Theory Review: Brain and Mind

Chad Miller

EDAC 635, Spring 2022

Professor:  Dr. Bo Chang

February 18, 2022

Student Name	Commented on
Chad Miller	Lyston Loucks
Chad Miller	Evaristus Ngetsop

Linking the brain and mind together with educational methods has seemed like the holy grail for quite some time, especially since the Decade of the Brain in the 1990’s and the rise of neuroscience. If we only understood how the brain functioned at a biological level of detail, and how that mapped to cognitive function in the mind, then we would be able to radically customize and contour the educational process for each brain and mind it was trying to reach and develop. This review will look at scientific findings on the brain and mind and attempt to relate them to educational methods and theories optimized to use the information.

The brain’s biology is relatively well understood at the macro level. Built by neurons, microscopic highly specialized cells that process and transmit information to other neurons in a complex network of connections made through dendrites and tiny gaps, the nervous system carries information from the brain through the spinal cord and the rest of the nervous system to control muscle contraction and many other systems. They also carry sense information back to the brain to be processed, where most neurons reside. These neurons develop better connections as they fire together, increasing their ability to work together more often, and that has been a proposed mechanism associated with learning for over 60 years. (Hebb, 1961)

But the mind’s mechanisms are more shrouded. As we study the mind’s functioning and process, new research is leading us to the concept of the mind acting as a prediction engine, adapting to errors in predicted sense data based on internal expectation and certainty models based on our own inferences. (Kuperberg, 2021) Even processes that happen without conscious awareness in the mind can increase learning and unexpressed knowledge. (Reber, 1989)

Neuroscience is the study of the workings and structure of the brain and mind, through theories on mechanisms that may exist and the measurements that can be made to validate said theories. It includes theories of the mind which can only be measured through the individual’s interpretation of their own mind and the observation of various behaviors tied to the mind. This disconnect makes the mechanisms of the theories in neuroscience difficult to determine and verify.

There are three parts of the brain that seem to function together but differently in their mechanism. The reticular activating system, sometimes called the reptilian brain, exists in structures at the bottom of the brain called the brain stem. It is most concerned with messaging from the rest of the body in and out of the brain and seems to activate in situations of survival, threat, stress, and basic needs.

The limbic system, referred to as the mammalian brain, seems to interact with experiences to trigger feelings and relate them to values. It can determine what type of response the rest of the brain (positive or negative) will have in relation to the new experience and also can influence how the experience is stored in short-term or long-term memory. It registers pleasure and pain based on the effects to our personal self-preservation.

Finally, the neo-cortex is the combination of both cerebral hemispheres and the corpus callosum which connects the two. It is the seat of intelligence and produces all speech and learning, creates the context for all senses, processes things in parallel, and is a massive prediction engine to try and adapt to the current and future environment to preserve the individual. (Mackeracher, 2004)

There are still more implications on brain functioning and how it responds to brain health, dealing with the environment the person is in from temperature, to stress, to power imbalances of the people in the learning center. Emotional health can play a part in how the brain is effective in performing as well, and the current state of the perceived student’s threat response will definitely make an impact on the retention of learning in that situation.

The concept of a brain “hijack” is when there is perceived threat to the individual. In this case, the reticular activating system or the limbic system will in a sense override the higher systems to take action to protect the self. Only when the self’s threat has ended can the other parts of the brain retake control of the mind and body. This situation is important from a learning perspective because the neo-cortex has the most involvement with learning new concepts.

These threats can be categorized into issues around five topics. Status is focused on an individual’s relative importance to others. Certainty is involved with the brain as a prediction engine, in that it will always work toward a certain future instead of one it cannot predict. Autonomy is the person’s ability to make choices that determine their outcome in events. Relatedness addresses their sense of connection with others. Fairness has to do with justice and non-discrimination across a group. Making sure these are not activated puts the brain in the best state for learning. (Bowman, 2020)

There are more ways to look at how the mind functions and what mechanisms go on inside the brain. Perception strategies like pattern recognition and focus and attention go to how the individual perceives things in the foreground (important) and other things in the background (noise) in how they filter experiences. Then memory strategies come to bear in how the relevant information is laid down in memory: verbally or visually aligned, narrow or broad attachments to categories, and even how often the memory is recalled or reconstructed.

