What’s the difference between a gamma and a delta wave? Why do we care?
This video from BrainFacts.org offers lively explanations to help you understand brain waves.
You’ll also learn more about the technology we use to measure them — and why we care in the first place.
This glum question has a glum answer: yes, pollution harms working memory.
Researchers in Barcelona focused on children walking to school. Working with over 1200 students, 7-10 years old, they reached a grim conclusion. Children whose walk was more polluted experienced slower development of working memory.
(The same research project had already concluded that pollution in school slows working memory development as well.)
If you’ve been to a Learning & the Brain conference, you know that working memory is essential for all classroom learning. It allows students to combine pieces of information into new, meaningful ideas.
The less working memory students have, the slower they are to read, acquire math skills, compare historical figures, and learn new oboe melodies.
In other words, damaging working memory is one of the worst things we can do in schools.
Of course, pollution is too big a problem for teachers and schools to solve right away. We’ll need lots of social effort–and lots of political will–to make meaningful changes.
In the short term, the study’s authors warn against one seeming solution. We might reason that walking to school exposes children to pollution, so we should encourage them to ride in cars or buses. However, the health benefits of walking are obvious and important; we should encourage–not discourage–physical activity.
In the short term, the best we can do is encourage students to walk less polluted routes: away from major highways, closer to parks and forests.
Of course, such a solution isn’t available to all students. We’ll need bigger fixes over the long term.
For the time being, knowledge of the danger is the power that we have.
Does mindfulness truly benefit people?
On the one hand, the obvious answer is “yes.” We’ve all heard that meditation reduces stress, improve concentration, deepens sleep, and whitens teeth. (I think I made that last one up.)
Some of you reading this post may have embraced mindfulness, and perhaps tell your neighbors and friends about its healing powers.
This sort of evidence–coming from personal experience–can be powerfully persuasive.
On the other hand, if we want to know about mindfulness in a scientific way, we’d like some research. Please.
Research on topics like these typically follows a predictable pattern. In the early days of Mindset theory, for example, Dweck worked with a few dozen people for an hour or so.
When these studies showed promise, she then followed larger groups of people for longer periods of time. In one study, for example, she and Lisa Blackwell followed hundreds of 7th graders for over 4 years.
One recent analysis I saw looked at Mindset data for 125,000 grade-school students. Yup: 125,000.
This trajectory–from small test studies to large and rigorous trials–makes sense. We can’t fund huge investigations of every idea that comes along, so we need to test for the good ideas before we examine them in depth.
But, once an idea–like, say, mindfulness–shows promise in early trials, we’d like to see larger and more rigorous trials as the years go by.
So: is that happening? Are we seeing better studies into mindfulness?
Sadly, not so much. That’s the conclusion of a recent study, which compared early mindfulness research to more recent examples.
We would like to see studies with larger sample sizes, active control conditions, longer-term evaluation of results and so forth. This study finds some positive trends, but overall isn’t impressed with the research progress over the last 13 years.
Of course, their conclusion doesn’t mean that mindfulness doesn’t help.
It does mean, however, that our evidence isn’t as strong as it might seem to be, because we haven’t yet “taken it to the next level.”
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By the way: you’ll have the chance to learn more about mindfulness, and about the ways that researchers investigate it, at the upcoming Learning and the Brain conference in New York.
Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child development, 78(1), 246-263.
Goldberg, S. B., Tucker, R. P., Greene, P. A., Simpson, T. L., Kearney, D. J., & Davidson, R. J. (2017). Is mindfulness research methodology improving over time? A systematic review. PloS one, 12(10), e0187298.
You can understand why this study lit up my twitter feed recently. It makes a remarkable claim: women — but not men — experience working memory declines after a sleepless night.
We have at least two powerful reasons to care about this study.
First, it makes strong claims about gender differences. According to lead author Rangtell (and 8 colleagues), women’s performance on a working memory task gets worse after a sleepless night.
On the other hand, men’s working memory performance remains just as good as when they had a cozy 8-hour sleep.
(I’ve written about gender differences before. You may recall that I’m often skeptical of specific claims, but do think that there are some important differences at the population level.)
So, this study plays an important role in the ongoing debate.
Second, Rangtell’s study focuses on working memory. And, working memory is really important in school.
What is working memory?
When a student works on a word problem in math, she first has to select the key information from the sentences. Then she holds that information in mind. Third, she reorganizes all that information into the correct formula. And finally she combines pieces of that formula appropriately: for example, she combines “7x+8x” into “15x.”
