Money and health problems create an amazing reason to feel down, look at the negatives, and give up. Recession proves it daily. In the midst of hopelessness, we admire folks who find ways to lead innovation, and spot solutions. We’re drawn to those who guide others to a finer place. It’s often lonely to look for lights in so much dark!

Brainpower for the Worst of Times!

Paul Bach-y-Rita, famous for his work in neuroplasticity,   tells of his father’s crippling stoke in New York. After a month’s therapy and little progress, medical experts assured the family that no more could be done, and suggested Bach-y-Rita be sent to an institution. Brains cannot repair themselves every medical leader argued and nothing else could help their 65 year old father to walk or talk again.

The scholar went from well respected professor at City College in NY to complete dependency on others for his basic needs.

One son George brought his Papa back to Mexico and began to teach him to crawl again. Using the wall to support his limp shoulder, Bach-y-Rita, inched along clumsily for months, as he and his sons created marble games to play on the floor that required a reach and movement. Cynics in medical schools warned that this was wasted time, and neighbors criticized the Bach-y-Rita family when their papa crawled outside, saying, “They are treating this old man like a dog.”

With every spark of progress, the boys persisted more to help their papa do acts on the opposite side of his weakness and loss.

Then progress began to show, as the brain reorganized itself to take over where damaged parts destroyed abilities. After many more months of crawling and learning to talk again, and through the same painful building of new neuron pathways for language to take over where damaged brain cells failed, Bach-y-Rita returned to teach at City College in New York, at 68, and three years after his stroke.

We can improve our lives in difficult areas, and reshape prosperity, when we recognize the brain’s proclivities to progress. When we simply act and persist on the other side of loss.

Younger son, Paul’s life was shaped by what he described as seeing with our brains and not our eyes, as his papa’s brain reorganized itself for new directions. He went on to explain a great deal of the foundations that move research forward today in areas of plasticity – or the brain’s ability to rewire and find solutions when cynics and naysayers shout words of doom and disaster.

What areas are weakest for you in this tough climate of loss and change? How could your brain’s plasticity help to reorganize itself to become the solution you seek today? How might you find inspiration to move forward, as one Mexican family did in their worst of times?

You likely know that  links between what people crave and what you can offer, requires you to connect the dots between your current position and creative prosperity. But have you ever considered how vital connections also boost innovative brainpower?

5 Vital Connections to Innovative Brainpower

The opposite is also true. Cut out your connections and by default you diminish brainpower to invent.

Rather than pack your brain with links that go nowhere, why not jettison your life and leadership forward with 5 essential connections.

Jumpstart  brainpower found  in highly innovative minds only, when you:

1. Join what you already know to what you wish to know in order to invent something new. Human brains come equipped to latch onto new facts faster if they hook to what you already know and do. How could that open  new opportunities for you to start with your current talents and learn what it takes to fill an innovative  niche you see  – yes, even in an economic downturn.
2. Connect skills you are learning to insights others offer, by linking your facts to their interests. While delivering information works against the human brain, teaching others as we learn ourselves pays back 90% more in retention. Intelligent people also build prosperous alliances in this way.
3. Link solution possibilities to every problem encountered. Einstein constantly cultivated curiosity, for example,  by linking suggested solutions to problems.  While others passed over, complained about, and whined about what could be – he connected himself to the problem of relativity by imagining he rode the curve of the arc. When you look at problems with solutions in mind, the human brain builds neuron pathways to create  answers you seek.
4. Draw together diverse people and welcome opposing views. I’ve learned during a lifetime in renewal work that to connect opposing views is to spot nuances that others miss on both sides of issues. It requires being less opinionated about most everything, and pays wonderful dividends to those who stay open-minded. For instance tradition insists on the separation of hard and soft skills, and then places these in silly hierarchies. Here at MITA we combine the best of both into what we term smart skills with the brain in mind for 21^st Century leadership strategies that work for a new era.
5. Join science to art and use imagination as innovative glue to intergrate. You have two well equipped sides to the human brain, and both play a keen role in highly sustainable innovation. To kindle and design ideas such as these  top creative moments that hit new heights in the last decade, takes connecting  the art and science from your left and right brain.

Pair  these essentials together and you’ll increase neuron connections come with  brainpower for new innovative heights.  Make fewer connections, on the other hand, and you’ll  limit your mental ability to create.  Simply put, your daily connections determine your IQ growth, since increased neural connections equal higher intelligence.

