How Words Affect our Brains

The human brain has evolved over six millions years. The most primitive parts of our brain operate at a deeply unconscious level, and influence a great deal more of our conscious behavior than most of us realize. As we added more complex structures to support critical...

Learning Activities to Build Empathy

Since the days of Socrates, asking the right questions has been a core discipline of the learning experience. Questions can be open-ended or close-ended. Closed-ended questions are usually factual and repeat-after-me type responses, such as: How many steps are in our...

Neuroscience and the Learning Professional

Through the use of brain imaging technology, scientists are able to observe a live subject in the process of making decisions, learning new skills, or retrieving memories. As learning professionals, we can apply these emerging insights to our work. In this space, I’m...

Seeing Is Believing

You’ve heard it before. Most of us are primarily “visual learners.” You know that using images will make your presentations more memorable and compelling. You teach leaders to tell stories that stimulate a listener’s brain. But what does neuroscience tell us about the...

2015 Summer Reading

Through neuroscience, we’ve discovered that the brain is always changing. This state of constant transformation is called neural plasticity. But even our hard-working, ever-changing brain needs a vacation now and then. Research has discovered that people who go on a...