Brain Research for Teachers & Other Curious Souls, 2013 update

Recent Brain
Research for Teachers
and Other Curious
Souls
By Wenda Sheard, J.D., Ph.D.
Updated 2013

The first edition of this PowerPoint was prepared for an
MIT SPLASH weekend in 2006. The second edition was
prepared in part for the 2012 SENG conference.
www.sengifted.org The third edition was prepared for a
Potential Plus UK event in February 2013.
APPRECIATIONS: This PowerPoint would not have been
possible without Supporting the Emotional Needs of the
Gifted (SENG), without Carolyn K. and her Hoagies Gifted
Education Page, and without Rebecca McMillian and her
Brain Café.
PERMISSIONS: Permission to copy for education and
advocacy purposes will freely given upon request to
wendasheard@gmail.com. Thank you for your requests in
advance.
EXPLANATION: My Ph.D. is in political science with an
emphasis on education policy.

Why Learn Brain Research?
 We want to be the best teachers possible for
our children. (WITH KNOWLEDGE)
 We want to advocate effectively (WITH
EVIDENCE) for diverse educational programs
and funding to meet the needs of all children.

Five Sections
 1. Brain Differences Exist
 2. Motivation
 3. Dopamine
 4. What Else Affects Brains?
 5. Education Improvements?

Before we begin, some
cautionary notes:
 I. Yale & “Neurobabble”: People are more likely
to trust articles if the word “neuroscience”
appears in the article.
 II. John Geake’s The Brain at School: We need
to avoid neurobabble, including multiple
intelligences and learning styles.
 III. Better tools for measuring brain activity are
under development and one is available now.

I. Yale & “Neurobabble”
 The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations.
 The scientists conducted three experiments and
discovered that non-experts “judged that explanations
with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were
more satisfying than explanations without.”
 More troubling: The subjects were Yale
undergraduates enrolled in a neuroscience course.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755

II. Notes from John Geake’s
The Brain at School (2009)
 Levels of analysis are confounded when we try
to port neuroscience over to education
 Correlation is not proof of causation.
 Cognitive neuroscientists and educators are
not well connected.
 Neuroscience tools will improve in the future.

John Geake &
“Neuromythologies”
 “[At education research conferences] I rarely
hear an education/practitioner researcher stand
up and say that a particular theoretical position,
much less a piece of research, is wrong, or silly,
or useless in the classroom. Or say that here is
evidence that this particular pedagogic approach
is ineffective. Instead, it all gets added into a
cornucopia of unpredictable flubber recently
expanded, to make matters worse, with the
latest neuromythologies.”

III. Better Tools Coming
“Pushing the frontiers of MRI”
“Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
has revolutionized our understanding of the human
brain, but the method is now approaching the limit
of its capabilities. Alan Jasanoff hopes to break
through this limit and to develop new technologies
for imaging the molecular and cellular phenomena
that underlie brain function.”
http://mcgovern.mit.edu/principal-investigators/alan-jasanoff/

What’s on his head?
Photo from: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/neuroimaging-and-mental-illness-a-window-
into-the-brain/neuroimaging-and-mental-illness-a-window-into-the-brain.shtml

Magnetoencephalography
(MEG machine)
 “A direct measure.” (not a measure of
metabolism products)
 “A very high temporal resolution device.” (only
milliseconds)
 “Sources can be localized with an accuracy of
millimeters.”
 “Completely non-invasive. Injection of isotopes
or exposure to X-rays or magnetic fields is not
required.”
http://www.meg-brain-mapping.pitt.edu/index.html

News Flash
 €500 Million for Brain Research
 Neuroscientist Henry Markram from the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in Lausanne won a €500 million grant
from the European Commission to simulate everything
known about the human brain in a supercomputer (Abbott
2013).
 Abbott, Alison. “Billion-euro brain simulation and graphene
projects win European funds.” Nature. Jan. 23, 2013.
doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12291,
http://www.nature.com/news/billion-euro-brain-simulation-
and-graphene-projects-win-european-funds-1.12291

1. Brain Differences Exists
Photo by Wenda Sheard

Infants, 1997
 Ninety-six children, Midwest United States
community, ERP measures of speech perception
obtained within 36 hours after birth from
synthesized speech syllable /gi/.
 “Auditory ERPs recorded within 36 hours after birth
can be used to successfully discriminate, at well
above chance levels, the reading performance of
children 8 years later.”
 Molfese, D. L., & Molfese, V. J. (1997). Discrimination of language skills at five years of age using
event-related potentials recorded at birth. Developmental Neuropsychology, 13(2): 135-156

