Tatyana Chernigovskaya is a world famous domestic psycholinguist researcher. She is twice a Doctor of Science, as well as one of the leading scientists in the field of a new direction - cognitive science. The researcher is convinced: in order to find out how the surrounding world functions, a person must first understand how his own brain works. Her lecture, which is precisely devoted to these issues, is very popular. This is not to say that in it Tatyana Vladimirovna gives direct advice on how to really train your brain. But the researcher devotes time to such important issues as the features of the modern digital era, the origin of man, especially his consciousness and other problems.
New era
Lecture entitled "How to teach the brain to learn?" was first read by Tatyana Vladimirovna on May 30, 2015. In it, the researcher emphasizes that man, although not everyone realizes this, in recent years has truly entered a new civilization. It is not yet clear what exactly is this world in which we now have to live. But one thing can be said for sure - he is completely different from that which our parents and our long-time ancestors are used to.
In his lecture "How to teach the brain to learn?" Tatyana Chernigovskaya emphasizes that in the modern world the geographical boundaries are completely blurred. We can communicate with a person from the next room, or we can talk on Skype with a resident of another country. It is also impossible to say for sure whether our virtual interlocutor is a real person, or whether there is still a group of people behind him. Modern man lives in conditions when not only geographical boundaries are blurred, but also personal ones. He does not understand who he is, what the people around him are. The huge availability of information affects the upbringing of children. They grow completely different, the researcher emphasizes.
A lot of data is equivalent to not having it.
A large amount of information creates completely different problems, different from those that people had to face in the past. Tatyana Vladimirovna recalls that in the past, when she had to write scientific dissertations, the main difficulty was the availability of data. Simply put, there was nowhere to take information. Now the difficulty is how to get rid of it. After all, dozens of different articles are published every day in various scientific fields. And to read them all is physically impossible. It turns out a paradoxical situation - there is data, but it’s the same as not.
The problem with the educational process
It is also unclear how to organize training in this case. After all, when there is a lot of information, it is even more difficult to select what is important and what is secondary. Or in this case, it is necessary to keep the children in school until the age of 20, so that they can master at least part of the acquired knowledge. However, this is impossible to do. But by what principle then to select information? So far, on this issue in his lecture "How to teach the brain to learn?" Tatyana Chernigovskaya, and other scientists, do not give an answer.
Information duplication
Where do people get their penchant for displaying the real world? Doctor of Science emphasizes:
"People are creatures that love to deal with virtual reality, they deal with signs."
In other words, people love to reproduce the world in their own vision. Tatyana Vladimirovna gives a simple example with a glass of water. There is this glass, and liquid is poured in it.
But for what purpose should it be painted? Where did this idea come from? But it is precisely on this that all art is built. Even the name "glass" is a word that duplicates a real glass.
Arguments Based on the Effect of Literature on Daily Life
Another example that Tatyana Chernigovskaya cites in this lecture in this respect is the so-called Turgenev girls. They, in fact, did not exist until the time when Ivan Sergeyevich himself created a similar image. The girls simply did not know that they needed to be gentle and pass out in any event that turned up, until Turgenev described such characters in his works. You can consider another example: There were no so-called "extra people", Tatyana Chernigovskaya emphasizes in the lecture.
“Extra people”, it turns out, are: loafers - sorry for cynicism, I'm deliberately cynical - got up from the sofas, threw off hookahs and said: “We are the generation of extra people”
Before this image was created by writers, no one especially wanted to reproduce it.
Denisovsky man
In her lecture, Tatyana Vladimirovna pays attention to the origin of our family, namely, the features of brain development. Not so long ago, in Altai, archaeologists discovered another species of ancient people - the so-called Denisov man. The professor herself was also in these caves when these remains were found. First, archaeologists found a phalanx from the little finger of a girl aged 13 years. This phalanx was sent to geneticists who conducted the necessary studies. Scientists at first thought that this girl should belong to the family of Neanderthals. However, the phalanx genome turned out to be completely different. In other words, scientists have discovered a whole new kind of people.
However, Tatyana Vladimirovna emphasizes in the lecture "How to Teach the Brain to Learn", these two types of people have something in common. Namely, the extremely suspicious FOXP2 gene, which indicates that both of these genes had the ability to speak. To prove, of course, this is impossible, because there is no direct evidence of this fact. However, the very presence of this gene causes a lot of suspicion. After all, it says that the history of mankind could be completely different, different from what we previously imagined.
Evolutionary brain development - its causes are unknown
Neanderthal brain evolved for the better. However, how did this happen? So far, scientists have no answer. The cerebral cortex developed, and not just all the areas, but precisely its anterior zones. They determine the level of mental abilities of a person. Why don't these areas develop at the same speed? For what reasons did precisely those zones begin to develop from which, as a result, such highly developed creatures that create modern technology came to be? There are no answers to these questions yet.
