Dr. B S Ramachandra and Ms. Pratiti B R
Centre for Fundamental Research and Creative Education
Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning
The present article is intended to provide clues to a workable solution to a pressing problem: What is that one thing we can do to ensure that learning may be restored to its rightful position as a natural, spontaneous, exhilarating, enthralling and intensely fulfilling experience? It is proposed as an answer to questions and issues that have been around for a long time and repeatedly raised by prescient thinkers in diverse domains of human endeavor. Indian Wisdom, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Rousseau, Bertrand Russell, Pestalozzi, Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, Sri Aurobindo, J Krishnamurti, John Dewy to name only a very few, have much to enlighten us even in present day education. However, every age has its own challenges and needs must be expressed and met in contemporary context, in a language most appropriate to it. Presently, Cognitive Neuroscience is that language.
The field of education abounds with theories, models, experiential methods and traditional wisdom. Almost all of these acquire fresh significance in the light of the new discoveries stemming from the ‘Decade of the Brain’ investigations in Cognitive Neuroscience. Cognitive Neuroscience provides by far the most comprehensive and incisive approach to learning in the context of the contemporary information era. It brings with it the power of simplicity on one hand and systems thinking and complexity on the other hand. In this, it has close kinship with the Fifth Discipline Paradigm inspired by Edwards Deming and pioneered by Peter Senge and his school. Cognitive Neuroscience allows one to model the Brain as a complex adaptive, evolutionary, psycho-physical active processing system. It incorporates the findings of Cognitive Science and that of Neuroscience to arrive at coherent, constructive, workable models of the learning apparatus. In what follows, we propose one possible model we have developed and that we have been using consistently to empower students at our Centre to discover learning as a joyful, exhilarating, enthralling and meaningful experience.
In his highly insightful book, “How Children Fail”, John Holt begins with the alarming open truth that one knows only too well but ignores nevertheless baffled by the very complexity or rather, simplicity of the problem. In his own words, that is a wake-up call to American education and applies equally or perhaps more, to Indian education,
“Most children in school fail…’for a great many, this failure is avowed and absolute. Close to forty percent of those who begin high school drop out before they finish…. Many others fail in fact if not in name….But there is a more important sense in which almost all children fail: Except for a handful, who may or may not be good students, they fail to develop more than a tiny part of the tremendous capacity for learning, understanding, and creating with which they were born and of which they made full use during the first two or three years of their lives. Why do they fail? They fail because they are afraid, bored, and confused. They are afraid, above all else, of failing, of disappointing or displeasing the many anxious adults around them, whose limitless hopes and expectations for them hang over their heads like a cloud.
They are bored because the things they are given and told to do in school are so trivial, so dull, and make such limited and narrow demands on the wide spectrum of their intelligence, capabilities, and talents.
They are confused because most of the torrent of words that pours over them in school makes little or no sense. It often flatly contradicts other things they have been told, and hardly ever has any relation to what they really know – the rough model of reality that they carry around in their minds.
How does this mass failure take place? What really goes on in the classroom? What are these children who fail doing? What goes on in their heads? Why don’t they make use of more of their capacity?”
Strikingly, the very same situation prevailing in the corporate world has been described by W. Edwards Deming, the pioneer of the quality-control movement in Management and the one who transformed Japan into what it presently is. Deming has the following to say,
"The teacher sets the aims, the student responds to those aims. The teacher has the answer, the student works to get the answer. Students know when they have succeeded because the teacher tells them. By the time children are 10 they know what it takes to get ahead in school and please the teacher - a lesson they carry forward through their careers of pleasing bosses and failing to improve the system..."
Yet another thinker who echoes John Holt and Deming is Robert Kiyosaki. He says,
"It is time for our society, and particularly our educational system, to stop playing the game of winners and losers with our children's minds, hearts, and financial futures....
In our own school years, most of us were subjected not to a system of education but to a system of elimination --and that system sadly continues even to this day. Rather than helping us develop the very best in each of us, this system has pitted us against each other in a tragic struggle where only those whom the system defines as the 'fittest' have survived. In this system less than 15 percent of us are defined as winners. The rest of us are left with a diminished sense of our own self-worth.
Instead of leaving school with confidence that we have skills to do well in life, all too many of us have graduated crippled and hurt. What's even worse, most of us are shamefully unprepared for the challenges that we meet in the adult world. ..
In this game of winners and losers into which we've been thrown, even the so-called winners ultimately lose since we end up with a society where only a small fraction of our human potentials are ever discovered or utilized. The cost to all of us is immeasurable - in terms of financial pressure, low productivity, crime, emotional stress, and a continuing diminishment of personal satisfaction.