There are also many theories about how the mind can be rated on different kinds of intelligences, maturity models on different fields. There are also issues around adults continuing to develop their cognitive capacities and new information in their minds as they ingest more and more experiences and can relate them in schemas. (Mackeracher, 2004)

Educational neuroscience is the application of mechanisms discovered in neuroscientific studies to the educative process for better learning, sometimes regarding behaviors, decision-making, the value of rewards and all kinds of reasoning. This is still a new field, even though there are new groups like IMBES (International Mind, Brain, and Education Society) and older groups like EARLI (European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction) who is adding educational neuroscience as a special interest group for further study.

Because this is a newer field, there can be issues with going all out in overhauling educational curriculums and methods. As an example, I think on the “new math” educational overhaul in the 1960’s and 1970’s. (Miller, 1990) It took educational systems by storm and there were stories of huge potential benefits. It was pushed through 85% of all schools in a decade, and it ended up being a complete failure. When we as educators see large potential benefits, we want to go fast. I hope we listen to history at this time regarding the speed which we attempt to incorporate the results from educational neuroscience into our practices.

Applications

Repetition in learning curriculums were built in long before Hebb proposed the mechanism for neuron linking. As the different psychological and neuroscience fields develop, there exists the opportunity to continually customize learning methods to the theoretical mechanisms in the brain and mind. Even the concept of combining methods (such as repetition and teaching mechanism) has been tried in education with success without a firm understanding of why the multiple methods would produce a better result.

With the brain and all its mechanisms seemingly focused on self-preservation above everything else, it is easy to infer that the environment is of critical importance as we situate the students in the learning center. The goal of eliminating any part of the environment (physical, emotional, social, etc.) that would potentially produce a threat response may be the most important goal, since if the threat response is activated in any of the students, learning in that session is reduced or eliminated for them. Simply the association of concepts and learning with negative emotions can be demotivating for the student.

Understanding how expectations play a part in cognition can also influence learning methods. The fact that unexpected rewards have a greater effect on dopamine levels in the brain can enhance the brain’s ability to code learning along with the positive experience of the dopamine hit and allow a greater chance for retrieval based on the associated learning experience. (Steinberg, Keiflin, Boivin, Witten, Deisseroth, & Janak, 2013)

Regardless of if the theories on multiple intelligences converge into a standard set, using the concepts of different ways of learning can be beneficial, even in situations like physical education and cooperative learning versus repetition, form, and practice. (Xin & Liu, 2018)

With all of the new mechanisms of cognition and recall proposed by recently researched neuroscientists, one could assume that the educator would have to also develop a firm understanding of neuroscience to be the most effective instructor possible. This is not necessarily the case, rather that educators continue to focus on behavior and the whole output from each student in determining an understanding of their abilities to receive the instruction and to show signs of the learning results from perceiving their emotions and inferring motivational levels. (Thomas, Ansari, & Knowland, 2019)

Even with all of this information, true mechanisms and theories are hard to find. Mackeracher goes into some older studies from 1984 to 1995 on hemisphere specialization and puts emphasis on how it could influence teaching content methods, but newer articles (Goswami, 2006) question the early results as misinformation and others (Kim & Sankey, 2018) call hemisphere specialization a neuromyth – early theories from neuroscience that don’t hold up in later studies – and go to show strong belief of these as true amongst educators.

Another thought in the warning about applying new theories to overhaul educational methods is to use the field of cognitive psychology as a bridging mechanism between new results in neuroscience. Waiting on how these theories affect theories in psychology, then using the psychological theories to influence educational methods may keep educators from jumping into fads that do not pan out in the long run.

