SDCCE offers many educational opportunities to help you have a brain healthy lifestyle.  

• We'll start this week with a quick overview of instructional strategies to support learning.    

• We will review how to register for any of these classes to enjoy some new learning experiences for a brain-healthy Summer and latter, Fall Semester.

• Finally, we will meet some of the instructors who teach these subjects here at SDCCE, and explain how they make their classes special and brain-healthy.

We’ve talked about the cognitive benefits of learning, specifically lifelong learning. There are effective curriculum and instructional strategies that can help our brains to maximize opportunities to learn and make learning more enjoyable. Our SDCCE faculty are familiar with these strategies and incorporate them into their classes. Understanding and recognizing these brain-strengthening learning techniques, can help you to focus on them and improve your brain fitness through the power of learning. 

Learning is most helpful to the brain when it facilitates the growth of new neurons, increases the production of beneficial brain chemicals, and improves synaptic connections (for faster and more accurate transfer of information). Our instructors incorporate these strategies into their classes. Take a look at this list of learning strategies and think about how you might find ways to incorporate more of these strategies into your own learning activities.  

•  Practice – makes memories and learning more permanent.  Mentally reviewing or visualizing what you learned in class, regardless of the subject, provides regular, daily cognitive stimulation and exercise for your brain. Making this part of your regular “cognitive health routine” is a good way to promote positive neuroplasticity.  

• Learning in Incremental Steps – produces the feeling of multiple successes in your brain.  Breaking a “lesson” into smaller bits of information allows you to feel successful more often as you learn each small piece of information or step into a new skill. The more success your brain feels, the more beneficial chemicals (neuromodulators) it produces and the more efficiently it works. Neuromodulators are for the brain, like oil is for your car; they help the brain to function more efficiently and effectively.   

• Group Learning - encourages socialization which facilitates both learning and brain health. When we feel connected to other people we are more likely to try new things with them. We accept their invitations and broaden our activities. Socialization produces feelings of wellbeing and belonging, and at the same time promotes independence. Yes, even socializing over Zoom promotes better mental health.

• Focus, Focus, Focus, & then Focus Some More – remembering to focus on the task at hand is a good way to center our thoughts and directing our attention. Multitasking hinders learning and memory.  Focusing produces acetylcholine (a neurotransmitter that helps to control the nervous system), and makes learning easier by preparing the brain to receive and assimilate new information. Just like physical exercise wakes up and primes the brain for learning, concentrated focus on a new idea, lesson, skill, or task primes the brain for learning, remembering, and even decision- making.

• Repetition – improves long-term memory. Finding diverse ways of rehearsing the same information or practicing the same skill (auditory, visual, tactile, etc.) can increase learning. Try at various times and places throughout the day to repeat it.  This helps you to retain information longer and more accurately.  For example, Googling a subject or looking up a related YouTube video will help your brain to retain what is viewed and will encourage the growth of more and healthier neurons in response to the banquet of new information you are feeding to your brain.

• Movement – circulates blood and transports oxygen to the brain and throughout the body. Stretching, creating physical models, and acting out scenarios while learning all work well to get you moving. Field trips are an excellent way to keep moving (consider our in-person Rediscovering San Diego classes). Participate in physical exercise outside of class too to promote a healthy lifestyle (i.e., join one of our Zoom Health/Fitness classes).

• Novelty – produces norepinephrine (a beneficial neuromodulator) that builds grey matter in the brain, helping to create stronger neuro-systems and to ward off neurodegenerative diseases. Exposing yourself to novel experiences and new information in your lessons wakes up the brain and promotes the production of this beneficial chemical. A boost of norepinephrine comes with every "aha" moment when we realize we just learned something new.  

• Relevance – Remember to choose educational activities that are relevant to your needs. Talk to your instructors about your educational goals and expectations. It will show them that you are interested in what they are teaching and allows them to adapt their lessons/curriculum accordingly. The more meaningful the experience, the more the brain is motivated to learn and the greater the cognitive benefit. It’s also more enjoyable for both you and the instructor, and even your classmates.