To keep things practical and workable, we focus on four key themes.
i) The Triune Brain
ii) The Four Brain States or Frequencies
iii) The Conscious Brain’s Reticular Activating System.
iv) The Subconscious Psycho-Cybernetic Mechanism
These suffice to arrive at a comprehensive workable model of learning and as a consequence, the principles to be followed in teaching.
The Triune Brain
As humans we have not one but three brains. We already knew this at school. But there, it was so cast that it did not even excite our curiosity. We learnt of the hind brain, the mid brain and the fore brain. If, instead, if the textbooks had rephrased these as the survival brain, the emotional-social brain and the self-aware brain, we would at once get interested. It would be even more striking if we were told that these three brains are like the drives of a computer, the C drive, the D drive, the E drive, for instance. Just as the computer has partitions to take care of specific functions, so also our brain has these three brains. Why call our brain to consist of three brains? Because, the three brains are in fact have quite independent origins. It is later that they get integrated into the Brain as we know it. The survival brain gets developed in course of evolution in the reptiles. So you might as well call it the reptilian brain. The emotional-social brain forms in mammals, so call it the mammalian brain. The self-aware brain gets formed in humans, so call it the human brain. Reptiles have therefore only a survival brain. It performs only those functions that help the reptile to survive. What are these? Fight, flight, freeze and reproduce. Mammals have the emotional brain in addition. It enables the mammal to have ‘social connections’, which at that level means to care for the young and for the species or pack or ‘family’. Humans have all the three, the Survival Brain, the Emotional Brain and the Self-aware Brain. It enables humans to perform the most significant function that characterizes them, namely, to ‘think’ and all that follows from it.
We see at once that reptiles can only be trained. Mammals can be trained and tamed. Humans alone can be trained, tamed and educated. This reframing of the brain allows us to immediately understand the role of different disciplines or subjects in brain development. Each of the three brains needs different kinds of disciplines. For instance, sports and physical education help develop the Reptilian Brain. Art, Literature, Poetry, Music, Painting, History, help develop the Mammalian Brain. Science, Mathematics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Analysis help develop the Human Brain. We hasten to add at once that these divisions are not strict. Neither should one take it that there is any ‘superiority’ in the three brains. The three brains form an integrated brain ‘organism’. As such each is essential to the Whole and the Whole is by no means merely the sum of the parts. In short, several disciplines of study go into the formation of a holistic education for the human brain. Excessive reliance or bias toward any particular kind like that we see today in our predisposition to “Science and Technology” or “Medicine” related education is detrimental in the long run.
The significance of education on brain development cannot be over emphasized. Indeed, as is being increasingly established, education begins right when the child is in the mother’s womb. Suffice it to say that it has been established that if the mother is under stress during the period preceding pregnancy the infant’s hind brain grows larger than the fore brain. If the mother is happy and has a sense of security instead, the child’s fore-brain grows larger than the hind brain. In the former case, the child grows up to be an individual who is more concerned about survival. In the latter case, the individual is found to have higher human concerns.
The Four Brain States or Frequencies
It is well known that the brain is found to be in four frequency states, the Beta, the Alpha, the Theta and the Delta. It is not necessary for our purpose to focus on the exact technical details. What is essential is to note that these four states are like the four gears of a car. The Beta is the first gear. In it the brain is geared to maximum power and least speed. In the next, or Alpha state the brain consumes lesser power and is very efficient. In Theta the brain consumes even less power and is much more efficient. In Delta, the brain consumes least power and is most efficient. In passing we would like to point out that a similar conclusion was arrived at in the Indian Yogic traditions. In the Mandukya Upanishad, for instance, there is a clear statement of four states of consciousness, corresponding to the normal Waking, Dream, deep Sleep and the Transcendent or their trance counterparts. The ‘normal’ here refers to the default states; states that the brain gets into without conscious stimulation. The ‘trance’ (resp partial trance) refers states reached only by conscious (resp half-conscious) stimulation. Each of the brain states has its own mode of language and communication. As the frequencies decrease, that is, as we move from the Beta towards the Delta, language becomes more and more symbolic. The Psychologist Carl Jung has pointed out in his studies on the archetypes of the collective unconsciousness that the language of dreams is predominantly that of Myth and that every culture therefore seems to have a commonality when it comes to creation myths and other collective representations.
