Page 57 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

Following a hemispherectomy89, the patient recovers almost completely and usually lives a very normal life. They do not lose either their artistic or reasoning capability, depending on which half of the brain was removed. Hence, we know for sure that there is no such thing as the left hemisphere being responsible for our logical deductive capacity and the right hemisphere being responsible for our creativity. Surprisingly, following the operation the brain recovers its original capacity and the patient learns as expected. There has been approximately 300 hemispherectomies carried out around the world.
Resource 22: Recovering from a Hemispherectomy
Each of the brain’s memory systems appears to save our memories in different ways. As an example, the sequencing system is quite efficient, allowing us to sequence and mimic our primary caregiver’s mouth movements to learn to speak. With humans having tens of thousands of years of practice and genetic enhancement with each generation, it is not surprising that this process is very efficient. While the concepts are complex, there is a pattern to mouth shape, tongue placement90 and the resulting sounds these combinations create. Creating sounds by copying the sequence of the shape of the mouth as well as lips and tongue placement is a challenge, but after their first few years, the child has learned a vocabulary that allows them to communicate successfully without being formally taught by anyone, thanks to hundreds of thousands of years of genetic refinement of this learning system.
Historically there have been three classes of memory that educators may be familiar with:
• Episodic memories: These are specific selections of sensory data that are stored and can be recalled later. Episodic memories can be temporary in nature, be held in the short term (minutes-hours-days) or they can become long-term memories that can be recalled much later. It is likely that episodic memories are held in the nuclei of a sequence of neurons, possibly epigenetically.
• Semantic memories: These are defined as the ability to form ideas, concepts or collections of concepts that build to form conceptual frameworks of understanding, that are recalled and can be applied non-consciously. Cause and effect is a concept because it is a relationship between different variables (variables are entities that can change, such as the weather and our bank balance). Once understood, semantic memories are immediately stored permanently with no temporary or short term process involved. We can then apply that memory of the concept to other contexts ‘on the fly’ if we retain our confidence in them and do not start thinking consciously about them.
89Streetwisdom Billy (2011)YouTube Plasticity - the story of Jody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaDlLD97CLM 90 Kuhl, P. (2010, Oct). The Linguistic Genius of Babies Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies?language=en
45