Creative Thinking - Part 1: Bridging the Gap Between the Experience and the Mind

Every organism interacts with the world in some way, but only human beings are capable of bridging the gap between "the experience and the mind" with the aid of representational thinking tools (illustrations, speech, concrete models, etc.). All abstract thoughts are grounded in concrete scenarios, and we can represent these abstractions on paper, whiteboards, or computer screens.

The human brain is capable of recreating at will an original event, modifying a past experience, or completely inventing a fabricated occurrence inside the mind. Vision and visual imagery have been essential to the evolving human brain far longer than the printed word has.

The celebrated petroglyphs found around the world, including the cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France, represent some of the first cognitive leaps in the evolution of abstract thinking, but the $64,000 archaeological questions are:

1. What were these particular drawings used for?
2. Were these etchings prescient efforts to convey historical records to
future generations or just flights of artistic and imaginative fancy?
3. Were the illustrations intended for storytelling, or possibly teaching models
that were used to instruct prospective Paleolithic hunters?

The power of these two-dimensional illustrations resided not in the images themselves, but in what the human brain did and continues to do with those illustrations.

An Abbreviated Dictionary of Memory Types

If someone tells you, "I think I'm losing my memory!" You might want to ask them, "Which memory?” We have several different types of memory and more than one pathway back to them.


Autobiographical memories are the specific memories about our personal lives that make us the unique individuals who we are.

Conditional memories represent our knowledge of when and where to deploy a skill to solve a problem or to produce additional knowledge (a “cognitive toolbox”).

Conceptual memory is knowing what something is, how it works, etc., which can be knowledge gained by learning (apprenticeship or mentorship) as well as through the analytical process sense-making.

Echoic memories are auditory memories (of songs, voices and sounds).

Explicit (declarative) memories are working (short-term) memories, which can be further divided into semantic (isolated words, facts, symbols, etc.) memories and episodic memories, which are memories of locations, events, circumstances and space. These particular memory "episodes" in life would include memorable moments (e.g., a 21st birthday celebration in Las Vegas) where the details of the memory are embedded in the broader experience.

Declarative memories are memories that can be articulated easily (dates, historical facts, telephone numbers, etc.) including what we can recall in our mind as imagery. They are easily established and the specific information easily forgotten, which leads to frustrations in the classroom.

Flashbulb memories are recollections of where you were when a historically or personally significant event took place (the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle, the assassination of JFK, the tearing down of the Berlin wall, the attack on the World Trade Center or your wedding day.)

Iconic memories are visual memories (pictures). Since human vision preceded writing, visualization is a powerful learning aid.

Implicit (non-declarative) memories include what we can “do” (typewriting, bicycle riding, tennis, etc.), which comprises procedural memories -- physical skills that require repetitive practice to learn them, such as the ability to dance, drive a car, tie one’s shoelaces or necktie. It constitutes the body's sensory-motor library of skills we have. Motor memory is the body of learned motoric habits (playing basketball) where "the mind is in the muscle." They are all described as non-declarative because we cannot say or "declare" how they are accomplished. How would you verbally explain riding a bicycle or dancing?

Permanent memory (formerly referred to a long-term) memory can be sub-divided into explicit and implicit memories.

Reflective memories or instinctive memories (e.g., knee-jerk response) are stored in the parietal lobes and the cerebellum. These memories can neither be trained for nor learned, since they occur naturally.

Sensory memory is the brief representation of a stimulus while it is being processed in one of the numerous sensory systems, most commonly with an origin in tastes, smells, touch/textures, sights or sounds.

Source memory is knowing when and where a particular fact or aspect of knowledge was originally learned and how you came about knowing it. (When and where did you learn the significance of the date “1776?”)

Working (short-term) memory has a limited capacity of 7 items and lasts approximately 30 seconds or less in duration.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the Prophylactic Value of a Good Education

Educating our children to their maximum potential is a goal whose paramount importance can never be overstated.

Learning in today's world has become a lifelong requirement, no longer restricted to the childhood years. A strong early foundation for learning undergirds all academic advancement, as well as future success in complex learning. Not only does developing a fully-functioning brain increase the probability of success in school and in career aspirations, it also has a documented prophylactic value.

