The document provides an overview of neuroscience concepts related to learning. It defines neuroscience and describes the central nervous system and autonomic nervous system. It discusses neural organization including neurons, glial cells, and synapses. It describes various brain structures such as the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, thalamus, and their functions. It covers brain research methods, localization of functions in the left and right hemispheres, and factors that influence learning such as genetics, environment, and critical periods of development.

1. NEUROSCIENCE
OF
LEARNING

2. DEFINITION
Neuroscience is the study of the human nervous
system, the brain and the biological basis of
consciousness, perception, memory and learning.
It links our observations about cognitive behavior
with the actual physical processes that support
such behavior.

3. Central nervous system (CNS):
It is composed of the brain and spinal cord and is the
body’s central mechanism for control of voluntary behavior
(e.g., thinking, acting)
Autonomic nervous system (ANS):
Regulates involuntary activities, such as those involved
in digestion, respiration, and blood circulation.
ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURES

4. NERVOUS SYSTEM

5. NEURAL ORGANIZATION
Neurons
 The brain and spinal cord contain about 100 billion
neurons.
 Send and receive information across muscles and organs.
They are different:
 Don’t regenerate.
 Communicate with one another.

6. NEURAL ORGANIZATION
Glial cell:
 are far more numerous than neurons.
 They may be thought of as supporting cells since they
support the work of the neurons.
 Glial cells work in concert with neurons to ensure
effective functioning of the CNS.

7. SYNAPSES
• Learning is a change in the receptivity of cells brought about by neural
connections formed, strengthened, and connected with others through
use.

9. BRAIN STRUCTURES

10. BRAIN STRUCTURES
Cerebral cortex Processes sensory information; regulates various learning and
memory functions.
Reticular
formation
Controls bodily functions (e.g., breathing and blood
pressure), arousal, sleep–wakefulness.
Cerebellum Regulates body balance, posture, muscular control,
movement, motor skill acquisition.
Thalamus Sends inputs from senses (except for smell) to cortex
Hypothalamus Controls homeostatic body functions (e.g., temperature,
sleep, water, and food); increases heart rate and breathing
during stress.
Amygdala Controls emotions and aggression; assesses harmfulness of
sensory inputs.
Hippocampus Holds memory of immediate past and working memory;
establishes information in long-term memory.
Corpus callosum Connects right and left hemispheres.

11. Occipital lobe Processes visual information.
Parietal lobe Processes tactile information; determines body
position; integrates visual information.
Temporal lobe Processes auditory information.
Frontal lobe Processes information for memory, planning,
decision making, goal setting, creativity; regulates
muscular movements.
Broca’s area Controls production of speech.
Wernicke’s area Comprehends speech; regulates use of proper syntax
when speaking.

12. LOCALIZATION
AND
INTERCONNECTIONS

14. LEFT
HEMISPHERE
RIGHT
HEMISPHERE
CONTROLS THE
RIGHT SIDE OF THE
BODY
CONTROLS THE
LEFT SIDE OF THE
BODY

16. If you are having a conversation with a friend, it is your
left hemisphere that allows you to produce speech but your
right hemisphere that provides the context and helps you
comprehend meaning.
THE HEMISPHERES WORK IN CONCERT

17. BRAIN
RESEARCH
METHODS
X-rays
Computerized
Axial
Tomography
Electro-
encephalograph
Positron
Emission
Tomography
Magnetic
Resonance
Imaging
Functional
Magnetic
Resonance
Imaging

19. Teaching to Both Brain Hemispheres
Brain research shows that much academic content is processed
primarily in the left hemisphere, but that the right hemisphere
processes context:
Kathy Stone is doing a unit on butterflies with her third-grade
class. They study material in a book, and Kathy shows them
pictures of different butterflies and a film. To help connect this
learning with context, Kathy uses other activities. A local museum
has a butterfly area, where butterflies live in a controlled
environment. She takes her class to visit this so they can see the
world of butterflies. A display is part of this exhibit, showing the
different phases of a butterfly’s life. These activities help children
connect characteristics of butterflies with contextual factors
involving their development and environment.

