Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge

Long-term impact of neuroscience outreach interventions on elementary students' knowledge

Neuroeducation is characterized as a subarea of neuroscience that involves comprehending the teaching and learning processes and relating them to neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neuropsychology. The inclusion of some aspects of the neuroscience of learning in teachers' and students' formation, applying them in teaching-learning environments, contributes to the quality of education and impacts students' quality of life and health. Thus, the POPNEURO outreach program performs interventions with students and teachers of low-income schools to disseminate neuroscience concepts, relating them to the students' daily lives. This study reports the impact of these actions, assessed 1 yr after their conclusion. The results showed that the long-term impact of the activities carried out is, in general, positive. Even 1 yr after the activities end, students demonstrate knowledge about the neuroscience themes and satisfaction with participating.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This article reports on neuroscience disclosure activities performed with school students and describes their short- and long-term positive impact. Even 1 yr after the activities, students demonstrate knowledge about the themes worked on and satisfaction with the activities.

Is neuroimaging ready for the classroom? A systematic review of hyperscanning studies in learning

Whether education research can be informed by findings from neuroscience studies has been hotly debated since Bruer's (1997) famous claim that neuroscience and education are "a bridge too far". However, this claim came before recent advancements in portable electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technologies, and second-person neuroscience techniques that brought about significant headway in understanding instructor-learner interactions in the classroom. To explore whether neuroscience and education are still two very separate fields, we systematically review 15 hyperscanning studies that were conducted in real-world classrooms or that implemented a teaching-learning task to investigate instructor-learner dynamics. Findings from this investigation illustrate that inter-brain synchrony between instructor and learner is an additional and valuable dimension to understand the complex web of instructor- and learner-related variables that influence learning. Importantly, these findings demonstrate the possibility of conducting real-world classroom studies with portable neuroimaging techniques and highlight the potential of such studies in providing translatable real-world implications. Once thought of as incompatible, a successful coupling between neuroscience and education is now within sight.

Defining the Science of Learning: A scoping review

BACKGROUND

Interest in research on the Science of Learning continues to grow. However, ambiguity about what this field is can negatively impact communication and collaboration and may inadequately inform educational training programs or funding initiatives that are not sufficiently inclusive in focus.

METHODS

The present scoping review aimed to synthesize a working definition of the Science of Learning using Web of Science and ProQuest database searches.

RESULTS

In total, 43 unique definitions were identified across 50 documents including journal articles, theses, conference papers, and book chapters. Definitions of the Science of Learning differed considerably when describing the fields thought to contribute to research on this topic.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on findings, we propose a working definition of the Science of Learning for discussion and further refinement: the scientific study of the underlying bases of learning with the goal of describing, understanding, or improving learning across developmental stages and diverse contexts.

Learning from others is good, with others is better: the role of social interaction in human acquisition of new knowledge

Learning in humans is highly embedded in social interaction: since the very early stages of our lives, we form memories and acquire knowledge about the world from and with others. Yet, within cognitive science and neuroscience, human learning is mainly studied in isolation. The focus of past research in learning has been either exclusively on the learner or (less often) on the teacher, with the primary aim of determining developmental trajectories and/or effective teaching techniques. In fact, social interaction has rarely been explicitly taken as a variable of interest, despite being the medium through which learning occurs, especially in development, but also in adulthood. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging research on social human learning, specifically focusing on cognitive models of how we acquire semantic knowledge from and with others, and include both developmental as well as adult work. We then identify potential cognitive mechanisms that support social learning, and their neural correlates. The aim is to outline key new directions for experiments investigating how knowledge is acquired in its ecological niche, i.e. socially, within the framework of the two-person neuroscience approach. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Neuroscience in Education: A Bridge Too Far or One That Has Yet to Be Built: Introduction to the "Brain Goes to School"

There have been numerous detractors and supporters relating to attempts to merge the neurosciences and the knowledge base of related contributing disciplines with the field of education. Some have argued that this is a "bridge too far". The predominant view is that the relationship between neuroscience and the classroom has been neither significantly examined, nor applied. What is needed is a specially trained class of professionals whose role it would be to guide the introduction of cognitive neuroscience into educational practice in a sensible and ethical manner. Neuroeducators would play a pivotal role in assessing the quality of evidence purporting to be relevant to education, assessing who is best placed to employ newly developed knowledge, as well as with what safeguards, in addition to investigating how to deal with unexpected consequences of implemented research findings. This special issue of the "The Brain Goes to School" aims to provide support for the development of training programs that truly integrate curriculum design and classroom instruction with the developmental cognitive neurosciences.

Educational neurotechnology: Where do we go from here?

Recent educational trends point to an interest in educational neurotechnology. While these tools have the potential to change education, little is known about whether their use improves educational outcomes. Additionally, their adoption may be negatively impacted by teachers' lack of knowledge about the brain. In this paper we outline the potential of educational neurotechnology including what we know, what we do not yet know, and additional considerations for the ethical, successful adoption of these tools in classrooms around the world. Special consideration is given to the training needs of pre- and in-service educators whose support will be essential to the successful adoption of educational neurotechnology.

On the Application of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in Educational Environments

The paper overviews components of neurologic processing efficiencies to develop innovative methodologies and thinking to school-based applications and changes in educational leadership based on sound findings in the cognitive neurosciences applied to schools and learners. Systems science can allow us to better manage classroom-based learning and instruction on the basis of relatively easily evaluated efficiencies or inefficiencies and optimization instead of simply examining achievement. "Medicalizing" the learning process with concepts such as "learning disability" or employing grading methods such as pass-fail does little to aid in understanding the processes that learners employ to acquire, integrate, remember, and apply information learned. The paper endeavors to overview and provided reference to tools that can be employed that allow a better focus on nervous system-based strategic approaches to classroom learning.