Early College Entrants, 1996
 EEG study of 30 gifted adolescents (mean age
13.3, SAT averages 1100), 30 average ability
adolescents, and 30 college-age subjects.
 “These finding suggest that gifted adolescents may
have a developmentally enhanced state of brain
activity, one that more closely resembles that of
college-age adults to whom they also resemble in
terms of cognitive ability.”
 Alexander, J. E., O’Boyle, M. W., & Benbow, C. P. (1996). Developmentally advanced EEG
alpha power in gifted male and female adolescents. International Journal of Psychophysiology,
23(1-2): 25-31.

Gifted Brains on Math
 Gifted students relaxed brain waves when
doing math problems and not relaxed
otherwise.
 Non-gifted students NOT relaxed when doing
math problems but RELAXED otherwise.
 More cross-hemisphere communication in
gifted brains doing math. Gifted children have a
larger corpus callosum in MRI studies.

Gifted Brains on Math Studies
 O'Boyle, M. W., Cunnington, R., Silk, T., Vaughan, D.,
Jackson, G., Syngeniotis, A., & Egan, G. (2005).
Mathematically gifted male adolescents activate a unique
brain network during mental rotation. Cognitive Brain
Research, 25, 583-587.
 Singh, H. & O'Boyle, M. W. (2004). Interhemispheric
interaction during global-local processing in mathematically
gifted adolescents, average-ability youth, and college
students. Neuropsychology, 18(2), 671-677.
 Alexander, J. E., O’Boyle, M. W., & Benbow, C. P. (1996).
Developmentally advanced EEG alpha power in gifted male
and female adolescents. International Journal of
Psychophysiology, 23(1-2): 25-31.

London Taxi Drivers, 2000-
2010
 Maguire and Gadian (2000) and Woollett
(2009) discovered that the brains of London
taxi drivers differ from the brains of non-taxi
drivers.
 Spatial brain area grows as “The Knowledge”
(25,000 details) is acquired.
 Spatial brain area shrinks after retirement.
Maguire, E. A., & Gadian, D. G. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi
of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, 97(8), 4398-4403.
Woollett, K. (2009). Talent in the taxi: a model system for exploring expertise. Philosophical
Transactions: Biological Sciences, 364(1522), 1407-1416.

Violin Players, 2007
 Schwenkreis, El Tom, Ragert, Plege,
Tegenthoff, & Dinse (2007) discovered that the
brains of professional violin players differ from
the brains of people who don’t play the violin.
Schwenkreis, P., El Tom, S., Ragert P., Pleger, B., Tegenthoff, M. & Dinse, H. R. (2007). Assessment
of sensorimotor cortical representation asymmetries and motor skills in violin players. European
Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 3291–3302.

Cost of Strengths? 2009
 The London taxi drivers were significantly more
knowledgeable than others about London
streets, landmarks, and their spatial
relationships.
 Despite their advanced knowledge in those
respects, the taxi drivers were significantly
worse at forming and retaining new
associations involving visual information.
 Woollett, K., & Maguire, E. A. (2009). Navigational expertise may compromise anterograde
associative memory. Neuropsychologia(47)4, 1088-1095.

Beyond Math/Verbal? 2003
 Haier, White, and Alkire (2003) found that the
individual differences in general intelligence
correlate with brain function not only during
reasoning tasks, but also during tasks that do
not require reasoning.
 This suggests giftedness is not just rational
thinking.
 Haier, R. J., White, N. S., & Alkire, M. T. (2003). Individual differences in general intelligence
correlate with brain function during nonreasoning tasks. Intelligence 31, 429–441.

