Not That Linked In To The Brain!

Brain knowledge is a hot commodity at the moment, with neuroscience seeing more interest from the general public than at any time I can think of. Adding the prefix “Neuro-” or describing an offering as “Brain-based” seems to be the Zeitgeist - educators, trainers, coaches, consultants, everybody seems to be capitalizing on how excited and intrigued we all are by the complex beauty of our brains.

Setting aside the utter redundancy of a phrase like “brain-based learning”, a pet peeve of mine in a world where we wouldn’t say leg-based walking or mouth-based eating; I get that it’s a marketable tool, implying that the course being offered is somehow special in its basis in neuroscience. But, if we’re going to pitch something as “brain-based” then let’s make sure the brain science is accurate!

The challenge here is that there are a lot of non-specialists telling us how our brains work, what the different parts are for, and what that could mean for our ambition, personal growth or learning. And, when non-specialists talk about science, they run the risk of getting things wrong and popularising neuromyths. 

Neuromyths are incorrect assertions about how the brain is involved in learning or processing, which may not seem like a huge deal, but with an enormous market out there exploiting people who want to learn and charging them for false information and methodologies, reputable learning providers need to be really aware of them. The interesting thing about neuromyths however is that their origin often lies in genuine scientific findings. And, if we’re going to present science to the masses and decrease the perpetuation of these myths and inaccuracies, it’s important to have our facts straight.

I have been part of the LinkedIn community for several years and have always appreciated LinkedIn’s devotion to putting out great learning opportunities. So, when a colleague of mine asked if I had seen this course, and I hadn’t, I was curious and excited to see what I would discover. 

Before I delve further into the issues I uncovered, let me set the scene. While I specialise in neuroscience and do have credentials, I am NOT a neuroscientist. I work closely with neuroscientists wearing two very relevant hats. One as a scientific learning designer, and the second as a neuroscience translator.  

As a translator, I take the exceptional research coming out of the field and its respective domains, and extract the functional knowledge that can be applied to practice when designing learning. This takes a fair amount of time and effort, a process I won’t go into in detail here, but what I will highlight is an essential step I take before finalising any scientific aspects of the work I produce. I run it past my board of advisors which is made up of neuroscientists, cognitive neuroscientists, behavioural scientists and neuropsychologists.   

Maintaining the credibility of my work by ensuring the accuracy of the science I’m sharing is of the utmost importance to me. In fact, ensuring scientific accuracy is imperative, period.

As a scientific learning designer, I get to merge all that amazing functional knowledge of the brain with the theories and methodologies that come from cognitive psychology and learning theory to create learning that works more optimally for the brain and its process of encoding. 

With all this in mind, I approached LinkedIn’s “Brain-Based E-learning Design” course currently available on LinkedIn Learning.

Helping people design learning to optimise brain encoding is a topic close to my heart, and while I applaud LinkedIn for broaching the topic, the course content is flawed, and that needed to be addressed. So I have performed an audit of the first module to show you, the potential student, where the inaccuracies lie.

My intention in writing this piece is merely to give you the facts, correct the inaccuracies and enhance your knowledge of our most remarkable brains. 

What follows are quotes from the first module of the course that didn’t hit the mark from a scientific perspective; along with accurate information on those topics.  

Here we go!

1) “...according to most neuroscientists, we have some 100 billion [neurons].” 

THE FACTS: While this is technically true at one point in our lives, at birth, through a process called pruning’, that scales back to roughly 86 billion by the time we’re adults. Still a pretty impressive number if you ask me.  

Why does this pruning happen? Pruning is a natural process that occurs in the brain as we grow up, in which the brain eliminates extra neurons, synapses and axons that exist within the brain and nervous system. It’s a process designed to increase the efficiency of our neuronal transmissions.

Why does this error matter? By perpetuating the myth that we have 100 billion neurons, we are effectively eradicating or dismissing the essential childhood to adulthood process of pruning as if it never happened.

