Tag: neuroeducation

What neuroscience can teach us about teaching

Recent brain research shows that different circuits are called upon in the brain for different activities such as math, music and reading.

In addition, learning and practicing particular skills can cause corresponding areas in the brain to grow or change by adding a tiny fraction of the brain’s neural circuitry and eliminating old ones.

Imaging technologies are helping map the circuits and study variability among children with learning difficulties. Moreover, recent research is providing insight into attention systems in the brain and is shedding light on how we plan, initiate, organize, and most importantly, inhibit certain behaviours.

On Friday, 23rd September, I will be giving a workshop at the Institute of Technology Sligo on what neuroscience can teach us about teaching. This workshop contributes to this dialogue by summarising what we already know about the learning process in the brain and suggests how it might inform the teaching/learning process in the classroom using approaches such as problem-based learning.

I will be touching on the following areas:

1. An overview of how problem-based learning is implemented and assessed in University of Limerick on the Graduate Medical School programme.

2. A review of how the brain learns and memorizes new information

3. An examination of the different brain circuits involved in processing science and maths concepts, music and reading or laboratory skills

4. Recommendations on how we can facilitate and support appropriate learning environments.

If you cannot attend in person, you can still take part in this workshop online.

Book online at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2174273310 

This webinar was recorded. Click here to access recording.

 

 

Weekly Round Up

A part of the human brain that’s involved in emotion gets particularly excited at the sight of animals, a new study has shown. The brain structure in question is the amygdala: that almond-shaped, sub-cortical bundle of nuclei that used to be considered the brain’s fear centre, but which is now known to be involved in many aspects of emotional learning.

Studies have shown that ­meditating regularly can help relieve chronic pain, but the neural mechanisms ­underlying the relief were unclear. Now, ­researchers from MIT, Harvard, and Massachusetts General ­Hospital have found a possible explanation.

Men and women differ in the way they anticipate an unpleasant emotional experience, which influences the effectiveness with which that experience is committed to memory according to new research.

New research has contradicted a 40-year-old theory of how the brain controls impulsive behavior

Head trauma may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, a new study says. The results show people who have suffered from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are 1.6 times more likely to develop schizophrenia compared with those who have not suffered such an injury.

Researchers from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Beaumont Hospital have conducted a study which has found striking brain similarities in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

The brains of older people are not slower but rather wiser than young brains, which allows older adults to achieve an equivalent level of performance, according to research undertaken at the University Geriatrics Institute of Montreal by Dr. Oury Monchi and Dr. Ruben Martins of the University of Montreal.

A new study testing alcohol’s effects on brain activity finds that alcohol dulls the brain “signal” that warns people when they are making a mistake, ultimately reducing self control.

Researchers in the Netherlands have been able to shed more light on how combat experiences change the brains of soldiers.

And finally, new research from MIT suggests that there are parts of our brain dedicated to language and only language, a finding that marks a major advance in the search for brain regions specialized for sophisticated mental functions.  And this week,new research makes the case that language is not a key part of thinking about numbers, but the key part, overriding other influences like cultural ones.

Weekly Round Up

Pathways within the brain can be strengthened by reading and language exposure

 Recent research shows that reading  boosts brain pathways and can actually affect understanding in nearly all school subjects – a great reason to encourage the reading habit in your children.

Scientists at the University of Michigan Health System have demonstrated how memory circuits in the brain refine themselves in a living organism through two distinct types of competition between cells. Their results, published  in Neuron, mark a step forward in the search for the causes of neurological disorders associated with abnormal brain circuits, such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism and schizophrenia.

The left and right halves of the brain have separate stores for working memory, the information we actively keep in mind, suggests a study published online yesterday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Over time, and with enough Internet usage, the structure of our brains can actually physically change, according to a new study.

Bringing the real world into the brain scanner, researchers at The University of Western Ontario from The Centre for Brain and Mind can now determine the action a person was planning, mere moments before that action is actually executed.

