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"ATTENTION deficit hyperactivity disorder is now the most prevalent psychiatric illness of young people in America, affecting 11 percent of them at some point between the ages of 4 and 17. The rates of both diagnosis and treatment have increased so much in the past decade that you may wonder whether something that affects so many people can really be a disease. And for a good reason. Recent neuroscience research shows that people with A.D.H.D. are actually hard-wired for novelty-seeking - a trait that had, until relatively recently, a distinct evolutionary advantage. Compared with the rest of us, they have sluggish and underfed brain reward circuits, so much of everyday life feels routine and understimulating. To compensate, they are drawn to new and exciting experiences and get famously impatient and restless with the regimented structure that characterizes our modern world. In short, people with A.D.H.D. may not have a disease, so much as a set of behavioral traits that don't match the expectations of our contemporary culture."

"Phrases like "random acts of kindness" and "pay it forward" have become popular terms in modern society. Perhaps this could be best explained by those who have identified a deficiency in their lives that can only be fulfilled by altruism. It seems that we just can't get enough of those addictive, feel-good emotions -- and with good reason. Scientific studies prove that kindness has many physical, emotional, and mental health benefits. And children need a healthy dose of the warm-and-fuzzies to thrive as healthy, happy, well-rounded individuals. Patty O'Grady, PhD, an expert in neuroscience, emotional learning, and positive psychology, specializes in education. She reports: Kindness changes the brain by the experience of kindness. Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it. Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it. A great number of benefits have been reported to support teaching kindness in schools, best summed up by the following."

"Studying for tests is tough on kids and parents. I'm frequently asked to speak and write about how parents can help their children remember things they need to learn for school. From my perspective as a neurologist and teacher, I've evaluated the neuroscience research about how the brain learns and remembers most successfully. This article brings together the strategies I've suggested, based on that research, reported by parents and educators to be most helpful"

"It's known as the "musician's advantage."  For decades, educators, scientists, and researchers have observed that students who pick up musical instruments tend to excel in academics-taking the lead in measures of vocabulary, reading, and non-verbal reasoning and attention skills, just to name a few. But why musical training conferred such an advantage remained a bit of a mystery. "

"ome widely held ideas about the way children learn can lead educators and parents to adopt faulty teaching principles Jan 1, 2015 Credit: Kiyoshi Takahase segundo MYTH HUMANS USE ONLY 10 PERCENT OF THEIR BRAIN FACT The 10 percent myth (sometimes elevated to 20) is mere urban legend, one perpetrated by the plot of the 2011 movie Limitless, which pivoted around a wonder drug that endowed the protagonist with prodigious memory and analytical powers. In the classroom, teachers may entreat students to try harder, but doing so will not light up "unused" neural circuits; academic achievement does not improve by simply turning up a neural volume switch. MYTH "LEFT BRAIN" and "RIGHT BRAIN" PEOPLE DIFFER FACT The contention that we have a rational left brain and an intuitive, artistic right side is fable: humans use both hemispheres of the brain for all cognitive functions. The left brain/right brain notion originated from the realization that many (though not all) people process language more in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities and emotional expression more in the right. Psychologists have used the idea to explain distinctions between different personality types. In education, programs emerged that advocated less reliance on rational "left brain" activities. Brain-imaging studies show no evidence of the right hemisphere as a locus of creativity. And the brain recruits both left and right sides for both reading and math. MYTH YOU MUST SPEAK ONE LANGUAGE BEFORE LEARNING ANOTHER FACT Children who learn English at the same time as they learn French do not confuse one language with the other and so develop more slowly. This idea of interfering languages suggests that different areas of the brain compete for resources. In reality, young children who learn two languages, even at the same time, gain better generalized knowledge of language structure as a whole. MYTH BRAINS OF MALES AND FEMALES DIFFER IN WAYS THAT DICTATE LEARNING ABILITIES FACT Diffe

"Recently, the NY Times ran an excellent article entitled: A Natural Fix for ADHD. In this piece, Dr. Richard Friedman, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Director of the Psychopharmacology Clinic at Weill Cornell Physicians, explores the neuroscience behind ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). In so doing, Friedman attempts to reframe our understanding of just what ADHD is, and how much more nuanced our approaches for treating it need to be."

"A student's social status faces no bigger threat in schools than bullying. In research, schools with a higher bullying rate, subsequently had lower scores on algebra, geography, earth science, biology, and world history. At first glance, bullying and academic achievement should not be related because one is academic and one is behavioral. This is not a coincidence. While bullying has taken the mainstream media by storm in recent years, the neuroscience behind what truly happens to students is usually absent from these reports."

"Teachers change brains. While we often don't think of ourselves as brain changers, when we teach we have an enormous impact on our students' cognitive development. Recent advances in educational neuroscience are helping educators understand the critical role we play in building brain capacities important to students' learning and self-control. To understand how teachers change the brain, we need to begin with a reasonably new understanding of the biology of learning. The human brain is an experience-dependent organ. Throughout our lives, the cerebrum-the largest portion of our brain-fine-tunes itself to adapt to the world around us. The scientific term used to describe this is "neuroplasticity, " which involves three processes."

"Breaking up lessons with activities like juggling could help to boost pupils' science results, research suggests. It says that there is evidence that students respond well to short, 12-minute sessions, broken up with unrelated 'spaces' for children to do something different. Around 2,000 youngsters at 15 schools took part in the study, which aimed to build on neuroscience that suggests information can be more easily learnt and remembered when it is repeated several times, with spells of unrelated activity in between."

"Barbara Oakley's professional biography does not suggest that she was once a struggling math and science student: She is an engineering professor, author of A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science and Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential (which is not affiliated with this MindShift). Oakley co-created Coursera's most popular course, "Learning How to Learn," with Terrence Sejnowski, which has enrolled nearly 2 million students.  But Oakley is a self-described "former math flunky" who "retooled" her brain - and who has since made it her life's work to help others learn how to learn by explaining some key principles from modern neuroscience. "

"Satisfaction and engagement may not be the most common feelings among students studying introductory calculus. According to Jo Boaler, a professor of math education at Stanford, roughly 50 percent of the population feels anxious about math. That emotional discomfort often begins in elementary school, lingering over students' later encounters with algebra and geometry, and tainting the subject with apprehension-or outright loathing. Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, associate professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California has explored how emotions are tied to learning. "Emotions are a piece of thinking," she told me; "we think of anything because our emotions push us that way." Even subjects widely considered to be outside the realm of emotion, like math, evoke powerful feelings among those studying it, which can then propel or thwart further learning."

"Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won't commit to. "I give it a few seconds - not even minutes - and then I'm moving again," says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University. Gallery Lynda Barry: The 20 stages of reading: If there are stages of grief and steps to recovery, isn't the act of reading a complicated, evolving thing over time? Cartoonist Lynda Barry, one of scores of writers at the National Book Festival on Sept. 21-22, certainly thinks so. (Related: 12 authors, 12 reasons why they write) Click here to subscribe. But it's not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel. "