The Heart-Brain Connection Notes

http://www.edutopia.org/richard-davidson-sel-brain-video

• Social-Emotional Learning changes the brain (Function and structure)
• Brain is the target of Social Emotional Learning
• We need to foster positive brain changes and one of the central vehicles is social-emotional learning
• behavioral interventions are biological
• Behavioral Interventions affect certain specific brain parts
• Parts of the brain
• Orbital Frontal Cortex
• making emotional judgments about information (good or bad)
• Dorsolateral Cortex
• Critical for certain aspects of emotion
• Guide emotional decision making positively
• Amygdala
• Good at detecting negative emotions and things that are not healthy
• Anterior cingulate cortex
• conflict resolution (cognitive and emotional)
• Pre-Frontal Cortex
• Children use smaller use of pre-frontal cortex
• adolescents use quite a bit more of pre-frontal cortex
• Pre-frontal cortex is turning on during adolescence
• lots of use of the pre-frontal cortex in adults
• Regulate emotions
• Amygdala
• Negative emotion
• Using skills that are taught in Social-Emotional Training can actually change the students' brain.
• Those good at dealing positively with negative stimulus show strong activity in part of the ventrimedial pre-frontal cortex (pre-frontal cortex acts as a controller of the activity of the amygdala)
• Cortisol
• Hormone that deals with stress
• study found that lower cortisol number in the evening
• Regulates emotions means lower cortisol at night
• High levels
• Interferes with circuits in the brain especially the amygdala and the hippocampus
• Both of these parts of the brain affect memory.
• To add stress to a situation, you lower students ability to function.
• If you can lower your anxiety, you will strengthen your prefrontal cortex
• You will do better in cognition, better on tests, etc.
• Summary
• Brain is plastic- built to change in response to experience
• Prefrontal cortex is key and is a convergence zone for affect and cognition; negative emotion will interfere with cognitive prefrontal function.
• Social-emotional learning is an empirically verified strategy to improve skills of emotion regulation and social adaptation
• As such, social-emotional learning likely produces beneficial brain changes.
• Education literally shapes the child's brain and likely produces alterations that lay the foundation for all future learning, emotion regulation and social functioning
• Qualities such as patience, calmness, cooperation, and kindness are all best regarded as skills that can be trained
• Training like social-emotional learning affects the brain.
• In essence, you can change a person who is diagnosed psychopath.
• EBD
• research is critically needed to document the impact of social-emotional learning on the brain.
• Plasticity always occurs
• Neuro-genesis
• Creation of new neurons and happens during all of life
• Sensitive periods exist
• We are rarely confronted with evolutionary dangers from our past
• No longer physical dangers, but emotional dangers.