If you've been involved in the field of education for any length of time, you've seen many innovations and programs come and go. Teaching machines, Time on Task programs, Epstein's plateaus of adolescent cognition and Madeline Hunter's Elements of Effective Instruction are just a few of the programs that at one time garnered many adherents only to fade into near obscurity several years later. The pendulum swings are so frequent in schools that many educators have adopted a "Sit tight, this too will pass." attitude.

The newest "break through" in education is neuroscience or brain research, a field that until recently has been foreign to educators. While many past programs generated a great deal of interest, rarely has one amassed a following so enthusiastic as this one. In the past few years numerous national educational conference have been devoted entirely to the brain. Some mention of brain research has become de rigeur in grant proposals and staff development plans. Hundreds of books tout everything from brain-compatible mathematics instruction to brain-based classroom environment. (I recently saw a book on an educational vendor's rack titled "Brain-compatible Worksheets...which may be an oxymoron!) An internet search of links that included "brain" and "education" produced over 400,000 sites.

Our fascination with the brain is not difficult to understand. We seem to have always had an innate curiosity about how our brains function, how we learn and how we remember. It's not surprising to discover throughout hundreds of years of history, theories have been generated to explain the elusive qualities of the human brain. Plato likened the brain to a ball of wax that becomes grooved as we learn and recall information over the same pathways. Aristotle thought that the heart was the source of memory and the brain served to cool the blood. In the mid 1660s, Descartes proposed that fluids in the ventricles of the brain controlled motor activity but human mental capabilities existed outside the brain in the mind. And as late as 1850, Franz Joseph Gall "reading" the innate propensities of people by feeling the lumps and bumps on their skulls, was all the rage.

We may smile at the naivete of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, or Gall ,but we have our own modern myths. For instance, the terms "right-brained" and "left-brained" are found commonly in conversation and writing. Robert Ornstein in his book, The Right Mind, calls our misunderstanding of the brain's two hemispheres dichotomania. While each hemisphere does have specialized functions, they work in concert with one another at all times. To explain a person's personality by stating that it is a preference for one hemisphere over the other is inaccurate and misleading. Another common myth is that we use only 10% of our brain. A quick look at a PET or fMRI image dispels this myth very quickly. Never will you see activity in just 10 % of the brain.

Educators are perhaps more captivated by brain research than the general public. The reason is not difficult to understand; the brain is the organ of learning but we haven't understood how it works! Our students' brains have been black boxes with their secrets locked inside. The knowledge base from which we've generated our decisions has been limited by what the behavioral sciences could provide which hasn't always been sufficient. Of necessity we've operated intuitively. Intuition has worked well in many instances but has left us without the ability to articulate our craft to others. Because of this, we've become, as Bob Sylwester puts it, a folklore profession. This lack of scientific knowledge has put us at the mercy of lay boards and politicians who have sometimes made decisions that are unrelated to what we know is best for students.

So the appeal and interest in the neuroscientific research is understandable. But where are we going with our newfound information? Will this become another fad or are we finally on the edge of acquiring a scientifically-based theory of teaching and learning? I think it has the potential to go either way. Which way depends on how we educators interpret and use the research. Unfortunately, some consultants and educators are proposing "brain-based" programs and strategies that have not been tested in classrooms. Running ahead of the research before sound clinical trials and testing of new hypotheses have been completed, makes us vulnerable to the criticism of jumping on yet another bandwagon.

Uncritical acceptance of what we read or hear in the media can be problematic. Media reports on science spare the humdrum details and sometimes exaggerate, misconstrue, and fabricate results. For example, a report in a Minneapolis newspaper reported that Fran Rauscher and Gordon Shaw at the University of California, Irvine found that 17 of 19 school children who received music lessons for 8 months "increased their IQs by an average of 46%." The actual research done by Rauscher and Shaw found that a specific type of music lesson increased spatial temporal reasoning in the students, not IQ scores.

Another article reported that Paul Gold, a researcher at the University of Virginia, had found evidence that glucose, a sugar, improves alertness and memory. The actual research on which this report was based was conducted with elderly people who drank lemonade sweetened either with glucose or with saccharin. It is true that the subjects whose lemonade was sweetened with glucose recalled almost twice as much from a narrative prose passage as their counterparts who drank the saccharin-sweetened drink. However, what was not reported was that this did not prove true for college students and that no research has been conducted with K-12 students. Yet on the basis of this newspaper article, some teachers are giving their students peppermint candy because "research proves that candy improves memory." Is it any wonder that some neuroscientists are beginning to accuse educators of engaging in pseudoscience or worse, becoming "snake-oil salesmen" for products and programs that have no real scientific foundation?