Later Development of
Executive Function for
Superior Intelligence? 2006
 The development of executive function appears
to be delayed in preadolescent children with
superior intelligence, perhaps because their
advanced development in other aspects of the
brain take more time.
 Cortex Matures Faster in Youth with Highest IQ http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-
news/2006/cortex-matures-faster-in-youth-with-highest-iq.shtml (2006)

From the NIH Study, 2006
Cortex Matures Faster in Youth with Highest IQ http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2006/cortex-
matures-faster-in-youth-with-highest-iq.shtml (2006)

More Executive Function with
High Intelligence? 2007
 “Of the six executive function indices subjected
to multiple regression, five were significantly
related to intelligence in a regression analysis.”
The relationship of intelligence to executive function and non-executive function measures in a
sample of average, above average, and gifted youth by Sharon Arffa,
http://acn.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/8/969.abstract 2007

Misdiagnoses? 2010
 “[C]linical measures of [executive function] may
differ among children with ADHD and controls
at average IQ levels, but there is poorer
discriminatory power for these measures
among children with above average IQ.”
Effects of IQ on Executive Function Measures in Children with ADHD by E. Mark Mahone,
DOI:10.1076/chin.8.1.52.871 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1076/chin.8.1.52.8719 (2010)

French Study of Infants, 2011
 Literature Review: “children identified as ‘high-
level potentialities’ or ‘intellectually gifted’
develop sensory, locomotor,
neuropsychological, and language skills earlier
than typically expected.”
 Hypothesis: “the earlier development
originates from biological processes
affecting the physical development of the
brain and in turn even intellectual abilities
are developed earlier, potentially allowing for
advanced development” (Cont. next slide)

 Findings: “Development data evidences an
advance in neurosensory-motor maturation among
“high-level potentialities” children, both in postural,
motor, and locomotor acquisitions, and in
eye/motor coordination and attentional abilities.
These results point to the reticular formation
coming into play at an early stage in the form of
awareness and attention and to rapid transmission
speed of nerve input, as has been corroborated by
different studies, leading to greater processing
speeds.” (Cont. next slide)

 Discussion: “[H]ow these developmental
advances interact with the social environment
and in certain circumstances may entail
increased risk for developing
socioemotional difficulties and learning
disabilities that often go unaddressed due to
the masking by the advance intellectual
abilities.”
International Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 420297,
doi:10.1155/2011/420297Review ArticleDevelopmental and Cognitive Characteristics of “High-Level
Potentialities” (Highly Gifted) Children Laurence Vaivre-
Douret1,2,3http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijped/2011/420297/

Intrinsic Motivation, 2010
 Extrinsic rewards such as money work only if
the task is simple.
 Rewards need to be intrinsic for creative and
conceptual tasks.
 Notes: Many people have created for free
(Wikipedia, Linux, etc). * * * Skype founder:
“Our goal is to be disruptive but in the cause of
making the world a better place.” * * * Steve
Jobs: “I want to put a ding in the universe.” * *
* We are purpose motivators, not only profit
motivators.”
RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Illustrated version of Daniel Pink’s Talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc (2010)

Video Game Motivation, 2011
 “It may seem counter intuitive to think that
children would consider harder work a reward for
doing well on a homework problem, test, or
physical skill to which they devoted considerable
physical or mental energy. Yet, that is just what
the video playing brain seeks after experiencing
the pleasure of reaching a higher level in the
game. A computer game doesn't hand out cash,
toys, or even hugs. The motivation to persevere
is the brain seeking another surge of dopamine --
the fuel of intrinsic reinforcement.”
Willis, Judy. “A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool.”
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/video-games-learning-student-engagement-judy-willis (April 14, 2011)

Video-Game Motivation, 2012
 “[A] video game about killing cancer in the
body, strongly activates brain circuits involved
in positive motivation. This reward-related
activation is associated with a shift in attitudes
and emotions that has helped boost players’
adherence to prescribed chemotherapy and
antibiotic treatments in a previous study.”
 Video Games in the Brain: Study Shows How Gaming Impacts Brain Function to Inspire
Healthy Behavior, http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/3/prweb9293984.htm (March 19, 2012)

Self & Group Motivation, 2010
 “Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of
the greatest problems of education -- the best
teachers and schools don't exist where they're
needed most. In a series of real-life
experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to
Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to
the web and saw results that could
revolutionize how we think about teaching.”
 Sugata Mitra, http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html (2010)

 “Participants rated the attractiveness of faces
and subsequently learned how their peers
ostensibly rated each face. Participants were
then scanned using functional MRI while they
rated each face a second time. * * * Participants
changed their ratings to conform to those of their
peers. This social influence was accompanied by
modulated engagement of two brain regions
associated with coding subjective value—the
nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal cortex * *
*.”
Zaki, Jamil, at al. “Social Influence Modulates the Neural Computation of Value” Published online
before print June 8, 2011, doi: 10.1177/0956797611411057 Psychological Science July 2011 vol. 22
no. 7 894-900
Peer Pressure Motivation, 2011

