A Theoretical Approach to Understanding the Brain, Education, and Mental Healthcare

This summer, I devoted ten weeks to theoretical neurobiology research in the Bryn Mawr biology department. Under the supervision and mentorship of Paul Grobstein, Ashley Dawkins, Ian Morton, and Heather Fetting, I conducted an open-ended, transactional inquiry into how structural understandings of the brain contribute to wider understandings of education and mental healthcare in the United States. My research fell largely into the domains of literature review, interviews, and observation during the Brain & Behavior Summer Science Institute. My prediction was that changing understandings of the brain would provide a useful lens through with to view critical issues in education and mental healthcare.

After a summer of scavenging for stories through interviews and printed publications, I began to try to create a story weaving new and old observations together. As I struggled to find words for my thoughts, I serendipitously bumped into an eerily relevant quote in the final installment of J.K. Rowling’s wildly successful epic, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

“’Tell me one last thing,’ said Harry. ‘Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?’
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
‘Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that this is not real?’ 1”

Great literary figures as varied in style and era as poet, Emily Dickinson ; molecular biologist, Francis Crick ; and indeed, popular fiction writer, J.K. Rowling were thinking along the same lines: We are who we are because of our brains. This observation forms the backbone of my research this summer. Instead however, of taking this statement in its entire breadth, I propose to first narrow the scope to the fields of education and mental healthcare through examination of the roles of teachers and learners, therapists and patients.

With this paper, I hope to document some of the thoughts others have had, and encourage others to contribute to this ongoing inquiry themselves. I’ll begin by placing this process into a larger historical and theoretical context, described as the tension between modernism and postmodernism, and proceed to discuss what the brain, education, and mental healthcare have to do with one another from a more empirical standpoint. My ultimate hope is that, following the model of Shayna Israel, this story about education and mental healthcare will serve as a metaphor for all learners everywhere at all times.

Modernist and Postmodernist Paradigms, a Historical Context
A useful way of approaching this broad topic is to use a historical paradigmatic shift to illustrate changes in thought. Though the terms modernism and postmodernism are often confined to literature studies, they have many important applications in scientific discussions and beyond. These catch phrases serve as symbols that highlight the differences between two major philosophical movements that have many bearings on the field of science.

With the advent of The Enlightenment, western science has largely concerned itself with the search for an objective truth through reductivist experimentation 2. Deductive and inductive experimentation and rationality form the pillars of the modernist movement 2. For centuries now, the modernist paradigm has dominated the field of science. In recent years, however, a new trend of postmodern thinking has attempted to dismantle the notion of objectivity and rationality with plenty of empirical backing.

Postmodernism is often misinterpreted as a single turning point in the chronology of academic work. Instead, postmodern philosophies can be thought of as a group of ideas spliced together from a series of different sources. Where modernism emphasizes objectivity, postmodernism emphasizes subjectivity 3. Where modernism touts universiality, postmodernism touts variation 3. On a much larger scale, this paradigmatic switch describes an ongoing tension between the objective and the subjective, between compliance with unity and acceptance of diversity.

So what does this have to do with a discussion of the brain and its implications for education and mental healthcare? Simply put, education and mental healthcare rely on the capacity of the brain to learn. A classic neurobiological definition of learning describes a process whereby physical changes occur in the synaptic connectivity of the brain that may or may not lead to an observable behavioral change. However, other understandings of learning can fall under modernistic descriptions or postmodernistic descriptions. Interpretations of the neurobiological process of learning can fall under modernist or postmodernist descriptions, just as literature or philosophical ideas can.

Because education and mental healthcare center around learning, understood as physical changes in the brain, it is possible that how we view the brain can shape how we view these two fields. This discussion will take these broad categories of modernism and postmodernism, scrutinize the observations that gave rise to these idea, and create an new story to explain these interesting connections.

Understandings of the brain affect understandings of the world: Why Learning is Significant

on a small level
Understandings of the brain are always changing. From the myriad of labs around the world, new revelations about kinetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry can shed light on more conceptual, abstract understandings about how the brain functions. This is why, for example, a study one particular compound's effect on one particular membrane-bound receptor in a neuron can have much wider rammifications for the understanding of learning in general 4. Scientific research is remarkable in that it can take small molecular and confirmational changes and engage them in a much broader dialogue about much more complex behavioral paterns. For this reason, science does not just affect science. Novel scientific discovery enhances understandings of the social sciences and the humanities as well.

One commonly cited example of how human brain research affects our understanding of conceptual ideas is the widely heralded study on gamma synchrony during Buddhist monk meditation published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin in 2004 5. One of the more lasting results of this study was demonstrating that meditation, or “thinking” can legitimately change the brain in specific ways resulting in clearly identifiable patterns. In this particular case, researchers applied neurobiological research techniques and applied them to the field of religion and philosophy to suggest that meditation does in fact alter the biochemistry of the brain in profound ways.

The same process that researchers used to determine D-cycloserine's anatgonistic affect on a neuron's NMDA receptor and gamma synchrony in the human brain during meditation practices can be used to understand learning behavior.

on a large level
This summer I spoke with two psychologists and one psychiatrist about the role of learning in mental healthcare.

Models of Learning
There are many understandings of learning currently in circulation. Most of the differences between these understandings deal with varying arrangements of the following common elements. The section below presents two models of brain structure that are essentially different recipes made from the same ingredients.

