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"Science, Technology, Engineering, Math. Teach coding, get girls interested in all of these subjects. However you slice it, there's a lot of focus on the logical and analytical brain functions these days. Many schools are cutting the 'extras' like art and music. While I firmly believe that students need to be well rounded and really need subjects like those to be considered more than 'extra', and while there are many people fighting to keep these programs in schools, you can't deny that the international economy and jobs outlook is demanding more focus on STEM. But does that mean we should drop all focus on the other stuff? The handy infographic below takes a look at why focusing on the skills of half our brain is not enough. It explores the functions of all parts of the brain (however simplified) and gives some insight into how the creative skills can help you a lot."

"You saw the pictures in science class-a profile view of the human brain, sectioned by function. The piece at the very front, right behind where a forehead would be if the brain were actually in someone's head, is the pre-frontal cortex. It handles problem-solving, goal-setting, and task execution. And it works with the limbic system, which is connected and sits closer to the center of the brain. The limbic system processes emotions and triggers emotional responses, in part because of its storage of long-term memory. When a person lives in poverty, a growing body of research suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways. This happens to everyone at some point, regardless of social class. The overload can be prompted by any number of things, including an overly stressful day at work or a family emergency. People in poverty, however, have the added burden of ever-present stress. They are constantly struggling to make ends meet and often bracing themselves against class bias that adds extra strain or even trauma to their daily lives."

"The story of the brain is a short video shedding light on how the human brain have been conceived of in different periods of time. I have watched this video twice and found it really interesting. Besides the pertinent content it has, the way it is animated together with illustrations included make it a perfect educational clip to share with your students."

"I took my handicapped dog of 15 years for a walk in the grass. Maddie has gone from not being able to walk on her hind legs (a neurological problem) to gradually being able to walk with an awkward, back-legs-don't-really-know-where-they're-landing gait. Let me relate Maddie's experience to brain-compatible elements that my teachers implement at New Morning School every day. I provide my dog with the choice to engage in walking every day; she loves it. When children engage in activities they view as pleasurable, and when the projects are ones they have chosen, just as Maddie does, dopamine is released in the brain. This neurotransmitter increases attention and helps information to be stored in long-term memory.1"

"Kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend 11.5 hours a day using technology - whether that's computers, television, mobile phones, or video games - and usually more than one at a time. That's a big chunk of their 15 or 16 waking hours. But does that spell doom for the next generation? Not necessarily, according to Dr. Gary Small, a neuroscientist and professor at UCLA, who spoke at the Learning & the Brain Conference last week. "Young people are born into technology, and they're used to using it 24/7," Small said. "Their brains are wired to use it elegantly.""

"rowing up poor has long been linked to lower academic test scores. And there's now mounting evidence that it's partly because kids can suffer real physical consequences from low family incomes, including brains that are less equipped to learn."

"Greater understanding of our brain's functioning, abilities, and limitations allows us to constantly improve our teaching skills and the productivity of our study sessions and working hours (and after-work hours). We've already given you tips on how to keep your brain in shape or how to boost your brain's abilities through exercise. With a different approach to the brain for you, this article originally published by OnlinePHDPrograms.com shares the 10 most significant breakthroughs that recent research has unveiled on the science of learning, giving you valuable insights on how to make the best use of your brain without wasting energy."

Stay on top of your game mentally and slow the effects of aging on your brain by keeping it in excellent shape. It's easy to do and costs little to no money with all the resources available on the Internet. The following tools, exercises, and games will stimulate your brain and give it the exercise it needs to stay in top form.

"When Ernest Hemingway would stand at his desk, he had a funny habit as he wrote: when he was working on the tough bits he'd write in his boyish, punctuation-disregarding longhand. Once the juice started to flow, he'd switch to the typewriter. Hemingway was moving between unmediated and mediated work: the pencil to his page was unmediated, the typewriter mediated. The analog helped to find flow, the mediated helped find efficiency. As Clive Thompson, the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better, would argue, working in analog or mediated ways changes how our brains and thoughts behave: anyone who's ever received a serendipitous answer from someone on Twitter has experienced how technology can amplify our social thinking, while at the same time if you've put off your projects because you're fiddling on Facebook, you know much tech can distract us--to the point of changing the structure of our brains."

