Osotu - On Neuroscience

This post is part of a series. Feel free to check the other posts:

As I write this post, I’ve already finished Osotu’s training course for teachers (I still have to upload the notes on a few modules), so in retrospect, I can say confidently that this was one of the best sessions of the course for me.

The session started with some basic concepts on the structure of neurons and their connection (dendrites, axons, synaptic endings, etc.). Still, it quickly moved into what has been one of the main discoveries about teaching/learning for me in this course: the executive functions.

The main idea is that for most of the tasks you need to be able to execute to be considered a functional person in society, the use of these functions is critical:

It is about the ability to think about a specific goal and to organize the means to achieve it.

Ustárroz, Javier & García-Molina, Alberto & Rios-Lago, Marcos & Ardila, Alfredo. (2012). Neuropsicología de la corteza prefrontal y las funciones ejecutivas.

To understand what we are talking about, we first need to understand that our brain works as a unit but has some clearly defined areas:

  • Limbic system is one of the oldest structures in our brain. It is involved in the emotional processing of the inputs you get through your senses. Most of the processes that happen on it are unconscious, automatic, and uncontrollable.
  • The cognitive, thinking brain that receives notifications from the limbic system and can develop thoughts in real time.
  • Finally, the Prefrontal Cortex, that part of the brain that allegedly made us take the leap that other hominids didn’t and become homo sapiens. The area is involved in almost all executive functions.

José Ramón Gamo, a well-known Spanish child neuropsychologist, explains the interaction between the different parts with a straightforward example:

  • While you are sitting on the sofa, your senses can feel something that your limbic system will interpret as “my leg itches”
  • In a range of 100-600ms, this will transmitted to the cognitive system and transform into a clear thought: “Scratch the itch”.
  • All that can happen unconsciously, and you may not realize you even scratch yourself until you catch a pimple and it hurts.
  • But imagine you have developed hives for some reason, and someone told you to “remember to use ice to calm the itch instead of scratching.”
  • Here is where the frontal lobe can overrule the other parts of the brain and help you inhibit the scratching. Inhibition is one of the executive functions that help us manage the world in our everyday lives.

There are, however, many other executive functions we must develop:

  • ANTICIPATE
    • Ability to foresee the future and anticipate consequences.
  • TAKE DECISIONS
    • Ability to imagine alternative actions and assess the possibility of success.
  • PLANNING
    • Plan, order, and sequence the actions that must be followed at a specific time.
  • CONCENTRATION
    • Ability to focus on critical points (Attention is an involuntary, simultaneous/parallel act of the brain. Concentration is a voluntary and conscious act of voluntarily selecting where I put the focus)
  • MENTAL FLEXIBILITY
    • Rethink the situation, change your attitude, and be flexible if the plan does not go as planned.
    • Solve problems that arise and improvise.

It’s very interesting to understand how critical these executive functions are and the biological infrastructure that allows this to happen because that is precisely where many issues that we see in school are rooted. Disorders like ADHD are directly connected with the inability of some kids to properly develop these functions and how adapting the content or, in some cases, medication can help to correct the neurochemical imbalance. Here Elissa Monteiro does a pretty good job of explaining executive functions and how they interact with students:

A modern school (or any other learning environment) should always focus on helping ALL children to develop and improve these executive functions. The different subjects (History, Maths, Music) should be used as the perfect excuse to hone these functions because they are the essential tools that will make any adult a functional part of society.

Not knowing what the Golgi apparatus is can be easily solved with a quick search online, but having the mental scaffolding to handle what to do on your first day at a new job or how to restructure your life after a traumatic event is a much more essential and valuable skill to have.

After we talked at length about how important those executive functions are, Marimar, the teacher who imparts the course, explained to us that all this scientific knowledge should help us design a better education plan, including the spaces where we study, the session timing and planification, the routines… everything.

It was a great, great session and since I attended it, I’ve been reading more and more about executive functions. Additionally, it has helped me understand better the many situations where we met adult people who are intellectually very capable but still struggle with the day-to-day, basic planning and seem to be always stuck in the same thinking. All this things are not innate, they are supposed to be developed and honed, and still our normative educaction systems FAILS completely at doing it.