What we must do at this point is carefully and analytically sort through the data and determine which studies actually have classroom applications and which ones do not. While many studies on memory and learning are general in nature, there are some that have been conducted with student learning in mind and have strong implications for educators.

One of the most direct applications of research to the classroom can be found in the work of Paula Tallal at Rutgers University and Michael Merzenich at the University of California at San Francisco. They discovered that difficulty in learning to read in some cases stems from a language processing delay in the student's brain. Armed with this information, they developed a computer program designed to correct this delay, to actually speed up the processing of the sounds that make up the written word resulting in definite improvement in reading skills. This program, Fast Forword, is one of the first brain studies with specific applications to the classroom.

Other research is being conducted with the goal of improving students' ability to read. At the New Haven based Haskins Laboratories, researchers Sally Shaywitz, Bennett Shaywitz and Kenneth Pugh have found that the brain of someone with dyslexia functions differently from a typical brain when processing phonemes. They are working on combining brain imaging with sophisticated cognitive-behavioral work to better understand how reading failure occurs and to develop better techniques to correct it.

Gordon Shaw, mentioned earlier, is a retired physicist who became interested in the connections between music and mathematics. His research, conducted over the past several years has resulted in a program that uses piano keyboarding lessons and a computer program called STAR (Spatial Temporal Animation Reasoning) with elementary school-age children. The students in the study have made exceptional gains in proportional math and fractions, math skills that require good temporal spatial reasoning.

While these specific studies have potentially important implications for educators, so do many of the more general studies that have been conducted on memory and learning over the past decade. The following is a generally accepted list of what we have learned about the brain and what I think are the potential applications of these findings for educational practice.

1. Experience shapes the brain.

The brain is the only organ in the body that sculpts itself from outside experience. In a sense our experience becomes biology. We used to think that the brain you were born with was the brain you were stuck with, but we now know that learning experiences change and reorganize the brain's structure and physiology. Several studies have shown actual structural changes in various parts of the brain depending on the way in which these structures were used. The changes can be observed in behavior as well as structure. It should be fairly obvious that this finding has strong implications for education. We now know that learning is a matter of making connections between brain cells and that the experiences our students have shape their brains. Obviously we do learn from reading and hearing, but the strongest connections are often made through concrete experience. Which do you think would make the most lasting changes in the brain, reading about an experiment someone conducted, or performing the experiment yourself?

2. Memory is not stored in a single location in the brain.

When an experience enters the brain, it is "deconstructed" and distributed all over the cortex. The affect (or the emotional content) is stored in the amygdala, visual images in the occipital lobes, source memory in the frontal lobes and where you were during the experience is stored in the parietal lobes. When you recall information, you have to reconstruct it. Since memories are reconstructed, the more ways students have the information represented in the brain (through seeing, hearing, being involved with, etc.) The more pathways they have for reconstructing, the richer the memory. Multimodal instruction makes a lot of sense.

3. Memory is not static.

It would be nice if memory were a matter of experiencing something once and then retrieving it at a later date in exactly the same form as it was originally stored. But memory doesn't work that way; it is dynamic. It decays naturally over time as new experiences infiltrate older ones. Fortunately, this natural decay can be minimized by using elaborative rehearsal strategies. Visualizing, writing, symbolizing, singing, semantic mapping, simulating and devising mnemonics are strategies that can be used to reinforce and increase the likelihood of recall. They often have the added benefit of enhancing students' understanding of concepts as well as retention.

4. Memory is not unitary.

There are two distinct types of memory each of which involves different brain structures. Declarative Memory is our everyday memory, the conscious ability to recall what you ate for breakfast yesterday, the names of your favorite musicians and the formula for finding the area of a rectangle. It is information that you can declare. Procedural Memory refers to skills and habits that you engage in without conscious recall such as driving a car, decoding words, touch typing and playing the piano. Procedural learning requires many repetitions over a period of time; in fact there is no other way to learn them. Repetition, however, generally is not an efficient way to learn or retain declarative information. Understanding the differences between these two types of memory is essential in designing classroom instruction and practice. Rote rehearsal is essential for procedural memory while elaborative rehearsal strategies are much more effective for declarative. In discussing declarative memory, Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter writes, "For better or for worse, our recollections are largely at the mercy of our elaborations; only those aspects of experience that are targets of elaborative encoding processes have a high likelihood of being remembered subsequently."

