scholarly journals Teaching the Science in Neuroscience to Protect From Neuromyths: From Courses to Fieldwork

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandra Carboni ◽  
Alejandro Maiche ◽  
Juan C. Valle-Lisboa
Keyword(s):  
Social Skills ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Math Learning ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Empirical Base ◽  
Scientific Principles ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Public Demand

In recent decades, Cognitive Neuroscience has evolved from a rather arcane field trying to understand how the brain supports mental activities, to one that contributes to public policies. In this article, we focus on the contributions from Cognitive Neuroscience to Education. This line of research has produced a great deal of information that can potentially help in the transformation of Education, promoting interventions that help in several domains including literacy and math learning, social skills and science. The growth of the Neurosciences has also created a public demand for knowledge and a market for neuro-products to fulfill these demands, through books, booklets, courses, apps and websites. These products are not always based on scientific findings and coupled to the complexities of the scientific theories and evidence, have led to the propagation of misconceptions and the perpetuation of neuromyths. This is particularly harmful for educators because these misconceptions might make them abandon useful practices in favor of others not sustained by evidence. In order to bridge the gap between Education and Neuroscience, we have been conducting, since 2013, a set of activities that put educators and scientists to work together in research projects. The participation goes from discussing the research results of our projects to being part and deciding aspects of the field interventions. Another strategy consists of a course centered around the applications of Neuroscience to Education and their empirical and theoretical bases. These two strategies have to be compared to popularization efforts that just present Neuroscientific results. We show that the more the educators are involved in the discussion of the methodological bases of Neuroscientific knowledge, be it in the course or as part of a stay, the better they manage the underlying concepts. We argue that this is due to the understanding of scientific principles, which leads to a more profound comprehension of what the evidence can and cannot support, thus shielding teachers from the false allure of some commercial neuro-products. We discuss the three approaches and present our efforts to determine whether they lead to a strong understanding of the conceptual and empirical base of Neuroscience.

A Physical Experience While Watching Dance

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (S1) ◽  
pp. 237-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Wildschut
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Visual Input ◽  
Motor Memory ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Dance Performance ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Kinesthetic Empathy ◽  
The Brain

Cognitive neuroscience is an area that helps us to enlarge our knowledge of how movement is perceived and how we can understand the process of kinesthetic empathy. In this article I will analyze the connections between the visual input while watching a dance performance, the motor memory, the awareness of movement sensation, and emotional experiences. Experiments done on monkeys by Rizzolatti et al. gave insight in the working of the brain while watching dance. He discovered activity of neurons, which he called mirror neurons. Many experiments followed by neuroscientists and psychologists like Keysers, Bekkering, and Calvo–Merino. In this article I will use research results from neuroscience, as well as results from my own empirical studies. Those results give us more insight in the mechanisms active in the process of kinesthetic empathy, which can be helpful for choreographers interested in involvement strategies on a movement level.

Dreaming and the brain: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 793-842 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Allan Hobson ◽  
Edward F. Pace-Schott ◽  
Robert Stickgold
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Rem Sleep ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Nrem Sleep ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Brain Physiology ◽  
Neurophysiological Studies ◽  
The Brain

Sleep researchers in different disciplines disagree about how fully dreaming can be explained in terms of brain physiology. Debate has focused on whether REM sleep dreaming is qualitatively different from nonREM (NREM) sleep and waking. A review of psychophysiological studies shows clear quantitative differences between REM and NREM mentation and between REM and waking mentation. Recent neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies also differentiate REM, NREM, and waking in features with phenomenological implications. Both evidence and theory suggest that there are isomorphisms between the phenomenology and the physiology of dreams. We present a three-dimensional model with specific examples from normally and abnormally changing conscious states.