Did you know that babies are born with 20 times more neural connections than adults? Why so? Experiences you have in a day  - either create or diminish neural connections for creativity.  Schools tend to teach by delivery and that kills connections that come from doing as people learn. Luckily it’s not all bad news.

Thanks to plasticity however, the human brain rewires new neural connections daily – based on what you do. Or you can lose connections by ruts, routines, and passivity. Does that challenge you to step outside of comfort zones, connect what has yet to fit together in your world, and spark the innovation ability in your brain and organization?

The human brain comes with unique equipment to build and sustain innovative cultures, where design leads to profitability. How so?

1.  Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative  idea,  Steve Jobs and others continue to design Apple products that revolutionize communication. Fast Company celebrated the last decade’s 14 biggest such design moments, all of which unveil the original ideas that rolled into products with possibilities. How does it happen? Your brain’s hippocampus releases a shot of dopamine in  response to novelty. Anthony Grace at the University of Pittsburgh describes a feedback loop that involves a chemical and electrical interactions between dopamine and novel or unexpected events. This lively process appears to lock in memory, as it also engages the amygdala where the brain processes emotional information that feeds innovation.

2. Mimic creative people. Believe it or not, you can literally adopt another person’s innovative talents by observing them. It’s also true that while innovation may be more vital than ever at your workplace, individuals  who think act and build differently often remain at a premium.  That’s where the brain can help out, so that more people learn innovative tactics that generate profitable designs.  How so? Mirror neurons show how innovative cultures come from imitation – and this video on mirror neurons illustrates how we watch and mirror the culture others live. Deep inside your brain cells are neurons that will fire in reaction to another’s beliefs as they roll into activity. See any new opportunities for innovation where you work,  as they play out in mimicking an innovator’s actions?

3. Link opposites together and build from both sides. Need a breakthrough to top up the creativity on a project? Then build an innovative culture of connecting opposites in ways that few non-innovators think to connect. If you’ve ever benefited from unique insights, you’ve likely also seen opposing viewpoints from high-performance minds,  that beg to differ. So why then, do disagreements about opposing views so often break up relations, terminate innovative projects, shut down brilliant people, promote racism, and even ignite wars? Tone is the brain’s best approach to tame an amygdala in ways that harness innovative energy. Rather than take potshots at people, consider disagreements as tools to build goodwill across differences, and diversity becomes the hottest neuron pathway to innovative solutions. Designs that come from engaging genius thinkers, are the same offerings that prosper a wider community.

4. Create a round table to brainstorm a process. The other day I facilitated a round table of leaders from many fields, and after many unexpected angles tossed into the mix, we came up with a renewal project that none of us could have masterminded alone. Have you experienced ideas piggybacked onto others from alternative positions?  Innovation, whether from arts or science, embodies mysteries to ponder. It’s that place that bubbles over in a circle where no brain is left behind. It’s where brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of prevailing thought, where people build beyond limitations. It’s where a culture of innovative thought hooks difficult facts onto ordinary experiences people live – so that learning increases in less time, with innovative designs as visible results.

5. Collaborate with a person who differs. Innovation rarely waits for situations to improve but shapes dendrite brain cells by outside worlds that spark mental growth based more on what you do than what’s done to you. The opposite of toxic workplaces is a climate of creative collaboration where innovative leaders engage opposing views to discover another design built from different angles. To work together is to listen to new ideas and to engage another’s talents. Innovative partnerships tend to work better when different players share in a common vision, and when the outcomes and expectations are clearly defined.

6. Reward talent. In too many workplaces problems go unsolved while some of the finest minds are left outside of the innovative process. In order to bridge the gap between the multiple intelligences people bring to work, and the problems that need solutions, organizations reward people for refreshing new ideas. As part of that process why not survey your unique intelligences to see which talents you have up and running innovatively. As people at work awaken new intelligences for innovative designs, offer a reward for teams who use most diverse perspectives on a refreshing and profitable innovation.

7. Pose two-footed questions. The best way to integrate innovation into your firm’s existing practices is to question ways that lead away from creative solutions. Start with stubborn problems, and toss in a two-footed question that probes the solution from angles of fact and interest. I am presenting an MBA course on innovation to several senior faculty at a university business school  in New York next week, and I plan to challenge leaders there with the question: What will  innovation look like in the 21st Century, and how can your business school promote creative intelligence through top facilitation of business brainpower? What two-footed question would launch your next innovative offering?