5. Emotion is a primary catalyst in the learning process.

Some of the most important findings from neuroscience have been in the area of the role of emotion in learning and memory. Two small but powerful structures deep within in each hemisphere called the amygdala regulate our emotional responses. These emotional responses have the ability to either impede or enhance learning. On the one hand, for survival purposes, our brains are hard-wired to pay attention to and remember those experiences with an emotional component, whether it is the Challenger explosion or a particularly vivid simulation in which you took part in the 8th grade. However, emotional responses can have the opposite effect if situations contain elements that a person perceives to be threatening. In these situations, the amygdala starts a chain of physiological responses (commonly called the fight or flight response) to ready the body for action. Under these conditions, emotion is dominant over cognition and the rational/thinking part of the brain is less efficient. The environment must be physically and psychologically safe for learning to occur.

I think it is important to note that there is much in the research that confirms what experienced educators have long known and used in their classrooms. What the research adds for these practices is an understanding of why certain procedures or strategies work so that we no longer have to operate intuitively but can articulate and explain the rationale for what we do. It is obvious that brain research is not the elusive "silver bullet" that will answer all our education problems. However, I do think that the new research offers educators an unparalleled opportunity for building a scientific foundation for educational practice which will allow us to make more informed decisions. To make certain that the brain research becomes a foundation rather than a fad, educators need to take a proactive stance. Here are some suggestions as to about what I think we need to do:

1. Become literate in the general structure and function of the brain. We don't need to become scientists, but we do need to learn the terminology they use. If you don't know what the cortex of the brain is you won't be terribly impressed to learn that it changes as the result of experience! If you are not familiar with the basic structure and function of the brain, you cannot read the literature analytically.

2. Learn how to determine whether a study is valid or not. Not all studies are equal. It is critical to be cautious when using the phrase, "Brain research proves......" To determine whether or not the study is valid, the following questions need to be answered. How many subjects were there in the study? What were the ages and characteristics of the subjects? Was there a control group of subjects who were matched with the subjects in the experimental group? What was the methodology used for this study? Has the study been replicated by other scientists using the same methodology? Are there similar studies that have contradictory findings? No one will consider educators true professionals unless we act like professionals in analyzing and applying the research.

3. Be cautious when making applications of research findings to the classroom. Eric Chudler from the University of Washington points out that there is a wide divide between bench science and the classroom. Many are working towards closing the gap but it takes time and money. Think about how a new drug gets on the market. There are animal studies to show how it works (benefits, possible side effect, etc.) Then, if the benefit to risk ratio is good, it may advance to clinical trials. These trials can take many years to insure that the drug works. Finally, the drug may go on the market. Much is being sold to teachers about the benefits of water, color, odors, etc. in the classroom that has never been put to the test in actual classrooms. Chudler suggests we question the findings of the research by asking: Will it work in actual classrooms? What specific benefit will be realized, higher math scores, reading scores, quieter classrooms? What are the side effects or problems? For example, if water increases brain functioning, for whom and how much water produces these effects?

4. Marry the findings from neuroscience with other fields. As important as the brain research is, we want to be certain that we don't ignore the research from other fields such as behavioral and cognitive psychology and educational research. For example, a recent large study completed in the Chicago schools found that elementary students scored higher on math and reading skills when teachers used more interactive instruction than when they employed the more traditional didactic methods. This certainly seems to fit with what we know about how the brain learns best, but the study was conducted by educational researchers, not neuroscientists.

Too often at conferences scientists speak and educators take notes. I would like to see more of a dialogue taking place between these groups. We educators must let the scientists know what kinds of information we need to best educate all children....including theirs! Ken Kosik, physician and professor of neuroscience at Harvard, suggests that we look at the option of establishing research schools where teachers and neuroscientists work together. Stephen Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health says we need a stepped-up collaboration between neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, physicists, computer scientists, physicians and teachers.