Whenever students select, hold, reorganize, and combine information, they’re using working memory.
And, our students do that all the time. They use working memory to conjugate a new Spanish verb. And, when they apply new terminology (“protagonist”) to a specific book (“Sethe is the protagonist of Beloved.”) And, when they balance chemical equations.
Basically, schools are shrines we build to honor successful working memory functioning.
If there truly is a gender difference in working memory function, that’s a really big deal.
This study is, conceptually, very straigtforward.
Ask some people to do a working memory task after a full night’s sleep. Then, ask them to do the same task after they’ve been up all night. Is there a difference in their working memory performance?
Rangtell and her colleagues say: for men, “no”; for women, “yes.”
However, this study includes a very serious problem. The task that they use to measure working memory DOESN’T MEASURE WORKING MEMORY.
(You read that right.)
The researchers asked these people to listen to a list of numbers, and then type those numbers into the computer in the same order.
That’s simply not a test of working memory. After all, the participants didn’t have to reorganize or combine anything.
Instead, that’s a test of short-term memory.
Now, short-term memory is related to working memory. But, “related to” isn’t good enough.
Imagine, for instance, I claimed that sleeplessness makes people shorter. The way I determine your height is by measuring the length of your arm.
Of course: arm length and height are related. But, they’re not the same thing. Tall people can have short-ish arms. I can’t measure one thing and then make a claim about a related but different thing.
So too, Rangtell can’t measure short-term memory and then make claims about working memory. She didn’t measure working memory.
Does sleeplessness harm women’s working memory more than men’s? We just don’t know.
(By the way: I’ve reached out to the lead researcher to inquire about the working memory/short-term memory discrepancy. I’ll update this post if I hear back.)
If you attend the more hard-core neuroscience talks at Learning and the Brain conferences, you’re familiar with words like “myelin,” “neuroplasticity,” and perhaps even “oligodendrocytes.”
How do all these terms fit together? Here’s the scoop…
For much of the 20th century, neuroscientists believed that brains developed during early childhood. However, relatively quickly, they arrived at their final, unchanging form.
With newer technologies, however, we now know that brains keep changing throughout our lives. We’ve even got a word for a brain’s ability to change: “neuroplasticity.” (“neuro” = brain; “plastic” = change.)
Because this finding contradicts so many decades of neuroscientific belief, researchers have been REALLY excited about it. When you hear them at a talk, you can see their eyes grow wide with wonder.
Brains change throughout our lives.
Like babies, neurons are born naked.
Of course, neurons carry electrical signals, and exposed wires don’t do that very effectively. Over time, therefore, your brain needs to insulate those naked neurons.
It does so with “myelin sheathing”; a phrase that neuroscientists use so they don’t have to say “little white hot-dog buns made of fat.” But: that’s what myelin sheathing is — fat.
Myelination benefits all sorts of human activities. 
When neurons myelinate, they carry their signals up to 100 times faster, and so perform the same job considerably more efficiently.
For example: babies learn to walk when the motor neurons responsible for that part of the body myelinate. (If you’re particularly interesting in myelination, check out this video.)
How does the brain myelinate those neurons? Highly specialized brain cells — with the poetic name “oligodendrocytes” — work like tiny bricklayers to create this essential coating.
In a recent article over at Searching for the Mind, Dr. Jon Lieff explores the complexities of these essential processes. In particular, as he describes it, he sees myelination as essential for “whole brain neuroplasticity.”
It’s an article for those of you who really want to know more about highly complex brain mechanics. If you don’t have time for graduate school work in neuroscience, here’s a fascinating place to start.
In their new book The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child, Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson offer parents guidance about how to support their children in “say[ing] yes to the world.” They argue that raising truly successful children who can create for themselves a life of connection and fulfillment means raising children who are not impulsively reactive but instead have the sense of balance, resilience, personal insight, and empathy for others to be receptive to the world around them. In the vein of making this book comprehensible to neuroscience novices, some scientists may note a lack of specificity about the neurological characteristics of the “yes brain.” This book includes cartoon animations of key concepts, prompts to build a “yes brain,” and a summary sheet of key characteristics of a “yes brain”, all of which makes it an accessible and useful tool for parents.
Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, the founder and co-director of the UCLA mindful awareness research center, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute. Bryson is a pediatric and adolescent psychotherapist, director of parenting for the Mindsight Institute, and a child development specialist. Both Siegel and Bryson are New York Times bestselling authors, including of two books they previously co-authored, “The Whole-Brain Child” and “No Drama Discipline.”
