In the human brain, neurons don’t communicate directly with each other because they don’t actually touch. Instead they secrete chemical molecules (called neurotransmitters) which travel across the gaps (called synapses). Neurotransmitters can link neurons in an almost infinite amount of ways.
It is in these gaps—the spaces between neurons—that the really important activity of the brain occurs, because it is here that the connections between different parts of the brain occurs. Continue reading
In our series of posts about online study skills, we had frequent occasion to from Nicholas Carr’s fascinating book The Shallows. In the book Carr gives a succinct and extremely helpful summary of how the human brain operates.
“[discrete nerve cells]—our neurons—are both like and unlike the other cells in our bodies. Neurons have central cores, or somas, which carry out the functions common to all cells, but they also have two kings of tentacle-like appendages—axons and dendrites—that transmit and receive electric pulses. When a neuron is active, a pulse flows from the soma to the tip of the axon, where it triggers the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters flow across [the] contact barrier—the synapse, we now call it—and attach themselves to a dendrite of a neighboring neuron, triggering (or suppressing) a new electric pulse in that cell. It’s through the flow of neurotransmitters across synapses that neurons communicate with one another, directing the transmission of electrical signals along complex cellular pathways. Thoughts, memories, emotions—all emerge from the electrochemical interactions of neurons, mediated by synapses.”
Further Reading
During your ‘time off’—that is, during the times when you are not studying for the EPPP—be careful how you treat your brain.
Just as an Olympic athlete will take care of his body even during the times of the day when he is not training or competing, so a student should take care of his mind even during those times of the day when he or she is not actually studying.
In our previous post we considered how it is particularly important when studying for your EPPP to not allow yourself to get too tired. In this post we will continue to give practical suggestions to help you avoid becoming too tired.
Drink lots of water, preferably cold water. When you consume cold water, your body has to work to warm that water up to the temperature of the rest of the liquid in your body. To do this the body expends energy which, in turn, speeds up the metabolism, thus helping the person to be more energetic. Cold water is always better than energy drinks, which do more damage to your body than good. If you need to have caffeine, tea or coffee are the best beverages, but these should be drunk in addition to cold water and not instead of it.
But of course, the best way to ensure that you do not become too tired is to get plenty of sleep. Elsewhere we have shared about the benefits of sleep. (See EPPP Study Video – Sleep). Sleep is central to processing information. In particular, sleep is crucial in helping the brain move information from the short-term memory in the frontal cortex to the long-term memory in the hippocampus at the back of the brain.
Often when a person feels like they need a boost of caffeine, what they really need is a brief nap. This is especially true if it’s after 3:00 pm, when the body is designed to have a nap. As developmental molecular biologist and research consultant Dr. John Medina has observed,
Napping is normal. Ever feel tired in the afternoon? That’s because your brain really wants to take a nap. There’s a battle raging in your head between two armies. Each army is made of legions of brain cells and biochemicals –- one desperately trying to keep you awake, the other desperately trying to force you to sleep. Around 3 p.m., 12 hours after the midpoint of your sleep, all your brain wants to do is nap.
Taking a nap might make you more productive. In one study, a 26-minute nap improved NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent.
Regular naps also help students who are studying online to avoid the type of techno-brain burnout that was mentioned at the end of our previous post. Researchers at Harvard University induced techno-brain burnout in test subjects and then found that a twenty to thirty-minute nap refreshed them and allowed increased accuracy in their work. Optimum refreshment and reinvigoration occurred for those whose naps lasted sixty minutes or more. (See ‘The restorative effect of naps on perceptual deterioration’.)
Given the importance of sleep, it goes without saying that you should avoid staying up late playing computer games, surfing the web or interacting with people over the internet.
If you have trouble sleeping, it could be because you are not having enough exercise during the day. Or it could be because you are having too many energy drinks during the day.
When you are having trouble sleeping, do an activity that will freshen your mind and promote well-being, such as doing something creative, meditating or doing yoga. (See ‘How to relieve stress and anxiety while studying for the EPPP.’) Do not go online (either with a computer or a phone) if you are having trouble sleeping, since this can keep your body tense and make it even harder to get back to sleep.
