The Brain as a Learning Machine

During the high school years, or even earlier in the middle school years, students should gain an understanding of the human body, whether that be in biology, life science, human anatomy or otherwise. As with anything we learn, the objectives for learning systems in the body should not simply be for achieving good scores on tests, but to gain highly practical and actionable understanding for living well. For instance, a student learning how the Krebs cycle is the way the body generates energy at a cellular level through a series of chemical reactions that release energy from the oxidation of acetate that comes from carbohydrates, fats and proteins. The Krebs cycle is way more complex than the sentence I just wrote. But even in this sentence, one can hear highly practical insights a student can gain about nutrition (understanding macronutrients), breathing (injecting oxygen into the system), and exercise (aerobic efficiency).

When it comes to the brain, a student learning how neurons send electrical information along axons within systems of circuits can begin to understand that the human brain hungers to gather as much of this electrical information as possible in order to reason, plan and solve problems. Feeding our brains good “food” enables it to process this electrical information more efficiently and in more reliable ways. In other words, the brain is a learning machine. A student who conceptualizes this has actually captured the central idea of lifelong learning.

Delving deeper into the intricate workings of the human brain can shed light on the mechanisms that underpin the learning process. As we’ve already seen, neural activity consists of specialized cells transmitting electrical signals throughout the body. Learning occurs as neurons fire together, forming the circuits where information gets stored. The authors of Make It Stick describe how neurocircuitry develops in humans:

“Our neural circuitry does not mature as early as our physical development and instead continues to change and grow through our forties, fifties and sixties. Part of the maturation of these connections is the gradual thickening of the myelin coating of the axons. Myelination generally starts at the backs of our brains and moves towards the front, reaching the frontal lobes as we grow into adulthood.”

Peter Brown, Henry Roediger & Mark McDaniel, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Belknap, 2014), 170.

This means that the insulation provided by myelin sheaths surrounding neurons plays a crucial role in the learning process not only for students in their teens, but throughout their lives. They mention the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher-order cognitive functions, including problem-solving, decision-making, and the ability to adapt to novel situations. This area of the brain is still in development throughout the teen years. This goes some way towards explaining why the adolescent years are associated with a lack of impulse control and, at times, poor decision making.

The hippocampus, often referred to as the “memory center” of the brain, is instrumental in the formation of new memories and the consolidation of learned information. Again, the authors of Make It Stick give us wonderful news about this brain center:

“The hippocampus, where we consolidate learning and memory, is able to generate new neurons throughout life. The phenomenon, called neurogenesis, is thought to play a central role in the brain’s ability to recover from physical injury and in humans’ lifelong ability to learn. . . . Already scientists have shown that the activity of associative learning (that is, of learning and remembering the relationship between unrelated items, such as names and faces) stimulates an increase in the creation of new neurons in the hippocampus.”

Make it Stick, 172.

Neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons, is still an emerging area of brain study in human subjects. But there is evidence that the hippocampus produces new neurons throughout the lifespan of healthy adults. These new neurons enable learners to continue to maintain and create neural connections, supporting the notion that we can and do learn throughout our lives. These new neuros contribute to what is known as neuroplasticity, the brain’s remarkable capacity to reorganize and form new connections between neurons. This dynamic process allows the brain to continuously adapt and evolve in response to new experiences and environmental stimuli, facilitating the acquisition of knowledge and the development of new skills.

Understanding the neuroscience behind learning can inform educational practices and help individuals optimize their cognitive abilities, ultimately empowering learners to reach their full potential. Here we’ll explore a few practical objectives that should become part of how all high schoolers are coached. These are the key skills that should be learned before leaving for college.

Three Essential Skills for College-Bound High Schoolers

From the first semester of freshman year and throughout their high school career, both teachers and students should talk about and highlight strategies related to three key skills that should operate in all subject areas. Too often we focus on content knowledge, grade-point average, or meeting college entrance requirements. While these are necessary and in some ways decent measures of core competencies, they don’t actually get at the transferable skills that enable students to manage their learning and take stock of themselves along the way as learners. In other words, these skills provide a feedback loop for students to learn how to manage their learning and eventually set goals in their learning.

The first skill is deliberate practice. This is a systematic approach to learning that has been shown to promote significant improvements in performance across a wide range of domains. At its core, deliberate practice involves focused, effortful activities designed to target specific weaknesses and push the limits of one’s current abilities.