 Researchers used fMRI “to elucidate the neural
mechanisms associated with social influence with
regard to a common consumer good: music. * * *
adolescents, age 12–17. * * * 15-second clips of
songs from MySpace.com * * * * Song popularity
had a significant effect on the participants’ likability
ratings of the songs. fMRI results showed a strong
correlation between the participants’ rating and
activity in the caudate nucleus, a region previously
implicated in reward-driven actions.”
Berns, Gregory S. et al, “Neural Mechanisms of the Influence of Popularity on Adolescent
Ratings of Music.” Neuroimage. 2010 February 1; 49(3): 2687.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2818406/
Peer Pressure Motivation, 2010

Dopamine Motivation, 2011
 “The human brain, much like that of most
mammals, has hardwired physiological
responses that had survival value at some
point in evolutionary progression. The
dopamine-reward system is fueled by the
brain's recognition of making a successful
prediction, choice, or behavioral response.”

3. Dopamine
From: http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/teaching-
packets/neurobiology-drug-addiction/section-i-introduction-to-
brain/8-dopamine-neurotransmission-modula

Dopamine & Genes, 2008
 Begley (2008) reports on research finding that
nearly 30 percent of children are born with genes
that result in their brains having fewer dopamine
receptors than normal. Having few dopamine
receptors is linked to an inability to learn from
mistakes, and to less activity in the brain’s frontal
cortex, the site of higher-order thinking.
Begley, S. (2008, August 9). But I did everything right. Newsweek.
Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http://www.newsweek.com/id/151758

Dopamine & Genes, 2008
Continued
 In her article, Begley quotes Jack Shonkoff,
director of the Center on the Developing Child
at Harvard University as saying, “individual
genetic differences are the 800-pound gorilla of
child development.”

Dopamine & Rewards, 2012
 “The researchers found that * * * hardworking
people had the most dopamine in two areas of
the brain known to play an important role in
reward and motivation, and low dopamine
levels in the anterior insula, a region linked to
motivation and risk perception.” in Journal of
Neuroscience. 2012
 From Slacker or Go-Getter? Brain Chemical May Tell Vanderbilt University.
http://www.livescience.com/20026-brain-dopamine-worker-
slacker.html?utm_content=LiveScience&utm_campaign=seo+blitz&utm_source=twitter.com&ut
m_medium=social+media

Dopamine & T. gondii, 2012
 Parasites – Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii)
causes production and release of abnormal
amounts of dopamine.

T. gondii in Brazil, 2006
 A 2006 article estimates the “dopamine”
parasite, toxoplasma gondii infects 67% of
Brazilians.
 The researcher hypothesizes that the bug’s
behavioral effects on individuals may in turn
influence human culture in general.
 See Lafferty, K. D. “Can the Common Brain Parasite, Toxoplasma Gondii, Influence Human
Culture?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 273 (1602), 2749-2755 DOI:
10.1098/rspb.2006.3641 (2006).

T. gondii in the USA, 2011
 The overall T. gondii antibody prevalence in the
United States according to NHANES 1999–
2000 data is 14.3% (95% CI 12.3%–16.2%).
 http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/4/06-1355_article.htm#tnT1

T. gondii’s effect on rats
 T. gondii makes rats friendly towards cats. Thus
the parasite affects the behavior of the rats,
which change of behavior increases the
chances of the parasite completing its life cycle
in the cats.
Berdoy, M. et al. “Fatal Attraction in Rats Infected with Toxoplasma Gondii.” Proceedings of the
Royal Society Biological Sciences. Vol. 267, no. 1452, p. 1591-1594. 7 Aug. 2000. doi:
10.1098/rspb.2000.1182 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/267/1452/1591

T. gondii in the UK, 2012
 According to a report commissioned by the
UK Food Standards Agency, 350,000
Britons a year are being infected by T.
gondii. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/beware-of-the-cat-
britains-hidden-toxoplasma-problem-8102860.html (2012)
 [A 1993 UK survey found that 5.5 to 12.7% of
pregnant women in the London region were
infected.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8432316?
dopt=Abstract]