 2) “The hippocampus is part of the brain's limbic system which regulates our emotions. It's a small organ - located in the front and center of the brain and connects the brain's left and right sides.”

THE FACTS: While the hippocampus is most certainly part of the limbic system, it is not an organ in itself, does not play the starring role in regulating our emotions, nor does it connect the left and right sides. That is the role of the corpus callosum (the bridge-like structure that divides the two hemispheres). The hippocampus is a set of nuclei and is located in the mid-region of the temporal lobe which sits above your ears, not front and center.

Where do we process emotions? The hippocampus’ role in regulating emotion is far less prominent than that of the prefrontal cortex (where your executive center is located). This area of the brain is highly connected to the emotional processing centers (known as the Amygdala). During what’s known as an “Amygdala Hijack” (I like to picture this as the Incredible Hulk making his transformation) the executive centers are inhibited (taken offline if you will) hindering our ability to regulate our emotions.  

Why does this error matter? Regulating our emotions is nothing to take lightly and if we’re going to put this into practice it serves us better to understand the actual part of the brain that’s doing it and how it is activated to help us achieve a calming of the emotional centers. If we look at the research on meditation for example, we see that how the emotional centers and executive centers are connected and operate in order to stimulate automatic emotional regulation, is widely cited and verified by neuroimaging studies,  

Further to this, if we’re going to tap into emotions as part of learning design, it’s incredibly important that we proceed with caution and do so with an understanding of what we could potentially be activating in someone's memory. Not all emotions are created equally, as I’m sure we’ve all experienced. 

 3) “[The Hippocampus is] in the perfect spot to receive all the information coming in through our five senses which then travels through our sensory nerves directly to the hippocampus. “

THE FACTS: This is incorrect. A portion of sensory information travels to the hippocampus, but certainly not all.  

So where do we process sensory information? We process sensory input in a number of places. For instance, the majority of our visual information goes to the occipital lobe, located towards the back of our brains. Auditory information gets processed in the temporal lobe, on either side of your head above your ears. We also have more than 5 senses, but we’ll leave that for another time!

Why does this error matter? One key thing, amongst the many to remember about the brain, is that it’s highly interconnected. The idea that one part of it is solely responsible for all incoming sensory information puts some pretty heavy weight on that part of the brain, especially while it’s learning. Think about how exhausting it would be if there was only one part of your brain processing all of the sensory information coming at you. And if that were the case, what would the other parts of the brain be doing?

When we design learning programs this is super-valuable information, because knowing where things are being processed allows us to be more intentional about the resources we run the risk of over-exhausting unnecessarily.  

4) “Neuroscientists have discovered that our ability to remember and recall learned information is directly linked to the strength of activity in the hippocampus while we are learning.” 

THE FACTS: The hippocampus is one part of the brain involved with memory, but certainly not the sole part. The hippocampus is not involved with short-term memory or procedural memory types (memory of how to do motor actions, like walking). Memory is far more complex than this. 

A great case, and one of the most famous in neuroscience, is that of patient HM. HM had his hippocampus removed as a last resort to manage severe epilepsy. Though he was no longer able to form long-term memories, he still had access to ones from earlier stages in his life.  

What does the hippocampus have to do with memory then? The hippocampus helps us process and retrieve two kinds of memory, declarative memories and spatial relationships. Declarative memories are those related to facts and events, for example, learning how to memorize a poem.

Spatial relationship memories involve pathways or routes, for example, learning the route to drive to work involves spatial memory. The hippocampus is also where short-term memories are turned into long-term memories. These are then stored elsewhere in the brain.

Why does this error matter? Memories are encoded in many parts of the brain and various networks are reactivated when memories are being retrieved. The activity of these pathways is strengthened during the encoding and storage process. So, if the memory is triggering the network, then it’s not the strength of activity in the hippocampus that matters as much as the sum of the whole pathway. In our learning designs, we can use this to our advantage to more strategically target areas of the brain to help our learners encode information.  

