Millions of neurons are stimulated by the information our five senses gather. But… what ultimately remains in our memory? If we were to close our eyes in search of our childhood memories from school, about the knowledge our teachers transmitted to us, images or sounds of what impacted us, moved us, what was original and we liked so much that perhaps it led us to specialize in that subject, would come to mind.
Without emotion, there is no good mental coordination, no learning, no memory. It is through our limbic system or emotional brain that the wonderful adventure of learning begins.
Through playful games, adapted to any age, the release of endorphins makes it possible to increase learning. Our most primitive part of the brain becomes active to capture everything that is important for our survival. The amygdala is activated along with the Nucleus Accumbens, the Thalamus, and the Hippocampus to enable emotional memories, linked to reward, laughter, pleasure, fear, memory, and context management.
Neurotransmitters are the substances necessary for neuronal connections to occur; an excess or deficit produces both behavioral and cognitive alterations. In learning, we highlight dopamine, important for activating states of alertness, working memory, motivation, and mental clarity. Serotonin acts by facilitating working memory, relaxation, pleasure, and satisfaction. With norepinephrine, we have good intuition, concentration, execution, persistence, and mental recall.
For a healthy emotional brain, cardiovascular exercise
It is important that our body is in motion; cardiovascular exercise provides better quality in our neurotransmitters, oxygenating our brain and providing it with a greater blood supply, thus, improving academic performance. Concentrations of serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, and noradrenaline also increase, and this brain activity provides better motor memory, increases vocabulary retention, improves visual discrimination by increasing alertness, attention, and motivation.
It is proven that exercise favors anxiety control and, as a result, increases concentration. The prefrontal area of the brain is the part most susceptible to improvement with exercise, affecting executive functions (cognitive skills that direct our behavior and our cognitive-emotional activity, helping us to plan, organize, initiate, inhibit behaviors, supervise, foresee consequences, change plans).
Use of New Technologies as a learning tool
All of this, translated into our classrooms, leads us to a new format for teaching subjects, where the use of New Technologies to work on aspects such as attention, memory, learning, literacy, emotional intelligence, social, visual, and motor skills… acquire a fundamental role in motivating students. Also, the use of games in cooperative work and the use of open spaces, where information is combined with movement, would be some of the ideas to put into practice.
Fostering curiosity, creativity, imagination, and interest are aspects that every school curriculum must consider.
We must take advantage of the windows of opportunity to learn as the brain matures, such as motor development (0 to 8 years), emotional control (3-4 months to 3 years), vocabulary (1 to 6 years), speech (0 to 5/8/10 years), mathematics/logic (0 to 4 years), instrumental music (3 to 10 years)… Without forgetting that we can continue learning at any age.
It is a challenge to know the tastes, talents, and expectations of our students to transmit new content, adapted to them individually and collectively. There lies the key to success.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]