Newsletter 006: Parts of the Brain and Neuroplasticity

In the previous newsletter, I discussed purposeful application through practice and performance. We looked at the ideas of “Checking in with the ‘Real World,’” “Feedback,” and “Stakes and Intensity” — each of these are part of purposeful application.

This newsletter will dive deeper into the physical parts of the brain, connecting the physical parts to learning.

(To keep the discussion from requiring years of studying neuroscience, many details will be omitted. If any explanation is incorrect, please contact me to fix the explanation.)

Here is Belcher’s Model for Learning (yes, I’m continuing to send this image in every email — returning to the same image with more information is how we create strong conceptual models!)

Ideas

Brain cells are called neurons, with adult brains containing roughly 100 billion neurons. These 100 billion neurons create roughly 100 trillion connections (yes, trillion with a T!); these connections are the physical foundation for every part of life!

Neurons have a few different parts:

• The main body is called the soma, represented in the top-right (under the word “neuron”) and bottom-left of the image.
• An axon from one neuron attaches to another…