Reflections

There is a lot of neuroscience research going on and each new theory provided is a potential gold mine in what it can do to improve educational methods and results. I was overwhelmed with all of the topics that could be researched and the sheer mass of information to produce even a high-level review of the literature.

I love the theoretical ideas of threat response and have previously read “Your Brain at Work” by David Rock. I used his theories at my work to help me understand others’ reactions around threat that were previously not obvious to me, and it helped me modify my behavior when faced with those tense situations. I believe instructors can do the same thing for their students with positive outcomes.

I’m really hoping that being a successful educator, consultant, mentor, and coach does not require mastery of the above topics but that my methods can be improved with the progress I can make using the above ideas.

Process

I read the chapter, Brain and Mind in Learning (Mackeracher, 2004), and proceeded to write an outline of the major topics including brain and nervous system biology and function, the nature of the parallel processing of the brain, cognition and varied strategies the mind employs in perception, memory, concept relation, and styles of thinking. I went on to note the many different and varied categorizations of intelligences and the theories behind each, and the different developmental theories associated with cognition over time.

I then researched through the Ball State Libraries web pages and EBSCO different articles written in the last ten years and peer reviewed to get a recent overview of relevant studies in the field. Since I am fairly new to researching, I looked for overviews and generalities instead of detailed research studies.

 I combined ideas from the articles into the outline and came up with much too large of an outline, so I compacted and compressed it into the main section of the paper.

Afterwards, I built the application section by pulling examples and recommendations from each article and book of possible ways to implement some of the theories for better learning.

Finally, I reflected on what I had learned through the process and tidied up the references and details.

Theoretical Idea	Application to learning
Neuroscience and brain biology, repetition, prediction engine mechanisms	What methods can we use? All of them. Applying different contexts for learning can stimulate different internal learning mechanisms and better cement the knowledge or seed it in multiple places for later retrieval. Teaching the process as well as doing repetitive work can enhance the result.
Threat levels or “triune” brain responses to threats, (SCARF) theory	Eliminate threats at all costs
Perception, memory, and cognitive strategies	Expectation management
Intelligence theories	Spread methods around to maximize the “hook”, use multiple methods
Educational Neuroscience and its warnings	Taking into account the newness of the field with experimentation, not overhaul Bridging through psychology

References

Kuperberg, G. R. (2021). Tea With Milk? A Hierarchical Generative Framework of Sequential Event Comprehension. Topics in Cognitive Science, 13(1), 256–298. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1111/tops.12518

Mackeracher, D. (2004). Making sense of adult learning (2nd ed.) University of Toronto

Bowman, R. F. (2020). Teaching and Learning with the Social Brain in Mind. Clearing House, 93(2), 100–106. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1080/00098655.2020.1716670

Thomas, M. S. C., Ansari, D., & Knowland, V. C. P. (2019). Annual research review: Educational neuroscience: Progress and prospects. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 60(4), 477–492. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1111/jcpp.12973

Miller, J. W. (1990). Whatever Happened to New Math? American Heritage, 41(8), 76.

Goswami, U. (2006). Neuroscience and education: from research to practice? Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 7(5), 406–411. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1038/nrn1907

Kim, M., & Sankey, D. (2018). Philosophy, neuroscience and pre-service teachers’ beliefs in neuromyths: A call for remedial action. Educational Philosophy & Theory, 50(13), 1214–1227. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1080/00131857.2017.1395736

Hebb, D. (1961). The organization of behavior : a neuropsychological theory. Science Editions, Inc.

Reber, A. S. (1989). Implicit learning and tacit knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118(3), 219–235. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1037/0096-3445.118.3.219

Steinberg, E. E., Keiflin, R., Boivin, J. R., Witten, I. B., Deisseroth, K., & Janak, P. H. (2013). A causal link between prediction errors, dopamine neurons and learning. Nature Neuroscience, 16(7), 966–973. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1038/nn.3413

Xin W., & Yuanguo L. (2018). Cooperative Learning Method in Physical Education Teaching Based on Multiple Intelligence Theory. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 18(5), 2176–2186. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.12738/estp.2018.5.117