6. Begin to incorporate in our classrooms and schools what we have learned about the brain. The goal of brain-compatible instruction is more than high test scores. Our students need to develop an in-depth understanding of concepts to the point where they are able to use what they've learned in school in the world outside of school. Granted, there is much more to be learned from neuroscience that will assist us in making our classrooms more compatible with how the brain functions, but it would be foolish to wait until all the research is completed to begin to incorporate the knowledge we now have. As mentioned earlier, many teachers are intuitively already using many brain-compatible strategies in their classrooms such as making the environment conducive to learning, providing opportunities for interaction, engaging students in projects and problem solving, giving students hands-on concrete experiences, using music, rhyme and mnemonics, teaching students to construct graphics and opportunities to simulate events and concepts. However, these strategies need to be brought from the intuitive to the conscious level so that educators can articulate their knowledge.

Fad or foundation, which will it be? The choice is ours.

References:

Chudler, E. (2001) Personal communication by email, February, 2001.

Kosik, K. From a speech given at the Brainy Bunch Renewal, Yountville, CA, January, 2001.

Ornstein, R. (1997). The right mind. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company.

St. Paul Pioneer Press (1999)

Tallal, P. (2000). Experimental studies of language learning impairments: From research to remediation. In Bishop, D. V. M., & Leonard, L. B. (Eds.), Speech and language impairments in children: Causes, characteristics, intervention, and outcome. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

Shaw, G. (2000). Keeping Mozart in mind. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Recently I've been reading articles in the news about the large number of parents who are concerned about getting their children into what they consider the best ‘academic" preschools in order to make certain they do well when they begin their formal schooling. Some are even signing their babies up before they are born! This concern and push for an earlier introduction to the academics is troubling. One of the definitions in the dictionary for the word academic is, ‘ that which is too far from immediate reality.' I think that's an apt description of some of the programs being touted to anxious parents. Given the research on early brain development, trying to create a ‘super baby' or ‘super child,' doesn't make sense and in fact runs counter to what we are learning about how children's brains develop.

Let's take a look at the possible origins of this upsurge of interest in the early years. In the past decade there has been an explosion of information in the field of brain research (neuroscience.) With the development of new brain-imaging techniques, the brain is no longer as much of a mysterious ‘black box' as it once was. Researchers now have the ability to see what is going on inside brains as subjects interact with their environment and their findings are being reported almost daily in the news media. The public is understandably fascinated with this new information, especially the findings that focus on the early development of the brain.

Contrary to the earlier belief that babies are born with a brain resembling a blank slate, scientists have discovered that learning begins before birth (babies are born recognizing their mother's voice and music they heard while in the womb) and that children know more and learn faster than was ever thought possible. Scientists have also discovered that in the first three to four years the young child's brain develops connections (synapses) between cells at an amazing rate, one that will never be duplicated again during the child's life. Unfortunately, this information has been misinterpreted by some to mean that babies and young children need extra stimulation during this ‘critical' period, and that after four you've missed the opportunity to develop the brain to its fullest potential. This is not only an oversimplification of the research, it is not true. There are two major misconceptions about the development of synaptic connections.

The first misconception deals with the belief that synapses represent learning and the more you have, the better, and that these synapses need to be protected in some way so you don't lose them. It is true that the child's brain develops trillions of synaptic connections in the early years. What is often not reported (and therefore not understood) is that the brain overproduces connections in the early years and an important aspect of normal brain development is the pruning away of those that are inappropriate or not needed. For example, babies are born with cells that would allow them to pronounce the sounds of every language in the world. However, the connections for sounds of the language they hear everyday are strengthened while the ones that are not used are pruned away. This allows children to adapt to and eventually speak the language of their parents or caregivers. An important part of learning is getting rid of connections!

The second misconception is that early, special and enriched environments are essential during critical periods to develop their child's brain to its fullest potential. Hence, worried that they may miss the critical periods, parents provide their infants with black and white mobiles, play foreign-language or Mozart tapes, and provide educational games and software in order to make certain their children have the most enriched environment possible. Many scientists believe this extra stimulation is not necessary.