5) “So, think of the hippocampus as a recorder of information and dopamine as a save button. We can design eLearning that facilitates the release of dopamine by leveraging its role in stimulating motivation and reward.”

THE FACTS: This is one of those more prevalent neuromyths. The hippocampus is most certainly not a recorder of information nor is dopamine a save button. It takes more than one pathway and one neurochemical to encode a memory.  Further to this, the reward systems do not reside in the hippocampus. That is a function of the striatum which along with the gut, as new research has shown us, are main sources of dopamine production.  

So how do we “record” and “save” information? In order to form new long-term memories, information must be changed into a usable format, which occurs through the process known as encoding. During encoding, information is processed and categorized. It’s that initial learning which requires focus and effort as we get the information in. Once the information has been successfully encoded, it must be stored in memory for later use. Storage is the how, where, how much, and for how long something is retained. Rehearsal during storage is essential in order to access long-term memory. Much of this stored memory exists outside of our awareness most of the time until we need to use it. The retrieval process then allows us to bring stored memories back into our conscious awareness to utilise them.

Why does this error matter? When we reduce a very complex human process to a simplistic and inaccurate concept, we give the impression that learning and memory are easy. This can dilute the way we design for it. We can design learning for fun and engagement, which I’m all for, but we can’t rely on that process for powerful memory encoding. We run the risk of doing a disservice to those who need to learn and to transfer practical skills, knowledge and behaviours into their professional practices. When we have an understanding of the brain’s operational process of memory encoding, we are far better equipped to design learning for the type of memories we’re aiming to create through our learning programs. 

6) “Many studies have shown that spacing learning out over time rather than massing learning into a single event helps learners maintain optimal levels of attention and generation throughout the learning process.”

THE FACTS: Absolutely, spaced repetition is key! As memory is also consolidated while we sleep, spacing out learning over time allows for this natural process to happen. However, the purpose of spaced repetition has less to do with attention and more to do with the challenge of retrieval which strengthens the neural pathways over time to assist with the encoding process.

So how does attention interact with learning? There are several attentional networks in the brain; one that alerts us and orients us to sensory inputs and another for executive control. When it comes to learning, attention is critical as it is a mechanism to focus. Stretch attention too thin and you’re hindering the ability to focus on any one given thing. And, with the limited resources we have in working memory, anything we can do to help the brain focus on incoming information will serve to benefit that encoding process.  

Why does this error matter? If you’re using spaced repetition because you think it’s a way to achieve optimal attention, then you’re using it in an incorrect way. Results will be little to none if maintaining attention is your goal. If you understand the true purpose of the methodology as it relates to memory and how time variables play a distinct role in that, you’ll be able to design with this method far more effectively.  

 Alright, so there you have it.  These certainly weren't all the errors, but some of the most prevalent.

As a researcher and scientific learning designer who is obsessed with the brain, I’m clearly biased, but to me, our ever-increasing knowledge of the brain is the past advantage we never had, and the future of how effective good learning design can be. 

There is so much to understand about our brains, and how we can best apply cognition and learning theory to our learning design. I truly hope that you’ve found value in this article, and if you’re looking for accurate and scientifically sound routes to pursue your curiosity about our remarkable brains, and how we can use that knowledge not only for learning design, but as every day remarkable humans, connect with me through my mailing list and get a sneak peek into Joining Forces with Your Brain, the series. 

If you’re interested in reading some of the research associated with what I’ve covered in this article, here are some papers for reference!

References: 

Core Concept: How synaptic pruning shapes neural wiring during development and, possibly, in disease https://www.pnas.org/content/117/28/16096

Impact of short- and long-term mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6671286/

The Senses — A Primer (Part I) https://www.brainfacts.org/thinking-sensing-and-behaving/vision/2013/the-senses-a-primer-part-i#:~:text=Sensory%20data%20generally%20pass%20through,the%20occipital%20lobe%20for%20sight.

 How memory works https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/how-memory-works