Spatial Relations

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-216
Author(s):  
David Kemmerer
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Linguistic Representation ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Brain

Ever since the 1980s, research on the cross-linguistic representation of spatial relations has burgeoned. Surprisingly, however, very little of this work has had any impact on cognitive neuroscience, and most researchers who study the cortical underpinnings of concrete conceptual knowledge have ignored spatial relations completely, preferring to focus on objects and actions instead. Due to this rather stark asymmetry, this chapter has a different organization than the previous two. The first section focuses entirely on cross-linguistic similarities and differences in the grammatical-semantic representation of three main types of spatial relations: topological, projective, and deictic. Then the last section addresses a number of neuroscientific issues, including a review of what has been learned so far about the implementation of these kinds of concepts in the brain, and a discussion of how the typological literature can both inspire and guide future research in this important but relatively neglected area of inquiry.

Awareness of Employee Stress Response: How Employers Can Mitigate Workplace Burnout and Workplace Depression

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-82
Author(s):  
Tony Deblauwe
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Leadership Management ◽  
Social Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Prosocial Behaviours ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Effective Conditions

By examining the science behind leadership, management practices and how they relate to social cognitive neuroscience, we can understand how to target the most effective conditions for preventing workplace burnout and workplace depression. This process begins with the ability of managers to recognise and react responsively to create a culture of trust within the organisation, and identify and promote prosocial behaviours to prevent feelings of disengagement and displacement. This review discusses how one’s ability to inspire employees is particularly important, because followers with low self-concepts are drawn to a highly personalised vision. Through the promotion of the brain chemical, oxytocin, the material presents eight building blocks to promote a culture of trust, while mitigating the factors associated with workplace burnout and workplace depression.

scholarly journals Sensorimotor brain dynamics reflect architectural affordances

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (29) ◽  
pp. 14769-14778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zakaria Djebbara ◽  
Lars Brorson Fich ◽  
Laura Petrini ◽  
Klaus Gramann
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Head Mounted Displays ◽  
Actual Movement ◽  
Imaging Approach ◽  
Essential Function ◽  
The Brain

Anticipating meaningful actions in the environment is an essential function of the brain. Such predictive mechanisms originate from the motor system and allow for inferring actions from environmental affordances, and the potential to act within a specific environment. Using architecture, we provide a unique perspective on the ongoing debate in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy on whether cognition depends on movement or is decoupled from our physical structure. To investigate cognitive processes associated with architectural affordances, we used a mobile brain/body imaging approach recording brain activity synchronized to head-mounted displays. Participants perceived and acted on virtual transitions ranging from nonpassable to easily passable. We found that early sensory brain activity, on revealing the environment and before actual movement, differed as a function of affordances. In addition, movement through transitions was preceded by a motor-related negative component that also depended on affordances. Our results suggest that potential actions afforded by an environment influence perception.

scholarly journals What does the interactive brain hypothesis mean for social neuroscience? A dialogue

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1693) ◽  
pp. 20150379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne De Jaegher ◽  
Ezequiel Di Paolo ◽  
Ralph Adolphs
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Brain ◽  
And Robotics

A recent framework inspired by phenomenological philosophy, dynamical systems theory, embodied cognition and robotics has proposed the interactive brain hypothesis (IBH). Whereas mainstream social neuroscience views social cognition as arising solely from events in the brain, the IBH argues that social cognition requires, in addition, causal relations between the brain and the social environment. We discuss, in turn, the foundational claims for the IBH in its strongest form; classical views of cognition that can be raised against the IBH; a defence of the IBH in the light of these arguments; and a response to this. Our goal is to initiate a dialogue between cognitive neuroscience and enactive views of social cognition. We conclude by suggesting some new directions and emphases that social neuroscience might take.

Blackboards in the brain

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-81
Author(s):  
Ralph-Axel Müller
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Recurrent Neural Networks ◽  
Temporal Coherence ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Blackboard Model ◽  
The Brain

Although van der Velde's de Kamps's (vdV&dK) attempt to put syntactic processing into a broader context of combinatorial cognition is promising, their coverage of neuroscientific evidence is disappointing. Neither their case against binding by temporal coherence nor their arguments against recurrent neural networks are compelling. As an alternative, vdV&dK propose a blackboard model that is based on the assumption of special processors (e.g., lexical versus grammatical), but evidence from the cognitive neuroscience of language, which is, overall, less than supportive of such special processors, is not considered. As a consequence, vdV&dK's may be a clever model of syntactic processing, but it remains unclear how much we can learn from it with regard to biologically based human language.

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