How To Think About the Brain

School Administrator, Jan, 1998 by Renate Nummela Caine, Geoffrey Caine

A set of guiding principles for moving cautiously when applying brain research to the classroom

Writing as two of those who have delved deeply into the neuro-sciences and who have suggested changes based on our findings, we would caution educators not to act naively concerning brain research findings not to overrely on the research. Many underlying questions need to be considered--most importantly, what does it mean to use more of our brain?

What or where exactly is our brain? If neuroscientists were to be widely invited to answer that question, the response would vary according to the personal and professional limitations individual researchers set on their research focus. For some, the conscious brain is lodged in the area above the neck. For others the brain is lodged in the entire body, partly in the form of neuropeptides and an immune system that makes intelligent, ongoing decisions that affect the life of any individual.

If the latter is true, then does using more of one's brain include developing a more coherent and healthy physiology or having greater sensory enhancement? Where do critical thinking and intellectual understanding fit? What exactly are the brain's limits and parameters? And how should educators use these answers in dealing with other questions?

For example, to what extent is the brain involved in throwing a baseball? In listening to music? In touching a leaf or composing a poem? What is the relationship between emotions, feelings and the brain? What, precisely, is the brain's role in memorization of facts and skills or critical and logical reasoning? And in the light of all this, what exactly should school be? And where is school?

These provocative questions will be raised by the new research and should be a part of lively discussion and debate among educators. Questioning our own deeply held assumptions about learning and teaching will surface a variety of perspectives that brain research can enrich. One thing is certain: The answers we find will vary profoundly depending on whether we deal with the brain as a wholistic, seamless, self-organizing and interactive web or the orderly combination of very complex but essentially individual pieces of a puzzle where things can be stored, fixed, programmed and controlled.

Right from the beginning we puzzled over these issues. The bottom line is that the brain research by itself leaves far too many questions unanswered at the same time that it inevitably influences how we educate. Hence, we have insisted that all the findings and conclusions of biologists and others be filtered through lenses that include a wide range of research and related fields. Educators, in particular, need to learn how to think about brain research because no one works more closely with living brains and minds than we do. At the very least, reducing research from the neuro-sciences to prescriptive teaching strategies shortchanges the immense promise such research could hold for educators.

Reasons for Caution

Many reasons exist for being cautious whenever anyone uses the phrase "Brain research says." For instance:

* Researchers often disagree with each other's conclusions or theories.

One of the most influential of the recent findings is that the brain is plastic. That is, the physical brain is literally shaped by experience. Yet even this finding, which is the platform upon which much of the new support for early childhood education is based, is not the subject of unanimous support, partly because the word "plasticity" itself has different meanings.

Another issue on which major uncertainty remains is the nature of memory. Several theories suggest what memory is, how it works and how many memory systems we have. Readers may be familiar with terms such as declarative and procedural memory, emotional and sensory memory, short-term and long-term memory and more. We personally subscribe to the system developed by John O'Keefe and Lynn Nadel in The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. They argue that memory is of two basic types: taxon memories (from taxonomies or lists), which are suitable for rote memory and programming, and the locale memory system, which is an autobiographical and spatial system that naturally records our everyday experience.

This powerful view of memory appeals to educators and is supported by research in other fields. However, it calls into question other approaches to categorizing memory.

* Research in the neurosciences and biology operate at a more concrete and often mechanistic and red uctionistic level.

The use of the phrase "memory and learning" is often highly specific and restricted to well-specified and limited parameters. Such research might clarify specific physiological phenomena that are observed, but it rarely deals with critical philosophical and practical issues that affect educators trying to make sense of such information.

For example, if our brain really determines how we feel or act, this fact raises multiple questions: Who and what is the "I," the person I experience as making choices, changing and growing? Am I an illusion? Be it the observable reactions of a single brain's amygdala, frontal lobe connections or hippocampal indexing, who is causing what? Or do we need a larger more complex view? And if ultimately everything can be reduced to inappropriate levels of serotonin or neurotransmitters, why not "fix" everything with pharmaceuticals? Why bother with human potential or responsibility? What do we say to children and adults who want to feel better by taking drugs? Why study memory at all when a pill will do?