Tag and capture: how salient experiences target and rescue nearby events in memory

The long-term fate of a memory is not exclusively determined by the events occurring at the moment of encoding. Research at the cellular, circuit, and behavioral levels is beginning to reveal how neurochemical activations in the moments surrounding an event can retroactively and proactively rescue weak memory for seemingly mundane experiences. We review emerging evidence showing enhancement of weakly formed memories encoded minutes to hours before or after a related motivationally relevant experience. We discuss proposed neurobiological mechanisms for strengthening weak memories formed in temporal proximity to a strong event, and how this knowledge could be leveraged to improve memory for information that is prone to forgetting.

Identifying Non-Math Students from Brain MRIs with an Ensemble Classifier Based on Subspace-Enhanced Contrastive Learning

In current research processes, mathematical learning has significantly impacted the brain’s plasticity and cognitive functions. While biochemical changes in brain have been investigated by magnetic resonance spectroscopy, our study attempts to identify non-math students by using magnetic resonance imaging scans (MRIs). The proposed method crops the left middle front gyrus (MFG) region from the MRI, resulting in a multi-instance classification problem. Then, subspace enhanced contrastive learning is employed on all instances to learn robust deep features, followed by an ensemble classifier based on multiple-layer-perceptron models for student identification. The experiments were conducted on 123 MRIs taken from 72 math students and 51 non-math students. The proposed method arrived at an accuracy of 73.7% for image classification and 91.8% for student classification. Results show the proposed workflow successfully identifies the students who lack mathematical education by using MRI data. This study provides insights into the impact of mathematical education on brain development from structural imaging.

Effect of a Science of Learning Course on Beliefs in Neuromyths and Neuroscience Literacy

Misconceptions about the brain (neuromyths) among educators have been found across different countries, but little has been done to dispel them. The present study assessed the effect of a one-year Science of Learning (SoL) course on neuroscience literacy and beliefs in neuromyths in a sample of Chilean pre-service teachers. An experimental group of pre-service teachers, who took the SoL course as part of their university training, and a control group were needed for the study. Participants in both groups completed an online survey three times during the year (beginning, middle and end of year). The results showed that participants in both groups responded correctly to most assertions but held major misconceptions about the brain (Time 1), in line with previous studies. Regarding neuroscience literacy, participants in the experimental and control groups did not differ significantly at Time 1, but the experimental group showed significantly better performance than the control group at Time 2 and Time 3. Unlike neuroscience literacy, the results in neuromyth beliefs did not differ significantly by group at Time 1 and Time 2; however, at Time 3, the experimental group showed a significant decline in neuromyth beliefs. Overall, these results suggest that the SoL course significantly improved overall neuroscience literacy and reduced neuromyth belief among pre-service teachers, but the effect of the intervention was small.

Odor cueing during sleep improves consolidation of a history lesson in a school setting

Sleep is a key factor in memory consolidation. During sleep, information is reactivated, transferred, and redistributed to neocortical areas, thus favoring memory consolidation and integration. Although these reactivations occur spontaneously, they can also be induced using external cues, such as sound or odor cues, linked to the acquired information. Hence, targeted memory reactivation during sleep represents an advantageous tool for improving memory consolidation in real-life settings. In this study, our goal was to improve the consolidation of complex information such as that of a history lesson, using a school study session in the presence of an odor, and a reactivation round while sleeping at home on the same night of the acquisition, without using additional study sessions. We found that complex information can be associated with an odor in the classroom and that one session of reactivation during the first night of sleep in the students’ houses improves its consolidation. These results bring new evidence for the implementation of reactivation during sleep in real-life settings.

Assessing Algorithmic Thinking Skills in Relation to Age in Early Childhood STEM Education

In the modern digital era, intensive efforts are made to inject computational thinking (CT) across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, aiming at formulating a well-trained citizenry and workforce capable of confronting intricate problems that would not be solvable unless exercising CT skills. Focusing on contributing to the research area of CT assessment in the first two years of primary school, we investigated the correlation of algorithmic thinking skills, as a fundamental CT competency, with students’ age in early childhood settings. This article reports a relevant research study, which we implemented under the umbrella of quantitative methodology, employing an innovative assessment tool we constructed for serving the needs of our study. The research was conducted within the context of the environmental study course, adding to the efforts of infusing CT into STEM fields. The study results shed light on the correlation between algorithmic thinking skills and age in early childhood, revealing that age is a predictor factor for algorithmic thinking and, therefore, for CT.

Neuroscience Outside the Box: From the Laboratory to Discussing Drug Abuse at Schools

One of the effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic is that low-income countries were pushed further into extreme poverty, exacerbating social inequalities and increasing susceptibility to drug use/abuse in people of all ages. The risks of drug abuse may not be fully understood by all members of society, partly because of the taboo nature of the subject, and partly because of the considerable gap between scientific production/understanding and communication of such knowledge to the public at large. Drug use is a major challenge to social development and a leading cause of school dropout rates worldwide. Some public policies adopted in several countries in recent decades failed to prevent drug use, especially because they focused on imposing combative or coercive measures, investing little or nothing in education and prevention. Here we highlight the role of neuroscience education as a valid approach in drug use education and prevention. We propose building a bridge between schools and scientists by promoting information, student engagement and honest dialogue, and show evidence that public policy regulators should be persuaded to support such science-based education programs in their efforts to effect important positive changes in society.

