Education 2.0 & 3.0

When you learn a new technical concept, something happens in your brain, but exactly what has been a mystery until now.
For the first time, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have traced the brain processes that occur during the learning of technical concepts. Published in NeuroImage, the findings reveal how new technical knowledge is built up in the brain during the course of different learning stages. The findings foreshadow the capability to assess the effectiveness of instruction and efficiency of learning by monitoring changes in the brain.

Summary from Learning and the Brain Society Newsletter - April 2015

Teaching science to the brain: How the brain learns the way things work 

For the first time, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have traced the brain processes that occur during the learning of technical concepts. Published in NeuroImage, researchers, scanned the brains of 16 healthy adults as they learned for the first time how four common mechanical systems work. While inside the brain scanner, the participants were shown a series of pictures, diagrams and text that described the internal workings of a bathroom scale, fire extinguisher, automobile braking system and trumpet. The explanation sequence allowed the researchers to examine the participants' brain states after each learning step. The findings reveal how new technical knowledge is built up in the brain during the course of different learning stages and foreshadow the capability to assess the effectiveness of instruction and efficiency of learning by monitoring changes in the brain. Robert Mason lead author explains "This provides evidence that appropriate instruction can bring out the fundamental understanding of how things work at a deep level. In the future, teaching to this deep level as measured in terms of brain representations may be applicable to other disciplines and scientific concepts."