WEBVTT 00:00:12.751 --> 00:00:14.403 I want to share a little secret, 00:00:14.403 --> 00:00:18.403 which I hope will not be a secret by the end of the talk. 00:00:18.403 --> 00:00:24.180 I am truly, madly, deeply passionate about the human brain. 00:00:24.180 --> 00:00:29.092 Science has taught us that our brain shapes us, 00:00:29.092 --> 00:00:32.997 that it makes us uniquely who we are. 00:00:32.997 --> 00:00:40.161 And if we think about our brain, it has 200 billion neurons. 00:00:40.161 --> 00:00:44.945 Think about the world's population: that's a mere 7 billion. 00:00:44.945 --> 00:00:51.664 And we have hundreds of trillions of connections in our brain. 00:00:51.664 --> 00:00:56.049 If we imagine all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, 00:00:56.049 --> 00:01:02.339 there are more connections in our brain, than all of those stars combined. 00:01:02.339 --> 00:01:06.383 So, this incredibly complex organ that we carry with us 00:01:06.383 --> 00:01:09.979 everywhere we go, it does shape who we are. 00:01:09.979 --> 00:01:12.556 It is a filter, it filters our perceptions 00:01:12.556 --> 00:01:17.854 and our understanding of ourselves, of others, of our world, 00:01:17.854 --> 00:01:21.151 and of our place in that world. 00:01:21.151 --> 00:01:23.371 And, what is incredibly amazing 00:01:23.371 --> 00:01:27.104 is no two brains are exactly alike. 00:01:27.104 --> 00:01:29.525 If you look at the person next to you, 00:01:29.525 --> 00:01:32.523 and you note all the physical differences between you: 00:01:32.523 --> 00:01:37.000 the shape of your nose, the color of your eyes, your height, 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.429 there are more differences between your two brains 00:01:40.429 --> 00:01:45.238 than all of those physical differences in combination. 00:01:45.238 --> 00:01:50.232 So, our brain does make us uniquely us. 00:01:50.232 --> 00:01:55.031 And I am here today to share with you my story, 00:01:55.031 --> 00:01:57.574 and it's a story of how I came to learn 00:01:57.574 --> 00:01:59.928 that not only does our brain shape us, 00:01:59.928 --> 00:02:04.495 but that we can actually shape our brain. 00:02:04.495 --> 00:02:07.841 My story began in Grade 1, 00:02:07.841 --> 00:02:11.845 and in Grade 1 I was identified as having a mental block. 00:02:11.845 --> 00:02:14.374 I was told I had a defect. 00:02:14.374 --> 00:02:19.067 And I was told I would never learn like other children. 00:02:19.067 --> 00:02:23.395 And really, the message at that time was loud and clear. 00:02:23.395 --> 00:02:28.649 I was told I needed to learn to live with those limitations. 00:02:28.649 --> 00:02:34.691 And this was 1957, and it was the time of the unchangeable brain. 00:02:34.691 --> 00:02:40.556 And childhood was a profound struggle for me. 00:02:40.556 --> 00:02:44.449 I couldn't tell time. I couldn't understand the relationship 00:02:44.449 --> 00:02:48.564 between an hour hand and a minute hand on a clock. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:48.564 --> 00:02:54.355 I couldn't understand language. Most of what I read, or heard, 00:02:54.355 --> 00:02:58.247 was really as intelligible as the 'Jabberwocky'. 00:02:58.247 --> 00:03:00.620 I could understand concrete things. 00:03:00.620 --> 00:03:03.321 If somebody said to me, "The man is wearing a black coat", 00:03:03.321 --> 00:03:07.295 I could paint the picture in my head, and I could understand that. 00:03:07.295 --> 00:03:13.899 But what I couldn't do was understand concepts, or ideas, or relationships. 00:03:13.899 --> 00:03:17.256 So, lots of things were confusing. 00:03:17.256 --> 00:03:22.722 I pondered, how could my aunt also be my mother's sister? 00:03:22.722 --> 00:03:27.809 And what did that fraction, 1/4, really mean? 00:03:28.973 --> 00:03:32.255 Any kind of abstract concept was hard for me. 00:03:32.255 --> 00:03:35.663 Irony and jokes: that was impossible. 00:03:35.663 --> 00:03:39.594 So, I learned to laugh when other people did. 00:03:39.987 --> 00:03:44.276 Cause and effect: it did not exist in my world. 