20. INFORMATION
PROCESSING
SYSTEM

21. AROUSING AND MAINTAINING STUDENTS' ATTENTION
Cognitive neuroscience research shows that various environmental
factors can arouse and maintain people’s attention:
Importance
Kathy Stone is teaching children to find
main ideas in paragraphs. She wants
children to focus on main ideas and not be
distracted by interesting details. Children
ask the question, “What is this story mostly
about?” read the story, and ask the question
again. They then pick out the sentence that
best answers the question. Kathy reviews
the other sentences to show how they
discuss details that may support the main
idea but do not state it.

22. AROUSING AND MAINTAINING STUDENTS' ATTENTION
Novelty
A fifth-grade teacher contacted an
entomology professor at the local
university who is an expert on
cockroaches. The teacher took her class to
his laboratory. There the students saw all
types of cockroaches. The professor had
various pieces of equipment that allowed
students to see the activities of cockroaches
firsthand, for example, how fast they can run
and what types of things
they eat.

23. AROUSING AND MAINTAINING STUDENTS' ATTENTION
Intensity
Jim Marshall wants his students to
memorize the Gettysburg Address and be
able to recite it with emphasis in key
places. Jim demonstrates the reading while
being accompanied at a very low volume
by an instrumental version of “The Battle
Hymn of the Republic.” When he comes to
a key part (e.g., “of the people, by the
people, for the people”), he uses body and hand
language and raises his inflection
to emphasize certain words.

24. AROUSING AND MAINTAINING STUDENTS' ATTENTION
Movement
Studying birds and animals in books can be
boring and does not capture their typical
activities. An elementary teacher uses
Internet sources and interactive videos to
show birds and animals in their natural
habitats. Students can see what their typical
activities are as they hunt for food and prey,
take care of their young, and move from
place to place.

25. LANGUAGE LEARNING
Specific brain regions are associated with orthographic, phonological,
semantic, and syntactic processing required from reading.
There are two key areas in the brain involved in language:
 Broca’s area: plays a major role in the production of grammatically
correct speech.
 Wernicke’s area: is critical in proper word choice and elocution.

26.  Orthographic processing: depends heavily on the
primary visual area.
 Phonological processing: is associated with the superior
(upper) temporal lobes.
 Semantic and syntactic processing: is associated with
Broca’s area and wernicke´s area

27. TEACHING FOR CONSOLIDATION
Factors such as organization, rehearsal, and elaboration help the brain
impose structure on learning and assist in the consolidation of neural
connections in memory. Teachers can incorporate these ideas in
various ways.
Organization
Ms. Standar’s students are studying the
American Revolution. Rather than ask them
to learn many dates, she creates a time line
of key events and explains how each event
led to subsequent events. Thus, she helps
students chronologically organize the key
events by relating them to events that they
helped to cause.

28. TEACHING FOR CONSOLIDATION
Rehearsal
Mr. Luongo’s elementary students will
perform a Thanksgiving skit for parents.
Students must learn their lines and also
their movements. He breaks the skit into
subparts and works on one part each day,
then gradually merges the parts into a
longer sequence. Students thus get plenty
of rehearsal, including several rehearsals of
the entire skit.

29. TEACHING FOR CONSOLIDATION
Elaboration
Mr. Jackson knows that students find
precalculus difficult to link with other
knowledge. Mr. Jackson surveys his
students to determine their interests and
what other courses they are taking. Then he
relates precalculus concepts to these
interests and courses. For example, for
students taking physics he links principles
of motion and gravity to conic sections
(e.g., parabolas) and quadratic equations.

30. INFLUENTIAL FACTORS
Genetics
Enviromental
Stimulation
Teratogens
Steroids Nutrition

31. CRITICAL PERIODS
Sensory Motor Development: The systems associated
with visión, hearing and motor movements develop
extensively through experiencies during the first two years
of life.
Auditory Development: In the first two years, children´s
auditory system mature in terms of range of sounds
Heard and ability to discriminate among sounds.
Vision: Vision develops largely during the first year of life
and especially after the fourth month.

32. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 A critical period in language development seems to be between birth and age
5. During this time children’s brains develop most of their language
capabilities. There is a rapid increase in vocabulary between the ages of 19
and 31 months

33. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 Different areas of the brain participate in language development in normally
developing children, these areas must work together to learn language, such as
the areas involved in seeing, hearing, speaking and thinking.

34. TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH TEENAGERS
The rapid and extensive changes that occur in teenagers’ brains suggest
that we not view teens as smaller versions of adults. Some suggestions
for instruction with teens based on brain research follow.
Give Simple and Straightforward Directions
Mr. Glenn, who teaches 10th grade English,
knows that his students’ memories may not
accommodate many ideas at once. For each
novel students read, they must do a literary
analysis that comprises several sections (e.g.,
plot summary, literary devices, analysis of a
major character). Mr. Glenn reviews these
sections carefully. For each, he explains what
it should include and shows a sample or two.

35. TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH TEENAGERS
use models
Students process information well when it is
presented in multiple modes—visual,
auditory, tactile. In her chemistry class, Ms.
Carchina wants to ensure that students
understand laboratory procedures. She
explains and demonstrates each procedure
she wants students to learn, then has students
work in pairs to perform the procedure. As
students work, she circulates among them
and offers corrective feedback as needed.

36. TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH TEENAGERS
Ensure that students develop competence
Pattersonteaches calculus,
which is difficult for some
students. Through quizzes, homework,
and class work she knows which students are
having difficulty. Ms. Patterson holds review
sessions before school every day for her
students, and she makes a point to advise
students having difficulty

37. TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH TEENAGERS
incorporate decision making
Mr. Manley incorporates
much decision making and discussions of
consequences into his marine science
classes. Students read about topics such
as global warming and water pollution,
and then he presents them with case
studies that they discuss (e.g., a ship’s
captain who wants to dump garbage at
sea).

38. MOTIVATION
Is the process whereby goal-directed activities are instigated and
sustained. Motivated actions include choice tasks, physical and mental
effort, persistence, and achievement.
Rewards  They are key components of conditioning theories, which
contend that behaviors that are reinforced (rewarded) tend to be repeated
in the future.
Motivational States They are complex neutral connections that
include emotions, cognitions, and behaviors.

39. EMOTIONS
There are various theories to account for human emotions because
the operations of emotions in the central nervous system is not
fully understand.
One theory says that emotional reactions consist of four
overlapping stages:
 orienting complex
emotional event integration
response selection
sustained emotional context.

40. Orienting complex:
is an automatic response in which individuals direct their attention toward a stimulus or
event and mobilize resources to deal with it. The orienting complex produces a neural
response that is sent to other stages.
Emotional event integration:
this stimulus or event is integrated with information in WM and LTM, such as information
about the definition or meaning of thestimulus or event and the context.
Response selection:
the individual ascribes cognitive meaning to the stimulus or event, integrates this
meaning with an affective component, identifies possibleactions, and selects one.
sustained emotional context stage:
The individual’s mood is linked with outputs of prior stages

41. Involving emotions in learning
Kathy Stone wants her students to enjoy
school, and she knows how important it is
to arouse children’s emotions for learning.
She always tries to link academic content to
students’ experiences so that their positive
emotions associated with these experiences
become associated with the learning. When
her children read a story about a child who
took a trip, she asked them to tell about
when they took a trip to visit a relative, go
on vacation, or so forth. When working on
mathematical division, she asked children to
think about something that was divided into
parts (e.g., pie, cake) so that several people
could enjoy it.

42. INSTRUCTIONAL APPLICATIONS
Relevance of Brain Research:
Educational researchers increasingly believe that
understanding brain processes provides additional insights
into the nature of learning and development.
Findings from brain research actually support many results
obtained in research studies on learning and memory, there is
much evidence that tasks require activity of both
hemispheres and that their differences are more relative tan
absolute.

43. EDUCATIONAL ISSUES
Brain research, and CNS research in general, raises many issues
relevant to education
 The first issue involves the critical role of early education.
 The second issue concerns the idea that instruction and learning
experiences must be planned to take into account the
complexities of cognitive processes such as attention and
memory.
 The third issue involves remedying students’ learning
difficulties.
 The final issue concerns the complexity of learning theories.

44. Bibliography
Schunk, D. (n.d). Learning Theories. An Educational Perspective, Sixth
edition. The University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

45. THANKS!!