Download Movement stimulation creates bridges

Movement and Cognition
Dr. James L. Chestnut B.Ed., MSc., D.C.
DISCOVERY CONSISTS OF SEEING WHAT
EVERYONE ELSE HAS SEEN AND THINKING
WHAT NOBODY ELSE HAS THOUGHT
“As the brain, our organismic interface with the environment, becomes
isolated from or closed to the exchange of information with the
environment, disorder must continually increase according to the law of
entropy; and, in fact, it does just that. As we shall see in the next
chapter, even minor restrictions in information flow can result in serious
consequences.”
Furman and Gallo (2000) The neurophysics of human behavior.
“As information consumers, informavores, we are only just beginning to apprehend the profound
implications of a good balanced diet of information. Information processing is life, and both
overconsumption and underconsumption have their consequences. It follows, then, that the
quality of our lives can be influenced by the quality and quantity of the information that we
process. Information should be regarded as a living entity, not merely a property of the
biosphere. … Hence, information can give life or take it away.”
Furman and Gallo The neurophysics of human behaviour.
Mechanoreception is an essential nutrient for human function!
• “Dr. Frank Pederson, Chief of the Section on Parent-Child Interaction of the
National Institute of Child Health and Development, compared the effects of visual,
auditory, and movement stimulation on the infants’ mental and psychomotor
development. Out of six variables ranging from social responsiveness to object
permanence, movement correlated positively with all six areas, whereas vision and
hearing were important in only one”
• “Heath’s initial results from the Harlow monkey showed, not surprisingly, that the
limbic areas responsible for emotion (hippocampus, amygdala, and septal areas)
were directly linked. What was more surprising, however, was the discovery of
connections between these emotional centers and the cerebellum. In addition, two
way communication could be shown between the centers in the cerebellum and the
emotional areas of the brain for pleasure and displeasure.”
Schmahmann and Sherman. The cerebellar congnitive affective syndrome. Brain 1998; 121.
• “Behavioural changes were clinically prominent in patients with lesions involving the posterior
lobe of the cerebellum and the vermis, and in some cases they were the most noticeable aspects of
the presentation. These changes were characterized by: impairment of reasoning and working
memory; personality change with blunting of affect or disinhibited and inappropriate behaviour;
and language defIcits including agrammatism and dysprosiadia.”
• “The cerebellar contribution to cognition is one of modulation rather than
generation.” Dysmetria of (or ataxic) thought and emotion are the clinical
manifestations of a cerebellar lesion in the cognitive domain. The cerebellum
performs the same computations for associative and paralimbic functions as it does
for the sensorimotor system.” (balance, tone, coordination, posture, equilibrium).
The following quotes are from the International Review of Neurobiology, Volume 41 The
Cerebellum and Cognition Edited by Schmahmann
“Clinical case studies at this time reported an association between cerebellar abnormality and
intellectual or emotional dysfunction. Bolhauser and Isler (1977) confirmed the earlier report of
Joubert et al. (1969) describing mental retardation in children with dysplasia of the cerebellar
vermis, and Cutting (1976) observed mania in a child with cerebellar degeneration. Kutty and
Prendes (1981) reported psychotic behavior in adults with cerebellar degeneration. Hamilton et
al. (1983) reported psychotic behavior and cognitive deficits in patients who were found at
autopsy to have cerebellar degeneration, infarct, or tumor.”
“Functional neuroimaging reveals cerebellar activation in a multiplicity of tasks, including linguistic
processing (Petersen et al., 1988; Klein et al., 1995), mental imagery (Ryding et al., 1993; Mellet
et al., 1996; Parsons et al., 1995), cognitive flexibility (Kim et al., 1994); sensory discrimination
(Gao et al., 1996), classical conditioning (Logan and Grafton, 1995), motor learning (Seitz and
Roland, 1992; Jenkins et al., 1994; Rauch et al., 1995), verbal memory (Grasby et al., 1993;
Andreasen et al., 1995), working memory (Klingberg et al., 1995), attention (Allen et al., 1997),
and emotional states (Reiman et al., 1989; Bench et al., 1992; Dolan et al., 1992; George et al.,
1995; Mayberg et al., 1995)”.
Seitz, J.A. I move therefore I am. Psychology Today 1993; 26
“It's time to jettison antiquated ideas about the relationship between mind and body. Your body "thinks" just as much as
your mind.”
“In every case, movement or action of the body ran parallel with thought and emotion. You scratched your head while
thinking, calculated with your fingers as a kind of bodily abacus, followed your thoughts on foot from room to room,
expressed your feelings through facial and bodily gestures and vocal intonation, and communicated your thoughts
through your voice. Activity or motion always accompanied thought and emotion. Is this just a happy coincidence?
