Enrichment studies have shown that a caring environment aids learning and development. But neuroplasticity also has a darker side. Impoverished environmental conditions, prenatal substance exposure, sensory deprivation, emotional trauma and nutritional deficiencies can cause plasticity to play its unkind hand, wreaking havoc on the developing young brain. Long-term chronic stress (“toxic stress”) provokes the release of high levels of the hormone cortisol that can lead to permanent damage to hippocampal neurons, causing learning difficulties and memory impairments.
On the brighter side, the human brain responds favorably to emotional support, challenge, and steady constructive — it need not always be positive — feedback by increasing the myelination and nourishment of neural pathways. Individuals who are blind at birth have highly resilient brains eager to compensate for any deficiency. With their acute hearing ability, some of the world’s best musicians have emerged among the blind. In the absence of appropriate stimulation, the brain reassigns underutilized areas for other, sometimes completely different, functions.
Learning
“Failure is not an option” is a popular educational mantra that was unwisely borrowed from the business world. It inaccurately reflects how the young human brain learns. Students who struggle in school often appear to be impervious to the best efforts of well-trained professionals. The notion of “rigor” becomes almost academic rigor mortis for them. In nearly all cases, each learning difficulty is indicative of a neurological underinvestment in the necessary brain wiring needed to be successful. When we point to a concept or skill that is not “developmentally appropriate,” the reference we are making is to brain development, not curriculum development.
With this backdrop, certain academic shortcomings are expected. However, these events foster frustrations when the child “doesn’t get it.” With time, maturation, and the appropriate brain wiring, s/he will one day “get it.” When it comes to learning, failure is often a prerequisite. This is particularly true when learners lack related prior experiences, as the new information cannot merge with brain circuits that don’t exist yet. When there is nothing with which to integrate new knowledge, the building process must begin from scratch. The child is not “slow”; the process of brain-building is sometimes slow.
Expertise
In “Outliers: The Story of Success,” author Malcolm Gladwell hypothesizes that exceptional performances in any field have little to do with innate talent. He proposes the “10,000-Hour Rule”: devoting approximately 10,000 hours of time to a skill fosters a dendritic density representing competency in that area. Whether we are examining achievement in academics, professional careers, athletics, or public speaking, practice makes permanent, not perfect, when it comes to the human brain.
Long years of continuous practice create the hard-wired neural pathways of proficiency and expertise. Complex interconnections among the pathways in the brain give an expert four distinct neurological advantages:
- Highly used neural pathways are easily activated, because they are nearly always “on alert.”
- Extensive hardwiring provides neural “shortcuts” to answers that their underwired counterparts might find puzzling for hours, days, years, or forever.
- Their jam-packed cognitive tool chest serves as a repository of information, precluding the time-consuming data searches required by others.
- Most importantly, cognitive resources are freed up to engage in ideational exploration and conceptual processing. The question asked about experts such as golfer Tiger Woods changes from “Is he any good?” to “Is he always that good?”
Experts routinely take the time to learn, unlearn, and relearn relevant information related to their craft. For them, learning is not an informing experience, where they simply build networks to represent their new experiences; instead, their experience is transforming: Their brain circuits are rearranged in order to integrate new data.
The Future of the Brain
With each major advance in the human condition over the past 4.5 million years, our brain volume has increased to accommodate our behavioral improvisations. Is the human brain on the doorstep of another “brain spurt”? (See Chart 5: Brain Spurts.) Our evolutionary history would suggest that we may be. The remarkable world of technology will likely be accommodated by an even more remarkable brain plasticity.
In the early decades of the 21st century, we recognize that we are living in a unique, historic time. Neuroplasticity is shaping today’s young brains for a future that is less like our recent past than any other time in human history. Technology is extending the range of human information processing, shattering the previous limitations of our sensory systems. Previously, the walls of time and place dictated the scope of the human experience. These barriers are falling rapidly.
If you are a parent, educator, or anyone charged with the responsibility of developing young minds, brain literacy is no longer optional. When you are asked by your former students, children, or grandchildren, What did you do to help me when that new research on the brain suddenly became accessible to you?, hopefully, your answer will be, I did everything I could, based on everything we knew from every field in neuroscience at that time.
Kenneth Wesson works as an educational consultant in San Jose, CA for pre-school through university-level institutions and organizations. He speaks throughout the world on the neuroscience of learning and methods for creating classrooms and learning environments that are “brain-considerate.” For more information, please visit his website.
This article is updated from its initial publication in Brain World Magazine’s Winter 2010 issue.
More From Brain World
- Beyond The Books: 6 Tips For Improving Learning and Memory
- Lost In Thought: Is The Wandering Mind More Creative?
- The Magic of Human Language
- Shine a Light on Limitless Learning
- The STEM Branches Out: Preparing for the Jobs of the Future
- You Are Your Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
