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What
is the art of changing the brain?
| James
Zull
Author of The
Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching
by Exploring the Biology of Learning
Professor of Biology and Director of the University Center for
Innovation in Teaching and Education, Case Western Reserve
University
Wednesday, April 2
12:00 - 1:30 PM
Stamp
Student Union Atrium
Lunch Provided
Please RSVP here for
this Workshop |
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In this discussion we will examine
the concept of “changing the brain” as descriptive of the
learning process. Over
the past decades it has become clear that the brain is a dynamic
structure, capable of continually
changing its synaptic structure in response to new input.
Neurons that fire frequently tend to alter their structure,
enhancing the likelihood for formation of new synapses, and
increasing or decreasing the strength of individual connections.
Thus, the brain is plastic. Entire
regions of cortex can take on new functions, or lose old functions.
It is this plasticity that explains
learning. New
connections and stronger connections are associated with the
development of new capabilities and memories.
Loss or weakening of connections leads to reduction in old
capabilities and memories. We
learn what we do and forget what we don’t do. By practice and
study we eliminate unproductive behaviors or incorrect memories
because they are infrequently used, and we enhance useful behaviors
and new memories because we repeat them.
Use itself stimulates neuron connections; and disuse reduces
them. This leads to “long term potentiation” of synaptic
connections, or to “long term depression” of such connections.
One of the primary factors that
generates such cortical change is emotion.
The actual biochemical basis for the action of what we might
call “emotion chemicals” has been defined.
These chemicals are ones that we all hear about in the
popular media: serotonin,
adrenalin, dopamine, and acetyl choline, are all examples.
They all work through the same general process. They trigger
change in synapses. The
nature of the changes, their intensity, and their time dependence
(do they act slowly or quickly?) varies with each one, as does the
region of cortex (or other brain structures) that they influence.
But the common factor of synapse change is present in all of them.
The question for educators, then, is
how can teaching generate change in the brain of a learner? And
although it is based on the science of biochemistry, the actual
practice of “changing brains” is an art. My concept of this art
will be the thrust of this presentation. I will use jargon-free
vocabulary and try to give examples from my own experience as a
teacher for 42 years. |
