Class 1
Neuroscience and Education – Carew
Neuro-education is discipline that seeks to blend the collective fields of neuroscience, psychology,
cognitive science, and education to create a better understanding of how we learn and how this
information can be used to create more effective teaching methods, curricula and educational policy.
Learning and teaching are intertwined with brain function.
Innovation and creative thinking are not being taught, practiced, or nurtured in children’s lives. →
concerning
Seeks to blend the collective fields of neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and education to
create more effective teaching methods and curricula and to inform and transform educational
policy.
Want neuro-education to help reach game-changers for education and learning.
A parity relationship between educators and researchers is integral to make gains in educational
outcomes. Educators must pull research findings out of the lab and put them to use in the classroom,
and researchers need to distill their results for teachers’ purposes. Effective changes in teacher
practices must then be communicated back to scientist. → Feedback crucial for improvement
Greater exposure to scientist and high-quality research will help educators become more informed
and critical consumers of science and make it easier for them to avoid non-research-based fads.
Neuro-education may help prevent counterproductive actions in tough times.
Neuro-education initiatives can help frame issues and make the case for far-sighted education
policies that make evidence-based sense for children’s development.
Children must remain the clear motivation for action and should form the basis for a compelling drive
to sustain and grow this movement.
Neuro-education provides a paradigm for how science can inform broader social policies by bein
inclusive and collaborative with other established disciplines.
, Class 2
Educational Neuroscience: The early years – McCandliss
Developmental cognitive neuroscience explores mechanisms of change at the cognitive and neural
systems level.
Reading development has proven to be an early touchstone topic for interdisciplinary work in
cognitive development, systems neuroscience, and education.
Changes in functional circuitry within and between systems that support vision and language have
been linked to progressive cognitive developments in reading ability.
A repeated fMRI study of kindergarten children:
- Shows that, over a course of 8 weeks, accumulating just 3.6h of playtime with an educational
computer program leads to changes in neural activity within regions of the visual system
associated with viewing letters. These changes include in the creased blood oxygenation
level dependent (BOLD) responses in the left occipital temporal cortex and in the scalp
recordings of ERPs over left inferior posterior electrodes after viewing letter stimuli.
Study 1; Linking the changes in brain activity to educational experimental manipulations has proven
to be an elusive task.
- Randomly assign children to 1 or 2 educational experiences
- Crossover phase of the design enabled each group to serve as its own control across the 2
educational experiences
- Tracking changes in both fMRI and ERP responses provided converging evidence that the
educational manipulation induced change in the processes applied during the online
perception of letters.
→Strongest evidence to link educational experiences to specific changes in brain activity in young
children.
Study 2; impact of 2 educational experiences on occipito-temporal regions associated with
recognizing letters.
- Hypothesis: specific educational activities performed with letters, rather than just visual
experiences with letters, are key factors in driving changes in BOLD responses within the
fusiform gyrus.
- Sensorimotor learning condition produced increases in BOLD responses to letters, especially
in the left fusiform gyrus, but is also produces weaker and smaller effects in the right
fusiform gyrus.
- Highlights potential of educational neuroscience studies to directly examine the critical
facets of effective instructional design. → insight in how different educational approaches to
teaching the same material may impact both learning and changes in functional circuitry that
supports such learning
Study 3; fMRI to explore the neural basis of 3rd grade children’s emerging sensitivity to the
association between particular letters and particular speech sounds. (interaction between multiple
neural systems).
- Capturing sensitivity to the specific association trained in school and inherent in the childre’s
native writing system.
Dyslectic children struggle to establish robust cortical associations between visual representations of
letters and auditory representations of speech sounds, novel educational innovations may support
such learning effort. →Game.
→New possibilities may emerge for educational and neuroscience research efforts to inform one
another in increasingly rapid cycles.
Neuroscience and Education – Carew
Neuro-education is discipline that seeks to blend the collective fields of neuroscience, psychology,
cognitive science, and education to create a better understanding of how we learn and how this
information can be used to create more effective teaching methods, curricula and educational policy.
Learning and teaching are intertwined with brain function.
Innovation and creative thinking are not being taught, practiced, or nurtured in children’s lives. →
concerning
Seeks to blend the collective fields of neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and education to
create more effective teaching methods and curricula and to inform and transform educational
policy.
Want neuro-education to help reach game-changers for education and learning.
A parity relationship between educators and researchers is integral to make gains in educational
outcomes. Educators must pull research findings out of the lab and put them to use in the classroom,
and researchers need to distill their results for teachers’ purposes. Effective changes in teacher
practices must then be communicated back to scientist. → Feedback crucial for improvement
Greater exposure to scientist and high-quality research will help educators become more informed
and critical consumers of science and make it easier for them to avoid non-research-based fads.
Neuro-education may help prevent counterproductive actions in tough times.
Neuro-education initiatives can help frame issues and make the case for far-sighted education
policies that make evidence-based sense for children’s development.
Children must remain the clear motivation for action and should form the basis for a compelling drive
to sustain and grow this movement.
Neuro-education provides a paradigm for how science can inform broader social policies by bein
inclusive and collaborative with other established disciplines.
, Class 2
Educational Neuroscience: The early years – McCandliss
Developmental cognitive neuroscience explores mechanisms of change at the cognitive and neural
systems level.
Reading development has proven to be an early touchstone topic for interdisciplinary work in
cognitive development, systems neuroscience, and education.
Changes in functional circuitry within and between systems that support vision and language have
been linked to progressive cognitive developments in reading ability.
A repeated fMRI study of kindergarten children:
- Shows that, over a course of 8 weeks, accumulating just 3.6h of playtime with an educational
computer program leads to changes in neural activity within regions of the visual system
associated with viewing letters. These changes include in the creased blood oxygenation
level dependent (BOLD) responses in the left occipital temporal cortex and in the scalp
recordings of ERPs over left inferior posterior electrodes after viewing letter stimuli.
Study 1; Linking the changes in brain activity to educational experimental manipulations has proven
to be an elusive task.
- Randomly assign children to 1 or 2 educational experiences
- Crossover phase of the design enabled each group to serve as its own control across the 2
educational experiences
- Tracking changes in both fMRI and ERP responses provided converging evidence that the
educational manipulation induced change in the processes applied during the online
perception of letters.
→Strongest evidence to link educational experiences to specific changes in brain activity in young
children.
Study 2; impact of 2 educational experiences on occipito-temporal regions associated with
recognizing letters.
- Hypothesis: specific educational activities performed with letters, rather than just visual
experiences with letters, are key factors in driving changes in BOLD responses within the
fusiform gyrus.
- Sensorimotor learning condition produced increases in BOLD responses to letters, especially
in the left fusiform gyrus, but is also produces weaker and smaller effects in the right
fusiform gyrus.
- Highlights potential of educational neuroscience studies to directly examine the critical
facets of effective instructional design. → insight in how different educational approaches to
teaching the same material may impact both learning and changes in functional circuitry that
supports such learning
Study 3; fMRI to explore the neural basis of 3rd grade children’s emerging sensitivity to the
association between particular letters and particular speech sounds. (interaction between multiple
neural systems).
- Capturing sensitivity to the specific association trained in school and inherent in the childre’s
native writing system.
Dyslectic children struggle to establish robust cortical associations between visual representations of
letters and auditory representations of speech sounds, novel educational innovations may support
such learning effort. →Game.
→New possibilities may emerge for educational and neuroscience research efforts to inform one
another in increasingly rapid cycles.
