Monday, March 24, 2014

Notes from Spark and Words that Work

Really enjoying the book Spark about the positive effects of exercise on the brain. So many studies that show exercise is actually miracle grow for the brain. It is a very research based book. Here is some information that I found interesting. I know it is a little like reading a research study, but the implications are pretty powerful... In Naperville, Illinois, gym class has transformed the student body of nineteen thousand into perhaps the fittest in the nation. Among one entire class of sophomores, only 3 percent were overweight, versus the national average of 30 percent. What’s more surprising— stunning— is that the program has also turned those students into some of the smartest in the nation. In 1999 Naperville’s eighth graders were among some 230,000 students from around the world who took an international standards test called TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), which evaluates knowledge of math and science. In recent years, students in China, Japan, and Singapore have outpaced American kids in these crucial subjects, but Naperville is the conspicuous exception: when its students took the TIMSS, they finished sixth in math and first in the world in science. I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, like the drugs, exercise elevates these neurotransmitters. It’s a handy metaphor to get the point across, but the deeper explanation is that exercise balances neurotransmitters— along with the rest of the neurochemicals in the brain. And as you’ll see, keeping your brain in balance can change your life. As fundamental as the neurotransmitters are, there’s another class of master molecules that over the past fifteen years or so has dramatically changed our understanding of connections in the brain, specifically, how they develop and grow. I’m talking about a family of proteins loosely termed factors, the most prominent of which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Whereas neurotransmitters carry out signaling, neurotrophins such as BDNF build and maintain the cell circuitry— the infrastructure itself. Say you’re learning a French word. The first time you hear it, nerve cells recruited for a new circuit fire a glutamate signal between each other. If you never practice the word again, the attraction between the synapses involved naturally diminishes, weakening the signal. You forget. The discovery that astonished memory researchers— and earned Columbia University neuroscientist Eric Kandel a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize— is that repeated activation, or practice, causes the synapses themselves to swell and make stronger connections. A neuron is like a tree that instead of leaves has synapses along its dendritic branches;eventually new branches sprout, providing more synapses to further solidify the connections. These changes are a form of cellular adaptation called synaptic plasticity, which is where BDNF takes center stage. Cotman conducted this experiment not long after BDNF was discovered in the brain, and there was nothing to suggest that exercise had anything to do with it; his hypothesis was an act of sheer creativity. He’d just finished working on a long-term aging study designed to see if the people whose minds hold up best share anything in common. Among those with the least cognitive decline over a four-year period, three factors turned up: education, self-efficacy, and exercise. Indeed, in a 2007 study of humans, German researchers found that people learn vocabulary words 20 percent faster following exercise than they did before exercise, and that the rate of learning correlated directly with levels of BDNF. Along with that, people with a gene variation that robs them of BDNF are more likely to have learning deficiencies. Without Miracle-Gro, the brain closes itself off to the world. Ratey, John J. (2008-01-10). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (p. 45). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition. Also reading Words that Work. Here are his rules for an effective marketing message... 1. Use small words 2. Use short sentences 3. Credibility is as important as philosophy 4. Consistency matters 5. Novelty- Offer something new 6. Sound and texture matter 7. Speak aspirationally 8. Visualize 9. Ask a question 10. Provide context and explain relevance