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By Patricia Burke of Safe Tech International Images Courtesy Artist and Mother Michele Hertz

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Transcendent Thinking

Several stories have been featured in the Safe Tech International News Substack about research confirming the benefits of hand-written notes over keyboards and screens, for comprehension and retention.

University of Southern California researchers have also reported recently that ‘transcendent thinking’ actually increases brain size.

“The more a teen grappled with the bigger picture and tried to learn from the stories, the more that teen increased the coordination between brain networks over the next two years, regardless of their IQ or their socioeconomic status. This brain growth—not how a teen’s brain compared to other teens’ brains but how a teen’s brain compared to their own brain two years earlier—in turn predicted important developmental milestones, like identity development in the late teen years and life satisfaction in young adulthood, about five years later.

In previous studies, the authors had shown that when teens and adults think about issues and situations in a transcendent way, many brain systems coordinate their activity, among them two major networks important for psychological functioning: the executive control network and the default mode network. The executive control network is involved in managing focused and goal-directed thinking, while the default mode network is active during all kinds of thinking that transcends the “here and now,” such as when recalling personal experiences, imagining the future, feeling enduring emotions such as compassion, gratitude, and admiration for virtue, daydreaming or thinking creatively.

The findings reveal a novel predictor of brain development—transcendent thinking. The researchers believe transcendent thinking may grow the brain because it requires coordinating brain networks involved in effortful, focused thinking, like the executive control network, with those involved in internal reflection and free-form thinking, like the default mode network.” Source

The implications of the research on devices and cognition and learning for school budgets and a growth economy beholden to Ed Tech companies are staggering.

And therefore, not being addressed.

Inclusive Thinking…