The Neuroscience of Learning & Upcoming Midterm Exam

In today's class, we watched a talk on the neuroscience of learning, which you can view again on your own, hopefully with better sound quality. It occurred to me, while watching the video, that we might usefully apply some of the ideas from the talk to an area of our own learning/brains. Could we do research to learn how to learn something that would make our lives better? Please give it some thought before we begin to tackle our research project after the midterm break.

The Midterm Exam:
We will review on Monday and have the exam in class on Wednesday (Tuesday for the soccer team). To prepare, review the class blog and your notes. You will need to be able to briefly define/summarize the neurosciences concepts we have explored:

1. Growth vs. Fixed Mindset;
2. The Adolescent Brain;
3. Stereotype Threat;
4. Effects of Stress;
5. Neuro-plasticity; and
6. The Neuroscience of Education.

Strong summaries will include an example of an experiment described in the article or talk.

You will also need to be able to identify on a map the locations of the ancient schools we've visited and, in a sentence or two, describe the education system of each place and the purposes they served in their societies (what was taught and why?):

1. The Eduba of Mesopotamia
2. The Imperial Examination System of China
3. Greece (Athens and Sparta) & Rome
4. The Tēlpochcalli and the Calmecac of the Aztec Empire