Last Module is over, here's a rapid report about key concepts or ideas, techniques and tricks I learned during week four; I hope you'll enjoy it!

• If you change your thoughts, you can change your life. It seems people can enhance the development of their neuronal circuits by practicing thoughts that use those neurons. It's important to underline that new neurons are born every day in hippocampus, but they can survive only if we use them by having new experiences and by doing physical activity!
  

• Metaphors and analogies are useful not only to remember, but also to understand concepts in many different fields (art, literature, science, maths...). Often, the more visual, the better.
  

• When you go rapidly through a homework or test question and you don't go back to check your work, you're using a few parts of  your brain. It's important to take a mental breath and then revisit your work to see whether it makes sense.

• By doing some of your studying with friends, you can more easily catch where your thinking has gone astray, find errors and avoid overconfidence. Teamwork allows you to compare ideas and opinions, furthermore it has an invaluable role in broadening perspectives and in enhancing your creativity.
  

• Going through your own test preparation checklist can vastly improve your chances of success.

• The hard start-jump to easy technique, can give your brain a chance to reflect on harder challenges even as you're focusing on other easier problems. At a first glance it can seem a strange approach evidences show it can help brain finding solutions using the diffuse mode of thinking.
  

• Human body puts out chemicals (Cortisol) when it's under stress which causes sweaty palms, a racing heart, a stomach knot and so on... The way you interpret your body's reaction to those chemicals makes all the difference! So shift your thinking from, this test has made me afraid, to this test has got me excited to do my best; it helps reduce stress and improve your performance.

• If you're panicked on a test, try to turn your attention to your breath (just for a moment):  relax your stomach, put your hand on it, and take a deep breath.
  

•  Your mind can trick you into thinking that what you've done is correct even if it isn't. In order to avoid this you should shift your attention, and then double check your answers using a big picture point of view.
  

• Have a good sleep the night before a test!!!
  

I also share with you a very useful summary concerning Rules of Good Studying  written by Barbara Oakley (you find it in the annex)

As always you can find here my notes!