Parasites in General, 2011
 “[W]e tested the parasite-stress hypothesis for
the distribution of intelligence among the USA
states: the hypothesis proposes that
intelligence emerges from a developmental
trade-off between maximizing brain vs. immune
function.”
 “As predicted, we found that the correlation
between average state IQ and infectious
disease stress was − 0.67 (p < 0.0001) across
the 50 states.”
 Parasite prevalence and the distribution of intelligence among the states of the USA,
doi:10.1016/j.intell.2011.02.008

4. What Else Affects Brains?
Culture
Language
Aerobics
Emotions
Norepinephrine
Health
Music

Culture, 2012
 “Despite claims to the contrary, leaders in the
neurodiversity movement clearly recognize
autism as a disability. * * * They also maintain,
however, that difficulties experienced by
people with disabilities are contextual and
that living in a society designed for
nonautistic people exacerbates the
challenges experienced by autistic
individuals.”
What Can Physicians Learn from the Neurodiversity Movement? By Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, in
American Medical Association Journal of Ethics June 2012, Volume 14, Number 6: 503-510.
http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2012/06/oped1-1206.html

Culture, 2011
 In a Nature commentary, researcher Laurent
Mottron criticized autism research to date and
argued that we should move away from
expecting people with autism to correct
themselves to meet our expectations. Instead,
we should accommodate the needs of
people with autism in much the same way we
accommodate the needs of people with visual
and hearing impairments.
 Mottron, Laurent. “Changing perceptions: The power of autism,” Nature. Vol. 479, p. 33–
35. November 2011, DOI: doi:10.1038/479033a.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7371/full/479033a.html,

Language, 2011
 Words for color affect perception of colors.
Members of the Himba Tribe in Africa have
language that names colors differently than
we name colors. They can see what we can’t
see, and we can see what they can’t see.
BBC Horizon: Do you see what I see? "The Himba tribe"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b71rT9fU-I (2011)

Aerobic Fitness, 2010
 “MRI and behavioral methodologies to examine
the link between aerobic fitness, brain
structure, and cognition in preadolescent
children. A clear association between aerobic
fitness, hippocampal volume, and relational
memory in children is demonstrated.”
 49 children ages 9 &10, average K-Bit IQ 115,
MRI used.
A neuroimaging investigation of the association between aerobic fitness, hippocampal volume, and
memory performance in preadolescent children (2010) Chaddocka et al (IL, OH, PA)

Emotions, 2001
 Ethics problems involving emotion show
different patterns of brain involvement than
those ethics problems not involving emotion.
Emotions affect judgment and problem-solving.
Greene, J.D., R.B. Sommerville, L.E. Nystrom, J.M. Darley, J.D. Cohen. (2001). An fMRI
investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293 (5537):2105.

Emotions, 2002
 Participants in a negative mood learned faster,
contrary to expectation. This research
examined learning over a 12-day period. The
learning involved a word association task,
visual learning task, and a mood-induction
process.
Moore, Simon C., Oaksford, Mike. Some long-term effects of emotion on cognition. British Journal of
Psychology. August 2002, 93(3).

Norepinephrine, 2012
 “University of Kansas researchers have found larger
resting pupil size and lower levels of a salivary enzyme
associated with the neurotransmitter norepinephrine in
children with autism spectrum disorder.”
 “* * * samples taken at home throughout the day showed
that sAA levels were higher in general across the day and
much less variable for children with ASD.”
 “What this says is that the autonomic system of children with
ASD is always on the same level,” said Christa Anderson,
assistant research professor. “They are in overdrive.”
 http://neurosciencenews.com/pupil-size-saliva-alpha-amylase-
children-autism-spectrum-disorder/

From Norepinephrine to
Overexcitabilities?

Health Behaviors, 2012
 “We report longitudinal data in which we assessed
the relationships between intelligence as assessed
in Grade 7 and consequential health outcomes in
Grade 11.”
 “The mean age of respondents (N = 420; 188
males, 232 females) was 12.30 years (SD = 0.49)
in Grade 7and 16.17 years (SD = 0.45) in Grade
11. They completed standardized verbal and
numerical ability tests and a measure of
conscientiousness in Grade 7 and health related
questions in Grade 11.”
Cognitive ability and health-related behaviors during adolescence: A prospective study
across five years. Joseph Ciarrochi et al. From Australia
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289612000384