And finally good news at last for coffee addicts.For years we’ve been told that caffeinated coffee was bad for us. It’s unhealthy and addictive, doctors warned. But as vindication for all who stuck by their energizing elixir, a new study published early online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease,  shows that guzzling caffeinated coffee may actually be good for our brains. In fact, it may help keep Alzheimer’s at bay.  So enjoy that cuppa joe!

Sign your name across your brain

THE LATEST OECD survey reveals that almost one-quarter of Irish 15-year-olds are below the level of literacy needed to participate effectively in society. How can this be after unprecedented investment in Irish schools in the past decade?*

Research in neuroeducation – the brain science of learning – suggests that something is lost in switching from book to computer screen, and from pen to keyboard. Neuroeducation may help to explain the reported decline in literary – particularly writing – skills observed in students over the past decade.

When it comes to learning – the pen is mightier than the keyboard

Do you remember that diary you so assiduously kept or that pen pal you wrote to? Little did you know then, but the mere act of picking up a pen and writing makes you smarter.  The answer may be that reading and writing involves a number of the senses. When writing by hand, our brain receives feedback from our motor actions, together with the sensation of manipulating the pencil to form words on paper. This nerve activity is significantly different from those we receive when touching and typing on a keyboard. This explains why a written signature carries so much weight in the legal and business world – because it reflects the wiring unique to that brain.

The knack to learning is – learning by doing

The trick to all learning is to create an enriched physical learning environment by employing as many of the five senses as possible – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling – in your learning.  Thus, when writing by hand, the movements involved leave behind a kind of motor memory in the sensorimotor part of the brain, which helps us recognize letters. This implies a nerve connection between reading and writing, and suggests that the sensorimotor system plays a role in the process of visual recognition during reading. This nerve connection is weak or absent in keyboard typing.

Work it out – with pen and paper

In addition, writing involves more ‘doing’ than that observed for keyboard typing and the ‘doing’ actually reinforces the learning process by helping us focus on the task at hand and strengthening the nerve connections. Furthermore, brain scans of avid writers show an activation of Brocas area – a language centre within the brain – while little or no activation of this area is observed in those who had learned by typing on keyboards.

Awaken the living roots in your head – with your pen

The poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney – a master craftsman of the written word – was not far off the mark in his poem ‘Digging’. The poem takes the form of a promise from the poet to his father and grandfather, whose lives were, spent literally digging the soil. In this short poem Heaney acknowledges that he is not a farmer, and will not follow their vocation. But at the start of his career, he vows to translate their virtues into another kind of work:

 The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

 

 *Irish students drop in rankings for literacy and maths, Irish Times, Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Weekly Round-Up

 

fightclub

Does a part of our brain host its own fight club?

In this week’s round-up of the latest discoveries and research in the field of neuroscience – the science of falling in love, the brain’s own fight club and how blogging may hold the secret of making boys write properly.

Continuing with the Valentine’s theme this week, Judy Foreman examines the scientific basis of falling in love.

In the Feb. 10 online issue of Current Biology, a Johns Hopkins team led by neuroscientists Ed Connor and Kechen Zhang describes what appears to be the next step in understanding how the brain compresses visual information down to the essentials.

In Itching for a Fight Science News carries the story that a small part of our brain hosts its very own fight club.

And finally, a report in The Independent newspaper on how blogging may have solved one of the most pressing problems that has perplexed the education world for years: how to get boys to write properly.

Weekly Round Up

In a new study, participants who received electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes were three times as likely to reach the fresh insight necessary to solve a difficult, unfamiliar problem than those in the control group. (Credit: iStockphoto/Andrey Volodin)

In this week’s round-up of the latest discoveries in the field of neuroscience – electric thinking caps, shrinking brains, brain controlled bionic arms, expanding memories..and much more.

Are we on the verge of being able to stimulate the brain to see the world anew with an electric thinking cap? Research by Richard Chi and Allan Snyder from the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney suggests that this could be the case.

Human brains have shrunk over the past 30,000 years, but it is not a sign of decreasing intelligence, according to scientists who suggest that evolution is making the key motor leaner and more efficient in an increasing population.