00:03:44.683 --> 00:03:49.287 There were no reasons behind why things happened. 00:03:49.287 --> 00:03:55.822 My world was a series of disconnected bits and pieces of unrelated fragments. 00:03:55.822 --> 00:03:59.895 And eventually, my fragmented view of the world 00:03:59.895 --> 00:04:05.450 ended up causing a very fragmented sense of myself. 00:04:05.850 --> 00:04:09.069 And that wasn't all: this whole left side of my body 00:04:09.069 --> 00:04:13.140 was like an alien being, unconnected to the rest of me. 00:04:13.140 --> 00:04:16.955 I would bang and bump into things on the left side of my body. 00:04:16.955 --> 00:04:20.821 If I picked up anything in this left hand, I would drop it. 00:04:20.821 --> 00:04:24.678 If I put this left hand on the hot burner, I would feel pain, 00:04:24.678 --> 00:04:27.749 but I had no idea where it was coming from. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:27.749 --> 00:04:31.287 I was truly a danger to myself. 00:04:31.287 --> 00:04:36.274 My mother, she was convinced I would be dead by the age of 5. 00:04:36.274 --> 00:04:40.093 And then, if that wasn't enough, I had a spatial problem. 00:04:40.093 --> 00:04:42.567 I couldn't imagine three-dimensional space. 00:04:42.567 --> 00:04:45.151 I couldn't create maps in my head. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:45.151 --> 00:04:49.444 I would constantly get lost, even in my friend's house. 00:04:49.444 --> 00:04:52.147 Crossing the street instilled terror. 00:04:52.147 --> 00:04:55.710 I could not judge how far away was that car. 00:04:55.710 --> 00:04:58.537 Geometry was a nightmare. 00:04:58.537 --> 00:05:01.212 I felt incredible shame. 00:05:01.212 --> 00:05:05.395 I felt there was something horribly, horribly wrong with me. 00:05:05.395 --> 00:05:08.944 And in my child's mind, when I'd heard that diagnosis, 00:05:08.944 --> 00:05:12.488 of having a mental block, I actually thought 00:05:12.488 --> 00:05:16.762 I had a wooden cube in my head that made learning difficult. 00:05:16.762 --> 00:05:21.191 And I didn't have a piece of wood in my head, but I wasn't far wrong. 00:05:21.191 --> 00:05:24.343 I had blockages, as I was later to learn, 00:05:24.343 --> 00:05:27.833 in very critical parts of my brain. 00:05:28.867 --> 00:05:33.049 And I tried all the traditional approaches, they were all about compensation, 00:05:33.049 --> 00:05:36.024 and about working around the problem, 00:05:36.024 --> 00:05:38.360 finding a strength to support a weakness. 00:05:38.360 --> 00:05:44.120 They were not about trying to address the source of the problem, 00:05:44.120 --> 00:05:50.604 and they took heroic effort, and led to rather limited results for me. 00:05:51.732 --> 00:05:55.498 Then, Grade 8. 00:05:55.498 --> 00:05:57.802 I hit the wall. 00:05:57.802 --> 00:06:01.212 I could not imagine how I could go on to high school, 00:06:01.212 --> 00:06:05.204 and handle more complex curriculum. 00:06:05.204 --> 00:06:09.465 The only option I could see was ending my life. 00:06:09.465 --> 00:06:14.516 So, I decided to end the pain. 00:06:14.516 --> 00:06:19.374 And the next morning, when I woke up after my failed suicide attempt, 00:06:19.374 --> 00:06:24.326 I berated myself for not even being able to get that right. 00:06:24.326 --> 00:06:26.775 So, I soldiered on. 00:06:26.775 --> 00:06:33.294 And part of what kept me going was an attitude that I learned from my father. 00:06:33.294 --> 00:06:37.769 He was an inventor, and he was passionate about the creative process. 00:06:37.769 --> 00:06:43.357 He taught me that if there's a problem, and there's no solution, 00:06:43.357 --> 00:06:46.294 you go out and create a solution. 00:06:46.294 --> 00:06:49.710 And the other thing he taught me was 00:06:49.710 --> 00:06:54.368 that before you can solve a problem, you have to identify its nature. 00:06:54.368 --> 00:06:58.765 So I continued my hunt. I went on to study psychology, 00:06:58.765 --> 00:07:02.106 to try to understand what was wrong with me, 00:07:02.106 --> 00:07:05.532 what was the source of my problem. 