According to Siegel and Bryson the “yes brain” is able to overcome challenges, remain flexible, and receptive to the world, while the “no brain” is reactive, and quick to attack, reject, or remain stubbornly fixed. The authors claim that the difference between a “yes brain” and a “no brain” is not merely a difference in mindsets but a difference in the brain’s response to situations. They draw an analogy between a brain and a house such that brainstem and limbic regions, which are fast-acting and supportive of life-sustaining functions, are the bottom floor of the house and the cerebral cortex, which supports complex thought and emotion, is the upstairs part of the house undergoing construction after the bottom floor has developed. They argue that balance, resilience, insight, and empathy are all supported by the prefrontal cortex in the “upstairs brain.” To suggest that there is not prefrontal cortex activity in reactive responses may not be accurate, but the authors are right to argue that there are neurological differences associated with being receptive versus reactive. Their “yes brain” construct may be best understood as a set of psychological and behavioral skills and mindsets.
Siegel and Bryson argue that balance or emotional stability and flexibility is important for finding success. It is natural for children to become imbalanced by acting out in a hyperaroused state or by shutting down in a state of hypoarousal. To help them regulate themselves, parents should remember that children do not like feeling imbalanced; they need a loving, soothing, understanding presence to help them return to feeling in control. Free play, diversifying the way one spends his time, prioritizing quality sleep, and receiving instruction about balance can promote balance.
Building resilience, or the ability to bounce back after failure, requires allowing children to feel the sting of failure so that in the long-run they can rise above setbacks. Parents need to allow kids opportunities to stand up for themselves as well as to intervene on their children’s behalf when challenges are too big to face alone. To build resilience, Siegel and Bryson argue for making it clear that reasonable risk-taking and failure are okay and for making children feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure.
Siegel and Bryson argue that children need to develop insight to understand themselves and have control over their social and emotional lives. One strategy to promote insight is taking well-timed pauses to act as a spectator of one’s own life. Parents can develop their own insightfulness by building a coherent narrative of who they are as a parent and a person and acting in a way that accords with who they want to be.
The final component of the “yes brain” is empathy. Siegel and Bryson remind parents that empathic abilities develop over the course of childhood and adolescence; so it is natural if youngsters do not always seem optimally empathic. Modeling empathic listening, perspective taking, and caring are critical for developing empathic kids. Parents can help children develop empathy by reframing situations with role playing, providing children with a vocabulary to communicate care, and exposing children to the way other people live.
Helping children develop an internal sense of self, a concern for others, and curiosity is likely to lead to deep and meaningful success. Siegel and Bryson argue that for parents’ to help their children develop balanced, resilient, insightful, and empathic “yes brains” they must allow kids to grow into who they will be while being prepared to help when children are in need of practice building these key skills.
Siegel, D. J. & Bryson, T.P. The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilence in Your Child. New York: Bantam Books
Do students benefit more from a high IQ or from high levels of intrinsic motivation?
Over at Quartz, Rebecca Haggerty argues for the importance of motivation. To make this argument, she draws on the research of Adele and Allen Gottfried. By gathering data on a group of children for decades, they conclude:
Kids who scored higher on measures of academic intrinsic motivation at a young age—meaning that they enjoyed learning for its own sake—performed better in school, took more challenging courses, and earned more advanced degrees than their peers. They were more likely to be leaders and more self-confident about schoolwork. Teachers saw them as learning more and working harder. As young adults, they continued to seek out challenges and leadership opportunities.
Even more than a high IQ, intrinsic motivation points students toward a fulfilling life.
According to the Gottfrieds, how can parents encourage this trait?
Unsurprisingly, parental behavior can influence child development. Inquisitive parents foster inquisitiveness. Parents who read to their children promote a love of reading.
No matter how many parenting books say it’s okay, paying children for grades squashes a love of learning for its own sake.
In any case, the examples we set early on endure. In one of the Gottfrieds’ findings, children encouraged to be curious when they were eight took more science classes years later in high school. That’s parenting for the long haul.
(For some thoughts on teaching strategies to promote intrinsic motivation, click here.)
A caveat:
Whenever thinking about the “motivation vs. IQ” question, we should pause to remember its complexity. It might be tempting to discount IQ completely. And yet, we know that something like intelligence exists, and that it’s good to have.
Richard Nisbett explores these questions here.
Two points in Haggerty’s article strike me as puzzling.
First, the Gottfrieds speak of children being “motivationally gifted.” However, we know from Dweck’s research that such praise demotivates students.
