Neuroscience and education | Manuel Carreiras | TEDxRíodelaPlataED

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What happens when we make the two most common reading and writing learning methodologies compete? Can neuroscience help us decide public policy? Manuel Carreiras shares the conclusions he arrived to by posing these questions. Manuel Carreiras is a neuroscientist specialized in reading, bilingualism and second language learning. He is scientific director of BCBL (Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia, San Sebastian), IKERBASQUE research professor and visiting professor at the UPV / EHU.

I suppose many of you have heard
that we use only 10% of our brain.

And I'm sorry to say that is false.

Think if you use 10% or the whole brain

when you are trying to seduce
that gal or that guy,

like you call them here, eh?

On a more scientific level, we now know
by the use of neuroimaging techniques,

that we make use
of the brain's whole capacity.

We use the whole brain, not just a part.

And when we read, when we listen,
when we remember,

we use different parts of the brain.

Many of them of shared use,
but others are different.

Because this is like an orchestra,

the violins come in, then the cellos,
the violas, then the winds,

and they end up working together.

Therefore, we don't use only its 10%.

Another explanation
is related to brain damage.

You must have a friend or someone you know
who has had a stroke or brain damage,

and not one affecting 90%
but a very limited part with consequences.

People stop talking,
some have problems moving.

So, not just 10% of the brain is used.

These people after rehabilitation
and intense training,

what they achieve is relearning
some of these functions.

Why? Because the brain,
even the adult brain, changes.

It changes with learning.

London taxi drivers have a big challenge,
they have to learn a very complex map.

And when we compare the brain
of these drivers with other people's,

-people who are not taxi drivers-

what we find is an increase in the volume

of a part of the brain called hippocampus,
here shown in red.

It has to do with the functions
of remembering, memory and navigation.

We also did another experiment
in which we compared

people who had learned to read,
and people who were illiterate.

And what we found is that in this part
of the brain, which I point out in red,

in that back part of the brain,
there was also a change in volume.

It's like an athlete who works hard,

for example, Nadal, and then
he develops some iron muscles.

The same happens in the brain:

when you work hard on it,
it eventually swells.

Learning changes the brain,
and what is education?

It's learning.

It changes the brain and our lives.

It's the weapon of social change.

Medicine made the transformation,
thanks to science more than 100 years ago.

Now people don't die from the flu,
from a flu epidemic.

They don't even die from cancer.

Many cancers can be cured if caught early.

That's what we want for education.

When an anesthesiologist puts anesthesia,

they don't ask if it's progressive
or conservative, but whether it works,

based on the results from experiments.

That's what we want for education.

We need an education informed
by empirical evidence.

Let's do an experiment here.

What we intend to do with this experiment:

observe the computer screen, right?

At the top there's a string of consonants,
at the bottom there's a string of pads.

Now I am going to display another screen
and the string of pads will appear above,

and the string of letters, below.

Your task will be to tell me
if they are the same or different,

if there's a change between
the part above and the one below.

You agree?

Since we don't have 2 buttons,
what we will do is:

if it's the same above and below,

you remain silent, okay?

And if it's different, if something
changes, you raise your hands.

We agree?

If they are equal you do nothing,
if different, you raise your hands.

Okay? Let's begin with the experiment.

Are you asleep or is that a "yes"?
It's a "yes", alright.

Here we go, now, next. Remember:
if they change you raise your hands.

Ready? (Strings of letters and pads)

(Audience raises hands) Very good.

Next trial. Go! No, no, come, there, come.

Next trial. There!
(Audience raises hands)

They are different. Good.

There have been 2 conditions
in this little experiment.

If you notice, what we did in the first
was changing the 2 middle consonants.

In "B", we change the position
of the same consonants.

When we do this experiment
with illiterate or preliterate children,

for them it is just as difficult,
the first or the second.

When we do this experiment with you,
you take more time in the second.

The second is harder. Why?

Because the brain of illiterates
and preliterate children

see it as a whole,
they don't break it into parts.

However, you break it into parts.

Because you have learned to read.

I still remember when I learned to read
with my teachers Emilio and Caridad,

in class they taught me to read,
perhaps like many of you learned,

with the "ma-ma" "Mama", the "h", the "o",
the "m", the "e" is "home".

But later on, other methods appeared
with a more progressive tone.

Global methods that seemed more inclusive,
therefore more fashionable.

It's good that different approaches exist,
but the point is that, eventually,

it has become a simply ideological,
intuitive dilemma.

This is better than that, then I do
this or the other.

Well, what I have shown you here
is that the brain goes to details.

And as it goes to details,
why would we feed it with globality?

But well, you may be skeptics
and you should be,

skepticism in life is very important.

What we did, not satisfied with that,
was an experiment with preschoolers.

We selected preliterate children
and assigned them to 2 groups

so that the 2 groups would be equal,
considering some variables, IQ, etc.

And then, we put half of them
in an analytical method,

that is, the one of "m" with "a" is "ma",

and the other half learned to read
with a global method.

After a year and a half,
so that they could all read fine,

we performed a series of tasks with them
to see who executed better:

if those from the analytical method
or the global method.

Here I show you the results of 2 tests,
there are more than 10,

where we see how they behave,
the analytical and the global method.

One of the tasks is phonological,
they heard the word "lion".

And we asked, "of these 2 words,
now appearing, 'lens' and 'candle',

which starts with the same sound
as the word 'lion'?"

Obviously, for you this is very simple.

