Teaching from neuroscience: how does brain electrical activity change when we learn?

Abstract

The advent of non-invasive medical neuroimaging technologies has made it possible to establish new definitions and describe intrinsic brain mechanisms that have radically changed our conceptions of how we learn and how we remember. Functional magnetic resonance imaging in combination with brain electrical tomography has allowed researchers to directly observe human learning processes, at least from the point of view of underlying hemodynamic variations and electroencephalographic fluctuations. These advances have not yet been incorporated into the framework of general knowledge and have not yet changed the way of educating and teaching, but the advantages that this entails are evident because the logic of thought suggests that it is good to teach knowing how our brain learns. This chapter compiles some of the concepts and techniques most currently used in the electrophysiological study of learning and memory in animal models that could influence the development of new approaches to improve teaching processes in humans. Also, we intend to motivate the general interest in the knowledge of neuroscientific advances and promote the integration of neuroscience in the field of teaching and education, attempting from this approach, to answer the following questions: (1) How are memory and learning investigated from a neurophysiological point of view?, (2) What are the key electrophysiological variables of learning and memory?, (3) How to predict the rate of learned responses by observing the evolution of synaptic states that underlie learning?, (4) How do approaches based on connectivity between structural nodes of a network better explain learning processes?, and finally, (5) What advantages does electrophysiology offer to the study of memory and learning?