• Take Advantage of Multiple Modalities - Our instructors pride themselves on offering their lessons in multiple modalities – orally, written words, images, videos, Power Point Presentations, and tutorials. They create quizzes, activities, homework, Zoom sessions; all to give you multiple ways and opportunities to learn. Focusing on new information in a variety of ways maximizes the positive impacts of repetition and the benefits of a good brain challenge.  It also helps to prime the brain for learning. 

• Employ all of Your Senses – Likewise, learning that invigorates a variety of our senses is understood and remembered more easily, more accurately, and longer than something simply delivered verbally or read in a book. The more senses you employ, the more neurons the brain fires. “Neurons that fire together, wire together”, creating healthier neuro-pathways and stronger cognitive processing systems.  

Visual art can be a powerful tool for our brains. How many of us have visited a gallery and experienced awe at the magnitude of what we were seeing? And what sort of benefits are experienced by those who create art?  Let’s look at visual art through the lens of a neuroscientist, noting some of the impacts seen in the brain.

Visual Art Enhances Brain Function and Well-Being

The visual arts enhance the lives of individuals and society as a whole.  A project, The Healing Power of Art, is an initiative of Manhattan Arts International, and is comprised of artists, writers, and advocates. There is sufficient data to indicate that arts education improves academic, social, and emotional development. It suggests that the arts develop neural systems.  The benefits range from improvement to fine motor skills, to improved emotional balance, to greater creativity.   Art improves the basic systems of the brain including sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and motor capabilities.  Subjects like math, science, and language require complex cognitive and creative capacities, each key components in art education.  The brains of those who observe a profound piece of art seem to involve the same neural firing as the brains of the artist who is creating the work.  Just by viewing the art, we are creating new neural pathways and stimulating a state of inspiration. There is a term for that feeling of being drawn into a painting, “embodied cognition”.  

What is going on in the brain when creating art?

Scientists believe that art may serve an evolutionary purpose. Art involves parts of the brain responsible for decision making, mental visualization, focus, and reward centers.  It lowers stress. The brain is wired to try to make sense of the lines, colors, and patterns on the flat canvas of an artist, challenging and stretching its cognitive functioning in heathy and beneficial ways. Our brains work hard to analyze and process colors, symmetry, patterns, shapes, and emotional responses to visual input; which exercises and strengthens them.

Art has an amazing impact on your brain. The value of art lies beyond merely viewing, as we are met with emotional and spiritual reactions as well. Whether you are creating art or viewing it, it is a powerful factor in your brain healthy regime. Take a trip to the museum, view the art of a friend, or search online for beautiful pieces to spark activity in your brain!

Art is Good for the Brain, Body, and Spirit (Cohen, 2006).

Art is good for:

▪ Helping individuals relax

▪ Providing a sense of control

▪ Reducing depression and anxiety

▪ Assisting in socialization

▪ Encouraging socialization

▪ Novelty

▪ Encouraging playfulness and a sense of humor

▪ Improving cognition through focus, repetition and practice

▪ Offering sensory stimulation

▪ Fostering a stronger sense of identity

▪ Increasing self-esteem

▪ Nurturing spirituality

▪ Reducing boredom

Most people realize the powerful impact of music. It is the accompaniment to our lives. We use music to soothe, to energize, to feel sadder, and to feel better.  Music can be healing.  It can do all these things. Music has been part of our unique and shared cultures since the beginning of recorded history. The effects of music are universal; no words are needed. Neuroscience has enabled researchers to measure how music affects the brain.

How the Brain Processes Music

Music is a multi-modal activity. Many areas of the brain are involved at the same time (motor, visual, auditory, audiovisual, somatosensory, parietal, and frontal areas of both hemispheres). Playing a musical instrument engages every area in the body as well: It incorporates visual, auditory, and motor cortices. Playing the piano is a great example of engaging both physical and mental functions through the power of music.

Musicians’ Brains

Music strengthens brain functions, and transfers that strength to other activities. It has been shown to increase volume and activity in the brain’s corpus callosum (the bridge between the two hemispheres) making communication across the brain faster, more efficient, and across a variety of routes. Musicians may be able to solve problems more effectively and creatively. Music also helps to us to craft and understand the emotional context of communication, resulting in a higher level of executive function in the brain. This means that musicians may be better at planning, strategizing, and attending to detail. They may be better able to analyze both cognitive and emotional aspects of situations.