Learning features each have their own
Tatyana Vladimirovna also talks about the fact that it is impossible to assess the intelligence level of each individual person according to some general criteria. Professor emphasizes:
“Now, if the Unified State Examination, God forbid, offered to surrender to Pushkin and Lermontov, then they would definitely have failed. Not because they did not live to see Niels Bohr, but because they would have failed him in any case, which does not cancel them genius "
Tatyana Vladimirovna herself says that she is not very good at counting and solving mathematical problems. Which, of course, does not negate the fact that she has a high level of intelligence. On the other hand, why be able to count a person who, in principle, does not need this? It is not necessary in ordinary life to remember the table of logarithms. There are, for example, people with pathological memory. If you ask them what day of the week it was, say, November 7, 1654, they will easily answer - Wednesday. If you check - this is really the environment. But why does the average person know this?
The brain is always trained - this is another aspect that the professor is talking about. By the way, the scientist considers this organ to be the most mysterious, as it literally controls human behavior:
The brain is a mysterious powerful thing, which for some reason we call “my brain”. For this, we have absolutely no reason: who is whose is a separate issue.
Even if we do not study, do not read books and do not explore a certain area of cognition - still our brain continues to absorb information. While we walk or cook, he continues to study. But from another country, the education that is given in schools is distinguished by its usefulness from this kind of knowledge. After all, the latter are useful in practice. But what if a person knows on what day Napoleon and Josephine married? This is not particularly important information. After all, now you can find everything in Google.
Learning strategy
Still, something about how to train the brain, Chernihiv mentions. One of the most important factors for successful learning are breaks, distractions, and also normal sleep. When teachers tell the student that he is distracted too much and therefore is not able to learn anything, they make a big mistake. Tatyana Vladimirovna says:
The best thing we can do for ourselves is to quickly learn something and go to bed.
After all, the translation of learned information occurs precisely in a dream. And this is a thing proven by scientists. It is during a night's rest that the knowledge gained is transferred from a part of the brain called the hippocampus to the areas of the anterior cortex, from where a person can easily extract information. Everyone remembers the situation when he was preparing for the exam the day before, but he did not remember anything during the tests. After all, if you start to prepare too late and packs up the information in batches, it will not have time to properly "fit" in the brain. If you learn the material in advance, then there will be more breaks for rest. So, all the necessary knowledge will be properly acquired.
Training conditions are also important.
Chernihiv says that a good brain is constantly learning. She also emphasizes:
People have to work their heads, it saves the brain. The more it is turned on, the longer it is saved.
However, the conditions for perceiving information are also important. The visual component is important for one person, the other needs to write or draw for himself. The third is important class time. Tatyana Vladimirovna herself considers herself an “owl,” emphasizing that the period of her most productive work begins after 10 pm. There are, of course, people who at five in the morning can get up and work at full capacity up to eight.
Yes, I’d better immediately drown in the river, I just can’t do it and I can never - it’s useless
So says the professor. And she also recommends to her students to get to know themselves and their personal inclinations. You need to understand what is best for yourself - active learning or passive? Reading outdoors or listening to lectures indoors? It is imperative to decide what the learning objectives are. Maybe a person just wants to have a family and do household chores, then education is completely unnecessary.
The differences between the male and female brain
We continue the consideration of the summary “How to teach the brain to learn” by reviewing Tatyana Vladimirovna's ideas about gender differences. The professor immediately emphasizes that he is negative about this kind of scientific research. In addition, she is a supporter of traditional house-building and also looks negatively at feminism. In this light, the professor expresses the fact: the brain of men and women is different. And at the same time, according to Tatyana Vladimirovna, the female brain is better adapted to life.
In other words, the fairer sex has a serious task - not to quarrel with neighbors, to understand in time who is the enemy and who is the other. So-called mirror neurons should work well for her (these are such nerve cells, thanks to which we can understand what another person thinks and feels). Women have to constantly be in a changing environment, to survey the dangerous and threatening world around, to train the brain.
Representatives of different sexes need to be taught in different ways, the professor is convinced. At the same time, external conditions are also important. For example, boys should be in a cooler room than girls. The reason is that young men fall asleep faster and relax in the warmth, so they begin to perceive information worse. Also, the stronger sex needs constant nourishment of praise. Girls are more important than personal attitude, compliments.
Tatyana Chernigovskaya, "How to teach the brain to learn": listeners reviews
As for the opinion of the audience, here most of the visitors and listeners of the lecture respond positively about it. Many people like the manner of presentation of the material, the presence of various examples, the versatility of information. Tatyana Vladimirovna describes such things that will be useful to specialists from different fields and just interested.
There are those who did not really like the lecture, primarily because of its humanitarian focus. However, there are few such listeners. For the most part, the Chernigov lecture is interesting to students of various age and professional categories.