Health Behaviors, Continued
 “Results indicated that higher intelligence was
associated with a number of healthy behaviors
including delay in onset of cigarette smoking.
Intelligence significantly predicted less time spent
watching TV, lower physical exercise, and lower
consumption of stimulant drinks. Covariate
analyses showed that general intelligence
predicted health outcomes after controlling for
conscientiousness, socio-economic status, and
gender.”
Cognitive ability and health-related behaviors during adolescence: A prospective study across five
years. Joseph Ciarrochi et al. From Australia
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289612000384

Musical Training, 2009
 “Here, for the first time, we demonstrate structural brain
changes after only 15 months of musical training in
early childhood, which were correlated with
improvements in musically relevant motor and auditory
skills.
 These findings shed light on brain plasticity, and
suggest that structural brain differences in adult experts
(whether musicians or experts in other areas) are likely
due to training-induced brain plasticity.”
 Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2009 Jul;1169:182-6.The effects of musical training on structural
brain development: a longitudinal study. By Hyde, et al.

Cortical Thickness, 2011
 “High-resolution magnetic resonance scans
were acquired in 32 healthy adults to model the
gray– white and gray–cerebrospinal fluid
borders for each individual cortex and to
compute the distance of these surfaces as a
measure of cortical thickness (CT).
Associations between CT and the dimensions
of impulsiveness (Barratt-Impulsiveness-Scale
11, BIS) were identified in entire cortex
analyses.”
 Cortical thickness correlates with impulsiveness in healthy adults (2011). By Shilling.
NeuroImage doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.07.058

5. Education Improvements?
 First, we repeat John Geake’s cautions.
 Next, we offer a small sampling of brain
research studies and other information that
might improve education.
 The purpose of this section is not to provide a
full list; the purpose is to “whet your appetite” to
learn more.

Cautions from John Geake’s
The Brain at School, 2009
 Levels of analysis are confounded when we try to
port neuroscience over to education
 Correlation is not proof of causation.
 Cognitive neuroscientists and educators are not
well connected.
 Neuroscience tools will improve in the future.

Larger Kerning
 Zorzi, Marco, et al. “Extra-large letter spacing
improves reading in dyslexia.” Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences in the United
States
(2012)http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/0
5/29/1205566109
 G r e a t e r / l e t t e r / s p a c i n g / helps
reading in dyslexia
http://neurocritic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/g-r-
e-t-e-r-l-e-t-t-e-r-s-p-c-i-n-g.html

Better Fonts
 “OpenDyslexic is a new open sourced font
created to increase readability for readers with
dyslexia. The typeface includes regular, bold,
italic and bold-italic styles. It is being updated
continually and improved based on input from
dyslexic users. There are no restrictions on
using OpenDyslexic outside of attribution.”
 http://dyslexicfonts.com/

OpenDyslexic.
http://dyslexicfonts.com/

Physical Exercise, 2011
 Forty minutes of daily exercise done in the
classroom during reinforcement of basic academic
skills (students in grades 1-3) or done on exercise
equipment while watching educational programs
(students in grades 4-6) improves learning in a
low-scoring elementary school. The percentage of
students meeting state standardized test goals
increased from 55 percent to 68.5 percent.
 http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/05/02/exercising-
while-learning-boosts-test-scores-study-finds

Learning with Hands, 2010
 Scientists at the University of Chicago’s Human
Performance asked participants to solve a Tower of Hanoi
puzzle, and then asked them to demonstrate how they
solved the puzzle. If the weight of some of the puzzle parts
was significantly altered before a participant demonstrated
how he or she solved the puzzle, the participant’s problem
solving skills suffered. The scientists concluded, “Gesturing
does not merely reflect thought: gesture changes thought
by introducing action into one’s mental representations.
Gesture forces people to think with their hands.”
Beilock, S.L. and Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). “Gesture changes thought by grounding it in
action.” Psychological Science OnlineFirst, published on October 1, 2010 as
doi:10.1177/0956797610385353.

 To test whether gesturing while thinking
improves learning, the Birmingham scientists
recruited university students to solve the
problems. Results from a series of experiments
reveal that (1) people spontaneously use
gesturing to help them solve complex spatial
problems, and (2) the gesturing improves later
performance on different spatial tasks.
Chu, M. and Kita, S. (2011). “The Nature of Gestures’ Beneficial Role in Spatial Problem Solving.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. American Psychological Association, Vol. 140, No. 1,
102–116.

