Neuroscience in Education: How to keep brain young for long and memorize more?

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Due to neuroscience research and discoveries about brain activity, people now know more about themselves and how they function. Up to now, scientists have done enough experiments to drive some conclusions about how a person studies and how to increase the efficiency of learning.

Lately, The Harvard Gazette published the results of the research conducted by a group of scientists from several leading organizations and universities, including the Massachusetts General Hospital, Brown University, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and others. Researchers claim that the brain practices new skills right during sleeping, allowing it to consolidate memory or transit information from short-term to long-term memory.

For a long time, experiments were conducted on laboratory mice. The animals had to go through the same labyrinth, each time trying to remember the way leading to the exit. After a few days, when the mouse had already learned to go all the way, the scientists tracked the brain activity of the animal: the group of neurons in the brain that was responsible for this labyrinth route was lit up. The main discovery is that during the experiment, the brain activity of mice was also tracked during their sleep: it turned out that even during sleep, the same neurons in the brain are illuminated. This suggests that while sleeping, the brain practices reproducing new information; and, thus, educates on its own.

Despite the fact that scientists suggested the same process for humans, it was necessary to test this hypothesis experimentally. Researchers have chosen a 36-year-old man with tetraplegia, meaning that he is not able to move the upper and lower parts of the body, to participate in the study. The participant was asked to complete a memory task in which the player first observes a sequence of flashing colored lights and then has to recall that sequence. Due to tetraplegia, the man had to control the cursor on the computer screen by simply thinking about the movement of his own hand. At the time of the experiment, sensors measured neuron activity patterns. After that, his brain activity was measured during sleep. It turned out that the participant was “basically playing the game overnight in his sleep,” meaning that the patterns of neuron activity during sleep coincided with the patterns identified during the game. From this study, one can conclude that it is not worth sacrificing sleep for memorizing and repeating new information because, during sleep, the brain is already doing this work for you.

The research results in neuroscience, which can be applied in education, of course, do not end there. It is worth mentioning that sport, as well, has a positive effect on brain activity, concentration, and learning outcomes in general. Researchers claim that doing sports increases serotonin levels right 20 seconds after the start of the activity and contributes to the formation of new neurons, which, in the process of learning, form connections between themselves and old ones, and that is why it has a positive effect on learning and memory. Based on such studies, some schools, for example, in Finland, are practicing outdoor activities before the start of classes for elementary and middle school students, expecting an increase in academic performance. Besides, physical activity positively affects memory not only in children and adolescents but also in adults. For instance, scientists conducted an experiment, according to the result of which it turned out that among people 55-80 years old with a sedentary lifestyle, who went for a walk 3 times a week for a year, the volume of the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is responsible for consolidating memory and retaining attention, increased. Thus, one can draw another conclusion about learning: those who want to increase concentration, improve memory, and keep the brain “young” for an extended period, should go in for sports and keep it regular.

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