[xmca] Neuroscience connections to learning and relearning

["Duvall, Emily" <emily@uidaho.edu>]

I thought some of you might one or both of these article summaries
interesting. The first really speaks to the new field of neuroeducation
with regard to cellular learning... the nice thing about the summary is
it gives you an overview of learning at the cellular basis... very clear
and easy to understand. Plus an introduction to astrocytes... :-)

The second piece actually discusses re-learning, which has been a topic
lately. 

What I personally find so interesting is the role of experience in
learning and relearning... I found myself thinking back to Shirley Brice
Heath's work... it would be fun to go back to her work and look at her
study through a neuroeducation lens. 

1. Star-shaped Cells In Brain Help With Learning
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911132907.htm 

Every movement and every thought requires the passing of specific
information between networks of nerve cells. To improve a skill or to
learn something new entails more efficient or a greater number of cell
contacts. Scientists can now show that certain cells in the brain -- the
astrocytes -- actively influence this information exchange.

2. Forgotten But Not Gone: How The Brain Re-learns
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117110834.htm 

Thanks to our ability to learn and to remember, we can perform tasks
that other living things can not even dream of. However, we are only
just beginning to get the gist of what really goes on in the brain when
it learns or forgets something. What we do know is that changes in the
contacts between nerve cells play an important role. But can these
structural changes account for that well-known phenomenon that it is
much easier to re-learn something that was forgotten than to learn
something completely new?


~em


Emily Duvall, PhD
Assistant Professor Curriculum & Instruction
University of Idaho, Coeur d'Alene
1000 W. Hubbard Suite 242 | Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814 
T 208 292 2512 | F 208 667 5275 emily@uidaho.edu | www.cda.uidaho.edu 

He only earns his freedom and his life, who takes them every day by
storm. 
-- Johann Wolfgang Goethe 




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