The LA Times reports that the FDA are about to test a brain-controlled prosthetic arm. The arm system, developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, uses a microchip implanted in the brain to record and decode signals to neurons that control muscles linked to the prosthesis.

Interesting abstract in the New Scientist which shows that just as gardeners prune unwanted growths from flowers, the brain has its own molecular secateurs for trimming back unwanted connections.

Researchers have identified a protein that appears vital for forming the right kind of connections in the rapidly growing brain of newborn babies.

New research by scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London provides evidence that the cerebellum, a part of the brain used to store memories for skilled movements, could also store memories important for mental skills

Research conducted with deaf people in Nicaragua shows that language may play an important role in learning the meanings of numbers.

In the Neuroscience of Resilience, Lisa Brookes Kift is asking the question what does the brain and neuroscience have to do with building up our  resilience?

Finally, if you do just one thing this weekend, make it a walk. A report in the New York Times this week reveals that taking a walk may expand the hippocampus – a part of the brain important to the formation of memories. In healthy adults, the hippocampus begins to atrophy around 55 or 60. So get your walking shoes on this weekend!

Six ways to apply neuroscience to learning

If you have been following my series of posts last week on neuroeducation, you will have seen how learning actually changes the shape of the brain, allowing specific areas in the brain to grow or change. 

Neuroeducation is moving closer to the classroom as researchers understand how young minds develop and learn. 

An interesting recent finding is that children from troubled family situations show abnormally high blood levels of cortical – a stress hormone – which drops dramatically while in preschool.  This finding suggests that placing children from troubled families as early as possible in a safer environment – such as preschool – is a good idea not just from an educational- but also a mental health point of view.

Six ways to apply neuroscience to learning 

  1.  Connect emotionally with the child – a safe environment promotes learning while fear kills learning. This is first on the list because it is the most important.
  2.  Create an enriched physical learning environment – employ as many of the five senses – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling – in your teaching.
  3.  Teach on how to apply knowledge – not just impart knowledge for knowledge sake – thus, learning to tie a shoelace can also be used to wrap a gift for mom.
  4.  Teach for mastery – break down the information into manageable units and create tests for students to take on each of the units.  Leave no child behind.
  5.  Design curricula based on big-picture concepts – change your style and approach as situations change.
  6.  Evaluate learning outcomes periodically – you need to know quickly what’s working – and what’s not.

 

Image Credit: Superstock

How learning changes the shape of your brain

 Neuroeducation – the brain science of learning – is an interdisciplinary field that combines neuroscience, psychology, education theory and practice, and machine learning algorithms to create improved teaching methods and curricula.

The latest scientific research shows that learning actually changes the shape of the brain, allowing specific areas in the brain to grow or change and – most importantly – this brain growth can be accelerated to improve learning and memory using certain approaches to teaching. This new discipline is moving closer to the classroom as researchers understand how young minds develop and learn. 

Why I practice what I preach

As a neuroscientist and teacher I have a keen interest in this area and I have tried to apply the latest findings to my own teaching in the classroom over the past 30 years. I had the honour of being invited to speak at an International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy (ICEP) * in NUI Maynooth last Friday 28th January. This is an annual event that brings together researchers and practitioners in the field of third-level teaching in order to discuss means and methods of improving student engagement. In my talk I discussed how recent findings from neuroscience – the scientific study of the brain – impacts on education and I commented on the fast pace of research in this area over the past five years. You can view my abstract and those of the other presenters here. 

My talk has prompted me to explore in more detail the nature of neuroeducation and how it can lead to improved teaching and learning. This week on the Inside the Brain blog I will be exploring how certain approaches to teaching act to improve brain function, learning and memory.  

* Click here for ICEP proceedings

Image Credit – Dreamstime

What can neuroscience teach us about teaching?

This Friday 3rd December, I am heading to an International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy (ICEP) in NUI Maynooth. This is an annual event that brings together researchers and practitioners in the field of third-level teaching in order to discuss means and methods of improving student engagement.

I am looking forward to presenting recent findings on how recent findings from neuroscience – the scientific study of the brain – impacts on education. You can view my abstract and those of the other presenters here.