Cognitive Enhancement

As you can imagine, I have a fascination with the concept of cognitive enhancement, and the continued improvement in neuroscience coupled with the advancements in technology should intrigue you also. Often called brain-based or accelerated, the new learning paradigm takes advantage of the multifaceted nature of perception.

Example at point, the Five Finger Paragraph, designed to facilitate the “Visual, Kinesthetic and Logical domains of the Multiple Intelligences”. It may seem straight foreword and obvious to some, but it has been a long time filtering into actual use. I can remember reading SuperLearning many years ago, talking about timed delivery of information facilitating super learning. The book has now been updated into a 2000 edition.

There are several other new books that you should know about. Brain-Based Learning: The New Science of Teaching and Training by Eric Jensen is a general review of what brain research has been telling us about the learning process, and also includes a few practical suggestions. Real Learning : A Bridge to Cognitive Neuroscience by Harry Morgan discusses the major theorists and focuses on the “six significant domains of neuroscience (experience, attention, perception, knowledge, acquisition, memory, and retrieval) relationships to information processing”. Certainly a bit more academic. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction : Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer offers practical information on using current technology to enhance the learning process. And the heavy hitter of the bunch, Neurobiology of Learning & Memory by Jr., Joe L. Martinez, and Raymond P. Kesner. It is a “is a well-written, integrated, and multidisciplinary approach to this fast-paced field in neuroscience,” and not an afternoon read. But if you want to know everything about this subject, this book would be the only one you would need.