Week 1 - The good, the bad and the ugly

Question 1

The amount and complexity of neuroscience publications per year increased up to ~69k during the last decades, why?

Answer 1

Probably because of technological developments (Cordero 2016).

Question 2

What caused growth in investment in neuroscience in research in the USA?

Answer 2

When 1990 was declared to be the “Decade of the Brain” it soon spread all over the world under the Bush governance.

Other initiatives still help Decade of Mind; BRAIN initiative.

Question 3

What are the main 5 developmental areas where discoveries are made?

Answer 3

1. BOLD imaging and computational neuroscience
2. Neural plasticity and critical periods
3. Second-generation antidepressants and antipsychotics
4. Discovery of genetic mutations responsible for Huntingtons’ disease, ALS, Rett syndrome
5. Discovery of the neural origins and impacts of alcoholism.

Question 4

How number of articles about the brain published change from 2000 to 2010?

What are the main categories of articles?

Answer 4

Progressively increased.

1. The brain as capital (optimisation, enhancing, identifying threats).
2. The brain as an index of differences (categories of the brain like men, women, gay, addicted, teenage).
3. The brain as biological proof (placing the brain as a final proof for diverse beliefs and phenomena). It uses terms to make the text more reliable and have an aura of science: scientists proved, sciences proves.

Question 5

What was the most frequent topic among articles published in popular media between 2001 and 2010?

Answer 5

Brain optimisation - 43%

Psychopathology - 36%

Basic brain functions - 24%

Applicable contexts and paternity/motherhood - 14%

Individual differences - 12%

Sexuality and morality - 11%

Question 6

What is didactic transposition?

Answer 6

It is a process of reformulation of knowledge from laboratories, and academia to the education system. If not carried out carefully can evoke serious misunderstadings.

Question 7

What are the stages of didactic transposition (2) ?

Answer 7

1. Knowledge selection. Which knowledge will be taught? When and to whom?
2. Knowledge presentation. Occur between educator and learner.

Question 8

Through which two main vehicles neuroscience knowledge is directed to society?

Answer 8

1. The school
2. The media

Question 9

How do school and media differ in delivering neuroscience knowledge in terms of integration/audience?

Answer 9

The media does not care what has been released into a body of previous knowledge, unlike schools. Knowledge is not integrated. The audience is heterogeneous.

Question 10

What to check in articles to avoid distortions (4)?

Answer 10

Question 11

How the gap between internal scientific communication and public scientific communication can be reduced?

Answer 11

By scientists communicate their findings to the public themselves.

Question 12

What is Ingelfinger’s rule?

Answer 12

In scientific publishing, the 1969 Ingelfinger rule originally stipulated that The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) would not publish findings that had been published elsewhere, in other media or in other journals. The rule was subsequently adopted by several other scientific journals and has shaped scientific publishing ever since. Historically it has also helped to ensure that the journal’s content is fresh and does not duplicate content previously reported elsewhere, and seeks to protect the scientific embargo system.

Question 13

What is neuromyth?

Answer 13

An erroneous belief about how the brain (mind) works that’s held by a substantial number of people.

Question 14

Where is the 10% myth from? Why its wrong?

Answer 14

Largely promoted by the recent sci-fi films (Limitless, Lucy). Might come from philosopher and father of psychology William James, who said it was unlikely that the average person reached 10% of their potential.

Unfortunately, marketers latched onto this to promote pills, courses, and games to “unlock their potential”.

• This myth contradicts the research from neuropsychology in patients who had strokes or damage to the brain.
• Plenty of evidence when scanning the brain, that there is an activity in almost all areas of the brain.
• Evolutionary it doesn’t make sense to have an organ 90% unused (20% of the energy used by the brain).

Question 15

What is the myth of the left brain/right brain?

Why did this myth occured?

Answer 15

Certain functions occur in certain hemispheres. The left side of the brain relates to science, mathematics, and logical thought, while the right side of the brain relates to artistic expression and creativity.

Functional magnetic resonance shows that both hemispheres are active when people engage in creative tasks.

Because of the lateralisation (some skills being more strongly represented in one brain hemisphere than the other). An extreme simplification of true picture.

Question 16

What is divergent thinking?

Answer 16

That’s the task where you have to come up with as many uses for a brick as you can in a certain time limit, thus acting as a, sort of, rather poor proxy for creativity.

Question 17

What is the myth of multiple intelligences?

Answer 17

It came from the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner who just came up with this idea with no data involved. It was simply an opinion.

He suggested that there are:

• Visual-spatial intelligence
• Interpersonal inteligence
• Intrapersonal intelligence
• naturalistic intelligence
• Existential intelligence
• Moral intelligence

A large amount of data attest to the fact that if you test people on a wide range of mental tests, their scores will tend to correlate positively together, if you are good at one test, you will be good at others too.

