12 Brain-Based Principles
1. Each brain is unique:
Students share 99.5% of the same DNA, but each brain in unique because of unique life experiences.
2. Reward Dependency:
Our brain is designed to be highly responsive to biochemical rewards and drugs are only one example.
3. Susceptibility & Opportunity:
Our brain has sensitive periods with enhanced chances for risk and gain. They are 0-5 and 12-17.
4. Attentional & Input Limitations:
Our brain is designed to limit the quantity of new input per minute, tour, and day.
5. Adaptive & Changing:
Our brains are not static or fixed. They are constantly changing in over a dozen ways.
6. Rouge Drafts:
Our brain rarely gets it right the 1st time. Instead, we make sketchy rough drafts of new learning.
7. Memory-maker:
Every perception, sensation and conclusion is usually associated with another related experience. This may create meaning. When that doesn’t happen, we
often seek it (psychics, books, confession, talk shows, etc.)
8. Environments Matter:
Strong scientific evidence suggests that environments not only directly influence our brain, but also can trigger gene expression.
9. Prediction is key:
Prediction ot only fosters survival of our species, but it serves as a strategy for affiliation, resource acquisition and stress management..
10. Malleable memories:
This principle reminds us that our memories are a process, not a fixed thing. Memories can and are often altered or lost.
11. Perception, Not Reality Matters:
Our brain only knows what it takes in perceptually and is easily fooled. Our prior knowledge is a huge factor in determining what we see, hear, feel, taste,
and touch.
12. Emotional States Rule:
One neuroscientist called our brain “a bag of hormones”. In most struggles between our feelings and logic, we usually (not always) do what we feel like
doing.