"Teens can't control impulses and make rapid, smart decisions like adults can - but why? Research into how the human brain develops helps explain. In a teenager, the frontal lobe of the brain, which controls decision-making, is built but not fully insulated - so signals move slowly. "Teenagers are not as readily able to access their frontal lobe to say, 'Oh, I better not do this,' " Dr. Frances Jensen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross."

"A fight or flight reaction may be useful in some situations, but it is highly detrimental in the classroom. Whether anxiety stems from test taking or from an unstable home environment, the brains of students experiencing high levels of stress look different than those who are not - and those brains behave differently, too. In this article, we'll take a look at the neural and hormonal responses that underpin a student's stress response, and make a few suggestions for continuing to teach through the challenges it presents."

"We all know our chronological age. That's as simple as counting the candles on your birthday cake. But do you know your biological age? This second number measures not how many years you've seen, but how much those years have impacted the functioning of your body and brain. Scientists calculate it a number of ways, but whatever methodology they employ, they agree chronological and biological age don't always line up. Some 80-year-olds function like people decades younger. They ace their memory and cognitive tests, and scientists peering at their cells can even spot significant differences. Experts have dubbed these role models of healthy aging "superagers." Just about all of us would love to one day become one. How do you achieve that? A long and fascinating article in the latest issue of UCSF Magazine delves into the work of the University of California, San Francisco's Memory and Aging Center to answer this question (hat tip to PsyBlog). Much of this research is still far too new to be of everyday use, but science has already determined a few simple interventions you can start using today to help keep your brain young."

"We know that each student is unique, but what about each student's brain? This new Students at the Center infographic draws on the research from Mind, Brain, and Education to depict the brain science behind student-centered approaches to learning."

"Brain researchers have long studied how students hear and read individual words, but it has proven difficult to parse out what happens when a reader understands a long and difficult passage of text. Now, a team of researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston,Ill., have developed a new way to view reading comprehension in the brain, and in the process highlighted a new angle for testing comprehension that isn't skewed by a student's background knowledge."

"Video games get a bad rap. They are often portrayed as violent, addictive, and a mindless waste of hours that encourage laziness and make us fat. But that's not the full story. Most virtual games can be designed to have educational and physical benefits for players. Games that use repetitive actions, such as the swinging of a bat or targeting a moving object, train the brain and muscles to perform better in real-life activities. Video game brain training has the same effect as reading a book or riding a bike - when the brain is learning, thousands of new connections are being formed. The addition of a reward system motivates players to continuously improve their skills."

"Could a recent study by neuroscientist Simone Kühn reveal new ways of stimulating early brain development as well as a cure for the aging brain in later life? A study conducted at Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charité University Medicine in Berlin unveils the latest findings for video gaming."

"In children with math anxiety, seeing numbers on a page stimulates the same part of the brain that would respond if they spotted a slithering snake or a creeping spider-math is that scary. Brain scans of these children also show that when they're in the grip of math anxiety, activity is reduced in the information-processing and reasoning areas of their brains-exactly the regions that should be working hard to figure out the problems in front of them. These new findings, published this month in the journal Psychological Science, demonstrate that math anxiety is real and can't simply be wished away. But there are specific exercises that have been shown to reduce students' nervousness and allow them to focus on their work without the powerful distraction of fear."

"I have recently come across this beautiful visual entitled " The Science of Storytelling" and was really taken aback by some of the stats it included. These stats come in the context of highlighting the importance of storytelling in marketing but for me I view them  from an education vantage point. for instance, in comparison with words, the human brain has the ability to process images 60 times faster.This shows how much our brains crave the visual component. Also, a majority of 92% of consumers want brands to make ads that feel like a story. You probably have already noticed this trend  on YouTube, so many brands now are marketing video ads  in the form of stories narrated by a given character. But why do we tend to favour stories and how does storytelling affect our brain?"

"Using simple analogies, real-life case studies, and state-of-the-art CGI, this special shows how the brain works, explains the frequent battle between instinct and reason, and unravels the mysteries of memory and decision-making. It takes us inside the mind of a soldier under fire to see how decisions are made in extreme situations, examines how an autistic person like Rain Man develops remarkable skills, and takes on the age-old question of what makes one person good and another evil. Research is rushing forward. We've learned more about the workings of the brain in the last five years than in the previous one hundred."