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<\/a><\/p>\nHe meant: the brain is so FANTASTICALLY complicated that we barely know how little we know.<\/p>\n
Yes, we can name brain regions. We can partially describe neural networks. Astonishing new technologies let us pry into all sorts of secrets.<\/p>\n
And yet, by the time he left the program he founded at Harvard, Dr. Fischer was saying: “when it comes to the brain, we’re now just in 1st grade.”<\/p>\n
The brain is really that complicated.<\/p>\n
Fascinating Questions<\/h2>\n
Adolescents — with their marvelous and exasperating behavior — raise all sorts of fascinating questions.<\/p>\n
In particular, we recognize a real change in their ability to think abstractly<\/em>.<\/p>\n Unlike their younger selves, teens can often “infer<\/a>…system-level implications…and lessons that transcend the immediate situation.”<\/p>\n We can say in a general way that, well, teens improve at this cognitive ability. But: can we explain how?<\/p>\n More specifically, can we look a their brains and offer a reasonable explanation? Something like: “because [this part of the brain] changes [this way], teens improve at abstract thinking.”<\/p>\n A research team at the University of Southern California wanted answers<\/a>.<\/p>\n These researchers showed 65 teens brief, compelling videos about “living, non-famous adolescents from around the world.” They discussed those videos with the teens, and recorded their reactions.<\/p>\n And then they replayed key moments while the teens lay in an fMRI scanner.<\/p>\n In this way, they could (probably) see which brain networks were most active when the teens had specific or abstract reactions.<\/p>\n For example, the teen might say something specific and individual<\/em> about the teen in the video, or about themselves: “I just feel so bad for her.”<\/p>\n Or, she might say something about an abstract<\/em> “truth, lesson, or value”: e.g., “We have to inspire people who have the potential to improve society.”<\/p>\n If some brain networks correlated with specific\/individual statements, and other networks with abstract\/general statements, that correlation might start to answer this question.<\/p>\n As usual, this research team started with predictions.<\/p>\n They suspected that abstract<\/strong> statements would correlate with activity in the default mode network<\/em>.<\/p>\n And, they predicted that\u00a0concrete<\/strong> statements would correlate with activity in the\u00a0executive control network.<\/em><\/p>\n What did they find?<\/p>\n Sure enough, the results aligned with their predictions. The orange blobs show the teens’ heightened neural activity when they made abstract statements.<\/p>\n And: those blobs clearly overlap with well-established regions associated with the Default Mode Network.<\/p>\n The study includes a second (even more intricate!) picture of the executive control network — and its functional overlap with concrete statements.<\/p>\n The headline: we can see a (likely) brain basis for concrete and abstract thought in teens.<\/p>\n Equally important, a separate element of the study looks at the role of\u00a0emotion\u00a0<\/strong>in adolescent cognition. (One of the study’s authors, Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, has worked on this topic for years<\/a>.)<\/p>\n In brief, emotions don’t necessarily limit thinking. They can focus and motivate<\/em> thinking:<\/p>\n “Rather than interfering with complex cognition, emotion in the context of abstract thinking may drive adolescents’ thinking forward.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The much-discussed emotionality of teenage years might not be a bug, but a feature.<\/p>\n I’m especially happy to share this research because its lead author — Dr. Rebecca Gotlieb — has long been the book reviewer for this blog.<\/p>\n If you’ve ever wondered how she knows so much about the books she reviews, well, now you know.<\/p>\n Because of work that she (and so many other) researchers are doing, Dr. Fischer could now say that we’re entering 2nd grade in our understanding of the brain…<\/p>\n Neuroscience studies always include more details than can be clearly summarized in a blog post. For those of you who REALLY want to dig into the specifics, I’ll add three more interesting points.<\/p>\n First<\/strong>: knowing that scientific research focuses too much on one narrow social stratum, the researchers made a point to work with students who aren’t typically included in such studies.<\/p>\n In this case, they worked with students with a lower “socio-economic status” (SES), as measured by — among other things — whether or not they received free- or reduced-priced lunch. Researchers often overlook low SES students, so it’s exciting this team made a point to widen their horizons.<\/p>\n Second<\/strong>: researchers found that IQ didn’t matter to their results. In other words, “abstract social reasoning” isn’t measured by IQ — which might therefore be less important than some claim it to be.<\/p>\n Third<\/strong>: teachers typically think of “executive function” as a good thing. In this study, LOWER activity in the executive control network ended up helping abstract social thought.<\/p>\n Exactly what to make of this result — and how to use it in the classroom — is far from clear. But it underlines the dangers of oversimplification of such studies. Executive functions are good — obviously! But they’re not always beneficial for everything.<\/p>\n Rebecca Gotlieb, Xiao-Fei Yang, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Default and executive networks\u2019 roles in diverse adolescents\u2019 emotionally engaged construals of complex social issues,\u00a0Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience<\/em>, 2021;, nsab108,\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/scan\/nsab108<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kurt Fischer — who helped create Learning and the Brain, and the entire field of Mind, Brain, and Education — used to say: “when it comes to the brain, we’re all still in kindergarten.” He meant: the brain is so FANTASTICALLY complicated that we barely know how little we know. Yes, we can name brain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72,17],"class_list":["post-6333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-adolescence","tag-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6333"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6342,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333\/revisions\/6342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Networks in the Brain<\/h2>\n
Results and Conclusions<\/h2>\n
<\/a>A Final Note<\/h2>\n
\nA Final Final Note<\/h2>\n
\n