When I taught math at the University of San Francisco, I’ll never forget Susie. She approached me after the first day of class to inform me that she was a “C student” in math; always had been, always would be. When I asked why, she said that the highest grade she had ever gotten in math was a C. I told her that I knew of some excellent tutors, and if she worked with them, I bet they could raise her grade to a B, or maybe even an A. So, she met with one of them at the library

So just what is this thing called “self-talk?” Psychologists refer to it as that conversation you are having with yourself all day long. And a lot is being said. In fact, while I am talking to you, you are talking to yourself more than three times faster. When I stop talking, you are talking to yourself six times faster. (The reason we can do this is that we think mainly in pictures and feelings…more on that in a future column.) The research suggests that although we usually

You are not aware of 99.9999% of what your nervous system is doing. It not only keeps your brain working, it keeps the rest of your body working. It keeps your heart beating, your stomach digesting, and your eyes seeing. In addition, all the memories you take in everyday are recorded in your unconscious. Now this is interesting. We do not record the actual event, but our version of the event, and then we call it the “truth”, not “our” truth, but “the” truth. When you think yo

We have discovered your brain learns by recording images and connecting them together to form patterns. So, if I am learning about a city, these images (which are composed of groups of neurons I like to call “neural clusters”) include ones for people, cars, and buildings; all the things a city contains. When the brain then discovers similarities among these images, it connects them together using axons, dendrites, synapses, neural transmitters, etc. Over time, they become a “

At my fifty year high school reunion, I remember seeing Mickey, my dear friend walking up the stairs of the bleachers on the opposite side of the gym. Mickey had gained about sixty pounds and I had lost whatever hair I had decades ago. And yet we recognized each other…instantaneously, although we had not seen each other for fifty years! How did our brains do that? How Our Brain Learns If I were to put a paint brush in front of you, you would instantly recognize it. However, y

When Mary Knight walked into Dr. Monroe’s office back in 1932, she was bright and excited; her red hair neatly pinned in a bun. She had finally gotten pregnant and was due any day now. As it was the middle of the Depression, money was tight, so she had limited her visits to midwives. But since she was about to deliver, she asked Dr. Monroe to give her an exam just to make sure everything was fine. As Dr. Monroe examined her, he sensed that something was not quite right. Yes…h

The scientific community pretty much agrees the human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. In fact, the primary element that holds you back from still learning and growing and changing is what you say to yourself. When you say “I just can’t change that!” your brain readily agrees and makes sure you don’t! But when you say, “I can change that!” your brain agrees just as quickly, and looks for ways to help you change. So change must begin with the way you

The explosion of computers in the past fifty years has made it very chic to equate the brain with the computer. It has become especially tempting to liken the billions of neurons with the billions of transistors in large computers. More contemporary versions involve the number of nodes in the World Wide Web, or perhaps the number of pages indexed by Google. These huge quantities are also compared to the 100 billion neurons in the brain. Wrong! After closer examination, the si