Or do we really think with the body?”
“Ordinarily we consider the thinking process a purely mental activity. As our 17th century philosopher friend Rene
Descartes declared, "I think, therefore I am" just a mind separate from my body. Almost all of us still believe this is
the way things work, and take it for granted that mind and body are totally different things. Our popular ways of
speaking even signify this. We refer to athletes as "dumb jocks." We denigrate thinking types as "nerds" or
"eggheads." We regard these two realms as separate and unequal.”
“We are caught up in the persistent Cartesian dualism that we are comprised of two fundamentally different things - an
extended substance (body) and an unextended substance (mind). But what if the mind and the body are really two
different aspects of the same thing? What if the brain systems for movement and the brain systems for thought and
emotion are intimately connected to each other so that we are literally a "thinking (and feeling) body?"
“As it turns out, there are indeed extensive neural connections in the brain from those parts that
oversee movement, equilibrium, and balance of the body to those parts that direct thought and
emotion. This suggests a novel hypothesis. Our brain doesn't simply manage or regulate the
body in the way that a chief executive manages a corporation. The brain doesn't direct the
body and the body follows slavishly. What the brain communicates to the body depends on
what information the body has imparted to the brain and vice-versa. The two are in an
indissoluble union. The implication is that we literally think with our bodies, that is, we think
kinesically.”
“We also use "body language" in interacting with others, whole-body movements expressed through
posture.”
“Researchers have shown that there are neural connections from the cerebellar cortex, in the back of the brain, to the frontal part of
the cerebral cortex.”
“The cerebellar cortex is involved in the coordination of voluntary muscular movement as well as our capacity to maintain balance
and equilibrium. The frontal cortex is the meeting place of our emotional life and our thinking part. That's where affective
dispatches from the subcortex join information received from the rest of the cerebral cortex. It is where, neuroscientists now
believe, our sense of self resides, not to mention our capacity to make decisions and think logically.”
“The connections between the cerebellar cortex and the frontal cortex suggest a novel hypothesis. A trio of neuroscientists Henrietta and Alan Leiner, and Robert Dow challenge the assumption that motor functions such as walking or raising
your hand are under exclusive control of the motor part of the cerebral cortex. They believe the neural pathways from
cerebellar to frontal cortex also enable the "skilled manipulation of ideas.”
“The power to think with our body, then, should also affect our very personality, as it is conveyed through facial
expression, gesture, posture, as well as vocal inflection.
William James, philosopher and psychologist, proposed that bodily changes affect our emotional states. That is, we label
our emotional states based on our ability to interpret bodily experiences.”
“People who suffer from gross loss of bodily sensations, as in spinal cord lesions that disrupt visceral responses, report
less intense emotional experiences. Indeed, Robert Zajonc, Ph.D., head of the Institute for Social Research at the
University of Michigan, has evidence that simply by making the facial expression you abet development of the
feeling. Forcing a smile actually puts you in a better mood.”
“The fundamental importance of the body in the development of our intellect and social nature, and
in the expression of the personality is seen in the role that posture and gesture play in human
social interaction. To think is to communicate with ourselves and others through gesture and
posture.”
“Gesture and posture enable us to organize and communicate concepts, feelings, and events through
movement. Our very personalities, that is, self-expression, are constituted through bodily
movement and activity.”
“And if we stop to think about what we are expressing at the moment, we become self-aware or
-conscious of what we are doing. Consciousness has been traditionally conceived, primarily by
philosophers, as a mental act, a property of mind. But self-awareness is an act of the body. We
receive information about the external world through our five senses, and about internal bodily
states through our kinesthetic sense. We know what and where things are through the pressure,
position, and stretch of muscles and tendons. If something is hard to lift, we are aware that it is
heavy. If it is an apple or a pear, we recognize it by shape. Consciousness is really awareness of
ourselves through our bodies' reactions to the world around us.”
“If we are a thinking body that figures prominently in self-expression, self-awareness, and communicating with others,
then the body must have a central role in problem-solving.”
“Many thinkers, including the philosopher Mark Johnson and psychologist Seymour Fisher, have advanced the idea that
bodily experience provides the framework for the very way we structure our concepts of the world”
“Kinesthetic thinking lies in orchestrating a sequence of motor skills, integrating your multi-sensory, emotional, and
intellectual experiences, and selecting and executing appropriate movements.”
“From the days of the Greeks, movement in Western culture has been concerned with sport, recreation, and the care of
the body, without reference to how it infuses thought. Physical education early on was divorced from the
development of other subject matters, especially literature. The balance and interrelationship between mind and body
were all but forgotten.”
“Now, however, we are on the verge of correcting this age-old misunderstanding.