8. Capitalize on tone tools for tough times. Innovation gets lost in climates where toxins such as bullying or intimidation exist. It can happen faster than lightening strikes an iron rod in an electric storm. When stress or negativity shoot down the best ideas, and innovators wonder whether it’s a lot less stressful to hang up their cleats in favor of doing bare routines, tone tactics act like a vehicle to tug innovation back into play. It helps to invite an example of good tone from a gentle, and effective leader, and discuss how to offer olive branches back and forth at work. Or why not ask other innovators at work what tone they hear in your words and compare their responses to what your words meant to convey.

9. Start social network discussions. Recently I started a back-and-forth on Twitter to toss around insights and brain facts about multi-tasking as it affects innovation. Research shows that multi-tasking works against innovation because it bottle necks the brain’s ability to focus or innovate. Just as all brains wire differently though, I wanted to see how people view multi-tasking as it relates to their own innovation.  Social networks add new colors and textures to innovative brainpower because people hold up lived experiences to the rainbow for another look.

10. Run from cynics. Have you noticed how stocks rise when people speak hope? Or have you seen financial markets nosedive when naysayers spout doom? Luckily pools of innovative brainpower lie beyond the sea of cynicism. This trend hinges on the fact that hope adds serotonin to spark curiosity and fuel the brain. Cortisol, on the other hand, shuts down originality, and increases fear of failure. Make sense? When cynics spread fear, brainpower shuts down before innovation stands a chance.  When creators spark curiosity imagination kicks in genius.

Bravo! This article, Innovation, Design and the Human Brain,  was selected as a top leadership blog at Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership Blog.

Ever notice how Thanksgiving and Christmas tend to bring out blues in some and blessings in others? Or how lonely people see vast spaces between themselves and others – even at festive  holiday tables?

First glances  show people blessed with close family and  friends feel blessed over holidays while those alone feel abandoned. Not so. Loneliness replays for some yearly, in spite of holiday situations.  A stored sense of misery, or fears of lost opportunity may well be stored in your amygdala, and that rerun reaction explains feelings of isolation for some while others cherish holiday cheer.

Researchers John Cacioppo and others may help  explain why some people shop til their bank accounts drop – but still feel isolated at family feasts. New answers show why holiday blues for some becomes business boom for others, and could also help you  free up more holiday happiness. How so?

• Pleasure centers of lonely people light up with images of objects faster than with images of other people.
• Lonely people tend to increase their sense of alienation by not seeking out interactions with others, as they don’t see these will satisfy.

Scrooge with loads of money and no friends likely says it best. Not surprisingly, imaging of a lonely person’s brain also showed less activity in areas of the brain that understand other’s views or needs, and so further distance themselves from social bonding.

Loneliness is bad for your health

While still unsure if loneliness comes more from your gene pool or from social experiences,  researchers do agree on toxic outcomes.  Feelings of isolation often lead to serious cases depression, obesity, high blood pressure, heart problems, and many stress related illnesses.

Those who remain alone in live tend to die younger and enjoy less quality of life in senior years. Mother Teresa described feelings of being unwanted as “the most terrible poverty.”

If loneliness is bad for your health, and if feelings of isolation are often choices, is it also true that people choose health problems that come from a sense of abandonment?  That answer is less evident in the research and yet will likely be quite clear if you engage intrapersonal intelligence and reflect of how we change and grow mentally.

Rewire for holiday well being

With a few mental adjustments, that business boom need not come at personal expense this holiday season. Fortunately, you possess a unique ability to rewire negative emotions  stored in your amygdala – from feeling isolated and bitter -  to fully expecting fun with others in this holiday season.  How so?

Act now on what you’d value in your future.  Research shows how actions literally reshape your brain for more of what you expect.

Smile, regardless of how you feel, for example, and your brain’s plasticity changes in your favor. The action triggers your brain to create new neuron pathways toward a happier reality.

Give even a small gift of encouragement or support, without conditions, and in spite of personal loss.  In response, your brain raises levels of serotonin chemicals for sustainable well being.

Mimic the actions of a person you most admire for their holiday spirit, and your brain rewires dendrite brain cells for more of the same admirable spirit in you. Develop a new intelligence at the same time, and your brain rewires itself for further growth in that area.