Musicians also have enhanced memory functions. They are better equipped to create, store, and retrieve memories quicker and more efficiently. Musicians appear to be able to apply multiple tags to a memory (conceptual, emotional, audio, contextual), allowing a more complete search of their memory.  

Listening to Music

There are many different parts of the brain that affect the way we listen to music. The parietal and frontal lobes of the human cerebral cortex process the musical sounds.  The motor cortex allows our muscles to play the instrument and also to move (or tap) to the rhythm. The amygdala produces our emotional responses to music. The auditory cortex is responsible for perceiving tones. The hippocampus records and stores the memories of music.  

Music Creates Change in the Brain & the Body

Music can sooth, energize, balance our emotions, and even improve our memory. When we listen to music, multiple areas of our brains light up. The lyrics activate the language parts of the brain, while the music engages areas related to rhythm and memory. Music is sometimes so emotional that it affects our body in ways that expose emotion - our pupils dilate, pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, and the cerebellum (the movement center) becomes active. Blood is sent to our legs (maybe why we are inspired to tap our feet). Sometimes music causes our body to get chills, our brain to release dopamine, our reward system to produce neurotransmitters, and our emotions to heighten.

Music as Therapy

Music therapy can be used to:

1.  Shift attention from problems to solutions

2.  Offer a rhythmic structure for relaxation and breathing

3.  Help to visualize positive imagery evoking pleasure and happiness

4.  Help to achieve a deep state of relaxation

5.  Change moods

There is no argument that listening and playing music can be advantageous to our brain as well as our emotional health. It provides engagement in multiple regions of the brain and can be a factor in creating new neural pathways. Music can help us create and retain memories, improve our moods, and trigger emotions from the past. It provides a release from stress and creates a soundtrack for our life.  What are you listening to?  

Travel is a great way to restore, revive, and energize. Let’s look at travel and its benefits to the brain.

Taking a vacation is important for your health and well-being.  Studies have provided evidence that those who vacationed infrequently were more likely to have heart attacks than people who vacationed regularly. Vacations have positive effects on health and well-being in the areas of mood, tension, energy level, fatigue, happiness, and satisfaction. Even planning a vacation improves moods and increases happiness. 

Components of a Restorative Vacation

A vacation that promotes recovery will have the following four components:  

• Relaxation: Engage in activity that is pleasant and undemanding and doesn’t feel like work or require much effort.

• Control: The power to decide how to your spend time, energy, and attention.  

• Mastery experiences: Vacations that offer engaging and interesting things that you do well, are mentally absorbing, rewarding, and meaningful. An activity that creates an active endeavor rather than a passive experience. 

• Mental detachment from work: A total respite from the everyday tasks of work and related interruptions, improves stress levels and provides physical and mental replenishment, healing, recovery rates, and happiness.  

Cognitive Improvements from Travel

• Mental stimulation creates new connections between nerve cells, helps generate new cells (“brain plasticity”), and may also build functional reserve to help with future cell loss.

• Physical exercise involved in touring increases the number of blood vessels to the brain, the development of new cells, and increases the connections between brain cells (synapses). This makes our brains more efficient, plastic, and adaptive.

• Social interaction wards off depression and stress, encourages quick thinking, mentally challenges, and keeps us focused.

• Emotional care with the rest, relaxation, additional sleep, and joy/happiness provided by vacationing improves our focus and cognitive functions.  

• Education & learning new things while traveling can improve connections in the brain.

• Mindfulness included in a retreat vacation improves the blood vessels supplying the brain.  

• Sunlight exposure during a vacation provides Vitamin D and slows the aging of your brain.

• Whole brain thinking (using both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously) during an adventure improves creativity and physical coordination, while heightening instincts and intuition.  

• Focus strengthens neuroplasticity. Being fully focused on what we see and learn about new places, objects, or events creates new neural pathways in our brains. Later reflecting on our travels strengthens the new pathway.

• Laughter during a get-away reduces stress and produces an overall sense of well-being. Laughing to mentally challenging and complex humor involving paradoxes and surprise turns of phrases is even better for the brain.