Part of the controversy over the importance of the environment on brain development arises from treating all stimulation and environmental input as the same. Stephen Meltzoff, coauthor of the book, The Scientist in the Crib, states that the important question is not "What is the effect of the environment on the brain?" but "What is the effect of a deprived environment, a normal environment and an enriched environment?" (Meltzoff, 2000)

Many studies have shown the devastating effects of the deprived environment. The ability to speak a spoken language is lost by about age ten if children–because of deafness or lack of exposure to language–do not learn to speak a language in the early years. Severely impoverished environments can result in stunted emotional growth as reported in the studies of Romanian orphans. Fortunately, most children are not raised under severely deprived conditions. In an impoverished environment, the brain prunes too many connections.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum? Does an enriched environment somehow change the child's development? Is it better? Can we really produce ‘super babies?' Parents are barraged with products and services offering ‘brain stimulation' for their babies and children. They are marketed to parents frantic that failing to introduce their young children to letter sounds and number concepts will doom their child's success in later life. The fact is that the scientific evidence does not support these ideas. There is no proof that extra stimulation, over and above the natural interaction that takes place, is necessary or important for cognitive or social growth. In fact, too much activity can result in overstimulation and be damaging to a young child.

Does this mean that the environment is unimportant as some have suggested? Of course it's not. There are certain requisites for normal development. Using language as an example, it is obvious that for normal language development, human interaction with parents is crucial. Children need to hear a language to speak it. They are born capable of speaking any language, but they don't make it up! Every baby and young child prospers in a warm, intimate relationship with a primary caregiver. They need models of appropriate social interactions and a physically and psychologically safe environment. But it appears they do not need extra stimulation for normal cognitive and social development.

The human brain is innately curious and designed to learn. Young children are driven to master their world. Given a normal environment and barring any serious problems, this will happen without a lot of intervention on the part of adults. Play is incredibly important for children. In play they have ownership, exploring their own interests with the support of adults. Activity is critical; children do not like to learn through passive input. Flash cards, workbooks, language tapes and ‘educational' computer games are not only inappropriate, they often deprive children of the natural interaction with their world so important to development. What children need and enjoy is rich, varied input in natural settings. The opportunities for this type of input are everywhere from taking a walk through the neighborhood and talking about what you see to letting the child help with cooking or sorting clothes. Reading to young children and teaching them songs and rhymes is the most appropriate introduction to reading available. It is interesting to note that these are things that most parents have always done. Parental intuition is not something to ignore!

References and Suggested Reading

ASCD Audiotape Set (2000). How the Young Brain Learns. (Call 1-800-933-2723 to order) Contains the following three tapes:

Barney, JoAnn, Teaching the Young Brain

Petersen, Steven, The Nature of the Young Brain

Meltzoff, Andrew, Nurturing the Young Brain

Diamond, M. C. & Hopson, J. (1998). Magic trees of the mind: How to nurture your chid's intelligence, creativity, and healthy emotions from birth through adolescence. New York: Penguin Putman Inc.

Gopnik, Alison, Meltzoff, Andrew, and Kuhl, Patricia (2000). The Scientist in the Crib Morrow Press.

Newsweek Special 2000 Edition, Your Child, Birth to Three (Order off Newsweeks' web site www.newsweek.msnbc.com)

Ramey, Craig and Ramey, Sharon (1999). Right from Birth: Building Your Child's foundation for Life. Goddard Press. (The Ramey's web site is http://www.circ.uab.edu On this site you can obtain copies of a slide presentation on their early childhood research.)

The Adolescent Brain: A Work in Progress – June, 2009

            One day a child is cheerful, loving and obedient, comes to a parent or teacher for advice, dresses in appropriate clothing, and turns in for the night at 10:00 pm. Homework is done without nagging and parent/teacher conferences are a joy. Then somewhere between ten and twelve, a strange thing happens. Almost over night it appears someone has unzipped this child and put someone else inside. No longer could this child be called sweet and loving; surly and antagonistic would be better descriptors. Gone are the days when they ask for advice and if it is offered, you can be certain it will be ignored. This teen comes to breakfast in the morning dressed in an outfit on which you would like to pin a note stating, “What this person is wearing to school today is not my idea of good taste!”  The teen spends hours on the computer, but homework doesn’t get done and teacher/parent conferences are no longer pleasant.