Laugh, especially at yourself, and not only will others laugh with you, but your brain will create enzymes for clear thinking, better learning and adventures brimming over with possibilities in spite of turbulent times.

Discover one new insight by converting a rut into a renewed reality you’d like others to see in you. Phone one person you dislike today and invite that person to lunch to find out what’s working well in life. Curiosity and this call moves your brain’s basal ganglia from the rut of loathing into newly created possibilities lived from within your working memory.

Support one person who thinks on the opposing side of your own holiday views, and watch how your concrete defense of that person will leave you mentally able to override your brain’s default for ruts that held you back in past. The action shows you new possibilities where you may have slipped into limiting problems in past.

Can you see how brain based recommendations here carry you beyond hopeful or positive thinking? Do a few simple behaviors, and your brain does the rest for you.

Use any one of the above brainpower tools by simply doing a related act and you’ll spark brain cell regeneration for more satisfaction over any holiday.  Or create a brain power tool of your own and then use it, in spite of troubled times. Scientifically speaking, these tips come from neurogenesis research on how adult brains can grow new cells or regenerate old ones.

Worth a try to communicate colors where you once showed only sorrow for a festive event?

Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD

Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits

Challenges of Change

Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth of brainpower would be to lead innovation for the emerging global higher education movement.

Check out Carnegie research to see if online gets superior results to lectures and labs at college?

Traditional university communities, on the other hand, remain in crisis when they resist mind-bending changes to connect learners with 21^st Century advances. One dean at a large research university put it this way: We pretend to teach them, they pretend to learn.

Few deny an urgent need for innovative change to align universities with mental benefits from high perfmance minds. It takes open and courageous leaders who take risks to stand on the front lines. Brain based tactics highlighted in the ebook MITA Strategies in the Classroom and Beyond, inspire leaders to learn again, for instance, while igniting learners to lead at times. Have you seen it happen?

No magic bullet can offer surefire solutions to every learning setback seen in this YouTube video. Have you considered though, how information technology, distance education, and other biotech inventions generate changes in academic arenas?  Innovation shapes enormous challenges and yet offers advantages with significant results. At their best, higher education learning communities are integrating across isolated silos of isolated pasts.  The University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, for instance, collaborates with diverse fields to create new windows into learning with the brain in mind. The result?  They invented Elekta Neuromag, a non-invasive way to observe brains in action.

Without such integration of talented minds from different backgrounds, universities remain in crisis and will continue to cling to traditions that fail the young.  George H. Douglas said it best in Education without Impact:

The American university as we know it today is not an ideal community …. The young may enjoy themselves on campus… they may even learn a lot, but … they don’t .. interact with the academic world. Most rapidly conclude that they are sojourners at university, not key players, that the university seems to be made by others for others-researchers, espousers of trendy political causes, grant seekers, elusive pedagogues, distracted graduate students working on Ph.D.’s, tunnel-vision specialists, administrators clinging to their tiny patch of ground like a drowning person clinging to flotsam. .., the young come to college looking for interesting and inspiring adults who will help them to make a spirited transition to adulthood, but for the most part they must abide the kind of process-teaching they have been accustomed to throughout their lives….

One significant shift underway -  brain based approaches -  moves university learning from; delivery to engagement, from isolation to collaboration, from hierarchy to mutual accountability, from bureaucracy to flexibility, from tenure to risk-taking and from delivering facts to inspiring curiosity. Time has come to appeal to the university community’s collective genius to return authenticity to the college campus in ways that reconnect learners and leaders to more current frontiers. The challenge presents both problems and possibility to a modern campus.

At MITA International Brain Center we ask: How will higher education transform neuro-discoveries into brain centered practices that propel higher education into a new era?

While 25 years have passed since advocates of brain based practices suggested connections between brain functions and learning practices, disconnects continue to separate content delivered at university, from innovative outcomes leaders require for a fast-changing world.

Challenges come more from facilitating applications and growth, than from any lack of solid science about the brain.  Brain science discoveries should lead to improved learning. Does it? We know from works of MDs such as Dan Siegel, at UCLA’s School of Medicine, that we can draw on recent science to harness the brain’s circuitry for engaging and enriching learning experiences. Normal brain activity is now observable to show how humans acquire insights and use knowledge to construct authentic solutions. The same neuro discoveries that inform higher education approaches, will also determine how successfully universities transform broken or tired practices into scholarly advances.