00:07:05.532 --> 00:07:14.104 And then, in the summer of 1977, something life-altering happened. 00:07:14.104 --> 00:07:17.596 I met a mind like my own, 00:07:18.227 --> 00:07:23.652 A Russian soldier, Lev Zasetsky, the only difference being 00:07:23.652 --> 00:07:26.889 his mind was shaped by a bullet, 00:07:26.889 --> 00:07:30.870 and mine had been that way since birth. 00:07:30.870 --> 00:07:35.663 I met Zasestky on the pages of a book, 'The Man With a Shattered World', 00:07:35.663 --> 00:07:40.087 wrtitten by the brilliant Russian neuropsychologist, Alexander Luria. 00:07:40.087 --> 00:07:43.112 As I read Zasetsky's story, 00:07:43.112 --> 00:07:47.241 he couldn't tell time, he described living in a dense fog. 00:07:47.241 --> 00:07:50.510 All he got was fragments, bits and pieces. 00:07:50.510 --> 00:07:54.153 This man was living my life. 00:07:54.153 --> 00:07:58.110 So now, at the age of 25, in 1977, 00:07:58.110 --> 00:08:01.941 I knew the source of my problem. 00:08:01.941 --> 00:08:07.399 It was a part of my brain, in the left hemisphere, that wasn't working. 00:08:07.399 --> 00:08:10.246 And then I came across the work of Mark Rosenzweig, 00:08:10.246 --> 00:08:12.633 and he showed me a solution. 00:08:12.633 --> 00:08:14.485 Rosenzweig was working with rats, 00:08:14.485 --> 00:08:18.667 and he found that rats in an enriched and stimulating environment 00:08:18.667 --> 00:08:20.396 were better learners. 00:08:20.396 --> 00:08:22.565 And then he went and looked at their brains: 00:08:22.565 --> 00:08:28.416 their brains had changed physiologically to support that learning. 00:08:29.247 --> 00:08:31.947 And this was neuroplasticity in action. 00:08:31.947 --> 00:08:36.151 Neuroplasticity, simply put, the brain's ability to change 00:08:36.151 --> 00:08:40.684 physiologically and functionally, as the result of stimulation. 00:08:40.684 --> 00:08:43.663 So now I knew what I had to do. 00:08:43.663 --> 00:08:48.367 I had to find a way to work, to exercise my brain, 00:08:48.367 --> 00:08:50.971 to strengthen those weak parts. 00:08:50.971 --> 00:08:55.906 And this was the beginning of my transformation and of my life's work. 00:08:55.906 --> 00:09:01.369 And I had to believe that humans must have at least as much neuroplasticity, 00:09:01.369 --> 00:09:04.369 and hopefully more, than rats. 00:09:04.369 --> 00:09:07.933 So, I went on to create my first exercise. 00:09:07.933 --> 00:09:12.158 And I used clocks, because clocks are form of relationship, 00:09:12.158 --> 00:09:14.288 and I had never been able to tell time. 00:09:14.288 --> 00:09:16.164 So I started with the two-handed clock, 00:09:16.164 --> 00:09:19.253 to force my brain to process relationships, 00:09:19.253 --> 00:09:22.231 and then I added a third hand, and then a fourth hand, 00:09:22.231 --> 00:09:26.525 because I wanted to make my brain to work harder, and harder, and harder, 00:09:26.525 --> 00:09:30.539 to pull together concepts and understand their connection. 00:09:30.539 --> 00:09:32.930 And about three to four months in, 00:09:32.930 --> 00:09:37.662 I knew something significant had changed. 00:09:37.662 --> 00:09:42.564 I'd always wanted to read philosophy, and had never been able to understand it. 00:09:42.564 --> 00:09:46.782 And I just happened to have access to a philosophy library. 00:09:46.782 --> 00:09:49.913 So I went in, and I pulled a book off the shelf, 00:09:49.913 --> 00:09:51.997 and I opened it to a page at random, 00:09:51.997 --> 00:09:56.710 and I read that page, and I understood it as I was reading it. 00:09:56.710 --> 00:10:00.327 This had never happened in my entire life. 00:10:00.327 --> 00:10:03.717 And then I thought, maybe it's a fluke, maybe that was just an easy book. 00:10:03.717 --> 00:10:08.152 So I pulled another book off the shelf, opened it, read it, and understood it. 00:10:08.152 --> 00:10:12.481 And by the time I was finished, I was surrounded by a pile of a hundred books, 00:10:12.481 --> 00:10:17.448 and I had been able to read and understand each page. 00:10:17.448 --> 00:10:20.722 So I knew that something had changed. 