More efficient formation of longer-term representations for word forms at birth can be linked to better language skills at 2 years

Infants are able to extract words from speech early in life. Here we show that the quality of forming longer-term representations for word forms at birth predicts expressive language ability at the age of two years. Seventy-five neonates were familiarized with two spoken disyllabic pseudowords. We then tested whether the neonate brain predicts the second syllable from the first one by presenting a familiarized pseudoword frequently, and occasionally violating the learned syllable combination by different rare pseudowords. Distinct brain responses were elicited by predicted and unpredicted word endings, suggesting that the neonates had learned the familiarized pseudowords. The difference between responses to predicted and unpredicted pseudowords indexing the quality of word-form learning during familiarization significantly correlated with expressive language scores (the mean length of utterance) at 24 months in the same infant. These findings suggest that 1) neonates can memorize disyllabic words so that a learned first syllable generates predictions for the word ending, and 2) early individual differences in the quality of word-form learning correlate with language skills. This relationship helps early identification of infants at risk for language impairment.

A Machine Learning Approach to Personalize Computerized Cognitive Training Interventions

Executive functions are a class of cognitive processes critical for purposeful goal-directed behavior. Cognitive training is the adequate stimulation of executive functions and has been extensively studied and applied for more than 20 years. However, there is still a lack of solid consensus in the scientific community about its potential to elicit consistent improvements in untrained domains. Individual differences are considered one of the most important factors of inconsistent reports on cognitive training benefits, as differences in cognitive functioning are both genetic and context-dependent, and might be affected by age and socioeconomic status. We here present a proof of concept based on the hypothesis that baseline individual differences among subjects would provide valuable information to predict the individual effectiveness of a cognitive training intervention. With a dataset from an investigation in which 73 6-year-olds trained their executive functions using an online software with a fixed protocol, freely available at www.matemarote.org.ar, we trained a support vector classifier that successfully predicted (average accuracy = 0.67, AUC = 0.707) whether a child would improve, or not, after the cognitive stimulation, using baseline individual differences as features. We also performed a permutation feature importance analysis that suggested that all features contribute equally to the model's performance. In the long term, this results might allow us to design better training strategies for those players who are less likely to benefit from the current training protocols in order to maximize the stimulation for each child.

Educational Neuroscience Training for Teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Construction

The attention to the laws of the brain and the mechanism of learning in the smart education era becomes the starting point for the convergence and development of education and neuroscience, which also inspired educational neuroscience (EN) affecting the teacher’s development. Although teachers always have a general curiosity about EN and its applications, the limited knowledge hinders their general practice, neuromyths begin to emerge, and there is no evidence to directly show the connection between EN and teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) knowledge. Based on an EN teacher training program for 216 teachers, this study verifies that EN training programs can promote teachers’ understanding of EN-related knowledge, and EN is also correlated to teachers’ TPACK. However, the EN training program does not promote high well-being and satisfaction. The research also analyzes the process of teachers’ EN knowledge dissemination based on interviews, and the research conclusion can further reveal the necessity of EN training for teachers in the future.

An MRI Study on Effects of Math Education on Brain Development Using Multi-Instance Contrastive Learning

This paper explores whether mathematical education has effects on brain development from the perspective of brain MRIs. While biochemical changes in the left middle front gyrus region of the brain have been investigated, we proposed to classify students by using MRIs from the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) region that was left untouched in the previous study. On the cropped IPS regions, the proposed model developed popular contrastive learning (CL) to solve the problem of multi-instance representation learning. The resulted data representations were then fed into a linear neural network to identify whether students were in the math group or the non-math group. Experiments were conducted on 123 adolescent students, including 72 math students and 51 non-math students. The proposed model achieved an accuracy of 90.24 % for student classification, gaining more than 5% improvements compared to the classical CL frame. Our study provides not only a multi-instance extension to CL and but also an MRI insight into the impact of mathematical studying on brain development.

On Neuroeducation: Why and How to Improve Neuroscientific Literacy in Educational Professionals

New findings from the neurosciences receive much interest for use in the applied field of education. For the past 15 years, neuroeducation and the application of neuroscience knowledge were seen to have promise, but there is presently some lack of progress. The present paper states that this is due to several factors. Neuromyths are still prevalent, and there is a confusion of tongues between the many neurodisciplines and the domains of behavioral and educational sciences. Second, a focus upon cognitive neuroimaging research has yielded findings that are scientifically relevant, but cannot be used for direct application in the classroom. A third factor pertains to the emphasis which has been on didactics and teaching, whereas the promise of neuroeducation for the teacher may lie more on pedagogical inspiration and support. This article states that the most important knowledge and insights have to do with the notion of brain plasticity; the vision that development is driven by an interaction between a person's biology and the social system. This helps individuals to select and process information, and to adapt to the personal environment. The paper describes how brain maturation and neuropsychological development extend through the important period of adolescence and emergent adulthood. Over this long period, there is a major development of the Executive Functions (EFs) that are essential for both cognitive learning, social behavior and emotional processing and, eventually, personal growth. The paper describes the basic neuroscience knowledge and insights - or "neuroscientific literacy" - that the educational professional should have to understand and appreciate the above-described themes. The authors formulate a proposal for four themes of neuroscience content "that every teacher should know." These four themes are based on the Neuroscience Core Concepts formulated by the Society for Neuroscience. The authors emphasize that integrating neuroscientific knowledge and insights in the field of education should not be a one-way street; attempts directed at improving neuroscientific literacy are a transdisciplinary undertaking. Teacher trainers, experts from the neuroscience fields but also behavioral scientists from applied fields (notable applied neuropsychologists) should all contribute to for the educational innovations needed.