Surprisingly, challenges within the brain itself can cause university communities to resist even the kind of innovations that thriving entrepreneurs model. How so? People’s basal ganglia, or the mental equipment for safe routines – creates a sort of tug-of-war with their  working memory, the brain’s tool for change. When Aristotle said, We are the product of what we repeatedly do – he likely did not know the brain’s basal ganglia retains and repeats each move we make.

Think of a wine glass as working memory, with limited capacity, briefly held new details, yet it displaces facts easily since new details pour in to displace data already there. In contrast, see a backpack as basal ganglia, that holds habits, stores routines and sustains comfort levels with well worn facts.

Challenges also come through lack of widespread consensus. A shared vision for innovative change  requires extensive discourse across diverse backgrounds, and often involves risk. Brain based approaches negotiate roles and reward quality results, using two-footed questions that spark curiosity for solutions, and multiple intelligences as tools for productivity. Campus communities also increase their productivity as a result of hidden or unused talents that emerge. With smart skills, for example, learners integrate hard and soft skill strategies to address contemporary problems that require both sides of their brain.

Brain based communities rely on tone skills for harmony to engage voices on the other side of controversial topics, while avoiding mental toxins that come from cynics‘ demands to dominate. Brain based smart skills shield university learners from dominant shout-outs on either side. Tone for instance, melds together two sides into shared benefits for wider communities. Have you seen it happen?

The term brain based learning or intelligent-fair evaluations, tend to evoke a wide range of responses from both leaders and learners. For some, it signifies the death of education in exchange for a preferred dawn of learning within caring communities. Supporters speak of mentors and facilitators who approach all topics with learners’ brainpower in mind. For opponents, it suggests fear that traditional lectures will be lost in the hobble, and traditional leaders express concern that quality learning along with deeper understanding will flee in favor of a soft project-oriented settings. Where do you stand in the active learning debate?

Brain Based Approaches for Innovative Change

In the YouTube video here, a mental tug-of-war is seen to pull between working memory and basal ganglia. Working memory risks innovative changes or brain based approaches, and basal ganglia clings to traditions for safe practices. Methods that block benefits of emerging brain discoveries, but have also survived multiple fads. Not surprisingly then, breakthroughs come first to a campus community that remains engaged, involved, and inspired. In one class you’ll catch students actively involved in social media tools that enhance content presented in class. In another class, you’ll observe weblogs that stimulate literacy skills and higher cognitive thinking. Blogs are a means to enhance many math skills in practical ways. “In math the emphasis has shifted from teaching rules and procedures,” reflects Jamie Tubbs, “to helping students create their own understanding of the mathematics they are learning.

Obvious by its absence in brain centered learning circles, is student boredom or faculty frustration that limits learning and teaching through bureaucratic barriers. Nor does one encounter delivery of facts through canned lectures. Instead, classes such as business administration, political science, journalism and philosophy jump start new relevancy through student experiences with weblogs. According to recent research in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, it works wonders for learning and motivation.  For 30 years, and across many countries, leaders at the MITA International Brain Center sought answers as to why some college communities run with renewal while others stagnate in routines and ruts.

Change comes easier to robust faculty roundtables, while healthy risk-takers rarely survive in a toxic workplace. Most agree that before change takes root, alterations shift, swirl and reconfigure within re-examined beliefs. How so? It takes mental agility, for instance, to facilitate silenced voices. To inspire others or to hear and move on beyond previously excluded views, also takes certain sense of daring. How so?  Bullies may insist that one way only suffices, and brain based facilitators draw on mental tactics to address disagreement strikes. They might distribute memos ahead to tell people what is coming, or solicit feedback that asks what people expect back from a change related project.

In healthy learning communities, beliefs align with a shared vision for growth. In contrast, flawed beliefs may lead faculty to lecture under the assumption that for one person to speak is for another person to learn, yet scientific studies now affirm how learners retain far more by doing, than by listening. In fact it is said to be more effective for learners to teach their dogs than listen passively to lectures. Similarly, the notion that intelligence is fixed, once determined people’s destiny in traditional colleges. We now know however, that intelligences grow with use.