 Notre Dame psychologists placed 136 images of complex
geometric patterns within the same distance from the eyes
of each of 44 undergraduate students, but within different
distances from their hands. The scientists found that
learning differences occur depending upon whether the
visual material is within the reach of the students’ hands or
not, even if the students did not use their hands. But the
scientists discovered a downside to objects placed within
reach—people are less able to abstract information
common to a series of images when the images are near
their hands.
 Davoli, C. C., Brockmole, J. R., & Goujon, A. (2012). A bias to detail: How hand position modulates visual learning and
visual memory. Memory & Cognition, 40, 352-359. http://www.nd.edu/~jbrockm1/pubs.html

Optimal Rewards, 2011
 “The popularity of video games is not the
enemy of education, but rather a model for best
teaching strategies. Games insert players at
their achievable challenge level and reward
player effort and practice with
acknowledgement of incremental goal
progress, not just final product. The fuel for this
process is the pleasure experience related to
the release of dopamine.”

Improved Diagnoses, 2009
 “Developmental disorders in children are
typically diagnosed by observing behavior, but
Aditi Shankardass knew that we should be
looking directly at their brains. She explains
how a remarkable EEG device has revealed
mistaken diagnoses and transformed children's
lives.”
 http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/aditi_shankardass_a_
second_opinion_on_learning_disorders.html

About Aditi Shankardass
 “Aditi Shankardass is a neuroscientist trained
across three disciplines of the field:
neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and
neuropsychology. * * * Currently, she leads
the Neurophysiology Lab of the Communicative
Disorders Department at California State
University.”
 http://www.ted.com/speakers/aditi_shankardass.html

Impulse Control Training?
 Campbell and von Stauffenberg (2009) found
that children’s performances between 36
months of age and first grade on measures of
resistance to temptation, delay of gratification,
response inhibition, attention, and planning
predicted whether the children would have
symptoms of ADD or ADHD in third grade.
 Campbell, S. B., & von Stauffenberg, C. (2009).
Delay and inhibition as early predictors of ADHD symptoms in third grade. Journal of Abnormal
Child Psychology, 37(1), 1-15.

Meditation Training?
 “Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA
Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have
found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of
gyrification (“folding” of the cortex, which may allow the
brain to process information faster) than people who do
not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found
between the amount of gyrification and the number of
meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the
brain’s neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to
environmental changes.”
“Evidence builds that meditation strengthens the brain, UCLA researchers say.”
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/evidence-builds-that-meditation-230237.aspx March 12,
2012

Looking Inside Brains?
 Nature published an article about the efforts of
researcher Brian Butterworth and others to understand
dyscalculia (Callaway 2013).
 Butterworth hopes to monitor the brains of students as
they improve their math skills by playing Number
Sense, a suite of educational computer games that
Butterworth and a colleague at the Institute of
Education in London developed to help people with
dyscalculia.
 Callaway, Ewen. (2013). “Dyscalculia: Number games: Brian Butterworth is on a crusade to
understand the number deficit called dyscalculia — and to help those who have it.” Nature, 493: 150–
153. doi:10.1038/493150a http://www.nature.com/news/dyscalculia-number-games-1.12153

Zapping with Electricity?
 Scientists in the United Kingdom have shown that electricity
applied to the brain can boost math learning.
 Oxford University neuropsychologist Roi Cohen Kadosh has
been experimenting with administering very low, non-painful
electric current into the brains of adults (Feilden 2012). The
technique, called “transcranial direct current stimulation
(TDCS),” stimulates the prefrontal cortex nerves of adults as
they answer mathematics questions. Cohen Kadosh’s
studies have shown that the mathematical abilities of adults
improve after training with TDCS. Cohen Kadosh plans to
test the TDCS technique with children with dyscalculia.

Zapping & Movement &
Games, Oh My!
 Oxford neuropsychologist Roi Cohen Kadosh has developed
a system that involves not only a computer game to help
students improve their mathematics skills, but also a Kinect
device to record body movements, and a helmet to zap the
student’s brain with electricity as the student solves math
problems via body movements while playing the game.
 Here is a video demonstration of the
computer/Kinect/zapping system that Dr. Cohen Kadosh
plans to use for his research on brain stimulation and
mathematics learning:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2012/11/brain-
zapping-kinect-game-mathematics.html.

Thank You
wendasheard@gmail.com

Brain Research for Teachers & Other Curious Souls, 2013 update

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