It’s SPECtacular (Ep. 1) | Teaching Social, Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive (SPEC) Skills

Dr. Linda Gorman: My name is Dr. Linda Gorman, and I'm here to talk to you about open source — I hear that's the new buzzword — open source, accessible, science-based program that I developed for pre-K through fifth grade. And it's called “Brain Health: It's SPECtacular.” It's actually a sort of spinoff from our “Making Neuroscience Fun” program, which was a STEM program that I developed at Johns Hopkins in 2003.

And when I retired — I retired early — when I retired, I wanted to take the program and to make it more what we needed in order to understand our brain health. And I call it the “Brain Health: It's SPECtacular” program rather than a mental health program because "mental health" has such negative connotations.

And what I've been looking at — the literature and researching throughout my entire career at Hopkins— I realized that we really need to educate our children in particular, because if we can educate our children early, it will help them to understand how they can have a healthy brain. And when you have a healthy brain, that leads to a spectacular life.

So that's basically what the program is about. Now, what I have is — it's basically content, lots of content. And through stories, through activities, through assessments, facilitators — teachers — can use this program to educate their students about social health, which is one part of brain health. It's the "S" in "SPECacular" [followed by] physical health, emotional health, and cognitive health.

And by understanding these concepts and understanding how they can make the parts of their brain that are controlling those behaviors healthy, you can see that the brain is going to be healthy. And you can do this. What we've tried to do is make this a way that you can deliver the program in a fun and engaging kind of way.

Now, what we're doing today is we're going to basically tell you the concepts behind what the program's about, as well as what do you get when you look into the program, and how can you then use the program in your schools or your clubs or facilities that you have?

I'm here today with our partners from Society for Neuroscience — SFN. I'll just say SFN. And what we're doing is we not only want to educate you, but we want to educate others about this program. This is something — this is really a labor of love for me — because this is something that I realize: If we can get to people early —— And again, what people have told me when they've used this program is that they learn just as much as the kids learn. Because if you can understand how those four aspects — social, physical, emotional, and cognitive health — affect your brain health, then you can learn how to live a spectacular life, too.

And originally, when we were designing this program, it's meant to be a lifelong program. But I started with the pre-K through fifth graders because that's what I was doing when I was doing the “Making Neuroscience Fun” program.

So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about a number of different areas. And we're going to — I will warn you right now — when I get excited, I talk really fast. But we are videotaping this. All of this will be online on the Society for Neuroscience website under the Brain Facts portion. And it's going to be chunked up so that you don't have to go and listen to the whole talk again. You can listen to the various aspects.

So first, we're going to talk about: Why teach the “Brain Health: It's SPEC tacular” content? What makes it different from other programs that are out there that you can use? Why are those SPEC behaviors — the social, physical, emotional, and cognitive behaviors — so important to our brain health? Why are they fundamental? And then, how can you bring this program to your school?

Now, I've worked with a lot of educators. I've talked to a lot of educators. And I know that there are — I figured once I did this content, I could just spew it out there to the world, and everybody would be using it in the schools. But you guys have so much to do in the classroom that I realized that it has to be something different. And it has to be a way that you can use this program and not let it interfere with all the other things that you're supposed to be teaching. So, we'll talk a little bit about that.

All right, so we'll begin.

Why teach the “Brain Health: It's SPECtacular” content? How is that part of the “Brain Health: It's SPECtacular” program?

Well, in order to understand that, you have to know a little bit about your brain. And when we talk about this program, you'll see that brain facts are one of the components that we have of the stories that we tell.

So, basically, the function of the brain — and when I say the brain, I'm actually talking about the nervous system. You can see from that picture — and I love this picture, I show it all the time — but if you look at the nervous system of an animal, it looks like the animal. Why? Because your brain talks to every single part of your body, and every single part of your body talks to your brain. And basically, your nervous system controls all of the behaviors that you do  —everything that you do — from sitting here and listening to me, to breathing, to your heart pumping, to making decisions about what you're going to have for dinner. Your brain controls everything.

And if we look at why the nervous system is — it's basically trying to keep you alive. It's trying to keep you alive as an animal and as a species. That's what the brain wants to do. So the brain has you do behaviors that basically keep you alive.

Now, in the world we live in, it's always changing. And what we find is that when our world changes, that's when we basically have to use our brain to help us to adapt to those changes. And when I say your world changes — inside your body as well as outside of your body — there are changes going on all the time. And with our technology that's out there, the world as we know it — and how to adapt and survive in the world that we know — it is always changing.

And that's one of the things that the nervous system does. It helps you produce behaviors that are going to allow you to adapt, that are going to allow you to survive in this ever-changing world that we live in.

And again, for little ones — from the time you're born — there are changes that occur throughout your entire life. And that's why I say this program is good to understand for everyone. Because every time you are dealt a change that you have to deal with and that your brain has to adapt to, your brain is changing.