Applied to the practice of learning these have momentous consequences. For learning to take place, two conditions are needed. One is the “Cognitive Cycle of Creativity’. The other is Flow or Optimal experience. Flow is best understood as the balance between challenges and skills. When challenges are higher than skills, the brain evokes states starting with apathy moving on to worry and ending in anxiety in an attempt to establish order by decreasing psychic entropy. When skills are higher than challenges the brain evokes states starting with apathy and moving on to boredom and ending in passive relaxation. When the balance is perfect, the brain evokes states of flow or optimal experience. Teaching is most effective when the cognitive cycle of creativity is coupled to optimal experience. Most prevalent teaching is focused on the Beta state and the absence of flow. Any deviation from this ‘alert’ state is thought to be a distraction, a moving away of the attention from what is essential. According to Csikszentmihyalyi Mihaly, Attention is the concentration of psychic energy on a given object. It involves a simultaneous decrease of psychic entropy. “Because attention determines what will or will not appear in consciousness, and because it is also required to make any other mental events – such as remembering, thinking, feeling, and making decisions – happen there, it is useful to think of it as psychic energy. Attention is like energy in that without it no work is done, and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy. Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use it. And it is an energy under our control, to do with as we please; hence, Attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”
However, ‘alertness’ itself, as is any other quality is a function of the brain states. The alertness in the beta state is deceptively so. A student may be alert and fully focused on the lesson the teacher imparts. But this means nothing if the information is being processed so slowly that learning is also proportionately slow. In contrast, the relatively less ‘alert’ alpha state that the student slips into via ‘day-dreaming’ is a far effective state in which to process information. Indeed, it is one of the prerequisites for creativity. Another is the onset of flow. With flow the day dreaming becomes active and a partial trance-like state ensues. Lack of this knowledge on the part of a teacher makes him/her judge the student wrongly as ‘dull’ and unmotivated. The alpha state and the deeper theta state along with the beta, when coupled to flow form a continuous cycle that we may term the ‘Cognitive Cycle of Creativity.’ Learning is practically impossible by confining oneself to the beta waking state alone. In the beta state, coupled to flow the mind begins to prepare itself to take in the information. It does not really learn anything. When the information begins to sink in, the mind switches over to the alpha state to reconfigure the neural networks. This is accompanied by a withdrawing of the gaze inwards causing the eyes to appear slightly glassy along with a contraction of the facial muscles thus diminishing the expression. This process goes on for a while and as the brain-mind is temporarily withdrawn from the waking state, the student appears to be day-dreaming. After the brain has processed the information it reverts back to the beta state. The gaze is now full, the eyes lit up and the facial muscles expand out into full expression. The wise and experienced teacher automatically follows these signs intuitively even without knowledge of the cognitive processes and is able to help the student to learn. The same teacher can also distinguish easily between active day-dreaming which is a conscious choice and passive day dreaming that is merely apathy or boredom, often an unconscious choice. In addition, boredom is also accompanied by the same processes that day-dreaming does. However, in it, the brain switches over to the alpha state more in an attempt to save power than to process information. It is akin to what happens in a computer when it switches over to the screen-saver mode to save power. When the student is unable to retain motivation, the brain instead of having to supply more power, switches over to a state that consumes less. Now let us see what happens in the case of the cognitive cycle of creativity.
First, there is the conscious preparation in the beta state. To be truly effective, the psychic entropy needs to become minimal so as to enter flow or optimal experience. The brain now gathers information till a point of saturation is reached. It seems to reach a dead-end. Then it ‘switches off’ from the particular task and places its attention elsewhere. As this happens, simultaneously, the brain moves into the alpha state during which the subconscious incubation can take place. Often, the alpha state may deepen into the theta state for a more thorough processing. Once this is through, the subconscious sends forth the insight as a bubble into the beta state. This is accompanied by a chemical burst of growth hormones the endorphins and one undergoes what is termed an epiphany or ‘break-out’ experience. The brain is back to the beta state of verification. In teaching, the major challenge is to lead the student carefully through the cognitive cycle. When the teacher lacks understanding of this process, he/she fails in two ways right at the start. The first is when the teacher draws the attention of the student by conscious force of reinforcement by reward or punishment. Since this is an extrinsic stimulus, it does not have the naturality necessary to initiate flow.