It doesn’t take a brain scientist to tell you that adolescents can be frustrating. Most of us understand that the teen’s life is shaped by factors such as family, friends, school, and community institutions. But there are also powerful neurological issues at play. Neuroscience has made great strides in shedding light on the changes occurring in the teen’s brains and why they behave the way they do. Interestingly, the new information focuses not only on the oft-blamed raging hormones, but on what’s going on above the neck as well. Many of the new insights into the adolescent brain have been gained using the brain-imaging techniques that were discussed in Chapter One. What the scientists are seeing is that the teen years are a time of significant change in the activity, anatomy and neurochemistry of the brain.

As we have seen, the brain grows by expanding and pruning the connections between cells, keeping the connections that are used the most and getting rid of the unused ones. We have also seen that one of the most active periods of reorganization occurs early in life around two years of age when there is a huge build up of neural connections in the child’s brain. Recall that this build up is followed by a massive pruning which allows the strongest and most efficient connections to function more effectively. Until recently, scientists assumed that this period of growth and winnowing away occurs only in early childhood and that most, if not all, of the major changes in brain organization and development occurred before adolescence. This view seemed reasonable in the light of the fact that the brain reaches its full size by puberty. The conventional wisdom had been that the adolescent brain is fully developed and functions similarly to an adult brain. This turns out–as many middle-school teachers and parents already suspected–not to be the case. Instead scientists have discovered that very complex changes are taking place in the brain during adolescence and that the brain is not fully “installed” until between ages twenty to twenty-five. The brain is still changing during the teen years!

Changes in the Adolescent Brain

In what parts of the adolescent brain are the greatest changes occurring? A central area of focus has been the frontal lobes. A long-range study by Jay Giedd and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH.) has involved using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of nearly 1000 healthy children and adolescents aged 3 to 18. Giedd discovered that just prior to puberty, between ages 9 and 10, the frontal lobes undergo a second wave of reorganization and growth (Giedd, 2007). This growth appears to represents millions of new synapses. Then around age eleven a massive pruning of these connections takes place which isn’t complete until early adulthood. Recall that although it may seem like the more synapses, the better, the brain actually consolidates learning by pruning away connections. The brain is getting rid of the least-used pathways, a method for ensuring that the most useful synapses are maintained which in turn allows the brain to operate more efficiently.

In addition to this winnowing of connections in the adolescent brain, another developmental factor is also at play. One of the final steps in developing an adult brain is myelination. Recall that myelin develops in the more primitive areas of the brain first, gradually moving to the higher level functioning areas. Myelin increases the speed of the axon potential traveling down the axon, up to 100 fold compared to neurons that have no myelin. So, during the teen years not only does the number of connection change, the speed of the connections becomes faster. It is not surprising then to find that myelination occurs in the frontal lobes last. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles compared scans of young adults, 23 - 30, with those of teens, 12 - 16, looking for signs of myelin which would imply more mature, efficient connections. As expected, the frontal lobes in teens showed less myelination than in the young adults. This is the last part of the brain to mature: full myelination is probably not reached until around age 30 or perhaps later.

Why are these changes in the frontal lobes significant?  The frontal lobes–specifically the area right behind the forehead called the prefrontal or orbitofrontal cortex–is often referred to as the CEO of the brain. It is in this part of the brain that executive decisions are made and where ethical/moral behavior is mediated. In fact, this part of the brain has been dubbed “the area of sober second thought.”  Persons with damage to this part of the brain often know what they are supposed to do but are unable to do it. In these persons the damage also appears to impair their ability to imagine the future consequence of their actions. They tend to be more uninhibited and impulsive. Observations such as these suggest that teens may have difficulty inhibiting inappropriate behaviors because the circuitry need for such control is not fully mature. The chart below [Need #} summarizes the cognitive and behavioral functions of the prefrontal cortex.

These functions are practically a laundry list of characteristics that adolescents often lack. Many researchers suspect that an unfinished prefrontal cortex, with its excess of synapses and unfinished myelination, contributes to the adolescent’s deficits in these areas. Their brains often aren’t ready to take on the role of the CEO, resulting in a lack of reasoned thinking and performance.

Another factor is at play in the adolescent brain that sheds some light on their often over-emotional behavior. Scientists have discovered that in the teen brain, the emotional center matures before the frontal lobes. Emotion therefore often holds sway over rational processing. When we realize that the prefrontal cortex allows reflection while the amygdala is designed for reaction, we can begin to understand the often irrational and overly emotional reactions of teens. Our oft-asked question when teens engage in irrational behavior, “What were you thinking?” is difficult for teens to answer because in many cases they weren’t thinking reflectively; they were reacting impulsively. This phenomenon has been further validated by a team led by Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at Harvard’s McLean Hospital. They used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to compare the activity of adolescent brains to those of adults. They found that when identifying emotional expressions on faces, adolescents activated the amygdala more often than the frontal lobes. The opposite was seen in adults. In terms of behavior, the adult’s responses were more intellectual while the teens responses were more from the gut or more reactive. Giedd comments that adolescents can be thought of as trucks with no brakes!

