Dendritic Arborisation
The word dendrite comes from the Greek ‘déndron’ meaning tree. A dendrite is a part of the structure of a neuron in our brain, and we have 120 billion of them in our brain. As you already know, brains are highly dynamic, imaginative and adaptable. Through the processes of seeing and doing we are constantly pruning, rearranging, and growing our potential.
Dendritic arborisation, also known as dendritic branching, is a multi-step biological process by which neurons form new dendritic trees and branches to create new synapses, new ideas and new possibilities. There are literal forests in our brain, so the metaphor is very elegant.
Neurogenesis is the creation of new dendrites and neurons which form new neural nets and packages of information. Growing dendrites is the objective because the more dendrites we grow the more imaginative potential we have. The more imagination we have, the more creative we become, and the easier it is for us to see new possibilities and perspective. This is obviously a key to critical thinking. We need to focus on growing the potential [trees] in our brain.
First and foremost, this is why developing and growing imaginative, creative and critical thinking capabilities in our teachers is super important. We want to provide it for our school kids. If our teachers better understand imagination, they will be in a position to build these capabilities into our schools and our students.
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The V (visual) series of courses are part of a cluster of imagination/visual learning disciplines that form a turning point in imagination training.
V1_The Neuroscience of Imagination lays the foundation for a better understanding of what creativity is and how to develop it. It is also the beginning of visual learning.
V1 to V4 follow on from each other in order to build on skills as participants journey through the imagination learning process.
These thinking processes directly affect our ability to be better critical thinkers and absolutely develop our ability to be imaginative and therefore more creative.