⇔ “The What” Electrochemical signals called action potentials cause a disruption in the membrane potential of neurons, causing the signal to be perpetuated down the neuron.
⇔ “The Where” The brain is compartmentalized into different structures that are associated with different function
⇔ ” The How” Sensory neurons receive information from the external world, interneurons relay the information within the brain, and motor neurons take the information and do something with it that can be thought of as behavior

In addition to discussing two models of brain structure, this section will explore what education systems and mental healthcare systems would look like were they based entirely on these brains learning processes. Suppose that we were back at the fictional beginning. Suppose that an education system were to be based on this model of brain structure and function, paying specific attention to learning processes described by this model. How would success be measured? How would failure be measured? How would differences of opinion be treated?

I. The Spaghetti Model
One prevalent way of viewing the brain is known in Bio202, Neurobiology and Behavior class as “the spaghetti model”. This understanding of the brain includes the What, Where, and How as explained above, but it integrates them in a linear fashion. Stimuli enter the brain by the sensory neurons, are relayed through the brain in the interneurons, and prompt a response using the motor neurons. The illustration below provides a pictorial model of this understanding of the brain.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro06/notes.html

Figure 1. Spaghetti Representation of the Brain. In this paradigmatic model of the brain’s structure, stimuli enter via sensory neurons, interneurons relay the action potential signals, and motor neurons elicit a physical response.

Related ideas:

"Perhaps more than any other single theme, twentieth-century medicine has been characterized by the search for "magic bullets" - specific treatments to root out and destroy infecting microorganisms.  This biomedical model has come to define the role and nature of the medical enterprise. In this paradigm, individuals with a parasite that causes dysfunction of some sort; disease is defined as a deviation from a biological norm.  Social conditions, environmental phenomena, and other variables are generally discounted as cause of disease.  They physician dispenses "magic bullets" that restore the patient to health."

-Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet

What would education following this model look like?

• Lecturing
• Extensive Note-Taking
• Drills and Rote Memorization
• Standardized Testing
• Skills

What would mental healthcare following this model look like?

• Psychopharmacology
• Behavior Response Therapy

II. The Inquiring, Self-Constructing, Co-Learning, Creative Model
This model uses the spaghetti model as a starting point to make a “less wrong” working understanding of brain structure and function. This model retains the input, transmittance, and output functions, but adds another dimension to them as well. In this model, one input may generate multiple outputs, or multiple inputs may generate a similar output. Additionally, some outputs are generated by no apparent input at all and some input never produce an observable output. While these modifications keep the model better aligned with current research∗ they also provide fodder for the imagination. For example, sure, the small box with the circling arrows describes the spontaneous generation of action potentials, but at a broader level, what does it have to say about creativity?

Figure 2. Less Wrong Representation of the Brain. Aspects of this model complicate the understandings conveyed in the Spaghetti Model and include self-generating signals, central pattern generation, corollary discharge, and different input/outputs per output/input.

What would education following this model look like?

• Inquiry
• Ideas
• Tasks and Thought Experiments
• Problems

What would mental healthcare following this model look like?

• Psychopharmacology
• Behavior Response Therapy
• Talk Therapy

Storytelling and its role in Education and Mental Healthcare
An education system based on understanding brain structure and function in terms of the Spaghetti Model would lend itself toward pedagogy and assessment aimed as strengthening the connectivity between inputs and their single, respective outputs. According to this model, intelligence would confer getting a particular output per input for a high percentage of the time. Conveying material through lecturing serves as an input, and note-taking serves as output. Repetitive drills and memorization exercises strengthen input-output connections in a similar way as muscle memory. Lastly, because each input should produce one correct output, standardized tests would accurately measure intelligence.

A mental healthcare system based on understanding brain structure and function in terms of the Spaghetti Model would lend itself toward therapy based on righting faulty input-output synaptic connections. Mental illness, by this model, would be described as a break in one or many connections, generating an inconsistent output per input. Ways of righting this fault would include manipulating the biochemistry of the brain through psychopharmacology or strenghthening healthy circuits through behavior response therapy.

Perhaps one key difference between these two models of brain structure center around storytelling.

Learning: a look at Education and Mental Healthcare
When discussions spring up around institution in the United States and specific problems associated with them, Education, and Mental Healthcare are two of many topics often mentioned. Both are critical disciplines riddled with political, economic, and social challenges. Both involve learning, social interaction, and attention, among many other widely researched characteristics attributed to brain function. With this in mind, both of these fields share so many identifying traits that it seems odd that education and mental healthcare are not often directly included in the same discussions.

 "[The author] suggests that this paradigm is too restrictive; to find the solution to problems of disease we must look beyond the model of the magic bullet."

- Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet

The Significance of Learning
If the 1990s were, as the former president, George Bush would have said, “the decade of the brain”, I propose that the 2010s become “the decade of learning”. Within the neurobiological and cognitive psychological communities, research centered on learning has certainly exploded recently with the exploration of such topics as learning enhancement 4, attention, and emotional learning. Learning embodies physical changes in the structure of the synaptic connections of the brain that may be accompanied by observable behavioral changes and it is central to mental healthcare and education.

REFERENCES

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic, Inc, 2007.

Denning, Steve. Storytelling and post-modernism: Jean-François Lyotard.

Shannon Weiss, and Karla Wesley. PostModernism and its Critics of the Anthropological Theories: A Guide Prepared by Students for Students

Kerry J. Ressler, Barbara O. Rothbaum, Libby Tannenbaum, et. al. Cognitive Enhancers as Adjuncts to Psychotherapy

Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Nancy B. Rawlings, et. al. Long-Term Meditators Self-Induce High-Amplitude Gamma Synchrony during Mental Practice

Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.