Our Plastic Brains

 By Martha S. Burns, Ph.D.

http://www.scilearn.com/blog/martha-burns-ph.d/

How does the brain learn? Why do some children find learning so challenging? What can educators do to help those children? These are questions that neuroscientists have been grappling with over the past 10 years. By and large, they are beginning to find answers.

Neuroscience is rapidly uncovering more and more about how the brain functions in the learning process. Neuroscientists like Stanislas Dehaene, for example, provide evidence that specific brain structures in the temporal lobe are required so that learning to read happens easily and effortlessly. We know too from neuroscience research that those brain structures--and the neural pathways that connect them to other language comprehension, memory, and verbal fluency regions of the brain--need to be adequately mature when children enter school for the student to learn to read. Research is helping us understand the reasons why that brain architecture may not be strong enough to support the learning process--for example, a home environment where there is not a great deal of oral language experience may have negative impact on brain architecture.

These are all neuroscience findings that most educators are familiar with. What educators may not know, however, is that those undeveloped learning pathways are mutable. The brain's capacity to learn, it turns out, is not set by our genes or predetermined in any way--not even by early learning disadvantages.  

The human brain, in fact, is quite malleable--even into adulthood. Neuroscientists call this malleability "plasticity." Neural plasticity is what allows teachers to educate a classroom of children who range in background, environmental experiences, or learning behaviors. Adults experience this plasticity themselves when they study a new language or take up a musical instrument well into adulthood--their brains can get in shape for the task.

The exciting results of this decade of brain research are, first, that we have learned which brain structures are necessary to learn to read or to master other learning tasks. We also know more about how the learning process itself changes the brain. In addition, research has shown there are now neuroscientific methods available that can identify children, as young as 3 months, who may have weaknesses in these structures or the pathways that connect them.

Finally, and perhaps most exciting for educators, neuroscientists have developed technological interventions that have been shown to target and build these specific brain structures in struggling learners. Neuroscience has demonstrated that through brain-based learning practices, all children who have IQs within normal limits, even those diagnosed with severe learning disabilities like dyslexia, have the capacity to learn to read and successfully master all subject areas.