The Positive Impact of Travel on the Brain

•        Increases happiness

•        Lower depression

•        Less stress

•        Stretches us to go outside our comfort zone

•        Provides high levels of anticipation

•        Increases creativity

•        Broadens our personality

•        Builds character  

Stress-free Vacationing

•        Plan ahead financially

•        Have realistic expectations

•        Don’t over plan activities

•        Schedule something for everyone

•        Consider a full-amenity vacation rental.  

•        Don’t sweat the small stuff, focus on gratitude.

•        No need to go far, staycations can be very restorative.

Rediscovering San Diego & Beyond (Travel) Classes

Emeritus classes can help to satisfy your thirst for novel and unique experiences. “Rediscovering San Diego” (RSD) is a field trip class in which older adult students discover, explore, learn about, and experience San Diego resources, as well as politically, culturally, historically, economically, and educationally significant sites and venues within our community, firsthand.

Our Rediscovering San Diego (and beyond) classes, teach about and take you on virtual tours of fascinating places, beautiful locations, historic wonders, modern marvels, and amazing sights. 

Refer to the class schedule if you'd like to register for one of the classes for the Spring Semester. Not all instructors are teaching, so look for Rediscovering San Diego in the Spring Schedule to find available classes.  Instructor videos are posted below.

The Brain Connections between Reading & Writing

Scientists know that the brain of a writer lights up in a variety of areas when writing. The same is true for musicians and athletes. If writing about something active (like dancing), the motor cortex of the brain is activated. Reading produces some of the same activity in their brains. Areas associated with the content will light up as well, as if the reader is participating in the actual experience. The motor activity in the reader’s brain is mirrored in the activity in the writer’s brain.

The Power of the “Story”

When we are given a list of facts, two areas of the brain are engaged: the Broca's Areas and the Wernicke's Area. These are the language processing areas of the brain where words are turned into meaning. "When we are told or read a story the areas of the brain associated with experiencing the story's events come to life." If a story includes a physical activity or movement - our brain's motor cortex lights up. If the area included details of physical properties, such as "hands like leather" our sensory response with light up. The brain reacts as if we were experiencing the story firsthand. 

The Science Behind Reading

The process of reading engages several cognitive processes to analyze written forms into usable information. The reading process begins at birth when babies begin to attach sounds to meaning and eventually visuals to sounds and meaning. We develop the letter and word processing networks to analyze and convert written words into meaning using: the Anterior-interior front gyrus (Broca’s area), for connecting letters to sounds; the Temporoparietal (Wernicke’s gyri), which processes written words into sounds and attaches meaning to them; and the Occipitotemporal region, where familiar word forms are stored, as well as pronunciations and their meanings. 

Brain Areas Engaged/Strengthened with Writing

A study of novice writers has shown that some regions of the brain are active during the creative process, including during brainstorming sessions. Visual-processing regions became active as participants visualized the scenes they wanted to create. Other regions became active when novice writers were taking notes. The hippocampus was engaged when retrieving (remembering) factual information.  Studies seem to confirm that the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex) is crucial for holding several pieces of information at once.

In the same study, the brains of expert writers showed a different effect in the brain. Expert writers showed more activity in regions related to speech, suggesting that different strategies are used as writers gain experience. The writing novices may have watched their stories unfold like films inside their heads, while the experienced writers were narrating their stories with an inner voice.

As expert writers write, a region of the caudate nucleus becomes more active (not so with the novices). The caudate nucleus plays a role in the skill that comes with practice. When we begin to learn a skill, a great deal of conscious effort is needed. With practice, the actions become more automatic. The caudate nucleus and nearby regions start to coordinate the brain’s activity as the shift from conscious effort to automatic action occurs.

It is never too late to begin the creative process behind writing. Even if you do not write the next best-seller, the process of reading and writing is in your brain and will help you to build connections in the brain. These connections are formed through the factors involved in reading and writing.  Those factors include being challenged, whole brain thinking, novel thinking, decision making, focus, and more. So, get out and write something and build your brain in the process!

Meet Anjali Patel, and her wonderful Nutrition and Cooking classes:

Works Cited

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