Neuroscience and Education

Exploring how we can work with the brain in education, instead of against it.

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The Dangers of Teenage Stereotypes

Adolescence is a time when the brain is not able to function in ways that allows a teenager to make healthy decisions…at least this is the potentially dangerous message from many neuroscience experts.  These experts are not necessarily wrong in their reports of how the brain of a teenager functions. It’s true, the brain is less developed in the frontal cortex and there is lower activation in the reward center of the brain.  The issue lies in presenting the biology without considering the effective application of this for parents and teachers. To avoid stereotyping, which hold the dangers of becoming self-fulfilling prophecy, we need to acknowledge the whole of the adolescent, including his agency, individuality, environmental and cultural influences, and the guidance available to him in his decision making process. All of this will affect the behaviors of a teenager…the way these brain differences influence behavior.

 What we need to be asking is how this information can be used to provide practical value? Instead of viewing this lack of development or maturity in certain decision making areas in the brain as suggesting that a teenager has no control over their decisions, we need to look at how we can educate teachers and parents on providing the support and training that teenagers need to make better decisions.  

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The Implications of Designing Humans

If you could determine that your child had a deficit in infancy, and a drug could be taken to compensate for it early on, lessening the impact of the abnormality on his academic life, would you give it to your child? This is not an easy question to answer, as it brings up queries into the ethics of violating a child’s ability to choose, the question of long-term effects on development and the brain, and the bioengineering of a human race.

It is this last one I would like to take a moment and think on.  While the possibility to predict defects and provide early interventions sounds too good to be true, it is important to look at what implications such a system could have on society and where we could end up as a result. How might this lead us to treating children as objects to be programmed to meet design specifications? What will education look like? It would be hard fit to apply a learner style approach where learner and teacher are sharing knowledge, and the learner is an active participant…even director…of their education. And, most alarming of all, could this lead us to trying to engineer a master race, and we end up repeating history? Let us think, before we jump.

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Cognitive Enhancing with Coffee

If I asked you if you have ever taken a cognitive enhancer, you would most likely tell me no, while you shake you head thinking of Bradley Cooper in Limitless.  However, if you have ever had caffeine then you would be wrong.

“But wait”, you’re saying. “I can’t learn a piano piece in three hours like the Bradley Cooper’s character!“

Cognitive enhancers come in many forms, targeting different mental process and having different effects. They have what is known as different neuromodulatory mechanisms and enhance different cognitive processes. Caffeine, for instance, blocks adenosine, the chemical that makes you tired and promotes the production of adrenaline, which gives you the “awake” feeling and fills you with energy.  It also increases the dopamine levels in the brain by keeping it from being reabsorbed in the brain, which gives you the “happy” feelings. This is similar to what cocaine does. Shocking, right?

 You might be asking, “Wait a minute? If coffee is doing the same thing as caffeine, then, what’s the big deal about cocaine and why is coffee legal?” It’s the degree that is dangerously different.  Cocaine produces a big burst of dopamine in addition to blocking its reabsorption. This produces much higher levels than caffeine can give and is what gives the “euphoric” feeling of being high. Cocaine is mind altering, affecting the decision-making of the user and actually alters the rewards-pleasure centers, while caffeine doesn’t.  The damage to the cocaine user is always severe.

 Let’s get back to cognitive enhancers. Coffee actually increases the vigilance and learning capacity, while increasing working memory. This is because it affects the frontal lobe attentional systems.  Drinking a cup of joe has been shown by research to be associated with higher instances of learning and better ability of recalling the learned information. However, there is a catch. The brain adapts itself to this substance blocking it receiving adenosine and will just grow new receptors to receive the adenosine. This means that more caffeine is needed to reach the same results. With long-term use, the caffeine will be needed to reach a state of normal and no longer produces the initial effects of enhanced alertness, learning and working memory. You will then need it just to get back to where you were before you took it.  

For optimal use as a cognitive enhancer, limit your caffeine intake to once in a while, when you have that large assignment, deadline, or problem to solve. You will experience the full cognitive boosting effects.

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The Problem of Human Investment in Educational Policy for the Disabled

Educational policy is determined by return of investment. This makes sense, since economics and resource distribution are involved, determining where these resources will produce the most profit is important in determining where to invest the money. Educational budget cuts add to this, making it necessary to determine what programs can be cut and where money should be spent. Educational investment is no different than business investment. Budgets have to be met and risks justified; the greater the risk, the greater you return of investment (ROI) needs to be to justify this risk. For those who don’t know, ROI is calculated using a metric that subtracts the cost of the investment from the gain of the investment, and then dividing that number by the investment cost.

How might “gain” (think of this as profit) be calculated in education, as educational models should not be warehouses of monetary profit for the investors? Profit must be calculated as something known as “human investment”, which can be calculated by how much growth effect is produced in each student in whom the investment of resources is made. This can be done by measuring a specific skill set, cognitive or academic, charting the growth trajectory and estimating its growth rate. Unfortunately, educational policy can take on a slightly different measurement, and return is determined by two factors: what economic contribution a student will have on society upon completion of the academic program and how much increase is seen in intelligence levels.

