October 2001

Welcome to the Alite newsletter, October 2001

This month we look at how the brain is affected by smoking in adolescence, and how it deals with worry. We bring you the results of research into how sleep affects behaviour in under-fives, and an intriguing item about how music has impacted on criminal behaviour in the world of retail. We are also delighted to bring you information about the Learning to Learn campaign.

Girls and smoking
Scientists researching the addictive effects of nicotine have found that in the West, the vast majority of smokers start during their teenage years. They found that girls were the most vulnerable to addiction and to brain 'damage' and that it can lead to depression. Some studies suggest that starting to smoke early on in life can increase the chances of suffering depression in adulthood.

Research at Duke University showed that the adolescent brain responds more intensely to nicotine than the adult brain. Working with laboratory rats, the team injected the rats with nicotine every day for more than two weeks to simulate a typical smoker's intake. In every rat the number of chemical receptors dedicated to nicotine increased. This is one way of measuring addiction. In adolescent rats the increase in the number of nicotine receptors was double that of the adult rats.

A follow up study showed that adolescent exposure to nicotine contributed to subsequent and permanent behavioural problems - especially for females. After two weeks, adult female rats that had been injected with the nicotine were more sluggish, less interested in their environment and less interested in looking after their young than adult rats that had no exposure to nicotine.

Possible explanations are that the nicotine had acted as a suppressant and reduced the amounts of dopamine and norepinephrin produced. These chemicals are lower in humans who are suffering from depression. Or, that nicotine retards cell division in the hippocampus an area of the brain contributing to visual and spatial memory and an area which continues growing into adulthood in females but not in males.

Sleepless in School
A recent study of 500 children under five years of age has found that those who sleep less than 10 hours a day, including naps, are 25% more likely to misbehave (throw temper tantrums, act aggressively, etc) than children who sleep 12 or more hours a day.

Learning to Learn case studies
The Campaign for Learning is a UK charity devoted to the promotion of lifelong learning. Its flagship project Learning to Learn has attracted national and international interest. The project involves 26 Primary and Secondary schools from England and Wales and has been in place since its official launch in February 2000.

The Learning to Learn Project sets out to utilise the best of what we know about human learning at the beginning of the 21st Century. It supports schools that want to help their students become more sophisticated in their understanding of learning and of motivation. It draws on the expertise of an Advisory Board and on new knowledge about the human brain and learning, alternative theories of intelligence, about motivation and its psychology, and is open to insights from wider fields such as brief therapy and NLP.

Alite is proud to be represented on the Advisory Board of the Learning to Learn Project. We have agreed to promote the project, the schools and their work, and we are publishing information about the case studies on our website.

Pumping up the volume

Time and again we have seen the mood of a class completely transformed by the judicious use of an appropriate piece of music. Although the theme from The Bill is not one of our recommended recordings, we were intrigued (and a little amused!) to hear about the results of a trial carried out by the Tesco supermarket chain.

Petrol theft is, apparently, a big problem for retailers. In an effort to cut down on the amount of fuel they were losing, Tesco selected the themes from well-known crime programmes and played them quietly on their forecourts. In the stations that took part in the trial, theft was reduced by as much as 30%.

For the record, the most effective pieces were the themes from The Sweeney, The Bill and, at the top of the list, Crimewatch UK.

Something to worry about

Researchers at John Hopkins University have identified an area of the brain that appears to be activated when we dwell on negative personal experiences. Subjects were asked to describe family crises, financial worries and situations of personal stress on tape and then listen to the tapes. As they did so, they showed increased PET scan activity in the right frontal lobe.

When the same subjects were asked to listen to tapes of themselves describing inconsequential everyday events there was correspondingly less activity in the right frontal lobe. The John Hopkins staff infer that some of the neural structures to do with 'worry' lie in the right frontal lobe, which is known to contribute to goal-setting, planning and evaluation of decisions. All of which is very worrying.

This month's top ten

As the holidays seem to fade into the distant past, and next year's summer break seems a lifetime away, perhaps we should spare a thought for our colleagues in China, where the school year is 251 days long.

Here are the current Top Ten countries with the longest school years:

China - 251
Japan - 243
Korea - 220
Israel - 215
Germany - 210
Russia - 210
Switzerland - 207
Netherlands - 200
Scotland - 200
Thailand - 200

Just for fun!

Think you want to be a teacher? Take this test first.
Part Five: October 2001

1. Make magnanimous gesture involving selfless and sustained effort. Collect photocopied thankyou note from stranger six weeks later.

2. Assemble family and neighbours. Have them throw crumpled lumps of paper at you whilst your back is turned. Spin round quickly and say, 'I saw that'.

3. Go to London underground or similar . Select longest, narrowest and busiest of corridors there. Spend ten minutes in every forty bumping into people whilst carrying more books and papers than is safe.

Think you want to be a parent? Take this test first.
Part Five: October 2001

1. Purchase a large tub of peanut butter. Smear the contents on the bedroom walls and on your living room sofa.

2. Take fingers, soak thoroughly and conduct experiment within millimetres of electric socket.

3. Go to a toy store and buy the most expensive educational toys. Play with the box for two hours.