The neurotransmitter dopamine plays an important role in the often reckless, sensation seeking behavior of adolescents. Recall that dopamine is a naturally produced stimulant. It is critical for focusing attention on the environment especially when there are conflicting options. When a goal is not obvious, reflection, not impulse, is necessary to make a good decision. Early in adolescent development levels are relatively low which may account for their reactive behavior. The good news is that dopamine inputs to the prefrontal cortex grow dramatically as the teen ages, resulting in an increased capacity for more mature judgment and impulse control. But until this system is mature, decisions are often made on impulse.

Substance Abuse During Adolescence

Now that it has become clear that, in contrast to previously-held assumptions, there is a tremendous amount of change taking place in the teen brain, we need to look at the possibility that alcohol and other drugs impact both brains and behavior differently in adolescents and adults. The shaping and fine-tuning of the frontal lobes is, at least in part, mediated by experience. This raises the possibility that drug abuse could alter normal development of the brain. This is an area of critical importance. Current estimates suggest that roughly 50% of high school seniors consume alcohol at least once a month while 17% regularly smoke cigarettes and nearly 50% have smoked some marijuana (Kann et al, 2000: Johnston et al., 2001). The National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse reports that alcohol kills six and a half times more individuals under age 21 than all other drugs combined.

Much of the research on the effects of alcohol has been conducted using animal studies.  In studies of rats, Markwiese et al. (1998) found that alcohol disrupts the activity of an area of the brain essential for memory and learning, the hippocampus, and that this area is are much more vulnerable to alcohol-induced learning impairments in adolescent rats than adult rats. Rats are not humans, however, there is some evidence that the human hippocampus reacts in a similar manner. A recent study by De Bellis et al. (2000) found that hippocampal volumes were smaller in those who abused alcohol during adolescence and that the longer one abused alcohol, the smaller the hippocampus became.

            Research by Sandra Brown and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego has produced the first concrete evidence that heavy, on-going alcohol use by adolescents can impair brain functioning. They found several differences in memory function between alcohol dependent and non-drinking adolescents, none of whom used any other drugs. In the study, the 15 and 16 year-olds who had drunk heavily (more than 100 lifetime alcohol use episodes) scored lower on verbal and nonverbal retention of information.

Additional research by Brown and Tappert (2000) is trying to answer is whether or not heavy drinking at 15 is more dangerous for the brain than at 20. Their preliminary hypothesis is that drinking may be more dangerous because the finishing touches on brain development (myelination and pruning) haven’t been completed and alcohol may interrupt or disturb these refining processes. Brown and Tappert point out that more studies will be needed to produce a definitive answer, but at least their work is an important step toward confirming what many scientists have suspected for some time, teenagers who drink may be exposing their brains to the toxic effects of alcohol during a critical time in brain development.

Not only are the frontal lobes of adolescents going through major changes, the molecular and chemical systems are being re-shifted as well. Many substances appear to have a heightened effect on teens. Researchers at Duke University found that adolescent brains respond more intensely to nicotine than do adult brains. In rat brains, the levels of dopamine receptors in the pleasure center (the nucleus accumbens) of the brain increase dramatically between 25-40 days–the rat’s adolescent phase (Spears, 2000). These receptors play a huge role in the pleasure producing properties of drugs. It is not yet clear if the human adolescent brain evidences this same increase, but many researchers think it is highly probable.

Adolescent Sleep Patterns

A common complaint of parents of teenagers is that their kids insist they can’t fall asleep until midnight but every morning means yelling at them to get out of bed in time to get to school on time. And parents aren’t the only ones with complaints about adolescents’ sleep habits. Teachers of early morning classes complain that their students seem to be in class in body only, frequently nodding off or at the least, drowsy and difficult to teach. It may not be the teens’ fault; biology may be behind their sleep problems. Recent research has shown that here is yet another area where adolescents’ brains move to the beat of a different drummer.