Indeed, even chimpanzees seem to corroborate this observation. As Desmond Morris noted in his book, “The Biology of Art”, chimpanzees are capable of applying themselves to make balanced patterns of color, somewhat reminiscent of certain forms of modern art, such as abstract expressionism. The animals became so interested in painting and it absorbed them so completely that they had comparatively little interest left for food and other activities that normally hold them strongly. When the chimpanzees were subject to a system of reward, however, their work began to degenerate until they produced the bare minimum that would satisfy the experimenter. David Bohm and David Peat bring this out vividly in their book, “Science, Order and Creativity”,
“A similar behavior is observed in young children as they become “self-conscious” of the kind of painting they believe they are “supposed” to do. This is generally indicated to them by subtle and implicit rewards, such as praise and approval, and by the need to conform to what other children around them are doing. Thus creativity appears to be incompatible with external and internal rewards or punishments. The reason is clear. In order to do something for a reward, the whole order of the activity, and the energy required for it, are determined by arbitrary requirements that are extraneous to the creative activity itself. This activity then turns into something mechanical and repetitious, or else it mechanically seeks change for its own sake. The state of intense passion and the vibrant tension that goes with creative perception then dies away. The whole thing becomes boring and uninteresting, so that the kind of energy needed for creative perception and action is lacking. As a result, even greater rewards, or punishments, are needed to keep the activity going.”
As the above passage clearly indicates, mere authority on the part of the teacher fails to ignite the interest of the student so essential for flow. This is the first manner in which the teacher fails. The second manner in which the teacher fails is when he/she has managed to create interest but impedes the student from moving down in brain state from the beta into the alpha. Even through the student does gather information, he/she is unable to process it effectively. This results in the accumulation of psychic entropy since the information gathered remains in its raw form. Stress, in turn triggers off the release of harmones like cortisol that wear out the physical being. Instead of leading the student through the cognitive cycle of creativity, the teacher forces the student to go through what we may term, the ‘cognitive cycle of destructivity’. Let us understand what we mean by this. First, the student’s brain evokes states of apathy and the brain switches into the lower alpha state to save power and to counter the increase in entropy. Since this is not supported by flow, the brain struggles to establish order by moving away from apathy through worry and anxiety when the challenges are higher than skills or through to boredom to passive relaxation when skills are higher than challenges. The former happens to the wrongly adjudged ‘dull’ student and the latter to the equally wrongly adjudged ‘bright’ student. Both lose out on creativity. In contrast, the prescient teacher is able to lead the student to couple the cognitive cycle with flow thereby enabling learning.
There is another point to consider about worry or boredom. Essentially, all challenge has to do with confronting the unknown. Therefore, all stimuli related to the unknown, i.e. which the brain has not already incorporated into its neural framework, has a survival value. In absence of flow, the unknown translates itself into the brain signals as threat, fear, danger and awfulness to the individual on one hand or renders the individual an object evoking those same feelings in others. This is the classic flight-freeze-fight response. The same when coupled to flow evokes curiosity, surprise, wonder, mystery and awesomeness on the other hand. This is the reason why a teacher who nurtures curiosity, surprise, wonder, mystery and awe in a student succeeds in making him/her an incredible learner. Related to the emotional brain, we may classify negative emotions as those that evoke fear, anger, hatred and positive emotions as those that evoke curiosity, surprise, wonder, mystery and awe.
The Conscious Brain’s Reticular Activating System.
Situated near the region where the brain stem meets the emotional brain and connecting to the fore-brain is a spherical structure known as the Reticular Activating System (RAS). This is responsible for regulating arousal and sleep-wake transitions. The RAS is related to mental alertness and is also responsible for taking in signals having survival value and rendering it to the conscious fore-brain awareness. It is what translates instinctive alertness into intuitive awareness. By generating interest and tapping positive emotions the RAS may be programmed to remain alert to choice signals and filter out the rest. It is signal processing at its best. The teacher who understands this mechanism can heighten the learning of the student enormously. The Subconscious Psycho-Cybernetic Mechanism
Once the RAS has been programmed to look for choice signals, the teacher needs to ensure that those signals trickle down into the subconscious brain. The subconscious brain has an Auto-Pilot kind of mechanism known as the Psycho-Cybernetic mechanism. Once repetition has rendered signals significant it sets out on an expedition to hunt down goals corresponding to the signals. Therefore, this mechanism is what makes goal-setting such a powerful imperative for success in any endeavour. The details of goal-setting though undoubtedly significant for learning are however, beyond the compass of this short article.
Systems Thinking: The Solution
With the above we are now empowered to answer the challenge we posed ourselves in the beginning. The practical application of the above will be carried out in the seminar presentation. Here, instead of trying to reproduce the views of several thinkers we find it most convenient to let Robert Kiyosaki’s pertinent words serve as a wake-up call for action.
