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Neuroscience, Neurodevelopment, and Learning
- Stress and Learning
Neuroscience, Neurodevelopment, and Learning
Often there are factors that adversely affect normal neurodevelopment
including interactions with the environment resulting in
neurological dysfunction. Often these dysfunctions result in
various neurodevelopmental disorders and learning
disabilities. Modern research is focused on stimulating the
brain and reestablishing neural pathways to identify and
remove obstacles to normal neurodevelopment. These obstacles
must be removed prior to enjoying effective learning
successes.
• Compensatory strategies used by learning disabled students
work around weaknesses, circumnavigating the problem areas.
• Cognitive Training Programs are a level deeper than
Compensatory Strategies as they utilize the concept of
neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and
strengthen.
• Modern neuroscience is recognizing an entire level deeper
than Cognitive Training. This research is focused on making
changes to Neurological Dysfunctions.
One expert in this field is Judith Bluestone, a Neurodevelopmental
Specialist. Judith is the creator and founder of The HANDLE®
Institute, and the Clinical and Educational Director of The
HANDLE Institute International, LLC. She has proven that
“there are ways that we can get into our minds, brains,
sensory areas… to make little adjustments” in a gentle way
through precise movement. “What we do through non-invasive
means, using absolutely no high-technological means- the
highest technology we use in an evaluation session is a
penlight – is study how a person’s nervous system has
developed. We do that by asking people to do things. They
think we want to see what we’ve asked them to do, like
drawing a circle on a blackboard. Basically we want to see
how they’re doing it. The body tells you so much when you
know how to read it – the things it avoids doing, the things
it seeks, the ways it moves. It gives you a mirror to what’s
going on in the brain. By looking at how a patient uses the
basic neurological subsystems – light (Vision), taste
(gestation), odor (olfactory/smell), touch (tactility), sound
(audition/hearing),
the sense of their body in space (proprioception) – I can figure out which
parts of the person’s brain are immature, what parts are
damaged, what parts are there but not connected properly
with other parts. Then I gently reorganize the system.
Neural rehabilitation.” (A Woman’s Path 1998).
“A cornerstone of the technique is Bluestone’s “Gentle
Enhancement”®, which is based on the belief that the nervous
system slowly adjusts to change and that people’s nervous
systems will begin to shut down and not be receptive to
change if put under too much stress”. (Seattle Press, 1996).
Gentle and precise movement is foundational to the neurodevelopmental gains seen as a result of the HANDLE®
exercises.
Dr. Carla Hannaford, biologist, educator and author expresses the
relationship between brain growth and movement. She writes;
“Thinking and learning are not all in our head. On the
contrary, the body plays an integral part in all our
intellectual processes from our earliest moments in utero
right through to old age. It’s our body’s senses that feed
the brain environmental information with which to form an
understanding of the world and from which to draw when
creating new possibilities. And it is our movements that not
only express knowledge and facilitate greater cognitive
function; they actually grow the brain as they increase in
complexity. Our entire brain structure is intimately
connected to and grown by the movement mechanisms within our
body”.
Stress and Learning
Judith Bluestone, creator of the HANDLE Approach, explains the
interconnectedness between stress and learning. Judith
reports “scientists have known for more than 50 years about
neuroplasticity of the brain and the nervous system. They
are in a constant state of adaptation, except when there’s
stress”.
When we are stressed, feel fear or frustration, the heart exhibits an
incoherent heart rate variability pattern. In this state,
the heart sends a neural message to the amygdala that causes
it to function in a sympathetic state (the survival state of
fight or flight). A message from the heart causes the
thalamus to shut down to any incoming sensory information
that does not relate directly to survival, and the message
to the pre-frontal cortex of the brain is incoherent so we
don’t learn or remember. In this incoherent state, cells
within the hippocampus lose their dendritic connections and
die off resulting in poor memory, fuzzy thinking, and a lack
of creativity”. (Why Stress is Bad for Your Brain, R.
Sopolsky).
At The Phoenix Alternative Learning Centre, we utilize the HANDLE®
approach as our foundational framework. We respect and
appreciate that stressed systems shut down and are unable to
learn. It is from this core understanding that we base our
environment. “The HANDLE philosophy is one of “Gentle
Enhancement” – because stressed systems do not get
stronger. The therapeutic program is designed for the
particular client so that the stressed systems can calm down
and existing neural pathways can be enhanced or new ones
gently built”. (Seattle Child, Aug 2005).
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