Teaching the Science in Neuroscience to Protect From Neuromyths: From Courses to Fieldwork

In recent decades, Cognitive Neuroscience has evolved from a rather arcane field trying to understand how the brain supports mental activities, to one that contributes to public policies. In this article, we focus on the contributions from Cognitive Neuroscience to Education. This line of research has produced a great deal of information that can potentially help in the transformation of Education, promoting interventions that help in several domains including literacy and math learning, social skills and science. The growth of the Neurosciences has also created a public demand for knowledge and a market for neuro-products to fulfill these demands, through books, booklets, courses, apps and websites. These products are not always based on scientific findings and coupled to the complexities of the scientific theories and evidence, have led to the propagation of misconceptions and the perpetuation of neuromyths. This is particularly harmful for educators because these misconceptions might make them abandon useful practices in favor of others not sustained by evidence. In order to bridge the gap between Education and Neuroscience, we have been conducting, since 2013, a set of activities that put educators and scientists to work together in research projects. The participation goes from discussing the research results of our projects to being part and deciding aspects of the field interventions. Another strategy consists of a course centered around the applications of Neuroscience to Education and their empirical and theoretical bases. These two strategies have to be compared to popularization efforts that just present Neuroscientific results. We show that the more the educators are involved in the discussion of the methodological bases of Neuroscientific knowledge, be it in the course or as part of a stay, the better they manage the underlying concepts. We argue that this is due to the understanding of scientific principles, which leads to a more profound comprehension of what the evidence can and cannot support, thus shielding teachers from the false allure of some commercial neuro-products. We discuss the three approaches and present our efforts to determine whether they lead to a strong understanding of the conceptual and empirical base of Neuroscience.

Factor structure and psychometric properties of the Persian versions of the Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale and Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children

BACKGROUND

The Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (PDSS) and the Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC) are widely used to measure two important facets of sleep patterns, but neither have been adapted and validated for use in Iran. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties and factor structure of the Persian versions of the PDSS and the MESC in a sample of Iranian adolescents.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The Persian versions of PDSS and MESC were translated and administered to a representative sample (n = 407) of Iranian early adolescents, aged 9-15 years, who attended school in morning shifts. The factor structure of both scales, found in prior studies, was tested using Confirmatory Factor Analyses to assess their validity and reliability.

RESULTS

The results revealed that the model fit indices of the one factor solution of the PDSS and the two factor solution of the MESC were acceptable to good. A high Pearson correlation was found between raw and latent factor scores for the PDSS and the two factors derived from the MESC (i.e., Morningness and Planning). Furthermore, the higher the PDSS score (more daytime sleepiness), the lower the MESC scores (more eveningness), indicating criterion validity of the scales showing the expected increase in daytime sleepiness in evening oriented adolescents who wake up early for attending school.

CONCLUSION

The Persian versions of the PDSS and the MESC can be considered reliable and valid tools for evaluating, respectively, daytime sleepiness and morningness-eveningness in the adolescent population of Iran.

Neuroscience Concepts Changed Teachers' Views of Pedagogy and Students

Advances in neuroscience reveal how individual brains change as learning occurs. Translating this neuroscience into practice has largely been unidirectional, from researchers to teachers. However, how teachers view and incorporate neuroscience ideas in their classroom practices remains relatively unexplored. Previously fourteen non-science teachers participated in a 3-week three credit graduate course focusing on foundational ideas in neuroscience. The current work was undertaken to gain insight into if and how individual teachers choose to later apply the proposed set of educational neuroscience concepts (ENCs) in their classrooms. This qualitative follow-up study examined commonalities in how teachers of diverse ages and subjects utilized their new neuroscience understandings. To this end, a year after the course, all participants assessed their perceived usefulness of the ENCs in a survey. Six of those teachers permitted classroom observations and participated in interviews that focused on how the ENCs may have influenced their lesson planning and teaching. The survey revealed that irrespective of subject areas or grade levels taught, teachers found the ENCs useful as organizing principles for their pedagogy now and in the future. Overall teachers estimated that the ENCs’ influence on lesson design had increased from 51% prior to the course to an estimated 90% for future lessons. A cross-case analysis of classroom observations and interviews revealed how teachers used ENCs to inform their pedagogical decisions, organize actions in their classroom, influence their understanding of students, and respond to individual contexts. Teachers recognized the importance of student agency for engaging them in the learning process. The ENCs also offered teachers explanations that affirmed known practices or helped justify exploring untried techniques. The foundational neuroscience concepts offered a small group of teachers a lens to reconsider, re-envision and re-design their lessons. Some teachers applied these ideas more broadly or frequently than others. This case study provided insights into how teachers can directly apply neuroscience knowledge to their practice and views of students.

A scoping review of research on neuroscience training for teachers

BACKGROUND

Including neuroscience concepts in teacher training has continued to gain interest. While many studies advocate for this, little is known about currently published research.

METHODS

The framework for a scoping review was followed in order to generate a more comprehensive understanding of current research on neuroscience training for teachers. The present study aims to: (1) describe the scope of existing research; (2) summarize findings; and (3) provide recommendations for future inquiry.

RESULTS

Limited studies and methodological issues prevent strong conclusions from being drawn about the impact of this training although most results are promising.