In education, do some people have to fail so that others can succeed? The answer is a resounding “No! Definitely not!’ Failure only occurs in education because that is how the system was designed. But since we created the system, don’t we have the ability to change it?”
“Why don’t parents and teachers stand up to this system that is set up for students to fail? Who authorizes the system to brand your child smart or slow, gifted or not gifted? Why do parents whose children aren’t doing well allow them to be the “less than smart’ underclass so that privileged “bright” students can look good?” …In the peer society that develops in such environments, “fast” and ”slow” quickly gets translated into “smart” and ”dumb.” How does one measure the emotional pain that slips into the subconscious and haunts children, both the high and low achievers, over their lifetimes? We cannot afford to be careless about our judgments and thoughts around children…”
“Traditional education, however, is still set up to reward the students it deems smart while systematically weeding out the undesirable, less intelligent, “stupid” students. It is not a system set up to educate all the people that come in to it. It is set up to look for the smartest and to educate them. That’s why there are tests, grades, gifted programs, remedial programs and labels. It is a system of classifying, discriminating and segregating.”
“Most of us are tired of hearing about Japanese high-tech, innovative, quality products at excellent prices. Yet, let us not forget that there was a time, not so long ago, when “Made in Japan” meant inferior products. The person responsible for the change was an American named W. Edwards Deming. Very simply, what the Japanese did was change their systems of business and manufacturing. Deming reports that 94 percent of all failures in business are system failures. Only 6 percent are people failures. So even if all our teachers were replaced and their replacements were given higher pay and smaller class sizes, nothing would change because the system would still remain intact. Japan, Deming points out, doesn’t excel because it has better people but because it has better, more efficient systems. Meanwhile we blame our educational failures on inadequate teachers, or low pay, or class size, perhaps only because these are the most visible parts of a system whose other 90 percent is invisible…”
Robert Kiyosaki is perhaps one of the few who realizes as did Deming before him that systems thinking is at the heart of the problem and not students, teachers or parents. He goes on to say,
“Teachers have become the scapegoats of parents, politicians and administrators who would rather invent new slogans and throw more money at the problem than learn something about systems and how they could affect lasting, worthwhile change. The evolution of our society will continue to be held back until we all start looking at it in this new way. Only then can we begin to reap the emotional, professional and financial benefits that all of us are capable of making a reality. Let’s wake up and stop making teachers our scapegoats!”
The most pertinent message he voices is best captured when he says, “If there is a single message that we must understand from all this, it is that the current system of education will not change until we let go of the idea that there is such a thing as a stupid human being.”
Bibliography
Aristotle. (n.d.). Collected Works.
Aurobindo, Sri. (SABCL). The Foundations of Indian Culture.
Aurobindo, Sri. (SABCL). The Life Divine.
Bono, Edward. de. (n.d.). I am Right, You are Wrong.
Coyle, Daniel. (n.d.). The Talent Code.
Csikszentmihyalyi Mihaly. (n.d.). Being Adolescent.
Csikszentmihyalyi Mihaly. (n.d.). Creativity.
Csikszentmihyalyi Mihaly. (n.d.). Finding Flow.
Csikszentmihyalyi Mihaly. (n.d.). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Csikszentmihyalyi Mihaly. (n.d.). The Evolving Self.
Descartes. (n.d.). Discourse on Method.
Dewey, J. Education and Culture.
Galinsky, E. (n.d.). The Mind in the Making.
Gardner, H. (n.d.). 5 Minds for the Future.
Gardner, H. (n.d.). Creating Minds.
Gardner, H. (n.d.). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
Gardner, H. (n.d.). Intelligence Reframed.
Gardner, H. (n.d.). Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice.
Gardner, H. (n.d.). The Disciplined Mind.
Gardner, H. (n.d.). The Unschooled Mind.
Gopnik, A. (n.d.). The Philosophical Baby.
Holt, J. (n.d.). How Children Fail.
Kant, I. (n.d.). The Critique of Pure Reason.
Kiyosaki, R. (n.d.). If You Want to be Rich and Happy Don't go to School.
Krishnamurti, J. The Awakening of Intelligence.
Nivedita, S. On Education.
Peat, D. B. (n.d.). Science, Order and Creativity.
Pestalozzi. Collected Works.
Plato. Dialogues.
Roesseau, J. J. (n.d.). Emilie.
Russell, B. (n.d.). Education.
Senge, P. (n.d.). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society.
Senge, P. (n.d.). The Fifth Discipline.
Vivekananda, Swami. Collected Works.
