{"id":7584,"date":"2024-04-28T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2024-04-28T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=7584"},"modified":"2024-04-24T19:33:57","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T00:33:57","slug":"should-teachers-be-excited-about-neural-synchrony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/should-teachers-be-excited-about-neural-synchrony\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Teachers Be Excited about “Neural Synchrony”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog — and this company — exist to give good advice<\/strong> to everyone who cares about learning and teaching.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

To accomplish that mission, we rely — as much as possible — on solid research.<\/p>\n

An important part of\u00a0our mission: to warn against\u00a0bad advice.\u00a0<\/em>And, of course, we’re especially worried about people who give that bad advice with the label “All The Research Shows…”<\/p>\n

So:<\/p>\n

No, learning styles are not a thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No, Brain Gym doesn’t do anything special<\/a> for your brain.<\/p>\n

And no, “brain food<\/a>” shouldn’t really grab your attention.<\/p>\n

Like Celine Dion’s heart, the list could go on and on.<\/p>\n

The Potential Joys of “Synchrony”<\/h2>\n

In recent years, I’ve seen an increasing number of claims about the importance of “neural synchrony.”<\/p>\n

The claim sounds something like this:<\/p>\n

“When students are working effectively together in groups, we see an increased level of\u00a0neural synchrony<\/strong> among them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The technical definition of neural synchrony is complicated enough to stun a badger, but sounds more-or-less like what you think it would be: “neural networks in different people firing in ways that kinda rhyme.”<\/p>\n

The good news about “neural synchrony” is that … well … it’s good. Right? I mean, it SOUNDS really good.<\/p>\n

If my neurons are firing in ways that align with my students’ neurons, we can reasonably assume that something special and good is happening. Can’t we?<\/p>\n

Before I answer that question, I want to back up a step and talk about the difference between\u00a0psychology<\/strong> and\u00a0neuroscience<\/strong>. (I promise: I’ll get back to all those synchronous neurons in a few paragraphs.)<\/p>\n

Grab a Scalpal, or Grab a Quiz<\/h2>\n

As teachers and school leaders, we’re really interested in “stuff going on inside students’ heads.”<\/p>\n

We have — to oversimplify things a lot — two basic academic approaches<\/em> to studying “stuff inside the head.”<\/p>\n

We might think like a biologist<\/strong>, and study all the damp and sticky stuff: neurons, and the pre-frontal cortex, and neurotransmitters, and blood flow, and the amygdala, and so forth.<\/p>\n

We call this field neuroscience<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Neuroscience often requires gloves and scalpels, and occasionally fMRI and EEG gizmos.<\/p>\n

Or, we might\u00a0focus on mental function<\/strong>, and study things like attention, or memory, or motivation, or learning, or critical thinking, or curiosity.<\/p>\n

We call this field\u00a0psychology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

All of those mental functions result from something biological (studied by “neuroscience”), but we can study them without putting on gloves and grabbing a scalpel.<\/p>\n

So, I might give my students a retrieval practice quiz and then measure\u00a0how much they remembered a week later<\/em>. This research involves psychology (I measured “remembering”) but not neuroscience (I didn’t look at biological stuff).<\/p>\n

Here’s why we care: “neural synchrony” lies squarely in the world of neuroscience. We’re talking biology<\/em> here.<\/p>\n

The Charms, and Perils, of Neuro-Advice<\/h2>\n

Why does the difference between psychology and neuroscience matter? Here goes:<\/p>\n

We live in a cultural moment when people REALLY CARE about neuroscience. If you want to get people excited about whatever you’re saying, throw the word “brain” into your title.<\/p>\n

I mean, if eating blueberries benefits the brain<\/em>, then we should all eat blueberries! Because: brain!! (Caveat: I don’t know of any special brain benefits to eating blueberries.)<\/p>\n

For this reason, I assume, people seem to have gotten very excited about the topic of “neural synchony.”<\/p>\n

Alas, our cultural fascination with neuroscience leads us to a willingness…even an eagerness…to believe neuro-guidance MUST be true.<\/p>\n

If a teaching strategy helps my brain synchronize with my students’ brains<\/em>, it must be gold standard. No?<\/p>\n

No.<\/p>\n

The ever-wise Pedro de Bruyckere has recently written about a study<\/a> looking at “neural synchrony” between parents and children.<\/p>\n

This study gets a bit complicated because it combines neuroscience (“neural synchrony”) with psychology (“attachment theory”).<\/p>\n

But the headlines should force us to reconsider our all-too-easy assumption that “neural synchrony” must be a good thing.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Because:\u00a0mothers who have a good enough relationship<\/em> with their child (“secure attachment”) show LESS neural synchrony than those who have a difficult relationship<\/em> with their child (“insecure attachment”).<\/p>\n

Yes: in this one study, increased<\/em> neural synchrony correlates with\u00a0decreased<\/em> quality of parent-child relationship.<\/p>\n

De Bruyckere quotes the press release describing the study:<\/p>\n

\u201cIncreased brain-to-brain synchrony may reflect a neural compensation mechanism<\/em> to overcome otherwise less attuned interaction elements.\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p>\n

In brief, in this research, “neural synchony” doesn’t show that upliftingly good<\/strong> brain things are happening<\/em>; it shows a compensation strategy for difficulties<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I think it’s entirely possible that brain synchrony might — under other circumstances — reveal basically good things.<\/p>\n

But we shouldn’t assume that “more neural synchrony” = “more good stuff.”<\/p>\n

The Bigger Picture<\/h2>\n

Longtime readers will recognize a theme here.<\/p>\n

Over and over (and over) again, teachers get neuroscience-flavored advice — advice that sounds\u00a0really persuasive<\/em> because it’s got brainy words attached.<\/p>\n

Teach this way because\u00a0oxytocin!<\/em><\/p>\n

Start your lessons this way because\u00a0amygdala!!<\/em><\/p>\n

Schools should do this because\u00a0neuroplasticity!!!<\/em><\/p>\n

In every case, neuroscience research might make a teaching strategy plausible. But — and this is a really important point — we have to test the advice with actual students in actual classrooms first<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That classroom research will almost always be psychology (memory, attention, motivation) not neuroscience (neuron, fMRI, prefrontal cortex, EEG, dopamine).<\/p>\n

So: should we be excited when we read about neural synchrony?<\/p>\n

Only if the teaching advice that follows has been tested in classrooms first.<\/p>\n

For teachers,\u00a0neuroscience<\/em> research is fascinating;\u00a0psychology<\/em> research is useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog — and this company — exist to give good advice to everyone who cares about learning and teaching. To accomplish that mission, we rely — as much as possible — on solid research. An important part of\u00a0our mission: to warn against\u00a0bad advice.\u00a0And, of course, we’re especially worried about people who give that bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-7584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7584","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=7584"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7586,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7584\/revisions\/7586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}