It took longer for the children learning
with the global method, see the red bar.

Notice that the red bar is higher,
it took longer than the green bar,

who are the analytical method.

If you see the 2 circles in the middle,
the red circle is above the green circle.

That means that in this task,

children who have learned to read
with the global method

take longer and they are slower,

than those who have learned to read
with the analytical method.

You'd say, "sure, you're cheating,
because phonology is practiced a lot

in the analytical method and not much
in the global method."

Well, we'll see another task,
a more semantic task that would favor

those on the global method.

The task was to select a word out of four.

That which didn't fit with the rest.

Here we see that there are 3
that relate to fruits and 1 that doesn't.

Yet again, what we have now,
if you see the 2 circles,

is that the errors are similar,
but the red bar is higher.

This takes longer for the kids
who learned with the global method,

than for those who learned
with the analytical method.

We summarize here all the tasks.

A lot of tasks we performed: spelling,
phonology, lexicon, semantics;

the analytical method wins
in all of them by a landslide.

Now I ask you: if you were
ministers of education,

because each of us carries
a minister of education within, right?

Would you follow your adviser
or this data?

Don't reply, because maybe tomorrow
one of you becomes Minister of Education

and we are not putting you on the spot.

But think that this would be a decision
based on science and not on intuition,

or the minister adviser's ideology.

This is an example, there are others.

I'll show you another example of reading,

and I have focused today on reading
because reading is the scaffold

on which other cognitive
abilities are built,

it's the window to knowledge.

It's probably the most important thing
that happened to us in life.

After love, yes.

Then, there is another part which is:

can we make an early detection of children
who will have reading problems?

For those who don't know,

dyslexia is a problem that affects
around 8-10% of children.

It's about having difficulties reading,

when doing the translation
between letters and sounds.

They are not stupid children,
these children have a normal IQ.

But when they begin to see
that they can't do as their peers,

and their mates in turn
see that they are not going well,

kids start to avoid going to school,
their self-esteem goes down.

They can end in social exclusion,

because many of them are headed
towards school failure.

Then, it's important to diagnose dyslexia,

not only when it already manifests
at 8 years, like it's diagnosed now,

but to look at neuroscience
to diagnose it before it manifests.

And thus we could design therapies,
design appropriate interventions,

to alleviate that problem.

This is what our lab is engaged in.

The speech signal I am emitting,
the physical signal,

is made of different waves.

At the same time, within your brains,
now that you are listening,

your neurons are communicating
at different frequencies.

And your frequencies are aligning

with the physical frequencies of speech.

Therefore we propose: if dyslexic children
have phonological problems...

Phonological problems are:

I say, if we take out the first sound,
tell me what is left of this word:

"Parrot", what would be left?
(Audience responds)

And "silver"? (Audience responds)

That which is so easy for you,
is extremely complicated

for a kid with dyslexia.

We reasoned: maybe the origin
of these phonological problems,

is in the alignment of these frequencies
that their neurons are establishing now

with physical frequencies of speech.

And what we did was an experiment
in which we compared

dyslexic children with controls.

And what we found is that
there were problems in 2 brain areas.

One, in the right hemisphere
in the auditory cortex,

and another, in the left hemisphere,
where I mark it with the 2 circles,

in the left hemisphere, in Broca's area.

Both are areas related with language.

Broca's area is related
with phonological processes,

like those we spoke about earlier.

Well, here we have something
that not only can serve

to make an early diagnosis,

but that perhaps is the origin
of these kids' problems.

Also the connection between these 2 areas
is broken in dyslexic kids.

Therefore, if indeed the origin
of phonological problems is speech,

we can intervene not only
in phonological problems,

but in speech itself.

And it's super easy to do.

It's a task children can do
before they start reading.

If that is so, and this is the challenge
for our lab and others for the next years,

we could diagnose children
at risk of dyslexia

before the problem starts.

Before their self-esteem goes down,
before they start having reading problems.

This is the adventure we are at
and it's another undeniable example

of how neuroscience can help education.

How education can feed
on the findings of neuroscience

to evaluate educational policies;

to see these kids who may have problems
and may fail in school.

The future is full of challenges,
opportunities and goals.

The first thing we have to do
is to banish these neuromyths,

like the one I mentioned
at the beginning of the talk,

because they harm the relationship
between neuroscience and education.

And they only serve four crooks

who try to sell us some program
to train that 90%.

Another thing we don't have to fear
is this symbiosis.

Neuroscience doesn't come
to replace education.

Neuroscience will never create
political or educational projects.

It can help evaluating them;
education creates them,

neuroscience has tools for assessing

these educational policies,
the introduction of new technologies,

in short, many things that happen
in the world of education.

And it can help with that early diagnosis
of many learning disorders.

We started our private battle
in that regard.

We have created a laboratory in a school.

It's within the school, physically.

Children come there, we work with them,
we perform experiments.

In fact, the experiment I mentioned
on the reading methods

popped up at the talks we had
with teachers and the principal.

They told us once, "can you tell us
which method is better to teach reading?"

"Are we doing things right or wrong?"

And I said, "well, I don't know,
but we can do an experiment and find out."

And there you have the results.

This September we'll go to another school.

They called us to see when to introduce
English reading and writing.

I think that's the way to go:
an education not based on intuition,

not based on good will
or people's ideology,

but based on empirical evidence,
like medicine is.

So I would say to each
of the ministers of education within you:

let neuroscience enter the classroom.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)