In our previous post we urged you to wait before responding to every impulse that the internet brings your way. We encouraged you to make a list of things you need to do and return to it later when you aren’t studying.
An added benefit of organizing your time like this is that it will help you to distinguish those things which actually are important from those things we merely think are important at the moment. Doing this is a wonderful way to resist the internet’s unspoken ethic that what is new is of greater value than what is permanent.
Last year cultural critic Robin Phillips observed that the internet panders to “the human bias for newness.” In his article ‘The Worldview of Facebook’, Phillips explained that “This bias has always been part of the human species, since a key element to our survival has been our brains’ instinctive gravitation to the most recent changes in our environment. But while this can be useful in helping us to detect the slight movement of a leopard in the tree above us, or the movement of a snake in the corner of our tent, the Internet has pandered to the brains’ tendency to focus on what is recent at the expense of what is enduring.”
Phillips went on to explain that unlike early book printers, who had strong economic incentives to promote the reading of older works as well as recent ones, the various media connected with the internet privilege what is current, up-to-date, and happening this very second, over what is enduring.
Learning to resist the tyranny of the urgent is one of the first steps towards resisting the internet’s hegemony over our mental space.
If you are typical, when you’re studying you may suddenly remember something you want to check on Google, or an email you need to reply to, or something you want to say in an online discussion. It can be tempting to act on thatimpulse right away, especially if you think, “This will only take a minute, and if I do it now then at least I won’t forget.”
We suggest that instead of letting yourself be subject to the tyranny of the urgent—and often the not so urgent—that you keep a list of all the things you want to do online and then attend to those things later when you’re not studying. So if there is a webpage you want to look at, an email or text message you need to reply to, or a video on Youtube you think it would be fun to watch, simply jot it down on your list and return to it later, even if it has to wait a few days.
When we have a plan for something—even if it’s as simple as a things-to-do-list—then those things are less likely to flood our working memory. We can temporarily shelve the things on our list—clearing space in our working memory in the process—and know that we’re still in control. As you do this, you will be resisting the temptation to let yourself be inundated with information of immediate interest but which will have little or no relevance next year, or even next week.
Again, don’t just take my word for it, because there is a growing body of research to back this up. Here’s what the website Psyblog has this to say about the importance of avoiding interruptions as well as making plans:
In a series of studies researchers found that while trying to enjoy reading a novel (amongst other tasks), participants were frequently interrupted by intrusive thoughts about an unfinished everyday task.
But when researchers told participants to make very specific plans about that unfinished goal, while reading they experienced less intrusive thoughts about the other activity. In fact the intrusive thoughts lessened to the same level as a control group. This finding was repeated in the lab with other activities.
Making plans helps free up mental space for whatever we are doing right now, allowing us to be more efficient in the long term.
In a previous post I quoted Nicholas Carr about the cognitive demands created by hyperlinks. Carr also makes some helpful observations about why we should avoid checking our email during the middle of any task:
“Studies of office workers who use computers reveal that they constantly stop what they’re doing to read and respond to incoming e-mails. It’s not unusual for them to glance at their in-box thirty or forty times an hour (though when asked how frequently they look, they’ll often give a much lower figure). Since each glance represents a small interruption of thought, a momentary redeployment of mental resources, the cognitive cost can be high. Psychological research long ago proved what most of us know from experience: frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious. The more complex the train of thought we’re involved in, the greater the impairment the distractions cause. …Many studies have shown that switching between just two tasks can add substantially to our cognitive load, impeding our thinking and increasing the likelihood that we’ll overlook or misinterpret important information.” Continue reading
In my previous post I shared about the distractions created by hyperlinks. But what can we do to mitigate these distractions?
There are a couple of ways you can limit the distractions caused by hyperlinks. If you are reading a webpage that contains hyperlink you are interested in pursuing, right click on those links and select “open in new tab.” Then read those new webpages when you have finished browsing the current article. Continue reading