The human brain is hardwired for overcoming challenges and seeking solutions to complex puzzles that show up at times of change. Certain problem-solving skills change the brain’s chemical and electrical synapses, and in so doing, create entry points for mind-bending opportunities. Possibilities in this era of the mind, yield solutions that will also be a driving force behind higher marks that learners achieve. Alongside, watershed marks earned also by emerging global higher education itself, for facilitator roles that engage caring communities.

No longer is mental growth seen as the elixir for youth alone. Research suggests that brain cell regeneration benefits also extend to senior community members. Until recently, it was strongly held that adult brains cannot grow new cells or regenerate old ones. Until now that is. Elizabeth Gould’s dynamic discoveries in this area recently created an entirely new field of neuro-genesis, a discipline that shows how the adult brain generates new cells.

In future, more members in higher education communities will trade traditional notions of mere gracious living, for a far more robust and risk-taking lifestyle. Equipped with adjusted mental thermostats and brain based tactics, seniors can choose curiosity, and expect developing minds to help them live voraciously. Have you ever wondered how Jacques Barzun, the highly respected emeritus professor from Columbia University, could publish his finest masterpiece, From Dawn to Decadence,” in 2000, at the age of 92?

Amazingly, science now shows why the brain’s plasticity remains so vital, to university communities of every age. Brain strategies offer practical tools to explore flexibility insights from science, while implementing practical tasks for life. Practices that draw from solid learning theories as well as from a wide rage of cognitive and neuro sciences stand learners with one foot in research, and one foot in practices.

What do brain based classes look like at university? Faculty who teach and assess with the brain in mind differ in their teaching approaches and use techniques and tactics traditionally not used on higher education campuses. Twitter can transform teaching for those who come to class with an interest in social media. Students in brain centered classes set up #hashtags and engage in Twitter chats that apply class content through their communications with peers and experts. Learning in this class may require sharing personally constructed videos on Twitter to explain a complex concept, or following an approved author to exchange literary insights. Or it may pose two-footed questions that spring from faculty and student curiosity related to a new frontier.

When my book MITA Strategies in the Classroom and Beyond, first published with Pearson Publishers in 2005, fewer faculty agreed that brain based practices would impact learners positively at secondary schools and universities. Over time, I have remained in contact with amazing leaders with experiences very different from mine, who use and model powerful approaches to capitalize on their own and their students’ brainpower in ways that differ from the MITA approach. Rarely does one-size fit all, nor should it in academic communities. Having made that point, clear advantages come to university communities that create a brain based vision together, and engage their collective intelligence to roll tasks into action, that benefit most learners.

The model for implementing brain based teaching and assessment, that I developed, and tested across many cultures, began MITA’s work 30 years ago. Then, fifteen years ago Dr. Robyn McMaster joined the International Center, with offerings from a distinctly different background. Our rich collaboration experience inspired us to integrate diverse capabilities in ways that will soon become a practical book, about learning and leading with the brain in mind. After implementing brain based practices across many cultures together, we sense it is time to combine both our personal backgrounds and objective scientific understandings, as part of the extended conversations we have with communities such as yours.

Learning Theories Embedded in MITA Brain Based Learning and Assessment

MITA‘s higher motivation and achievement awards at university, secondary school and business workplaces, came from well-respected leaders who support different global theories. Theories rooted in problem based learning, multiple intelligences, authentic assessments, inquiry based learning, reflective thinking, differentiated learning, constructivism, socially constructed learning, evidence based assessments, performance based learning, and brain research applications from related discoveries.

Rather than emphasize any one theoretic pillar, this brain based model acts as a conduit that opens opportunities, based on leaders and learners’ unique background experiences with representative theories, and on the shared goals that learning communities identify.

In addition, the MITA brain based model draws from direct interactions across diverse cultures in the High Arctic, China, Mexico, Canada, United States, South America, Europe, and most recently from higher education and business approaches in the West Indies. In addition to theories and best practices, learning and leading acumen develops differently across different cultures, genders, disciplines, and experiences. Built on the belief that no brains need be left behind, this work fosters global interactions with innovative leaders from many strengths.

MITA Response to Critics of Brain Based Education

MITA methods consider brain based critics such as John Bruer – who question any translation of brain facts into specific learning and assessment practices. More effective responses to opponents include opportunities to emulate best practices and draw on well-respected learning theories, within substantiated brain facts. While we hear and learn from all reasonable positions on the other side, we would be remiss to ignore the implications from what we learn daily about the human brain’s plasticity. At MITA, evidence of effectiveness comes more from motivation and achievement in practice, and proven innovations, rather than from on-going debates about the authenticity of scientists’ latest mental breakthroughs.