From a neurological perspective, deliberate practice triggers key changes in the brain that facilitate learning. Repeated engagement in challenging tasks leads to the strengthening of neural pathways and the formation of new connections between neurons. This process allows the brain to adapt and improve performance over time.

Importantly, deliberate practice is distinguished from mere repetition or passive learning. It requires a high degree of concentration, feedback from a skilled coach, and a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. By embracing this approach, individuals can systematically enhance their skills and expertise in a given area, ultimately achieving a level of mastery that would be difficult to attain through more casual or unfocused learning methods.

One of the leading voices advocating deliberate practice is Cal Newport. His thesis that “the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable” is founded on the notion that one learns how to perform deep work through deliberate practice. The core components of deliberate practice consist of:

“(1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.”

Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Grand Central, 2016), 35.

Consider how a student in math or writing can be coached in specific skills and given feedback to improve their competency. This entails an atmosphere of intentional effort while also celebrating mistakes and errors so that there is ample materials with which to coach students.

The next skill is metacognition. This consists in the ability to think about one’s own learning. By monitoring their own cognitive activities, individuals can develop a deeper understanding of how they learn best and make adjustments to their study strategies accordingly. When individuals actively reflect on their learning, they are able to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, allowing them to allocate their cognitive resources more efficiently.

Metacognition is actually a bundle of skills. These include planning, self-monitoring, and reflection, among others. With planning, students approach a problem – a math problem or an essay prompt – by formulating a plan for how to solve the problem. Notice that this is a shift in focus away from the specific answer towards the approach that is most appropriate for the kind of problem it is. In other words, students will often get fixated on producing correct answers, but not step back to consider strategies that help them think about their thinking. With self-monitoring, students can ask themselves questions like, “Do I understand what I have just read?” Then, they can answer this question by providing a narration or producing information from the reading. This moves a student away from reading a text and then assuming that by reading it, they understand it. Finally, by reflecting, students can consider whether they grew in skill during an exercise set, or they can evaluate sticking points in their writing process, or they can articulate skills that helped them complete the assignment.

Metacognitive practices get students to think about what they are learning. They need practice shifting into a mode where they become active learners, instead of passively taking in information. These practices can lead to enhanced long-term retention and the ability to transfer knowledge to new contexts. By cultivating metacognitive skills, learners can become more self-directed, adaptable, and ultimately, more successful in their academic and professional pursuits.

The last skill is self-advocacy. This skill promotes deeper learning and skill development through the process of actively identifying one’s needs and communicating them effectively. Most often this occurs by the student connecting with the teacher to address an area where there’s a lack of understanding or the need for support in project management. For example, a student might struggle to recall formulas in a physics class. They know how to do the math work. They simply never remember which formula goes with which problem. This student could approach the teacher to ask for help in knowing better the best way to remember how to associate formulas with problems. In a different scenario, a student has to manage a long-term essay assignment. They are struggling to break it down into manageable steps. So this student emails her teacher to schedule an appointment during office hours to map out the project in logical steps. In both of these examples, the student is advocating for themselves by articulating the issue they are facing and drawing upon the teacher to assist them in solving the issue.

When we advocate for ourselves, we activate executive function skills like planning, organization, and self-monitoring. This skills goes hand in hand with metacognition. A student who is grasping their self-understanding as a learner can begin to equip themselves by reaching out to others for help. The effort required to self-advocate cultivates a growth mindset. Individuals who take responsibility for their learning demonstrate an understanding that improvement requires sustained work. This perspective enables them to persist through challenges and maximize the benefits of educational opportunities. Ironically, by getting help from a parent or teacher, the student actually finds that effort can be matched by support. They receive the coaching and encouragement to continue on an effortful pathway.

High schoolers need practice self-advocating. It does not come naturally to most students to seek out help. So, one policy you can put in place is to require every student to ask a self-advocacy question. Or you can require a certain number of office visits per semester. By making self-advocacy an assignment, you give students the practice they need to learn how to formulate a question and how to approach a grown up for help. It can be intimidating to reach out to a teacher, so by making it an assignment, you are forcing the student to overcome their barriers to accessing help.

Imagine how a student equipped with these skills will feel when stepping onto a college campus after graduating from high school. A student who has learned what it takes to engage in deliberate practice will be able to tackle their coursework with diligence. A student who has learned to think about their thinking will be able to assess the kinds of study skills that will most effectively work in different kinds of courses. A student who has learned to self-advocate with their high school teachers will be better prepared to approach their college professors with their questions and issues.