CONCLUSIONS

This scoping review provides the first comprehensive summary of the existing research on neuroscience training for teachers and discusses a number of considerations for improving future research in this area.

Emerging neurodevelopmental perspectives on mathematical learning

Strong foundational skills in mathematical problem solving, acquired in early childhood, are critical not only for success in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) fields but also for quantitative reasoning in everyday life. The acquisition of mathematical skills relies on protracted interactive specialization of functional brain networks across development. Using a systems neuroscience approach, this review synthesizes emerging perspectives on neurodevelopmental pathways of mathematical learning, highlighting the functional brain architecture that supports these processes and sources of heterogeneity in mathematical skill acquisition. We identify the core neural building blocks of numerical cognition, anchored in the posterior parietal and ventral temporal-occipital cortices, and describe how memory and cognitive control systems, anchored in the medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex, help scaffold mathematical skill development. We highlight how interactive specialization of functional circuits influences mathematical learning across different stages of development. Functional and structural brain integrity and plasticity associated with math learning can be examined using an individual differences approach to better understand sources of heterogeneity in learning, including cognitive, affective, motivational, and sociocultural factors. Our review emphasizes the dynamic role of neurodevelopmental processes in mathematical learning and cognitive development more generally.

Selective Inhibition of Mirror Invariance for Letters Consolidated by Sleep Doubles Reading Fluency

Mirror invariance is a visual mechanism that enables a prompt recognition of mirror images. This visual capacity emerges early in human development, is useful to recognize objects, faces, and places from both left and right perspectives, and is also present in primates, pigeons, and cephalopods. Notwithstanding, the same visual mechanism has been suspected to be the source of a specific difficulty for a relatively recent human invention-reading-by creating confusion between mirror letters (e.g., b-d in the Latin alphabet). Using an ecologically valid school-based design, we show here that mirror invariance represents indeed a major leash for reading fluency acquisition in first graders. Our causal approach, which specifically targeted mirror invariance inhibition for letters, in a synergic combination with post-training sleep to increase learning consolidation, revealed unprecedented improvement in reading fluency, which became two-times faster. This gain was obtained with as little as 7.5 h of multisensory-motor training to distinguish mirror letters, such as "b" versus "d." The magnitude, automaticity, and duration of this mirror discrimination learning were greatly enhanced by sleep, which keeps the gains perfectly intact even after 4 months. The results were consistently replicated in three randomized controlled trials. They not only reveal an extreme case of cognitive plasticity in humans (i.e., the inhibition in just 3 weeks of a ∼25-million-year-old visual mechanism), that allows adaptation to a cultural activity (reading), but at the same time also show a simple and cost-effective way to unleash the reading fluency potential of millions of children worldwide.

Why Educational Neuroscience Needs Educational and School Psychology to Effectively Translate Neuroscience to Educational Practice

The emerging discipline of educational neuroscience stands at a crossroads between those who see great promise in integrating neuroscience and education and those who see the disciplinary divide as insurmountable. However, such tension is at least partly due to the hitherto predominance of philosophy and theory over the establishment of concrete mechanisms and agents of change. If educational neuroscience is to move forward and emerge as a distinct discipline in its own right, the traditional boundaries and methods must be bridged, and an infrastructure must be in place that allows for collaborative and productive exchange. In the present paper, we argue that school psychologists have the potential to fulfill this need and represent important agents of change in establishing better connections between research and practice. More specifically, we use the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) (2020) Domains of Practice to highlight several areas where school psychology can actively support forging connections between neuroscience and educational practice. School psychologists represent untapped potential in their knowledge, skillset, and placement to serve a vital role in building the bridge between neuroscience and education.

The History of Writing Reflects the Effects of Education on Discourse Structure: Implications for Literacy, Orality, Psychosis and the Axial Age

BACKGROUND

Graph analysis detects psychosis and literacy acquisition. Bronze Age literature has been proposed to contain childish or psychotic features, which would only have matured during the Axial Age (∼800-200 BC), a putative boundary for contemporary mentality.

METHOD

Graph analysis of literary texts spanning ∼4,500 years shows remarkable asymptotic changes over time.

RESULTS

While lexical diversity, long-range recurrence and graph length increase away from randomness, short-range recurrence declines towards random levels. Bronze Age texts are structurally similar to oral reports from literate typical children and literate psychotic adults, but distinct from poetry, and from narratives by preliterate preschoolers or Amerindians. Text structure reconstitutes the "arrow-of-time", converging to educated adult levels at the Axial Age onset.

CONCLUSION

The educational pathways of oral and literate traditions are structurally divergent, with a decreasing range of recurrence in the former, and an increasing range of recurrence in the latter. Education is seemingly the driving force underlying discourse maturation.

Brain knowledge and predictors of neuromyths among teachers in Morocco

The objective of this study was to evaluate brain knowledge and the prevalence of neuromyths among teachers in Morocco. We aimed also predicting factors that may improve teachers' brain knowledge and widespread of neuromyths. An online questionnaire was sent to a large population of Moroccan teachers. The questionnaire contains 32 questions, 20 of them are designed to assess teachers' knowledge about the brain and the remaining 12 questions are neuromyths. The mean score of brain knowledge was (64.34% (SD = 27.9%)) and the mean score of neuromyths was (66.56% (SD= 25.73%)). Besides, 50% of teachers were unable to correctly answer seven out of the 20 brain knowledge questions. Moreover, half of the teachers believed in 9 out of the 12 neuromyths. Knowledge about the brain was the foremost predictor of neuromyths. The study disclosed a real lack of brain knowledge with a widespread of neuromyths among teachers in Morocco.