We should stop praising children for who they are (“gifted, talented, a natural”) and focus on praising them for what they do (“detailed and imaginative work”).
Second, a detail. Haggerty writes that 19% of the Gottfrieds’ subjects have an IQ of higher than 130. That’s an astonishingly high number.
In a typical population, just over 2% of people have an IQ in that range.
In raw numbers: 25 of their subjects have “genius-level” IQ, and we would expect than number to be about 3.
If Haggerty got that number right, then we should be hesitant to extrapolate to the general population from this remarkable sample.
“Can we have class outside today?”
If you’re like me, you get this question often. Especially on a beautiful spring day…
But do your students have a point? Might there be good reasons to move class outside every now and then?
We’ve already got research suggesting that your students might be on to something.
Some researchers suggest that classes outside help restore student attention.
Other studies (here and here) indicated that they might enhance student motivation as well.
We’ve even got reason to think that exposure to green landscape helps students learn. For example: this study in Michigan suggests that natural views improve graduation rate and standardized test scores.
None of the evidence is completely persuasive, but each additional piece makes the argument even stronger.
If I’m a skeptic about outdoor class, I might make the following argument. Outdoor classes might be good for that particular class. However, they might be bad for subsequent classes.
That is: students might be so amped up by their time outside that they can’t focus when they get back indoors.
To explore this concern, Ming Kuo and colleagues put together an impressive study.
Over ten weeks, two teachers taught several pairs of lessons. Half of the time, the first lesson was taught outside. For the other half, the first lesson was taught inside.
Researchers then measured students’ attentiveness during the second lesson in these pairs.
The results?
Students were more attentive — A LOT more attentive — after outdoor classes than indoor classes.
In almost 50% of the lessons, attention was a full standard deviation higher after outdoor classes. In 20% of the lessons, it was two standard deviations higher.
Technically speaking, that difference is HUGE.
(By the way: the researchers came up with several different ways to measure attention. Outdoor classes led to improved attention in four of the five measures.)
This research suggests that teachers needn’t worry about outdoor classes leading to distraction in subsequent classes.
That finding doesn’t necessarily mean that outdoor classes benefit learning, but it does mean we have fewer potential causes for concern.
Occasionally I try to persuade people that neuroscience is fantastically complicated. In other words: we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we don’t master it all.
Today I spotted a headline that makes my point for me:
Hippocampus-driven feed-forward inhibition of the prefrontal cortex mediates relapse of extinguished fear
Got that?
Neuroscience is simply fascinating. As teachers, we really want to know how neurons work. And synapses. And brain regions — like the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
However, specific teaching advice almost always comes from psychology. How do teachers help students connect neurons to create memories? Psychology. What classroom strategies support executive function in the prefrontal cortex? Psychology.
At a LatB Conference, you’ll enjoy the neuroscience talks because they show you what’s going on underneath the hood. At the psychology talks, you’ll get specific classroom suggestions.
The best conference experience, in my opinion, combines both.
I’ve seen the same headline three times in my newsfeed today: “Dim Light Might Make You Dumber.”
One summary includes this teaser:
“Spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices may actually change the brain’s structure and hurt one’s ability to remember and learn.”
That’s a fascinating — and potentially alarming — research finding. At a minimum, it seems to have important implications for classroom design.
Here’s a key detail to remember: this study was done on Nile grass rats.
No, really. Rats. (I assume rats that live in Nile grass.)
Rat research is essential for neuroscientists. A great deal of our neuro-knowledge comes from animal studies.
So, too, in psychology. Watching primate behavior (and even pigeon behavior) helps us understand human behavior.
But, here’s the key point to remember: your students are not rats. (Depending on the grade you teach, they might occasionally remind you of rats. But, they’re really not.)
Teachers should pay close attention to neuroscience and psychology research done on people. However, you should NEVER change your teaching practice based on research into non-human animals.
I want to go back to the quotation I cited above:
“Spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices may actually change the brain’s structure and hurt one’s ability to remember and learn.”
In your experience, how much time do rats spend in their offices?
According to Wikipedia, the natural habitats of the African rat are “dry savanna, moist savanna, subtropical or tropical moist shrubland, arable land, pastureland, rural gardens, urban areas, irrigated land, and seasonally flooded agricultural land.”
There’s no indication that rats ever go to the office.
Clearly, someone has already extrapolated the conclusions of this research to assume it applies to people. Until it has, in fact, been tested on people, you should not make the same mistake.
