modify mid-course. The right half of your brain sees the forest. The
left half sees the trees. (And in some people, the bugs on the trees.) Sitting
between the two halves and connecting them into a whole is a big body of wiring
called the corpus callosum (“big body” in Greek). The more these two sides of the
brain talk, the more firing in the wiring between the two, the thicker the
connections there will be and the deeper you will understand a subject.

Tomorrow: The Four Processors in the Brain

Cellular Memory

Here's a little something I'm working on for the Bible Song Sunday School manual.

Your brain contains 100 billion nerve cells – as many as all the stars in the Milky
Way galaxy. There are quadrillion connections between these neurons – as many
as all the phone calls made in the world in the last twenty years. There is a physical
pathway connecting nearly every part of your brain with every other part. Not only
that, but these neural connections extend far beyond the brain, itself, to every part
of your body.

a. Neurons (Nerve Cells) An average nerve cell, the color of raw liver and the
consistency of an avocado, connects electrochemically with an average of 10,000
other nerve cells. Neural signals are not confined to your head, but travel through
an amazing maze – an information super-highway of unfathomable complexity
and overlapping wiring. These tentacle spies reach out to sensory outposts in every
part of your body. In a very real sense, your mind extends to your fingertips.
Here’s another strange truth: you don’t just have memories in your brain.
Memories are stored in every nerve cell in your body. You actually have memories
in your arm, your liver, your eyeballs, and your feet! (Ask Tiger Woods about
muscle memory.) If, as neuroscientists believe today, nearly every part of your brain is involved in nearly everything you do, then nearly every part of your body
is also connected to nearly everything you think, feel, learn and experience.
Memorization on a neural level is all about building, maintaining, and
strengthening connections and patterns of connections between the neurons of
the brain and body. The more connections - and the more repetition to solidify
those connections - the better your chances of creating long-term retention of
what you are trying to learn.

b. Glial Cells (Memory Glue) Aside from neurons, an
increasing bit of attention has been paid recently to another type
of brain cell – a glue cell made from glucose that provides
several maintenance functions for the brain. These mysterious,
yet abundant, glue cells (glial cells) provide structural support in
the brain, lay down markers to tell nerve cells where to grow,
facilitate waste removal, and maintain nutrition in the brain.
They provide one additional function that will relate to our
singing and signing Scriptures: they insulate the wiring of the
neurons with a little fatty sheath – myelin – to help the nerves
fire more efficiently. As with electrical wires, the more insulation,
the better the connection.

Molecular Memory

Here's a little something I'm working on for the Bible Song Sunday School manual.

In order to truly understand the basis of memory and design
teaching tools to maximize long-term retention, let’s take a look at
memory on the molecular, cellular, then structural levels.
1. Molecular Memory
Picture a wall with a gate. The gate is locked with a magnesium lock. Unless you
have at least two keys, the locks aren’t going to open. That’s how memory works
on a molecular level. A spaghetti-like protein responsible for long-term memory
called the calmoldulin is the gate keeper. This structure can’t and won’t open the
lock unless there are at least two simultaneous stimuli knocking on its door. (It
actually looks like a little gate in your nerve cell!) Technically speaking, if you don’t
provide at least two stimuli, the calmoldulin won’t unlock the magnesium lock and
release the calcium ions that create the long-term potentiation that forms a
memory. (Okay, that’s more than you wanted to know.) Suffice it to say, you’ve
got to open the molecular gates with at least two keys for long-term memory to
occur on a molecular level. Knocking lightly on the cell door with only one
stimulus won’t do the trick. Keep that thought in mind as we move from the
molecular to the cellular basis of memory tomorrow.

Patterns

A. Patterns

 “Your brain craves patterns and searches for them endlessly. In the absence of adequate sensory input, it will even make its own.” - Thomas B. Czerner, M.D.