Numerous research studies have shown that attaining a college degree has the subsidiary benefit of protecting the brain from debilitating brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia in the later years of life. UCLA neuroscientist Dr. Robert Jacobs found that there were 40% more neural connections inside the autopsied brains of college-educated subjects than in their age-mates whose formal education terminated after receiving a high school diploma (or without ever completing high school at all).

Other neuroscientists have concluded that developing excessive numbers of intra-hemispheric and inter-hemispheric brain connections protects us from diminished cognitive capacities by making it easier for an injured or impaired brain to re-wire itself. Even in cases of brain trauma (due to auto accidents, missile wounds, etc.), better educated individuals, who have led challenging and stimulating lifestyles, typically enjoy a moderate neural advantage during recovery.

In January 2010, Arizona Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head during a deadly rampage in northwest Tucson, which left 6 other individuals dead and 12 more wounded. The neurosurgeons at Tucson’s University Medical Center, who operated on Congresswoman Giffords, were hopeful that she would survive, but offered a more dismal picture regarding any full recovery of her physical or mental capacities.

However, on the first anniversary of the shooting, January 8, 2012, the congresswoman led a crowd of 3,500 people in the Pledge of Allegiance at 10:10 a.m., which was the same time of the morning that she and the 18 others were shot. Since the damage was to the left side of her brain, Congresswoman Giffords resorted to holding her left hand (instead of her right hand, as is traditionally done) over her heart during the ceremonies. Because the brain is contralateral, a left hemispheric wound to the congresswoman’s brain resulted in the debilitation seen in the right side of her body.

Every parent should make a special effort to assure that learning and cognitive development are given the highest priority in the home and school. Children should also understand the instant power of learning and the long-term protection of a well-educated human brain.

The 7 Steps to Language Learning

Just as an infant must first drink milk, before eating solids, prior to the brain processing complex language abstractions, the networks for basic language foundations must be first laid down. All higher circuits build upon whatever the lower brain circuits have developed earlier, but those circuits must be pre-existing or there will be little on which to build. Infants and toddlers learn language in this recommended sequence of developmental events

1. Hear songs, children’s lullabies, and music, which teach infants the distinct phonemic elements – the building blocks – of the local language. To build a foundation in the language, an infant must hear the sounds that are most useful to their language. Songs for children, characteristically stress the high frequency/high utility sounds and grammatical patterns found in the local/regional language. (The sense of hearing goes “on-line” at 7 months in utero, when fetues begin eavesdropping on the language of the locality into which they will soon be born.)

2. Sing those songs themselves and learn how to produce the sounds via mimicry -- watching others. With their budding "mirror neurons" active, infants fixate on the lips and mouth of a singer (or speaker) and mentally “rehearse” how he/she would produce those same sounds well before the infant is capable of physically replicating the songs with voice. They begin to “babble,” or practice the language.

3. Listen to, repeat, and then recite children’s poetry where they begin to notice the similarities in sounds (words/word sounds that rhyme) by practicing the primary phonetic elements.

4. Listen to short stories emphasizing sentence structure, grammar, syntax, and the predictable nature of language (subject-verb agreement, the word order for adjectives and the nouns they describe, etc.) to learn language structure.

5. Repeat/re-tell stories in their own words making personal sense of words, content, and context. Oral language develops our “phonological loop,” where a child begins to listen to his own voice while speaking, and later, while reading. Words are used to think, not just to read, as we have learned. A limited vocabulary is a crucial factor underlying failure in school (particularly for disadvantaged students.) The “context processor” in the brain constructs an on-line, coherent interpretation of what is being heard. If he is fortunate enough to have a lengthy personal background where others have read to him, his phonological loop will more readily integrate those past language experiences into future language production. For that child, learning to read is a skill that develops considerably faster than for others. Children don’t learn exclusive from listening to stories. They benefit more from the give-and-take in discourse about the stories. That is where they learn how to use language.

