Can improved brain cooling enhance learning and increase frustration tolerance?

[generatech]

I've been trying to help my struggling 13-year old nephew with his music and schooling (straight Ds last year).

I tried a little neuroscience experiment you might find interesting.

Recent studies about yawning concluded the primary, and possibly only, function of yawning is to cool the brain; yawning is not a sign of boredom. Cooled-brain participants subjected to imagery that overwhelmingly evoked "contagious" yawns from non-cooled participants were immune to such imagery in the study; the cooled participants used either external coolant (cold pack?) or breathed deeply through their noses as instructed in the study.

My nephew seems like a bright enough guy, but he yawns as if having a sneezing fit when he thinks in focused way for as little as 1-5 minutes. Frankly, it annoyed me when I tutored him.

To help him with his music, I played a tone on a piano (electric piano, actually) and asked him to sing it. He loves music and hung in there even though he was way, way off. As I persisted in dishing out the same note, he'd start yawning and ask to stop and lie down. He had about 10 hours sleep the night before so I knew he was well rested. After a 10-20 minute break we'd try it again but again he'd start yawning one after another (I think about 4-7 yawns, which is really strange to watch).  This yawning pattern occurred during each the 5 or so days we’d worked on music over the last two weeks.

His sudden numerous yawns when challenged mentally reminded me of the yawning studies.

I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and taught him to breath deeply through his nose.  I told him about the yawning studies and that I thought his brain was overheating and he wasn't really tired or bored.  He agreed to try the ice pack and deep nose-breathing.

While repeatedly attempting to hit an F below middle C on the piano, and missing widely below and above, he expectedly started to yawn. I then had him rotate the ice pack between his forehead, cheeks and head top (since I don't know circulatory routes) as he sat for about a minute or two. I think he iced his forehead most and cheeks least.

I asked him to try singing again and he nailed the F while icing his head! We continued this ice-cooling experiment with other notes and note sequences and sometimes combined it with deep nose-breathing. When his arms grew tired of holding the ice (the impromptu ice hat didn't work very well), he tried only deep nose-breathing, which didn't seem as effective (though infinitely more practical).

Over and over again we reverted to ice when the yawning seemed imminent or after a first yawn.

Apparent Bounty
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(1) The cooling stopped or prevented his yawning whenever he started to struggle mentally.
(2) While cooled, he sung (matched) notes from the piano in his range, several times with a new ease.
(3) It lifted his confidence.
(4) It greatly improved his frustration tolerance.

Previously, I also noticed he yawned a lot when frustrated (making distraught faces and/or getting mad at not being able to match a note). It seems like a vicious cycle of overheating leading to frustration that causes even more overheating, ultimately leading him to quit and lie down.

I think the ice experiment somehow taught him to rise above his frustrated state and hover over it objectively, knowing that yawning pointed to his brain overheating and not to being dumb. Put another way, he seemed able to observe himself be frustrated and soothe himself knowing it wasn't "him" so much as his brain  .


10% ??
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I remember reading years ago that only about 10% of our brain's neurons are firing at any moment. I don't know if that's stated correctly or, if so, if it's been disproved. I wonder if overheating occurs when a significantly higher percentage of neurons actively fire for several seconds (maybe 1-5 minutes like my nephew's threshold). Perhaps adolescent, or at least some adolescent, brains haven't formed as many connections and therefore overheat more due to high-percentage use, threatening to start a vicious cycle of under-performance. Or maybe the actual forming of new connections causes too much extra heating in some adolescent brains, causing them to forgo this type of growing pain by shirking school work.

A good friend's wife taught at a special high school for near-dropouts and returning dropouts trying to earn their high school diplomas or GEDs.  A few years ago she told me the single biggest problem all her students had in common was stamina – they’d give up way to fast. She was shocked how quickly they’d give up even when they were on the right track. Maybe low frustration tolerance, whether caused from a personality or mood disorder or some other problem causes overheating that exacerbates learning difficulties. At a minimum, it seems yawning is sign of overheating in well-rested people (and tired ones, too).

Psychosomatic
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I joked with my nephew that he shouldn’t let ice become a crutch to the point of needing to hold a wooden ice-substitute block to his head just to feel confident and equipoised. I told him to focus on the more practical deep nose-breathing.

He starts music camp in 3 days.

I’m a musician and computer technician, not a scientist.

[NeuroNovice]

I will initiate my own, related topic later on.  Right now I just wish to briefly comment on this author's topic.  I have long wondered at my own experiences related to brain cooling.  It's hard to believe the overall cooling effect was significant in your nephew's experience, as in my own experiences open water swimming.  And yet it's hard to reconcile established scientific research with untested, personal experiences--and the general conclusions drawn by the members of the scientific community with those drawn by the individuals who have lived or witnessed somewhat uncommon experiences.  Here I am tempted to venture into a rather philosophical discussion about how the testimonies of people who are perceived as uncommon or abnormal due simply to their experiences/circumstances are often automatically discounted as biased, a thought process that might be termed an "outlier attitude" or "mindset".  If a witness does not fit the range of qualities one currently considers to be trustworthy and credible, then one is likely to undervalue that witness's testimony, most especially if the testimony itself also falls outside the range of the accepted and/or expected.  But isn't this a central reason for the existence of case studies?  And hasn't a great deal of new and interesting research--not to mention, current knowledge--resulted from unusual observations and/or case studies?

Since, over the past decade, I have invested a great deal of thought and interest to the idea of brain cooling as a tool for enhancing certain aspects of cognition, I was excited to find this post which reminded me a good deal of my own personal discovery of the relatively unexplored potential to use brain cooling in non-injured subjects... although I was simultaneously disappointed to find no discussion had followed generatech's post.  While my own experience stemmed from open water swimming, it is similar to generatech's nephew's in that my perceived cognitive enhancement was also centered around music.  I found that when, during most of the day prior to my swims, I would try to recall the artists and titles of some partial song melodies I recalled from my childhood and later in my past, these "blanks" in my memory would seem to "fill in" quite rapidly--I estimate within the first five minutes--after I had begun one of my twice-daily, twenty-minute swims.  Also, whereas before my swims I would only be able to recall a partial melody and/or lyrics from a song, after each swim I would be able to remember the entire melody of the song I had previously been struggling to remember, and most or all of the lyrics.  It would seem that at least the musical aspects in common between my experiences and those of generatech merit some relatively more intensive and, of course, more scientific scrutiny.