If you have ever seen a person doodling patterns and shapes on a note pad during a lecture, you know the statement above is true. If listeners aren’t finding any relevance in what the teacher is teaching – if they see no patterns or connections to their own lives – they will create their own patterns. Literally.

The brain loves patterns. It organizes itself around patterns. It is constantly searching for patterns to store, patterns to retrieve, and new patterns to connect with existing patterns in its memory array. The brain hungers to make sense of the world. To do that, it needs to recognize patterns. Once the brain is efficient in recognizing a set of patterns, it begins to do amazing things. Read this if you can:

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg! The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed.

it wsan’t a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

Because you are familiar with the patterns of words and letters, you don’t even need to see the letters in the right order for your brain to take over and fill in the gaps of the lines above. It does the work for you… all because of patterns.

 

En-Ter-Taining Patterns

Does all this sound too much like entertainment to you to be education? Before dismissing it, look for a pattern in the word en-ter-tain.

En means in or into. Ter (territory, terra, terrain, terrarium) means the land. Tain (contain, retain, obtain, fountain) means to hold. The word en-ter-tain literally means to “enter their land and hold them.” That sounds like mission work… Jesus work. You can’t expect the learner to enter your world. You must enter their land if you are to hold them. And the only way to enter their brain - the only way to hold their attention is through relevant and recognizable…

Patterns!

What makes something irrelevant and unrecognizable? The lack of meaningful patterns. What makes it meaningful and relevant? You recognize some familiar patterns and the brain calls out for more. What does this have to do with education and Bible memory? Read on.

What is a Memory?

What is a memory?

First of all, it is important to know what a memory is not. Contrary to popular belief, a memory is not a bit of information. It is not stored like you store words on a page, letters in a book, or data on a computer disk. Perceptions, thoughts and memories are sets of electronic signals passing through the brain and body in a synchronized firing – a simultaneous array of electrochemical firings. Like a movie coming over cable television, a memory is a firing of energy in integrated meaning-making patterns.

How do you set up these complicated patterns to fire and to be retrieved when you want them or need them? That’s the trick. That’s what the brain science behind Bible Song is all about.

 

Brainsperiments

Okay amatuer brain scientists, how would you answer these guys:

Hello!    A friend and I are doing an experiment on the brain and particularly focusing on memory.  We need to contact an expert in order to finish our project and it would be great if you can reply to our message or help modify our experiment.  Our hypothesis is: If people listen to classical music, then they are more likely to remember what they were thinking of (during that time of listening).
Our experiment goes as follows:

1.  Let the subjects(s) listen to classical music.
2.  Flash one word per second on a flashcard to the subject(s).
3.  Wait a minute after showing them the words.
4.  Have the subject(s) write down all the words they could remember.

Please let us know if you know of any information that can aid us in our project.

Thanks for listening!
     -Dennis W. and Sterling K.

Here's my feeble answer: What's yours?

Dennis & Sterling,

The best folks in the world to help you are Dr. Eric Jensen at www.thebrainstore.com, Robert Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute, Neuroscientist Larry Parsons at the University of Texas Imaging Center in San Antonio, and Frances Rauscher at the Center for neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine.

I'm an amatuer compared to them, and only know what they have taught me. Tell them I sent you.

At Irvine, they'll tell you listening to Mozart BEFORE th test is valuable, but DURING will likely cause neural competition by interfereing with the brain's firing patterns. Prove them wrong.

At Texas they may tell you it is the subsets of music - not the music itself - that enhance learning. Rhythm, tone, patterns - these stimulate neural growth, which gives you more synapes, which gives you more spies out there trying to gather information.

My little bit:

Have a control group sit quietly for 10 minutes, then take the test.

Have a second group sit quietly listening to Mozart for 10 minutes, then take the test in silence.

Have a third group sit quietly for 10 minutes, then take the test with Mozart playing quietly in the background.

Have a fourth group sit quietly for 10 minutes listening to Mozart, then take the test listening to Mozart.

That's my two cents.

Do let me know how it comes out.

Rich