6. Draw pictures of story events, objects, and characters, where children learn to create mental pictures in their “mind’s eye.” Nouns are typically more readily activated in the mind than words describing intangible concepts. Drawing will bring the abstract closer to mind. Drawing does for the brain during the day what dreaming does for the brain at night. Pictorial representations and symbols (art) have been part of the human experience for far longer than the printed word.

7. Begin reading and writing with symbolic language. Now, the child is ready. For boys, this may take 6-7 years.

Nobel Prizes and Synapses

What do Nobel prizes and synapses have in common?

In order for us to move, feel and think, neurons in our brain relay messages to one another. When neurons "chat" among themselves, their means of communication relies on both electricity and chemistry.

Once incoming stimuli of a specific type reach a threshold point, a 270 mph electrical impulse “fires” and is transmitted down the axon of a neuron, the elongated portion of the nerve cell.

The chemical component of this informational exchange occurs by means of over 70 neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) and neuromodulators. Once the electrical impulse reaches the end of the axon, a tiny pocket of chemicals bursts releasing neurotransmitters (the “chemical couriers”), which travel across the synapse, a microscopic gap separating two theoretically “connected” neurons. The “apse” in synapse means binding, and “syn” meaning together.

Synapses in reality are contiguous rather than continuous contact points between the message-sending or pre-synaptic neuron and the post-synaptic or message-receiving neuron.

As neurotransmitters cross the synaptic gap they lock into receptor sites on the post-synaptic neuron (the next neuron on a neural pathway) and convey their chemical message only if their molecular properties fit the precise configuration of the receptor sites on the post-synaptic neuron. Over one quadrillion (1,000 trillion) synaptic connections can be established inside the human brain. Each neuron can make 15,000 to 200,000 connections with other brain cells.

Creating new synapses and delivering the appropriate types and quantities of neurotransmitters in these chemical communications, is the foundation of the event we generically call learning.

Although synaptic transmission is just one aspect of how the brain functions, three Nobel prizes have been awarded (to Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric Kandel) for their research on this single portion of our complex brain transactions.

Linking Education and Economic Progress

While education is enjoying a global resurgence, it continues to be the target of conservative politicians in the United States. The World Bank places a premium on education, and more specifically, the education of young girls in developing Third World countries.

Today, loans to poor nations are granted with this single factor used as an important criterion in the loan-granting process. Educated women typically give birth to fewer children (an average of two rather than eight). The two children hailing from the smaller households will typically receive an education, because of two primary factors:

(1) formal education (instead of daily survival) in smaller families rises to the level of a high "family priority," when monthly income leaves funds available for discretionary spending, and
(2) more family resources can be invested in schooling rather than in basic needs of food, clothing, etc., for a large number of family members, who are not making even modest contributions to the family income. The ultimate fiscal drain on limited family resources often spells foreclosure on financially out-of-reach educational opportunities.

National instability and political oppression, coincidentally, often accompany high levels of poverty and low levels of education. Countries with a substantive middle-class population typically enjoy greater political stability, which allows them to make good on their World Bank loans.

The current attack on public employees in general, and public education in particular can be disastrously short-sighted recognizing the high correlation that we all acknowledge between a quality "education for all" and global economic standing.

There are no "internal winners" in the senseless assaults on public education. In both the long-term and the short-term, our entire nation will suffer when we don't support public education and maximize learning for every child who walks into our doors.

The First Ph.D. in Psychology

The first Ph.D. ever awarded with the term “Psychology” in its title was granted at Harvard University in 1878.

Barely fourteen years later, the American Psychological Association was the center of this fledgling discipline, which was quite “undisciplined” since it was not driven by any precise methodological or scientific focus. One hundred years later, Pres. George Bush declared the 1990s “The Decade of the Brain.”

During the intervening decades, our understanding of the human brain mushroomed as our knowledge base catapulted from mere conjecture, guesswork, and speculation to a domain grounded in biology, medicine, and science.

Parenting and education were two areas of the modern human experience that seemed almost impervious to the incredible findings in neuroscience until recently. Remarkably, no two arenas are better positioned to put this research into daily practice. To our collective good fortune, today we see educators, parents and neuroscientists seeking to understand the aspects of behavior, learning and memory.