Posts under ‘neuron pathways’

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 [...]

Canadian Alanna Mitchell, this year’s winner of the Atkinson Fellowship in public policy named brains as the secret to better schools. Not all agree.
Mitchell recalled a Minister of Education who asked a neuroscientist: “The brain? What does the brain have to do with education?” In my renewal work across many countries I heard similar [...]

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 [...]

Heaven or Havoc?

Which of these characters work with or in you?

Serotonin Sam:

“Feelin’ good – hey guys you’re welcome to share, anytime.”

Cortisol Carol
“Touch my stuff and you die!”

Plasticity Patty:
“Glad to know I can still nail this new knack at any age.”

Amygdala Arnie:
“They keep changing the freakin’ formulas so I it [...]

What makes MITA renewal so different from other top leadership and learning improvement models?

Thanks to Dr. Robyn McMaster’s masterful handiwork with cameras and talented online solutions, we’re able to carry on the MITA renewal conversation I’d been looking forward to for some time. Hope you’ll jump in to share your renewal stories, so we can [...]

When you rev up mental equipment daily to either sink or swim, you discover how creativity and curiosity will trump criticism and intimidation. How then can you experience mental power in settings where no brain is left behind?
One friend and fellow leader Dave Caiazza, put it this way:

Work against the dangerous twins of jealousy and [...]

On each new day your brain offers equipment to lose or win. The choice is yours, and brain activity can now be observed to show how winning or losing selections work, in spite of external conditions.
So why do some people pick winning equipment while others settle for the loser’s pick where the chips go down?
Here [...]

Imagine a climate of peace, with humility that inspires, and people who recognize talents, and you’ve just begun to awaken intrapersonal intelligence. Build healthy relationships that shape character, and your brain cultivates new neuron pathways toward spirit and highest values such as caring in your character and in others. Or trust that turned LA’s most [...]

Yesterday,  on a walk in the woods with a gifted young leader, I once again saw his ethics, openness and willingness to become vulnerable in order to learn new skills. Without notice a mountain biker appeared on our winding path and startled my friend’s dog Jack, who in return snapped at the bikers feet. The [...]

New York burns while Albany fiddles. News of political infighting, stalemates, accusations and posturing flood us daily, while opportunities for greatness fade for NY. A closer look, though, shows bureaucracy working against ethical brainpower. How so? 
Neuro discoveries uncover organizational problems and possibilities.
1. Secondary schools and universities in crisis continue to downsize rather than reconfigure [...]

Have you experienced mental power that bubbles over in circles where no brain is left behind? Interactive sessions where creativity trumps criticism, and diversity’s the handmaiden of dignity and innovative virtue?
If so, would you agree that brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of the prevailing thought – where:

1. No Brain Left [...]

Take advantage of recent neuro-discoveries and that illusive growth you’re looking for tends to follow far faster. Have you seen it happen?

Brainpower-tools create new landscapes -from mental resources immune to recession:

With a little help from you – an amygdala offers calm under pressure, even when old socks buck change or when few folks tend to [...]

Read vision statements  that affirm  secondary and university renewal, and you’ll spot innovative learning opportunities for all. Observe classes in these same schools, though, and practical results appear far less impressive. Have you noticed that a school’s intent, and its classroom practices too often differ when it comes to renewed learning and assessment opportunities for [...]

It’s now believed that you have both angel and devil brain parts and these two forces stay in consistent battle for your actions. Do you agree? Researchers looked at activity in the brain for healthy and unhealthy food choices and what they found may surprise you.
Angel brain parts help people to consider abstract decisions such [...]

Each step to renew your workplace ethically and with the brain in mind – casts lights on mental barriers that prevent change in stagnant organizations. How so?
To rethink old approaches is also to take a stand against Hebbian hardwired thought that defaults back to ruts and routines.
To upgrade motivation and achievement at secondary or higher [...]

Have you survived “Their Way” when it excluded your brain’s way. Einstein was kicked out of school for failing math in secondary school, and you too may be failing because you think or work differently from the status quo. When you question or disagree with  “Their Way.”
Blue Blue’s lyrics say it best:
I came, bought all [...]

Surprisingly, human brains tend to outperform themselves in reverse, rather than in forward motion.  Comfortable  traditions or routines can cause your brain to default to ruts, that only reverse brainpower can surpass. How so?  
Let’s say you wake up out of sorts – discouraged about a hectic schedule or a disorganized workplace. Take an active [...]

Spot any gap where you live or work, regardless of how small, and you may well be staring into the eyeballs of your own destiny.  How so?
Even though I taught university classes and facilitated top leaders around the world for many years, it still surprises me how few people ever discuss the proven wonder of [...]

Only after you hit unethical walls raised by scorn from the cynic, do you value freedom flights toward its opposite – the curious mind. I’m speaking of that chronically negative person, who expresses disdain for innovative ideas, where stressed brains rely on habit and distrust reigns.
For Russel Lynes, cynicism’s the pseudo-intellectual’s substitute for intelligence. For [...]

In spite of great books about memory and the brain’s amazing ability to remember, we still search frantically for keys as we fly out the door. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Books such as, How to Develop a Perfect Memory, by Dominic O’Brien, work well for those interested in remembering things like an entire deck of [...]