Our sleep cycles are determined by what is called circadian rhythms, a sort of internal biological clock that determines not only how much sleep we need but also when we become sleepy at night and when we awaken in the morning. Sleep researcher, Mary Carskadon in her sleep laboratory at Brown University’s Bradley Hospital, has discovered that teenagers need more sleep than they did as children and that their circadian rhythms appear to be set later than those of children or adults.

The conventional wisdom has been that young children need 10 hours sleep and that as we become adults, the need decreases to 8 hours. Teenagers have been included in the adult group. Carskadon has shown that teens, far from needing less sleep than they did as children, need more. In order to function well and remain alert during the day, they need 9 hours and 15 minutes, possibly because the hormones that are critical to growth and sexual maturation are released mostly during sleep. One survey of the sleep patterns of 3000 teenagers showed that the majority slept only about 7 hours a night with more than a quarter averaging 6 ½ hours or less on school nights. Given that sleep is a time when brain cells replenish themselves and when connections made during the day are strengthened, sleep deprivation can have a major negative effect on learning and memory.

A second finding from Carskadon’s research is that these teens’ biological clocks appear to be set later than those of children or adults. They do not get sleepy as early as they did when they were preadolescents and therefore tend to stay up later at night and sleep later in the morning. Most teenagers’ brains aren’t ready to wake up until 8 or 9 in the morning, well past the time when the first bells has sounded at most high schools. Teens who have to get up before their internal clock buzzes, miss out on an important phase of REM sleep that is important for memory and learning.

Not all scientists agree totally with the research on the adolescent brain. Giedd’s theory that brain changes are responsible for the often erratic behavior we see in teens is speculative. The theory is somewhat controversial because the roots of behavior are complex and cannot be easily explained by relatively superficial changes in the brain. However, if the theory turns out to be true, it would underscore the importance of providing careful guidance through adolescence, which isn’t a bad idea in any case. Giedd states “...unlike infants whose brain activity is completely determined by their parents and environment, the teens may actually be able to control how their own brains are wired and sculpted.” Adolescents are laying down neural foundations for the rest of their lives. As parents and teachers, we have an opportunity and an obligation to educate adolescents about what is going on in their brains and the role they play determining the structure and functioning of their brains for the rest of their lives.

Teaching the Adolescent

            Later chapters in this book will focus on brain-compatible strategies designed for various ages, however given the unique characteristics of adolescents, it seems appropriate to take a look some general considerations which may help teachers when they plan classroom instruction for these students.

            In a sense the adolescents’ brains are primed to learn, however we often see boredom and apathy in their behavior. When we consider the hyperactivity of the amygdala and high energy level at this stage of brain development this isn’t surprising. Too much classroom instruction is “sit and git,” adolescents’ least favorite classroom activity! Very few teens like to sit still and listen to a teacher deliver a lecture. While lectures are sometimes appropriate during the teen years, consider having the students use interactive note-taking guides. After hearing or reading new information, students can be asked to demonstrate their understanding of the content by various methods such as role play, poster demonstrations, teaching another student or writing their reflections in a journal. Most parents will attest to the fact that adolescents like to argue. This propensity can be put to good use in debates where students discuss the pros and cons of complex ethical issues. Project-based activities are especially motivating to teens. In collaborative groups they can be encouraged to seek answers to problems facing the school or community, perhaps interviewing other teachers, parents or adults for their points of view. When concepts have been learned, it is helpful to give students real-life problems to solve that require the use of the concepts.

            Few of us are as proficient in current technology as adolescents. They text, download music and information on ipods, and surf the internet with ease. Teachers should consider ways to integrate teens’ ability to use technology in the classroom. Given the option, students might prepare multi-media presentations rather than book reports or use email to dialog with experts in biology, history, music, mathematics, neuroscience, or other fields of study. The internet provides a speedy manner for researching topics for term papers and projects however with its increasing use many students will need guidance in determining the validity of the data. Reading “urls” may become one of the new basic skills for anyone capable of using a computer to obtain information.

            Teens are full of promise.  They are energetic, caring and capable of making many contributions to their communities.  They are also able to make remarkable spurts in intellectual development and learning.  But we must remember; they are not adults and need to be taught in a manner that enables their brains to make sense of information, to see what they are learning as relevant to their lives.

References:

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