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Moreover, some Christians fear, utilizing brain science to boost cognitive performance through strengthening the brain sounds like a mad scientist’s version of humanistic self-help. In our secular age, God-talk has been pushed to the margins and human innovation has taken center stage. The good news, we are told, is that with the right life plan in place, we can grow strong enough to turn our lives around on our own.

How, as Christians, can we maintain our convictions about the reality of a spiritual realm and our desperate need for God’s grace while simultaneously availing ourselves to the best of current neuroscience? What insights might scientifically-observable processes like neurogenesis and neuroplasticity yield in our calling to conform ourselves to the image of Christ?

In this blog, I will draw connections between recent findings in neuroscience with the aims of a liberal arts education. Along the way, I will consider the relationship between the body and soul, including the brain and the mind, within the context of growing spiritually and morally. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate that a working knowledge in how to care for one’s brain is one way we can steward our human bodies well and to lead lives of virtue and wisdom in service to Jesus Christ.

Growing New Brain Cells Through a Love for Learning

One of the most stunning insights from current neuroscience is that we can grow new brain cells. As humans age, we lose brain cells over time, which is partially what leads to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Aging, of course, is unpreventable and irreversible, but the research is clear that caring for our brains can slow the aging process. By adjusting the way we eat, sleep, and exercise, we can create new brain cells that actually grow one’s brain and increase one’s cognitive capacity.

In Biohack Your Brain (HarperCollins, 2020), Dr. Kristen Willeumier (PhD, UCLA) offers practical tips for increasing neurogenesis, that is, growing new brain cells. Some of these tips include eating blueberries, learning new words, and writing with your nondominant hand (22). Interestingly, Dr. Willeumier writes, cultivating curiosity is another way for spurring neurogenesis. When humans learn for the sake of pure joy and a love for knowledge, new brain cells are created and neural connections are strengthened (184).

One of the key aims of a liberal arts education, of course, is precisely this: to cultivate a love for learning. As Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain have demonstrated in The Liberal Arts Tradition, a fantastic summary of Christian, classical education, tuning the heart is a critical stage that precedes training in the liberal arts. This stage they call “musical education” and it serves as the soil for knowledge of God, humanity, and creation to later flower (7).

It is thus important to point out that the goal of cultivating a love for learning in the earliest years of education has both affective and neurological benefits. As we put specimens of goodness, truth, and beauty before our students for them to love and pursue, their hearts (metaphorically-speaking) and brains grow.

Cultivating Intelligence and Intellectual Virtue Through the Trivium

Not only can we grow new brain cells with certain practices, but there is growing research that we can actually increase intelligence. Dr. Willeumier writes, “In terms of intelligence, research shows we can change our brain to boost intellect in a number of ways. Primary among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is by learning new information and skills, which helps to strengthen neuronal communication and rewires parts of the brain responsible for cognitive thinking” (42). Additionally, research shows we can increase intelligence by how we eat, sleep, exercise, and handle stress.

There are many ways to think about intelligence, but we all have three main types. First, we have what is called crystallized intelligence: the knowledge, facts, and skills we have accumulated over time. Second, we have fluid Intelligence: the ability to problem solve. Finally, we have emotional intelligence: the ability to interact and connect socially with others.

Interestingly, it turns out that reading long-form narratives is the best way to boost all three.¹ Reading for extended amounts of time, at least thirty minutes, improves overall neuronal connectivity and the integrity of white matter in the brain (188). Along with reading, several other modes of language acquisition strengthen cognitive capacity. Learning new vocabulary, studying a new language, and writing all contribute to strengthening memory, growing new brain cells, and staving off neurodegenerative diseases.

In the liberal arts tradition, the language arts are known as the Trivium. These are tools for fashioning, or producing, knowledge, as opposed to subject areas, or sciences, to be studied in theory only. In other words, they are the skills for learning and using language. However, the purpose of the Trivium is not merely to increase one’s intelligence. It is growing in wisdom and intellectual virtue, ultimately to service God and neighbor (47).

As Christian, classical educators, we want to promote the pursuit of objective truth, beliefs that correspond to reality. It is encouraging, and not surprising, to see that language acquisition has been shown neurologically to increase one’s intelligence. But let us not lose sight of the fact that intelligence is not the end goal for Christians. We are to use our minds to honor and serve the Lord, especially the way we use language. While all humans will use language whether they receive a classical education or not, the Trivium prepares students to use language wisely and in service to others.