00:10:20.722 --> 00:10:25.356 (Applause) 00:10:25.356 --> 00:10:27.932 Thank you. My experiment had worked. 00:10:27.932 --> 00:10:30.442 The human brain was capable of change. 00:10:30.442 --> 00:10:32.165 And then I decided to create an exercise 00:10:32.165 --> 00:10:34.835 for that alien part of my body, 00:10:34.835 --> 00:10:38.496 and for that I knew I had to work on an area in the right hemisphere, 00:10:38.496 --> 00:10:41.754 the somatosensory cortex that registers sensation. 00:10:41.754 --> 00:10:46.798 I created an exercise for that and I am no longer a danger to myself. 00:10:46.798 --> 00:10:49.713 And then I decided, that spatial problem, 00:10:49.713 --> 00:10:52.017 because I was really tired of getting lost, 00:10:52.017 --> 00:10:54.770 and so I created another exercise for that, 00:10:54.770 --> 00:10:59.127 and I don't get lost, I can actually read maps -- I don't like GPS's, 00:10:59.127 --> 00:11:02.879 because I like to read maps now, because I can. (Laughter) 00:11:02.879 --> 00:11:06.907 So, I knew now, the brain could change. 00:11:06.907 --> 00:11:11.361 I was living proof of human neuroplasticity. 00:11:11.711 --> 00:11:16.602 And what really breaks my heart 00:11:16.602 --> 00:11:19.933 is that I still meet people today, 00:11:19.933 --> 00:11:25.245 children, individuals, that are struggling with learning problems, 00:11:25.245 --> 00:11:30.145 and they're still being told what I was told in 1957, 00:11:30.145 --> 00:11:33.720 that they need to learn to live with their limitations, 00:11:33.720 --> 00:11:36.610 they don't dare to dream. 00:11:36.610 --> 00:11:40.310 And what I learned since 1977, 00:11:40.310 --> 00:11:44.010 when I met Zasetsky and Luria, and Rosenzweig, 00:11:44.010 --> 00:11:47.291 is that, yes, our brain does shape us, 00:11:47.291 --> 00:11:53.007 it impacts how we can engage, and participate, and be in the world, 00:11:53.007 --> 00:11:55.340 and every single one of us 00:11:55.340 --> 00:11:59.617 has our own unique profile of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. 00:11:59.617 --> 00:12:05.238 And if there's a limitation, we don't necessarily have to live with it. 00:12:05.238 --> 00:12:08.480 We now know about neuroplasticity, 00:12:08.480 --> 00:12:13.854 and we can harness the brain's changeable characteristics, 00:12:13.854 --> 00:12:20.119 to create programs to actually strengthen and stimulate and change our brain. 00:12:20.119 --> 00:12:26.545 And in 1966, Rosenzweig threw down the gauntlet. 00:12:26.545 --> 00:12:31.252 He said, his challenge was: "Let's take what he'd learned with rats, 00:12:31.252 --> 00:12:33.709 and apply it to human learning." 00:12:33.709 --> 00:12:38.558 And we need to embrace that challenge, 00:12:38.558 --> 00:12:42.124 we need to also challenge current practices 00:12:42.124 --> 00:12:47.730 that are still operating out of that paradigm of the unchangeable brain. 00:12:47.730 --> 00:12:52.332 We need to work together to take what we know now about neuroplasticity, 00:12:52.332 --> 00:12:56.288 and develop programs that actually shape our brains, 00:12:56.288 --> 00:12:59.859 to change the future of learning. 00:12:59.859 --> 00:13:03.521 My vision is of a world that we create, 00:13:03.521 --> 00:13:06.583 in which no child has to live 00:13:06.583 --> 00:13:11.846 with the ongoing struggle and pain of a learning disability. 00:13:11.846 --> 00:13:18.555 My vision is that cognitive exercises become just a normal part of curriculum. 00:13:18.555 --> 00:13:25.381 My vision is that school becomes a place that we go to strengthen our brain, 00:13:25.381 --> 00:13:28.810 to become really efficient and effective learners, 00:13:28.810 --> 00:13:32.259 engaged in a learning process, 00:13:32.259 --> 00:13:36.580 where not only, as learners, can we dare to dream, 00:13:36.580 --> 00:13:39.519 but we can realize our dream. 00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:44.951 And to me, this is the perfect marriage between neuroscience and education. 00:13:44.951 --> 00:13:46.643 Thank you. 00:13:46.643 --> 00:13:52.546 (Applause)