Question 18

IQ tests just tell you how good you are at doing IQ tests.

Whats is wrong about this myth?

Answer 18

They are flawed in many ways but are the most reliable and predictive tests we have in psychological science.

Predictive for many things such as longevity.

Question 19

What is the myth of learning styles?

Answer 19

Learning styles: an innate property of the brain which gives rise to different best ways of learning. People differ in the way they learn.

Nobody is denying that some people have a preference to learn in a particular way. Its more of a question if there are really brain types, learning styles, that would require teachers to change the way of teaching?

So far there is contradicting evidence where it is shown that the same learning method optimised the test score for both kinds of learners.

Question 20

Smarter people have larger brains. Why this myth is wrong?

Answer 20

It has a valid scientific basis. IQ correlates with brain volume. Nevertheless, we do not know why, whether the neurons are bogger and healthier? Thus gives better cognitive performance?

Question 21

Why interleaved practice works better than blocked practice in learning?

Answer 21

To understand interleaved practice, we have to think about how we structure a single practice session. This session could be a set of homework problems that we solve. It could be an hour of basketball practice. It could be twenty minutes trying to identify bird calls.

Let’s go with bird calls. Suppose I’m learning about three different types of bird calls: A, B, and C. And the ultimate goal is for me to be able to identify the bird calls I hear. We can think about structuring a practice session in one of three ways:

Image by author.

Both the “predictable” and the “random” schedules mix up the practice. But it’s usually the randomized schedule that is considered to be truly interleaved. The key aspect of this schedule is that the learner doesn’t know what kind of problem they’re going to confront next.

The first explanation is our old friend spaced practice. Interleaving naturally involves spacing out the learning of specific problem types (or conceptual categories or motor skills). An order like A-B-A-A-B-A-B-B just naturally spaces the learning of A and B over a longer period than an order like A-A-A-A-B-B-B-B. The spacing encourages students to (partially) forget things and remember them again, strengthening their memories. There are some cases where the advantage of interleaved practice over blocked practice can be almost entirely attributed to spacing out the learning sessions. But there are many other cases where more seems to be going on.

The second explanation is that interleaved practice helps people distinguish between similar-looking things (the “discriminative-contrast hypothesis” if you want to get fancy). Suppose I’m learning bird species. A big part of what I need to do is to distinguish between birds that look a lot alike, but come from different species. With interleaved practice, students simply make more comparisons between different categories. After seeing one species, I’m likely to see a different species right after, which emphasizes the differences between them. The same is true with math problems or even motor skills.

A final, complementary way of understanding the benefit of interleaved practice is to think about what students are (and are not) actually practicing during different kinds of learning sessions. One goal of mathematical fluency is to be able to solve math problems with knowledge of math equations. This requires two fundamental skills: recognizing which equations are appropriate, and using those equations in the right way.

With blocked practice, students practice using the equations: they plug in the numbers, run through the procedural steps, and come up with an answer. But they rarely practice recognizing which equations are appropriate. They already know that this set of problems is about rectangle perimeters and that set of problems is about rectangle areas, and that other set of problems is about the areas of circles. Interleaved practice provides practice at actually figuring out what the problem is about, rather than just running through the procedural steps.

Question 22

Where the brain boosting myth came from?

Answer 22

In 1993 from Mozart effect. That playing Mozart you can improve people’s intelligence.

Paper in 2010 Mozart effect - Schmozart effect reported that the effect of listening to Mozart’s music was essentially zilch (nothing). The original research was actually a fluke.

Another myth is that training on dual n-back tasks boosts people’s intelligence presented in a paper in 2008 that started a craze for brain training. However, after that meta-analyses showed that the effect of working memory training on cognitive skills arent memory tasks (no far-transfer). You can get better similar working memory tasks, but not arithmetic or intelligence more broadly.

Question 23

How does educational psychology course affect belief about neuromyths in South Korean teachers survey?

Answer 23

It improves knowledge about neuroscience but has little effect on belief in neuromyths specifically.

Question 24

How neuromyths are endorsed by different groups (General public, educators, high neuroscience exposure)?

Answer 24

Question 25

Which part of the brain responds to stress? (Same physical or psychological)

Answer 25

Right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

Question 26

What are the results of high cortisol in the body?

Answer 26

Blood flow moves away from brain parts related to higher executive functions, thus affecting it negatively.

Erodes immunity - leading to illness.

Steroid effect on fat deposition.

Question 27

What are the signs of high levels of cortisol?

Answer 27

Sleep issues

Heartburn, reflux, acid indigestion

Headaches, muscle aches, fatigue

Irritability, anxiety

Craving caffeine, chocolate

Twitchy eyelid (a sign of low magnesium)

Question 28

What are the basic 8 human emotions?

Answer 28