While this may seem like a proper plan from a business angle, it serves as a poor evaluation system for determining the efficacy of an educational policy. While this is true for the whole of the global student base, the focus of this post will be on how well this system works for students with disabilities.  

 An obvious place to start is the economic contribution a student with disabilities will have to his society upon completion of his academic program. A 2015 census in the US1 showed that the unemployment rate for those with disabilities was twice as much as for those without a disability. It is important to remember that ‘unemployment’ only includes those who are able to work and want to, but cannot find a job. That percentage does not include those with disabilities that prohibit them from finding and maintaining a job. Statistically, those with disabilities work less hours and earn lower wages that their able bodied counterparts1. This puts a disabled person at an immediate disadvantage due to statistics (Statistics that are very generalized at that, not identifying percentages for each different disability level but lumping all levels together, including those who are under 16 and over 65.) It is a true fact that, as a generalized whole, those with disabilities will contribute less fiscally to a society. It is also true that the society will instead need to fiscally support them (or should).  Because of this, students with disabilities fail the efficacy test, and as a result, it appears to be a foolish waste of resources to focus scarce resources to implement an educational intervention to increase the intelligence level of the disabled population. Resources are spent to ensure that students with disabilities are included in education, as this has been determined to be a basic human right, but resources are not spent to make sure they excel.

Then we move on to measuring the amount of increase that occurs in the level of a student’s intelligence, after an educational policy, program, method, or intervention is implemented. This sounds rather fair and non-discriminatory at first glance, right? The problem is that they take a very complex thing like intelligence and put it into a formula that does not consider all of the factors that contribute to intelligence advancement. Factors like environment, parent resources, opportunity, quality of education, and disability interventions. It also doesn’t consider the differences that exist in the brain that contribute to how responsive it will be to what was implemented. This includes the important aspects of neuroscience, such as plasticity, neural development, activation of neurotransmitters, and the role of sensory processing and regulation in cognitive advancement, just to name a few. Instead, all students are lumped together, not individualized, and the many variables that will affect their results are not considered.  All students are determined to need the same resources to achieve the same level of advancement, and are measured based on this concept. Foolishness, and I think this comic strip says it well:

   In summary, the system looks at numbers that are generated and if the numbers show a high enough return, the financial investment is made. As you can see, this numbers crunching keeps the educational system pursuing a defective goal and from making the best investment choices with a limited budget. But what if the end goal was changed and future economic contribution was replaced with growth toward personal potential? What if we determined human investment by whether or not we could progress a child, not whether or not the child can progress society? What if we changed our definition of success in learning to actually reflect learning success? We can start by assessing whether each child has the right sized boxes to have an equal vantage point with their peers, before we start measuring their ability to look over the wall.

 1. Statistics taken from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/disabl.nr0.htm

 For a great read on this subject, check out: Howard-Jones, P.A., et al., The timing of educational investment: A neuroscientific perspective. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2011.11.002

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The Responsibility of Neuroscience

To deferrer thinking to a higher authority has been speculated as a by-product of the human condition. Throughout history, we can see evidences of the unthinkable happening, as individuals decide to turn over their ability to think to another human being.  But all of this may be purely rhetorical sentiment that barters dangerously close to the territory of philosophy and behavioral sciences, rather than neuroscience. Why then, we must ask, does this matter at all to the field of neuroscience? After all, in the order of the human hierarchy, would not neuroscientists be above the common masses and thus exempt from the deferring thinking?  Contrary, it is precisely because we are at the neuroscientists that we need to address such human tendencies, with the intent to prevent neuroscience from being desecrated by fables that lead those who do not know to adopt as truth that which has not been vetted out through the practice of scientific research.

 I recently watched a piece on BBC about the global phenomenon known as Brain Games©.  In this piece, one of the founders of this program, educator and reading specialist Paul E. Dennison, was questioned about some of the controversial claims made by him of the neural effects resulting from use of the Brain Gym program.  For starter, I feel sorry for the guy. He was asked questions that were targeted to cut through the neuroscience padding that encased the program he designed… as he should be. I don’t feel sorry for him being asked these challenging questions; that should be what every individual does: critically thinks through information being served them to determine the validity and reliability of the claims.  Hard questions need to be asked. Questions that make the one answering uncomfortable and feeling challenged, because they are being challenged.  Challenged to vet out their own claims to prevent leading the masses in ways that are futile and do not produce the intended results. We should want to be challenged in this way, as well, as a sort of safeguard against being deceived by our own intellect.

 I believe Dennison when he states the claim that he wants to do good by helping children with his program.  However, Dennison, himself, identified where he erred in his way. In the BBC piece, he states that his neuroscience claims came from studies he read. Mr. Dennison did right by researching studies, however, he failed to vet out these studies, and instead deferred his thinking to those who possessed knowledge in areas he did not. I, personally, am taking a note from Mr. Dennison. We all will encounter those who are above us in intellect in some area (even neuroscientist). Let’s not adopt as truth, that which has not been thoroughly investigated, let’s ask the challenging questions, and take personal responsibility for the information we deliver to others. We will be doing our field a service by keeping neuroscience as a respected source of truth.

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It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority

Benjamin Franklin