With new knowledge gained from the social and neurosciences and a deeper
understanding achieved through study of the artistic mind, it is now more apropos
to say that we think with our bodies not simply inhabit them.”
“One of the most effective ways to relieve stress, and irrational thoughts and feelings,
is through so-called body therapies.”
Seitz, J.A. I move therefore I am. Psychology Today 1993; 26
“A child's first movements clearly have emotional connotations; the sensory receptors that signal movement are
directly connected to that part of the brain that generates emotion.”
“Educators argue that teaching dance movement to preschoolers is important because it aids the child in
developing socially and acquiring the ability to organize and communicate thoughts and feelings.”
“Piaget (Gruber and Voneche, 1977) viewed movement as being intricately bound
with sensation and with intellectual and emotional growth. Sensorimotor,
cognitive, and affective systems all incorporate cerebellar input, and the evolving
understanding that these functions are likely to be influenced by the cerebellum is
harmonious with these concepts”.
Schmahmann
“Social and cognitive development is intimately connected with the body from the earliest stages of
life. University of Miami psychologist Tiffany Field has demonstrated the power of touch
with tiny preterm infants. Those preemies who receive extensive touching from caretakers
show measurably better social and intellectual development later in infancy and in the
preschool years than infants who receive minimal handling
Piaget argued that sensorimotor experience is the primary way in which the infant gains
knowledge of the world.”
Mabel Elsworth Todd “The Thinking Body”
“For every thought supported by feeling there is a muscle change. Primary muscle patterns being the biological
heritage of man, man’s whole body records his emotional thinking”.
Edward D. Frohlich “Pathophysiology – Altered Regulatory Mechanisms in Disease”
“Rich interconnections between somatic sensory, visceral sensory and the effector neurons of all sorts have been
discovered that link many zones of the central nervous system including thalamus, hypothalamus and limbic cortex
with the frontal lobes. The extent of interrelatedness of all of these structures in the formulation of organismal
behavior not only has led to the discarding of the too simplistic reflex concept of regulation but has made it clear that
the somatic and visceral pathways are not two systems after all but a single system with different kinds of neuronal
hookup in a state of continuous dynamic interaction.”
“How can sensory patterns affect so many different functions of mind and brain? Our biological
tissues are so thoroughly integrated and complex that a change anywhere in the system can be
expected to be experienced everywhere in that system, due to changes in boundary conditions
between morphologically disparate tissues.”
“Together these studies provide incontrovertable evidence that severe reduction or absence of
patterned stimulation of sensory organs over a prolonged period can result in profound damage to
the human neurocognitive system.”
Gallo and Furman 2000 “The neurophysics of human behaviour.
“The more structurally distorted we are the less
energy we have available for metabolism, for
thinking, and for healing.”
Roger Sperry Nobel Prize Winner 1981
Movement stimulation creates bridges
across unpotentiated (or depotentiated)
synapses. Movement stimulates the
neuroplastic phenomenon of c-fos
mediated synaptogenesis and builds
pathways for the delivery of the most
important brain nutrient ever identified –
somatosensation.
Chestnut 2002
“RARELY DO WE FIND MEN WHO WILLINGLY ENGAGE IN SOLID THINKING. THERE
IS AN ALMOST UNIVERSAL QUEST FOR EASY ANSWERS AND HALF-BAKED
SOLUTIONS. NOTHING PAINS SOME PEOPLE MORE THAN HAVING TO THINK.”
“MANY PEOPLE FEAR NOTHING MORE TERRIBLY THAN TO TAKE A POSITION WHICH
STANDS OUT SHARPLY AND CLEARLY FROM PREVAILING OPINION. THE
TENDENCY IS TO ADOPT A VIEW THAT IS SO AMBIGUOUS THAT IT WILL INCLUDE
EVERYTHING AND SO POPULAR IT WILL INCLUDE EVERYBODY.”
MARTIN LUTHER KING
“The people who get on in this life are the people who get up and look for
the circumstances they want, and if they cannot find them, make them.”
George Barnard Shaw
You need to all collectively commit to making the circumstances you
want within education.
If not you, then who?
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of
children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false
friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit
better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because
you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that
shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is
valuable.”
Ben Jonson
As future educators you have the power to show children that they can do
what they thought they could not. This is an opportunity that must
never be taken lightly.
Please fight for every child’s right to daily physical activity. It is more important
than they or their parents may ever know or understand. You must understand its
value. You cannot teach what you don’t know and you cannot sell what you don’t
own. Know how important movement is for the emotional, cognitive, and physical
development and health of our children. Own this enough that you can sell it to
those who decide if daily physical activity will be part of the curriculum. If you
don’t do this who will?