Brain Culture Part 2
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for downloading the More or Less podcast from the BBC. Except it's not More or Less you've downloaded because the series is currently off air. But instead, Matthew Taylor's series, Brain Culture, continues. As part of a season of Radio 4 programmes exploring the rise of neuroscience, the former number 10 head of strategy asks whether Britain's education system will be changed by new insights into how human brains learn and retain knowledge.
Welcome to part two of Brain Culture, my journey to discover how neuroscience will change society. This week, hopes for a neurologically based education for Britain's children. Let's try this, this will be totally terrible.
MUSIC PLAYS
As you can probably tell, the point of listening to this viola is not for its artistic merit. But stringed instruments, like the one being played here by Professor Chris Frith of University College London, do have an important place in the development of neuroscience. It was scans of brains of violin players that helped scientists understand that the brain is plastic. It doesn't just retain facts and memories in fixed areas, but learning special skills, like music, actually changes its structure. I believe this insight can shed new light on some very old debates about how to educate the nation. Chris Frith may not be a musical genius, but he's widely seen as the godfather of British neuroscience.
Professional violinists, the bit of the brain that controls the fingers of the left hand is actually larger. It wasn't just new pathways, the relevant bit of the cortex actually got bigger. It's one of the ways that people have recently demonstrated how plastic the brain is. What do you mean by plastic? I mean it can actually change. When I was a student, we were taught after the age of 16, that's it, and your neurons start to die off and you never have any changes. Since then, over the last 10 years or so, it's been found in animals that actually new neurons develop. And in humans, that you can detect structural changes in the brain simply as a result of learning a new skill. I mean, it has implications for all stages of life, and particularly for learning.
The idea that our brain is plastic throughout life and that as well as pouring things into it, learning can generate new brain cells, neurons and a new structure has many implications, ranging from the education of infants to warding off the symptoms of dementia. When my sons train for football, they don't just play matches. They go through a set of complicated drills, which have been shown to improve their underlying skills. Now, just as the relationship between sit-ups and scoring goals may not be obvious, so brain plasticity is starting to suggest surprising ways of making the brain fitter. I'm beginning my journey with a Year 8 class near Newport. They're experimenting here with a technique designed to boost the brain plasticity of young children by using something most parents see as a distraction from learning.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Matthew Taylor and I'm presenting this radio programme that we're recording today. And because you're going to be using technology, video game technology, in the lesson, I just want to ask you a few questions about video games, first of all. As a class, do you think learning in class is more or less interesting than playing video games?
Less. Less.
Less. OK.
A lot. Don't get shoot people in class.
You don't get shoot people in class? No.
No.
But it's not the fantasy and imagination of video games that interests the neuroscientists. Instead, they've noticed something unexpected going on in players' neural networks that seems to be affecting the brain's plasticity. I'm at Dufferin School, a Newport comprehensive, with a neuroscientist, Dr Paul Howard-Jones of Bristol University.
There's an idea, a common sense idea, that games are fun and we should be using more games in the classroom. The trouble is that we haven't really understood how to do that. What neuroscience is offering is a more thoughtful and principled way of understanding how we engage in games, what happens in the brain when we engage in games, and how we can use that understanding to support learning.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:29
2
How did scans of violinists first reveal lifelong brain plasticity?
4:29–15:41
3
What is the classroom experiment using video-game rewards to boost learning?
15:41–23:45
4
How does uncertain reward and dopamine improve memory retention?
23:45–28:11
5
What did the Newport school lesson show about gamified point systems?
28:11–28:21