Brain-to-Brain Synchrony in the STEM Classroom

Cognitive neuroscience research is typically conducted in controlled laboratory environments that hold very little resemblance to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classrooms. Fortunately, recent advances in portable electroencephalography technology now allow researchers to collect brain data from groups of students in real-world classrooms. Even though this line of research is still new, there is growing evidence that students' engagement, memory retention, and social dynamics are reflected in the brain-to-brain synchrony between students and teachers (i.e., the similarity in their brain responses). In this Essay, I will provide an overview of this emerging line of research, discuss how this approach can facilitate new collaborations between neuroscientists and discipline-based education researchers, and propose directions for future research.

The Next 50 Years of Neuroscience

On the 50th anniversary of the Society for Neuroscience, we reflect on the remarkable progress that the field has made in understanding the nervous system, and look forward to the contributions of the next 50 years. We predict a substantial acceleration of our understanding of the nervous system that will drive the development of new therapeutic strategies to treat diseases over the course of the next five decades. We also see neuroscience at the nexus of many societal topics beyond medicine, including education, consumerism, and the justice system. In combination, advances made by basic, translational, and clinical neuroscience research in the next 50 years have great potential for lasting improvements in human health, the economy, and society.

Exploring brain activity and transforming knowledge in visual and textual programming using neuroeducation approaches

Eight (8) computer science students, novice programmers, who were in the first semester of their studies, participated in a field study in order to explore potential differences in their brain activity during programming with a visual programming language versus a textual programming language. The eight students were asked to develop two specific programs in both programming languages (a total of four tasks). The order of these programs was determined, while the order of languages in which they worked differed between the students. Measurement of cerebral activity was performed by the electroencephalography (EEG) imaging method. According to the analysis of the data it appears that the type of programming language did not affect the students' brain activity. Also, six students needed more time to successfully develop the programs they were asked with the first programming language versus the second one, regardless of the type of programming language that was first. In addition, it appears that six students did not show reducing or increasing brain activity as they spent their time on tasks and at the same time did not show a reduction or increase in the time they needed to develop the programs. Finally, the students showed higher average brain activity in the development of the fourth task than the third, and six of them showed higher average brain activity when developing the first versus the second program, regardless of the programming language. The results can contribute to: a) highlighting the need for a diverse educational approach for students when engaging in program development and b) identifying appropriate learning paths to enhance student education in programming.

Educational fMRI: From the Lab to the Classroom

Functional MRI (fMRI) findings hold many potential applications for education, and yet, the translation of fMRI findings to education has not flowed. Here, we address the types of fMRI that could better support applications of neuroscience to the classroom. This 'educational fMRI' comprises eight main challenges: (1) collecting artifact-free fMRI data in school-aged participants and in vulnerable young populations, (2) investigating heterogenous cohorts with wide variability in learning abilities and disabilities, (3) studying the brain under natural and ecological conditions, given that many practical topics of interest for education can be addressed only in ecological contexts, (4) depicting complex age-dependent associations of brain and behaviour with multi-modal imaging, (5) assessing changes in brain function related to developmental trajectories and instructional intervention with longitudinal designs, (6) providing system-level mechanistic explanations of brain function, so that useful individualized predictions about learning can be generated, (7) reporting negative findings, so that resources are not wasted on developing ineffective interventions, and (8) sharing data and creating large-scale longitudinal data repositories to ensure transparency and reproducibility of fMRI findings for education. These issues are of paramount importance to the development of optimal fMRI practices for educational applications.

Exercício da Atenção e Resolução de Problemas em Atividades Cotidianas da Infância

Resumo Este trabalho investiga a relação entre as atividades cotidianas desempenhadas na infância e as funções cognitivas de resolução de problemas e de atenção. Dentre as atividades cotidianas, analisaram-se a leitura, a prática de esportes, o acesso ao computador e a interação com games. Para tanto, aplicou-se um questionário organizado em três partes, contemplando dados do perfil das crianças, o registro da frequência das atividades cotidianas consideradas e a avaliação da presença de comportamentos tomados como indicadores do desempenho da capacidade de resolução de problema e de atenção. O questionário foi respondido pelos responsáveis das crianças, considerando sua percepção. Analisaram-se os resultados de uma amostra de 162 crianças na faixa etária de 6 a 11. Os resultados indicaram a associação entre a leitura e a atenção, e entre o acesso ao computador e o jogar games com a capacidade de resolução de problemas.

Using collaborative action research to resolve practical and philosophical challenges in educational neuroscience

BACKGROUND

Researchers routinely cite neuromyths and neurorealism as barriers preventing teachers from effectively applying brain research to practice. A primary goal within educational neuroscience (EN), is to provide teachers with professional development that allows them to overcome these barriers and gain agency in developing the field. Yet, the EN literature does not provide a tangible framework for developing teachers' philosophical perspectives regarding neuroscience in education.

PURPOSE

Here, we review the history of teacher neuroscience professional development and identify challenges in developing EN teacher learning programs. Next, we present 'learning study', a form of collaborative action research, as a framework for addressing these challenges.

CONCLUSION

We highlight how learning study could be used as an appropriate model for exploring future classroom applications of theoretical neuroscience.

