Parts of the brain not traditionally associated with learning science become
active when people are confronted with solving physics problems, a new study
shows.
The researchers, led by Eric Brewe, PhD, an associate professor in Drexel
University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and Jessica Bartley, a graduate
student at Florida International University, say this shows that the brain’s
activity can be modified by different forms of instruction.
Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to measure blood flow in
the brain, the researchers looked to map what areas become active when
completing a physics reasoning task, both before a course on the concepts and
after.
“The neurobiological processes that underpin learning are complex and not
always directly connected to what we think it means to learn,” Brewe said of
the findings, which were published in Frontiers in ICT.
More than 50 volunteer students took part in the study in which they were
taught a physics course that utilized “Modeling Instruction,” a style of
teaching which encourages students to be active participants in their learning.
Before they participated in the class, the students answered questions from
an abridged version of the Force Concept Inventory while undergoing fMRI. The
Force Concept Inventory is a test that assesses knowledge of physics concepts
commonly taught in early college physics classes.
After the volunteer students completed their physics course, they again
took the Force Concept Inventory, once more monitored by fMRI.
In the pre-instruction scans, parts of the brain associated with attention,
working memory and problem solving — the lateral prefrontal cortex and parietal
cortex, sometimes called the brain’s “central executive network” — showed
activity.
“One of the keys seemed to be an area of the brain, the dorsal lateral
prefrontal cortex, that generates mental simulations,” Brewe said. “This
suggests that learning physics is an imaginative process, which is not
typically how people think of it.”
After the subjects had completed their class, comparison of the pre- and
post-learning scans revealed increased activity in the frontal poles, which was
to be expected since they’ve been linked to learning. But there was another
area that also became active: the posterior cingulate cortex, which is linked
to episodic memory and self-referential thought.
“These changes in brain activity may be related to more complex behavioral
changes in how students reason through physics questions post- relative to
pre-instruction,” Brewe and his co-authors wrote about the study. “These might
include shifts in strategy or an increased access to physics knowledge and
problem-solving resources.”
One of the aims of the study was to further explore how the form of
teaching used, Modeling Instruction, encourages students to use their own
mental models to understand new concepts.
“The idea of mental models is something that people who research learning
love to talk about, but have no evidence of what is happening inside brains
other than what people say or do,” Brewe said. “We are actually looking for
evidence from inside the brain.”
As such, Brewe and his fellow researchers think their study provides a good
look at what might be typical when these “mental models” take hold.
But why physics? What makes this the ideal subject to study mental modeling
in the brain?
Brewe said that there has been some research on the brain networks
associated with learning math and reading. But mental modeling especially lends
itself to physics, which has not gotten as much attention.
“Physics is a really good place to understand learning for two reasons,”
Brewe said. “First, it deals with things that people have direct experience
with, making formal classroom learning and informal understanding both relevant
and sometimes aligned — and sometimes contrasted.”
“Second, physics is based in laws, so there are absolutes that govern the
way the body works,” Brewe finished.
Moving forward, Brewe is excited by what this study opens up in his quest
to improve physics learning in the United States and beyond.
“I would like to follow up on the question of mental simulations in
physics, to see where that shows up at different levels of physics learning and
with different populations,” he said. “But this whole study opens up many new
areas of investigations and I’m pretty excited about how it will play out.”
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