SLIDE 1 Neurobiological perspectives on emotion, learning and self for education in a multicultural, technological age
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD
Brain and Creativity Institute; Rossier School of Education; Neuroscience Graduate Program,
University of Southern California
Margaret Lazzari, “Aqueous” (2007)
Embodied brains, social minds
SLIDE 2 Margaret Lazzari, “Aqueous” (2007)
SLIDE 3 “This is the one that's hit me
the most I suppose. And… I'm not very good at like verbalizing emotions, I just, I don't know, I think my brain's just not wired that way. But if… um, I can almost feel the, like, physical sensations. So this one is like… like there's a balloon or something just under my sternum, like, inflating and moving, like, up and out. Which… I don't know, is like, my sign of something really touching.” Quoted from : Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2010) Toward a microdevelopmental, interdisciplinary approach to social emotion. Emotion Review, 2(3), 217-220. The video version is also available on: www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience Unit 3: Empathy
SLIDE 4 “And, so, like, the selflessness
- f the mother and then also
- f the little boy, you know…
having these wonderful cakes that he never gets to have and still, like, offering them to her… and then her turning them down, is, uh [pause]… And then it makes me think about my parents, because I don't… they provide me with so much and I don't thank them enough, I don't think. I know I don‘t [pause]… So, I should do that.” Quoted from : Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2010) Toward a microdevelopmental, interdisciplinary approach to social emotion. Emotion Review, 2(3), 217-220. The video version is also available on: www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience Unit 3: Empathy
SLIDE 5
Experiment Design ADAPTED FROM: Immordino-Yang, M.H., McColl, A., Damasio, H., Damasio, A. (2009). Neural correlates of admiration and compassion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(19), 8021-8026.
SLIDE 6
Feeling emotions about others’ minds engaged brain areas related to sensing and regulating the “self” (and the body).
ADAPTED FROM: Immordino-Yang, M.H., McColl, A., Damasio, H., Damasio, A. (2009). Neural correlates of admiration and compassion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(19), 8021-8026.
SLIDE 7
Feeling emotions…involves the neural mechanisms for feeling and regulating your own body and for constructing your own sense of “self,” and meaningful learning always involves emotion. Emotions (and their primitive counterparts, biological drives) serve to keep organisms alive, and living comfortably. Human “survival” has become a complex social and cultural construct. FROM: Immordino-Yang, M.H., & Damasio, A.R. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain and Education, 1(1), 3-10.
SLIDE 8
Individual differences in embodiment
FROM: Saxbe, D., Yang, X., Borofsky, L., Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2013). The embodiment of emotion: Language use during the feeling of social emotions predicts cortical somatosensory activity. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8, 806-812 doi: 10.1093/scan/nss075. (First published online: 2012)
SLIDE 9
There may be two interrelated forms of “self”…
FROM: Immordino-Yang, M.H., McColl, A., Damasio, H., Damasio, A. (2009). Neural correlates of admiration and compassion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(19), 8021-8026.
SLIDE 10 There may be two interrelated forms of “self”…
This area is activated during emotions about
- thers’ physical/cognitive
circumstances. This area is activated during emotions about
social circumstances. This area is active during internal reflection, but suppressed when attention is directed
FROM: Immordino-Yang, M.H., Christodoulou, J., Singh, V. (2012). Rest is not idleness: Implications of the brain’s default mode for human development and education. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(4), 352-364.
What might this mean for children in urban environments? What might it mean for the way children use technology? How might this change the way we think about sustained attention?
SLIDE 11 Reflexes Abstractions Representations Actions
Images adapted courtesy of Kurt Fischer, HUGSE.
FROM: Fischer, K.W., & Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2002). Cognitive development and education: From dynamic general structure to specific learning and teaching. In E. Lagemann (Ed.), Traditions of scholarship in education. Chicago: Spencer
SLIDE 12 Skills are organized around both emotion and cognition. Skills grow in the context of social relationships. Of course, the unit of skill a person is capable of mentally coordinating develops over time. Cognitive development involves building connections between skills and ideas, coordinating skills into more and more complex mental units. (This includes academic skills, as well as skills for emotion and identity.) FROM: Fischer, K.W., Bidell, T., (2006) Dynamic development of action and
- thought. In: Damon, W., Lerner, R. (Eds.), Handbook of Child
Psychology, Vol. 1: Theoretical Models of Human Development. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
SLIDE 13 A complex unit of thought.
A system of smaller thoughts,
coordinated together.
Two simple thoughts or actions,
coordinated together.
A single simple thought or action.
FROM:
Fischer, K.W., Bidell, T., 2006. Dynamic development of action and thought. In: Damon, W., Lerner, R. (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 1: Theoretical Models of Human
- Development. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
SLIDE 14 Reflexes Abstractions Representations Actions
As skills are coordinated through development, they consolidate into mental units that form the basic unit of skill for the next level. FROM:
Fischer, K.W., Bidell, T., 2006. Dynamic development of action and thought. In: Damon, W., Lerner, R. (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 1: Theoretical Models of Human
- Development. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
SLIDE 15 Creativity is basically about conceiving and communicating novel and innovative solutions to relevant human problems…or moving other people (or yourself) to feel, understand, and experience from a different perspective. Meaningful learning, in the complex sense in which it happens in schools or the real world, is not a rational or disembodied process; neither is it a lonely one. From the perspective of affective and social neuroscience, the purpose of education is to increase children’s abilities to recognize the complexities of situations, and to help them develop increasingly nuanced and sophisticated strategies for acting and responding. Emotions may be automatic responses to situations…but we need to learn how to “feel” emotions.
FROM: Immordino-Yang, M.H., & Damasio, A.R. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain and Education, 1(1), 3-10.
SLIDE 16
www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience
SLIDE 17
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray…
Excerpt from, The Layers Stanley Kunitz, U.S. Poet Laureate