Risks for Child Cognitive Development in Rural Contexts

While poverty all over the world is more typical and extreme in rural contexts, interventions to improve cognition in low socioeconomic status (SES) children are for the most part based on studies conducted in urban populations. This paper investigate how poverty and rural or urban settings affect child cognitive performance. Executive functions and non-verbal intelligence performance, as well as individual and environmental information was obtained from 131 5-year-old children. For the same level of SES, children in rural settings performed consistently worse than children in urban settings. These differences could be accounted mostly by the months of past preschool attendance and the father's completed level of education. These results should inform policies and programs for children living in rural poverty worldwide, and specially in Latin America.

The maturation of speech structure in psychosis is resistant to formal education

Discourse varies widely with age, level of education, and psychiatric state. Word graphs have been recently shown to provide behavioral markers of formal thought disorders in psychosis (e.g., disorganized flow of ideas) and to track literacy acquisition in children with typical development. Here we report that a graph-theoretical computational analysis of verbal reports from subjects spanning 6 decades of age and 2 decades of education reveals asymptotic changes over time that depend more on education than age. In typical subjects, short-range recurrence and lexical diversity stabilize after elementary school, whereas graph size and long-range recurrence only steady after high school. Short-range recurrence decreases towards random levels, while lexical diversity, long-range recurrence, and graph size increase away from near-randomness towards a plateau in educated adults. Subjects with psychosis do not show similar dynamics, presenting at adulthood a children-like discourse structure. Typical subjects increase the range of word recurrence over school years, but the same feature in subjects with psychosis resists education.

From the Laboratory to the Classroom: The Potential of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy in Educational Neuroscience

Paralleling two decades of growth in the emergent field known as educational neuroscience is an increasing concern that educational practices and programs should be evidence-based, however, the idea that neuroscience could potentially influence education is controversial. One of the criticisms, regarding applications of the findings produced in this discipline, concerns the artificiality of neuroscientific experiments and the oversimplified nature of the tests used to investigate cognitive processes in educational contexts. The simulations may not account for all of the variables present in real classroom activities. In this study, we aim to get a step closer to the formation of data-supported classroom methodologies by employing functional near-infrared spectroscopy in various experimental paradigms. First, we present two hyperscanning scenarios designed to explore realistic interdisciplinary contexts, i.e., the classroom. In a third paradigm, we present a case study of a single student evaluated with functional near-infrared spectroscopy and mobile eye-tracking glasses. These three experiments are performed to provide proofs of concept for the application of functional near-infrared spectroscopy in scenarios that more closely resemble authentic classroom routines and daily activities. The goal of our study is to explore the potential of this technique in hopes that it offers insights in experimental design to investigate teaching-learning processes during teacher-student interactions.

Stress in the Educational System as a Potential Source of Epigenetic Influences on Children's Development and Behavior

Despite current advances on the relevance of environmental cues and epigenetic mechanisms in biological processes, including behavior, little attention has been paid to the potential link between epigenetic influences and educational sciences. For instance, could the learning environment and stress determine epigenetic marking, affecting students' behavior development? Could this have consequences on educational outcomes? So far, it has been shown that environmental stress influences neurological processes and behavior both in humans and rats. Through epigenetic mechanisms, offspring from stressed individuals develop altered behavior without any exposure to traumatizing experiences. Methylated DNA and noncoding RNAs regulate neurological processes such as synaptic plasticity and brain cortex development in children. The malfunctioning of these processes is associated with several neurological disorders, and these findings open up new avenues for the design of enriched environments for education and therapy. In this article, we discuss current cases of stress and behavioral disorders found in youngsters, and highlight the importance of considering epigenetic processes affecting the development of cognitive abilities and learning within the educational environment and for the development of teaching methodologies.

A Translational Framework of Educational Neuroscience in Learning Disorders

Neuroimaging has undergone enormous progress during the last two and a half decades. The combination of neuroscientific methods and educational practice has become a focus of interdisciplinary research in order to answer more applied questions. In this realm, conditions that hamper learning success and have deleterious effects in the population - such as learning disorders (LD) - could especially profit from neuroimaging findings. At the moment, however, there is an ongoing debate about how far neuroscientific research can go to inform the practical work in educational settings. Here, we put forward a theoretical translational framework as a method of conducting neuroimaging and bridging it to education, with a main focus on dyscalculia and dyslexia. Our work seeks to represent a theoretical but mainly empirical guide on the benefits of neuroimaging, which can help people working with different aspects of LD, who need to act collaboratively to reach the full potential of neuroimaging. We provide possible ideas regarding how neuroimaging can inform LD at different levels within our multidirectional framework, i.e., mechanisms, diagnosis/prognosis, training/intervention, and community/education. In addition, we discuss methodological, conceptual, and structural limitations that need to be addressed by future research.

Post-class naps boost declarative learning in a naturalistic school setting

Laboratory evidence of a positive effect of sleep on declarative memory consolidation suggests that naps can be used to boost school learning in a scalable, low-cost manner. The few direct investigations of this hypothesis have so far upheld it, but departed from the naturalistic setting by testing non-curricular contents presented by experimenters instead of teachers. Furthermore, nap and non-nap groups were composed of different children. Here we assessed the effect of post-class naps on the retention of Science and History curricular contents presented by the regular class teacher to 24 students from 5th grade. Retention was repeatedly measured 3-4 days after content learning, with weekly group randomization over 6 consecutive weeks. Contents followed by long naps (>30 min), but not short naps (<30 min), were significantly more retained than contents followed by waking (Cohen's d = 0.7962). The results support the use of post-class morning naps to enhance formal education.

Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths

Neuromyths are misconceptions about brain research and its application to education and learning. Previous research has shown that these myths may be quite pervasive among educators, but less is known about how these rates compare to the general public or to individuals who have more exposure to neuroscience. This study is the first to use a large sample from the United States to compare the prevalence and predictors of neuromyths among educators, the general public, and individuals with high neuroscience exposure. Neuromyth survey responses and demographics were gathered via an online survey hosted at TestMyBrain.org. We compared performance among the three groups of interest: educators (N = 598), high neuroscience exposure (N = 234), and the general public (N = 3,045) and analyzed predictors of individual differences in neuromyths performance. In an exploratory factor analysis, we found that a core group of 7 "classic" neuromyths factored together (items related to learning styles, dyslexia, the Mozart effect, the impact of sugar on attention, right-brain/left-brain learners, and using 10% of the brain). The general public endorsed the greatest number of neuromyths (M = 68%), with significantly fewer endorsed by educators (M = 56%), and still fewer endorsed by the high neuroscience exposure group (M = 46%). The two most commonly endorsed neuromyths across all groups were related to learning styles and dyslexia. More accurate performance on neuromyths was predicted by age (being younger), education (having a graduate degree), exposure to neuroscience courses, and exposure to peer-reviewed science. These findings suggest that training in education and neuroscience can help reduce but does not eliminate belief in neuromyths. We discuss the possible underlying roots of the most prevalent neuromyths and implications for classroom practice. These empirical results can be useful for developing comprehensive training modules for educators that target general misconceptions about the brain and learning.

The Benefits of Multilingualism to the Personal and Professional Development of Residents of The US

In the past two decades, new research on multilingualism has changed our understanding of the consequences of learning and using two or more languages for cognition, for the brain, and for success and well-being across the entire lifespan. Far from the stereotype that exposure to multiple languages in infancy complicates language and cognitive development, the new findings suggest that individuals benefit from that exposure, with greater openness to other languages and to new learning itself. At the other end of the lifespan, in old age, the active use of two or more languages appears to provide protection against cognitive decline. That protection is seen in healthy aging and most dramatically in compensating for the symptoms of pathology in those who develop dementia or are recovering from stroke. In this article we briefly review the most exciting of these new research developments and consider their implications.

Integration of Teaching Processes and Learning Assessment in the Prefrontal Cortex during a Video Game Teaching-learning Task

Human teaching is a social interaction that supports reciprocal and dynamical feedback between the teacher and the student. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a region of particular interest due to its demonstrated role in social interaction. In the present study, we evaluated the PFC activity simultaneously in two individuals playing the role of a teacher and student in a video game teaching-learning task. For that, we used two wearable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) devices in order to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive interactions between teachers and students. Fifteen teacher-student pairs in total (N = 30) participated in this study. Each teacher was instructed to teach the video game to their student partner, without speaking. The PFC activity was simultaneously evaluated in both participants using a wearable 16-channel NIRS system during the video game teaching-learning task. Two sessions, each including a triplet of a 30-s teaching-learning task, were performed in order to evaluate changes in PFC activity after advancement of teaching-learning state. Changes in the teachers' left PFC activity between the first and second session positively correlated with those observed in students (r = 0.694, p = 0.004). Moreover, among teachers, multiple regression analysis revealed a correlation between the left PFC activity and the assessment gap between one's own teaching and the student's understanding (β = 0.649, p = 0.009). Activity in the left PFC changed synchronously in both teachers and students after advancement of the teaching-learning state. The left PFC of teachers may be involved in integrating information regarding one's own teaching process and the student's learning state. The present observations indicate that simultaneous recording and analysis of brain activity data during teacher-student interactions may be useful in the field of educational neuroscience.

The Computational Development of Reinforcement Learning during Adolescence

Adolescence is a period of life characterised by changes in learning and decision-making. Learning and decision-making do not rely on a unitary system, but instead require the coordination of different cognitive processes that can be mathematically formalised as dissociable computational modules. Here, we aimed to trace the developmental time-course of the computational modules responsible for learning from reward or punishment, and learning from counterfactual feedback. Adolescents and adults carried out a novel reinforcement learning paradigm in which participants learned the association between cues and probabilistic outcomes, where the outcomes differed in valence (reward versus punishment) and feedback was either partial or complete (either the outcome of the chosen option only, or the outcomes of both the chosen and unchosen option, were displayed). Computational strategies changed during development: whereas adolescents’ behaviour was better explained by a basic reinforcement learning algorithm, adults’ behaviour integrated increasingly complex computational features, namely a counterfactual learning module (enabling enhanced performance in the presence of complete feedback) and a value contextualisation module (enabling symmetrical reward and punishment learning). Unlike adults, adolescent performance did not benefit from counterfactual (complete) feedback. In addition, while adults learned symmetrically from both reward and punishment, adolescents learned from reward but were less likely to learn from punishment. This tendency to rely on rewards and not to consider alternative consequences of actions might contribute to our understanding of decision-making in adolescence.

We employed a novel learning task to investigate how adolescents and adults learn from reward versus punishment, and to counterfactual feedback about decisions. Computational analyses revealed that adults and adolescents did not implement the same algorithm to solve the learning task. In contrast to adults, adolescents’ performance did not take into account counterfactual information; adolescents also learned preferentially to seek rewards rather than to avoid punishments, whereas adults learned to seek and avoid both equally. Increasing our understanding of computational changes in reinforcement learning during adolescence may provide insights into adolescent value-based decision-making. Our results might also have implications for education, since they suggest that adolescents benefit more from positive feedback than from negative feedback in learning tasks.