Welcome to

Patrices Corner
EDU417: Cognitive Studies Capstone
Instructor: Joanna Savarese-Levine
April 4, 2016

Environment and Neurochemical Factors

Impact Behavior
Environment

Nerochemical
Neurochemicals within the brain relate
to how we behave and what can be
done to change negative behavior.

Dopamine, Serotine, and

Acetylcholine are only a few
chemicals we will discuss in this
presentation that relate to.

Environment in the Home

Children who have a greater positive
learning opportunity at home, had a
greater intrinsic opportunity in school
activities (Gottfried, Fleming, & Gottfried,
1998).
Additionally, having more cognitive
stimulation in the home, dramatically
increases your childs ability to excel in
their academics through early
adolescence.

Assigning challenging assignments

decreases disruptive behavior in
the classroom with children who
have ADHD (Umbreit, Lane, &
Dejud, 2004).

Environment
in School

Bringing in electronics into schools does well

for improvement in reading. Research done
by Chen, Yang, & Huang, (2015) children
have improved reading with electronic
portfolio. Not only in thier reading, but in thier
organizational skills too.

How information travels through the brain

Information enters our body through
various stimuli. Ever child process
information differently. It is important for
every child to receive adequate sleep and
nutrition. These two stimuli's will
determine whether your child effectively
receives the information needed for
school.

Nutrition
Students who learn how to farm fruits and
vegetables are less likely to consume harmful
foods. According to Berlin, Norris, Kolodinsky, &
Nelson, (2013) One of the most explicit goals of
Farm To School (FTS) is to improve childhood
nutrition. Programs may attempt to increase
knowledge and awareness, change attitudes,
improve skills, or alter behaviors, to positively
impact health measures (p. 590, para 7).

SLEEP
Sleep is one critical aspect of a childs
consolidation of information (Wolfe, 2010).
Consolidation of information allows shortterm memory to travel to long-term memory.
Most elementary students needs 12 hours
of sleep a night (Wolfe, 2010). Furthermore,
lack of sleep would result in your child
performing at a lower level than if they were
to get the full amount of sleep needed
(Sadah, Gruber, & Rav, 2003).

Exercise
To increase oxygen flow to the
bloodstream, you need to get physical
(Wolfe, 2010). Furthermore, exercise can
induce neurogenesis (p. 95). Additionally,
neurogenesis has been found to help the
hippocampus and the nose. Understanding
the hippocampus is involved in storage,
consolidation, and retrieval of information; it
is an important to want to keep it active as
long as you can.
Exercise has also pumps blood through the
body including the brain, which in turn
increases capillary health and the growth
and plasticity of the frontal lobes (Aamodt
&Wang, 2008) (Wolfe, 2010).

Areas of Concentration

Dopamine Enables conscious motor activity and is the brains reward

system

Serotonin Allows moods to calm down

Acetylcholine Allows muscles to move

Learning Connections between neurons in the brain called synapse

Memory Lives in the Hippocampus, leads to long term memory in the Cortex

Dopamine
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that enhances
your pleasure feelings. The dopamine pathway
leads to the frontal lobes and hypothalamus;
which controls your automatic system and normal
state of the body (Wolfe, 2010).
As dopamine serves our bodies as a pleasure
neurotransmitter, another transmitter,
Norepinephrine, is the primary neurotransmitter
for the arousal mechanism of the fight-or-flight
syndrome (Wolfe, 2010, p. 60, para 2).

Serotonin
Serotonin is the feel good neurotransmitter. As
reported by McIntosh, (2016) Serotonin is
regarded by some researchers as a chemical that
is responsible for maintaining mood balance, and
that a deficit of serotonin leads to depression (para
3).
Furthermore serotonin is known to be linked to
mood. Serotonin plays a major part in feelings of
happiness and anxiety.

Acetylcholine
Acetylcholine was the first
neurotransmitter discovered
and is connected with
voluntary and involuntary
muscle movement. Moreover,
acetylcholine relates to
learning in that this transmitter
is found working in synapses
throughout the brain (Wolfe,
2010).

Environmental and Neurochemical

Factors Impact Behavior

First
Learning at
Home increases
your childs
school success

Second
Eat a healthy
diet

Third
Get enough
Sleep

Fourth
Get Moving,
exercise enough

Fifth
Use technology
for 30-45 min.
three times a
week

References
Berlin, L., Norris, K., Kolodinsky, J., & Nelson, A. (2013). The Role of Social Cognitive Theory in Farm-to-SchoolRelated Activities: Implications for Child Nutrition The Role of Social Cognitive Theory in Farm-toSchool-Related Activities: Implications for Child Nutrition. Journal Of School Health, 83(8), 589-595 7p.
doi:10.1111/josh.12069
Chen, Z. S. C., Yang, S. J. H., & Huang, J. J. S. (2015). Constructing an e-portfolio-based integrated learning
environment supported by library resource. The Electronic Library, 33(2), 273. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1666965548?accountid=32521
Gottfried, A. E., Fleming, J. S., & Gottfried, A. W. (1998). Role of cognitively stimulating home environment in
children's academic intrinsic motivation: a longitudinal study. Child Development, 69(5), 1448-1460.
McIntosh, J., (2016). Serotonin: Facts, What Does Serotonin Do? MNT. Retrieved by
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232248.php

Cont. References
Umbreit, J., Lane, K. L., & Dejud, C. (2004). Improving classroom behavior by modifying task
difficulty: Effects of increasing the difficulty of too-easy tasks. Journal of Positive Behavior
Interventions, 6(1), 13-20. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/218779856?accountid=32521

Wilson, D. A., Fletcher, M. L., & Sullivan, R. M. (2004). Acetylcholine and olfactory perceptual
learning. Learning & Memory, 11(1), 28-34. doi:10.1101/lm.66404

Wolfe, P. (2010). Brain matters: Translating research into classroom practice. (2nd ed.).
Alexandria,VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.