The Brain and Gymnastic Education

For time immemorial, philosophers have argued about the relationship between the mind and body. How do these two parts of a person relate? Are they ultimately one thing or two? More recently, this debate has taken a scientific edge. Are mental states reducible to firing neurons?

In an article for Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, “Neuroplasticity and Spiritual Formation”, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA, offers an interesting take on the relationship between the mind and the brain. The brain, he believes, serves as the passive recipient of experience, taking in the sensory data of the natural world. The mind, on the other hand, serves the active role of making decisions and choices about how to focus one’s attention.

Applying this approach to a current issue, Dr. Schwartz writes, “Many people are concerned about the effects of the internet on our distractibility. If ever there was an era in which the brain could be readily recognized as constantly putting out a call, ours is it. Because of this, more than ever, we now have to bring in the mind to decide what to listen to. A lot of what the brain is putting out calls about is not particularly good to listen to—certainly not to focus on.”

In this quotation, Dr. Schwartz suggests that while the brain serves as the central station for receiving sensory data, the mind’s job is to determine which data to focus on. In this way, Dr. Schwartz seems to conceive of the mind as the seat of the will, conscience, and affections. However, what Dr. Schwartz does not emphasize, at least in this article, is that the brain, neurologically-speaking, is very much active in these moments as well.

What I want to suggest is that perhaps we should think of training the brain as a form of gymnastic education, the broader training of the body. Clark and Jain write, “Education is not merely an intellectual affair, no matter how intellect-centered it must be, because human beings are not merely minds. As creatures made in God’s image, we are composite beings–unions of soul and body. A full curriculum must cultivate the good of the whole person, soul, and body” (29).

If Clark and Jain are right about the importance of promoting a fully-orbed Christian anthropology, and I believe they are, then it seems that caring for and training the brain is to be included. Fortunately, given the close connection between the mind and the brain, our lessons already lend themselves to this sort of training. As I have already shown above, training in the language arts grows new brain cells and strengthens neural networks. But it is worth stating and remembering that God has given us brains, which are physical organs, and we should care for them as we do other parts of our physical bodies.

Physicality and Christian Formation

There is one final point I would like to make about the relationship between the brain and liberal arts education. It is the idea that Christian formation, which is ultimately a spiritual process, often occurs through physical means.

In “The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Formation and Flourishing”, Dr. Brad Strawn and Dr. Warren Brown, psychology professors from Fuller Theological Seminary, write, “Humans cannot be reduced to disembodied souls or immaterial minds. We are embodied and embedded creatures. Our physicality matters, including our brains. Humans are formed and transformed through embodied and embedded experiences. Personhood is not the immaterial reality, but an embodied one.”

There is much to unpack in this quotation, and I do not agree with all of their philosophical conclusions, but I do think they point out something important. Sometimes when thinking about how to help students grow spiritually, we think of their relationship with God in individualistic and gnostic terms. In other words, we summarize Christian formation as a private encounter between God and their individual souls. But what these psychologists helpfully remind us is that often our relationships with God grow in communal settings. Whether it be the weekly church gathering, summer Bible camp, or small group Bible studies, we grow as Christians through embodied and communally-embedded moments.

Thinking about how adults grow in these settings as much as children, the psychologists write, “Many of the same formative social processes are at work in adults as in children: imitation, attachments, and life-forming narratives. What is at stake in ongoing adult development is the degree to which wisdom and virtue come to characterize persons.”

As we seek to cultivate wisdom and virtue in our students, as well as ourselves, we should remember that this endeavor, though moral and spiritual in nature, has a connection to our physicality. We should think through how we can harness physical experience to form our students in wisdom and virtue.

Conclusion

There is a lot more that could be said here. As we educate the hearts, minds, and souls of our students, how should we understand what is happening to the brain? In this blog, I have reflected on the relationship between neuroscience and the liberal arts. As educators, I believe we can use the insights of modern brain science to not only take better care of our physical bodies. We can use these insights to strengthen the liberal arts education we offer our students to help them grow in wisdom and virtue, and ultimately, in service to Jesus Christ.

Endnotes

1. Kidd DC, Castano E. Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind in Science (6156): 377-380)

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