“Pop science” versus understanding the emergence of the modern mind

The Persistence of Neuromyths in the Educational Settings: A Systematic Review

Neuroscience influences education, and these two areas have converged in a new field denominated “Neuroeducation.” However, the growing interest in the education–brain relationship does not match the proper use of research findings. In 2007, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned of the misunderstandings about the brain among teachers, labeling them as neuromyths. The main objective here is to observe the prevalence of the neuromyths in educators over time. After two decades of publications of research on neuromyths among in-service or prospective teachers, this work presents a systematic scientific review. To select the articles, we used the words: “teachers,” “preservice teachers,” “neuromyths” combined with the Boolean data type “and.” The search was filtered according to the following criteria: (a) identifiable author, (b) written in English, Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese, (c) word neuromyth in title, abstract, or keywords, (d) research with a participant's survey, (e) sample focused on educators, (f) peer-review publication index in JCR, SJR, or ESCI. The documents were found through Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Dialnet, ProQuest, EBSCO-host, and Google Scholar. After the search, 24 articles were identified as being of sufficiently high quality for this systematic review. This result highlights that neuromyths are still the subject of attention almost two decades after their definition. The findings present neuromyths as the consequence of a lack of scientific knowledge, a communicative gap between scientists and teachers, and the low-quality information sources consulted by teachers. In addition, the data on protectors and predictors of neuromyths is inconsistent. There is also no standard scientific methodology nor a guideline to determine a new neuromyth. The results show the need to improve the scientific content in higher education and the importance of in-service teacher training. This research justifies the requirement for university professors to be active researchers and to establish a close link with educators from other fields and levels. Neuroeducation will be the bridge that unites scientific knowledge and practical application in education, with a rigorous, standard method for the entire scientific-educational community.

Doing with less: hominin brain atrophy

In contrast to hominin encephalization, the final Pleistocene and Holocene reduction in cranial volume has attracted very little attention and remains unexplained. Here it is examined in the light of current neuroscientific and archaeological understanding, and it is shown that the most parsimonious explanation is via the domestication hypothesis of recent humans. Accordingly, rapid atrophy of the brain is partly explained by the culturally based process of sexual selection, first detectable in late robust Homo sapiens perhaps 40,000 years ago. Furthermore it is suggested that this deleterious process of neotenization and brain atrophy was compensated for by the concurrent development of exograms, i.e. means of storing memory outside the brain. Consequently most of human memory and cultural information is now stored external to the brain, which has altered that organ significantly and facilitated a cultural complexity that would be impossible to maintain by biological memory alone. The escalating use of exograms, neotenization and reduction in cranial volume all appear to co-occur with numerous other changes to the human genome.

Did courtship drive the evolution of mind?

The driving force in the evolution of language and the human mind was the advantage gained in courtship by efficient communicators. Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny may offer an alternative to Donald's picture of the relative origins of language and mimesis. Very recent evidence is pertinent to dating the origin of language.

The role of vocalization, memory retrieval, and external symbols in cognitive evolution

The human vocal apparatus is part of a vertically integrated system, and I agree withLicbennanthat modern high-speed phonology co-evolved with our capacity for grammar.Olsonand I agree that some distinctly human thought skills appear to be fairly recent cultural acquisitions related to the introduction of new symbolic technologies and external (that is, nonbiological) memory storage.Stenning's concern with my use of the term “episodic” can be resolved by distinguishing between episodic storage and retrieval.Baum's suggestions regarding courtship and cognitive evolution seem to apply better to mimetic expression than to language.

Episodic is what apes are not

Donald presents a three-stage theory of the evolution of cognition – episodic, mimetic, symbolic. This commentary is chiefly concerned with his use of the first term “episodic” which conflicts with standard usage in the memory literature. This conflict of usage has more than terminological implications for Donald's theory.

On Neanderthal speech and human evolution

Loring Brace's assertion that “Neanderthals were just as capable of articulate speech as we are” reflects ignorance of speech anatomy and physiology. Metrical analyses of hyoid bone morphology cannot predict supralaryngeal vocal tract (SVT) shape. Houghton's (1993) “modern” Neanderthal SVT reconstruction yields an impossible creature who had a larynx positioned in his chest. The reconstructed modem SVTs of early fossil Homo sapiens indicate brains that can regulate speech, consistent with Merlin Donalds timetable for the evolution of language.

Taxing memory: Writing, memory, and conceptual change

Writing is important not because it “extends memory” but because it invites new concepts. The basic cognitive resources, including memory, have remained unchanged for perhaps a million years but the objects on which it has to work have changed significantly partly because of writing which has tended to turn speech into an object of reflection and analysis.