Inclusion lies at the center of brain based practices. Because research suggests that cynicism shuts down creativity in the brain, for instance, the International Brain Center chooses to seek solutions that leave no brains behind. We tend to collaborate and work more with innovators, entrepreneurs,  and inventors, rather than merely discuss problems with naysayers or debate brain credibility with cynics. To collaborate and move forward makes better use of brain center resources, and allows leaders at the center to learn from others as well as lead from strengths.

To acknowledge experts on the other side of brain related approaches, is not the same as resisting brain research that informs teaching. Some psychologists suggest that no proven relationships exist for either educational practice or policy. MITA approaches, in contrast, draw from alternative learning and assessment approaches that relate to neuro discoveries that can guide theory research and practice in education. While critics continue to respond with interesting polemics, MITA brain based approaches concentrate more on transferring scientific results into brainpower opportunities that improve the way faculty teach and enhance learners’ takeaway tools.

Brainpower expands with challenge, and one way to turn criticism into shared visions together is to provide answers to even unfamiliar problems. Limited thoughts can create limited results and tend to add toxins that prevent caring communities.  MITA leaders conclude that in all learning and assessment fields, the brain promises to be the next grand research frontier, and therefore deserves continued consideration. What few critics know is that human brains hold miraculous flexibility to build goodwill even with those who disagree. Serotonin, the natural drug for calm and well-being, leads to collaboration, while cortisol can lead to skepticism or pessimism through panic and anxiety.

Just as practice in science tends to change when new facts surface, so practice in higher education evolves when people come together to expand notions of mental possibilities. University settings that too often perpetuated misconceptions about learning, begin to inspire facts about the brain that unleash real capabilities and increase intelligence. Rather than draw from jargon to diminish one another’s efforts, faculty discover the key to mental success is less about memorized theories, and more about rethinking possibilities, potential and life targets. Cognitive and neuro sciences along with psychology can help college communities to build together a finer art and science of learning by rewiring mind to co-create ongoing change for a finer future.

In an uncertain economy, with higher competition for fewer college students, brain based approaches offer one way to distinguish a campus’ contemporary eminence.  Learners gain incentives to thrive in future eras, and leaders achieve refreshing tools to collaborate and expand innovations with competitive advantage. Few deny that even in its infancy, brain research holds opportunities for pacesetters from formerly competing fields, to harness brainpower that could construct renewed university relevance. MITA continues to invite measurement through research processes where experimental groups, taught and assessed through brain based tasks, compare to control groups with traditional teaching and assessment approaches. Further investigations and on-going renewal ventures ensure learning and leading gains from within emerging brain facts. Analysis of pre-tests and post-tests, continue to reveal significant advantages in settings that favor brain based approaches. Simply stated, learners and leaders accomplish things never before accomplished by using parts of the brain never before used.

References in Addition to Hyperlinks used in Text to Illustrate Brain Based Terms

Bruer. J.T. (1997) Education and the brain: The bridge is too far. Educational Researcher, 26, (8), 4-16.

Douglas, G. Education without Impact: How our Universities Fail the Young (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1992)

Gardner, H. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983);

Hanna, J. “Mind, Brain, & Education: Linking Biology, Neuroscience, & Educational Practice,” Harvard Graduate School of Education News, 1 June 2005, available at www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/mbe06012005.html.

Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

Lipton, B. The Biology of Belief (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Mountain of Love Publishing, 2005); and Ernest Rossi, The Psychobiology of Gene Expression (New York: Norton, 2002).

McEwen B. and John Wingfield, “The Concept of Allostasis in Biology and Biomedicine,” Hormone Behavior, January 2003, pp. 2-15.

Marco Iacoboni et al., “Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System,” PLoS Biology, 22 February 2005, available at http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079.

Sousa,D.A.  How the Brain Learns, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin, 2005)

Sylwester, R. (Dec. 2006) The School Administrator, “Cognitive Neuroscience Discoveries and Educational Practices, ” retrieved from http://www.aasa.org/publications/saarticledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=7814&snItemNumber=950&tnItemNumber=

Weber, E. (2005) MITA Strategies in the Classroom and Beyond (New York: Pearson Publishers originally printed) Available currently at http://mitaleadership.com/index.html