Reducing this vital supply of nutrients and energy to the brain limit its ability to function at its optimal levels. The brain requires an excessively large and disproportionate amount of our blood supply. Unlike other organs and muscles, it cannot store energy. Consequently, a pint and a half or blood must flow through the carotid artery (in the neck) and into the brain every single minute.

All young children have a viable, fully functioning photographic memory. However, this gift is lost early in school during the early school years. That loss appears to coincide with the onset of formal reading instruction. Remembering the numerous and detailed elements in the physical environment is the coin of the realm in the natural environment. However, the printed word is the chief means of transactions within the world of formal education.

Our contemporary schools are based on a model that is approximately 140 years old. However, the human brain has been in existence, in varying developmental stages, somewhere in the evolutionary neighborhood of 4.2 million years. Why do we try to force-fit millions of years of brain development into a set of 140 year-old flawed educational practices? It is evident that these practices don't seem to work as well as they supposedly once did.

Cognitive neuroscience alone is not the elusive "silver bullet" we've all searched for over the past century and a half. However, collectively, we represent the very first group of educators in the history of the world, who are in a position to take advantage of this dazzling new information. The extent to which we put this valuable science to good use hinges largely upon the honest commitment made by those parents and educators who understand and appreciate what is occurring inside the human brain, when it is engaged in that neuro-anatomical event we call "learning." Perhaps that partially explains why fifteen Nobel prizes for medicine and physiology were awarded to neuroscientists during the most recent 25-year period!

We are still in the initial stages of this fascinating cerebral journey, however, we have discovered more in the past 10 years about the human brain than we had learned in all of our prior human history. By applying new information from neuroscience, all of us are capable of making vast improvements in our classrooms and our homes. Superior macro-outcomes and higher learning results for children of all ages are almost guaranteed in the 21st Century, if we will use what we now know about the human brain!

Kenneth Wesson is a staff developer and educational consultant for pre-school through university-level institutions and organizations. You can contact him through Ties Magazine.