Article Review - Neurosience and education: prime time to build the bridge

Sigman, M., Peña, M., Goldin, A. P., Ribeiro, S. (2014). Neuroscience and education: Prime time to build the bridge. Nature Neuroscience, 17(4), 497-502.

Background:

The suggestion that there should be a bridge between neuroscience and education has received scrutiny. Scholars have argued that the functional and structural brain components relative to learning and information processing do not benefit or inform teaching practices.

Purpose:

The article aim was to provide justification for why neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience both are relevant for important educational implications and should used as complements of one another. 

Definitions:

Neuroscience – the study of the structure and function of the nervous system and the brain; Cognitive Psychology – the study of mental processes such as attention, language, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity and thinking

Key Points:

Neuroscience has the potential to contribute to understanding the physiology of education. The main physiological areas of interests include nutrition, sleep, and exercise as they all influence learning. Also, neuroscience has a role in the study of preverbal language development in infants, which can lend toward early intervention for deaf children. Structural and functional differences between bi-linguists and mono-linguists suggest the importance of neuroscience to the examination of language acquisition. Neuroscience also offers understanding the reading process such as the significance of eye movements, reading time and the distinction between the letters and the whole word. Dyslexics, for instance suffer from a difficulty in breaking words down into letters. Also, neuroscience has found that dyslexics show hypo-activation in the area linked to auditory and visual processes.

Conclusion/Implications: There are five proposed pillars to optimize the dialogue between neuroscience and non-scientists. (1) Educational neuroscience contributes the practical and ethical link between neurobiology and education, but should heed to recommendations of when and where neuroscience can be relevant to education. (2) There is a need for field studies that examine the validity of neuroscience theories in the classroom for the benefit of teachers, principals, and decision makers; so neuroscientists should expand the realm of their studies. (3) Education should be a source of inspiration for neuroscience research, with an integration of teachers’ knowledge to expand experimental designs. (4) Brain concepts should be incorporated as a part of teacher’s professional training and development. (5) Investments should be made to promote the development of capable students to progress the investigation of the links between education, cognition, and brain function.

Questions Raised: Can sleep in a room shared with other students be as efficient for learning as sleep in a quiet laboratory room? How do naps interact with other variables such as nutrition, exercise, and levels of intrinsic motivation? How do neuroscience findings help a teacher deal with a dyslexic child? What sort of transformation elicits this type of learning (the shift from a non-reader to literacy) in the brain and what material is optimal for this learning process?