So, let's see how that works. Basically, the relationship between our brain and behavior. The brain controls all of our behaviors — I've already told you that. But once we produce those behaviors, the behaviors are then going to change the brain — your brain. And again, it's constantly changing. It first develops because humans are born very immature in terms of their brain. And that's so the environment — the world that we live in — can basically produce the changes in our brain that we're going to need to survive.

So the brain is changing. That's called neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity in the brain — those are tons of different mechanisms that allow your brain to change and adapt. When you are encountering changes in your environment, it allows you to adapt to the environment.

Now, the thing is, is that this relationship between the brain and behavior, it's reciprocal. So, the brain produces the behaviors, the behaviors then change our brain, but then the brain is changing the behaviors. And that's how the nervous system is working. That's how it allows you to be able to live in this world that's constantly changing.

Now, the thing is, is that what you should be thinking about is that, okay, what happens if my brain can't change? And that's the problem that we run into when there are problems with your brain health, is that your brain can't adapt. And then your brain can't help you to do the behaviors you need to survive.

So, the brain changes in response to behaviors. The behaviors change. The brain then changes the behaviors so that we can adapt to this world that we're living in now.

One of the things that occurs is that when we encounter changes, that is going to basically cause stress. I love this little video that I put together — stress, stress, stress. Stress really gets a bad rap. Stress — the stress response — is actually a good response.

I was nervous before this presentation, and I find that — and I've talked millions of times over the course of my lifetime — but I find that when I don't get nervous, that's because my sympathetic nervous system isn't getting me ready to produce the behavior that I need to produce. And it usually isn't good.

So, the stress response is actually adaptive. It essentially will activate your nervous system, your immune system, your endocrine system, so that you — I mean, humans are animals — so that we can provide the behavior that we need to survive to that change that causes us stress.

Now, where stress is bad is that we know that stress activates the fear response. And this response, this emotion that we have, can either be to something real — a lion walks in the room, that's not good — or it can be something imagined. Okay? Doesn't matter. So, if it's real or imagined, you get this stress response.

And when the person feels like they have no control over the situation, that's when stress can be damaging. So, when I was teaching at Hopkins, it was like when students got stressed out because of exams. I'm like, that's because you feel like you have no control. You have control. Just work on your schedule, put in times that you need to do so that you can do the work, so that you can do the behavior and do well on those exams.

But when the person feels like they have no control, that's when we have damage. And damage to the brain is going to cause the brain not to be able to change. So, the behaviors that are normally produced when we change our behaviors to deal with that stressful situation — we can't do them. So, we can't adapt.

So that's how stress interacts with the changes in the environment. Little changes, yeah. So ,we'll talk more about that.

So, how does this all relate to the “Brain Health: It's SPECtacular” program? Well, we know the brain controls the behavior. The behavior changes the brain. And we know that the areas of the brain that are going to be affected — or, when those changes occur, those are areas that control your social, your physical, your emotional, and your cognitive behaviors. So, your SPEC behaviors.

So, those are the areas that are going to change. And when they don't change, then you have issues. Then we know that the brain is changing the behaviors. And the behaviors—the ones that are changing—are our social, physical, emotional, and cognitive behaviors.

So, in a world that's always changing, a healthy brain is going to depend on our ability to change our brain. So those neuroplastic mechanisms that allow our brains to change in those areas that control our social and physical and emotional and cognitive behaviors — that's going to change our behaviors.

And what we need to do is come up with coping mechanisms, ways to deal with those changes. And by doing behaviors that fall under the auspice of social, physical, emotional, and cognitive health, we are able to come up with coping mechanisms.

And again, just like our brain and behavior have to change, our ways of coping with changes in the environment, that has to change too.

So basically, that's how social, physical, emotional, cognitive health — that's how that affects what's going on and changes the function of the nervous system. So basically, a healthy brain depends on — we have to be able to change our brain, change our behaviors, so we can adapt.

What does social health do for us? Well, social health provides us with the tools to develop those coping mechanisms. And again, I see lots of people writing quickly. Remember, this is all going to be online, so it's going to be there for you.

Physical health — that gives us the resources so that we can implement the coping mechanisms.

Emotional health — what the emotions do is it affects our perception of those stressful events. Think about it. When you're in a good mood, change comes along. It's like, "I can deal with it." When you're feeling sad or not in a good mood, change comes along. You're like, "Mm, I can't do this anymore." You know? So it changes our perception of the changes, the stressful events. And it also is going to change our motivation to perform those coping mechanisms.

And then, of course, cognitive health is going to help you to identify, understand, and assess not only those changes that are going on in the world, but also assess your coping mechanisms. Are these coping mechanisms working?

One of the things I used to always talk to my students about early on, when I first met them, is I would say, "What stresses you out?" And they would tell me. And then I would say, "Okay, how do you deal with that stress?" And everybody would say, "Oh, I exercise. Exercise helps me deal with the stress." I'm like, "You're sitting in an exam. What are you going to do? Get up and do some jumping jacks?" No. You need coping mechanisms so you can deal with stressful situations depending on what the situation is.

And again, your coping mechanisms have to be able to change with time as well.

All right, so that's the first part of our little talk.