Abstract
A Reading List on and about Your Brain
Neuroscience is a branch of life science devoted to studying the biology of the brain and nervous system, especially as these structures relate to our behaviors and the ways we learn. The field of neuroscience came into its own in the 1960s, but since the appearance in recent decades of major technological advances such as MRIs, CAT scans, and other tools for measuring and mapping our neurochemical circuitry, our knowledge of brain development and function has really taken off. Greg Blimling discussed this topic in About Campus Volume 18, Number 5. In the article, he wondered why college students sometimes demonstrate such relatively poor self–regulation and engage in so much seemingly risky behavior. As a partial answer, he reminded us that late adolescence really extends into the mid–20s. He also shared with higher educators what neuroscientists are beginning to understand about the ongoing brain development that occurs in our traditionally aged students well into their college years. As a licensed psychologist, student affairs professional, and educator for more than 25 years, I read Blimling's article with interest. I, too, have been amazed at recent advances in neuroscience and have been thinking about their implications for higher education. Although we certainly covered brain and behavior extensively during my graduate studies in counseling psychology in the late 1980s, the neuroscience field seems to have advanced with incredible speed since then, and as an educator I have felt a need to catch up!
In spite of being an undergraduate psychology major and then a doctoral student, I think my first exposure to neuroscience was through pop culture. On their 1977 Rockets to Russia album, the punk band The Ramones introduced it to me with their song, “Teenage Lobotomy.” Lead singer Joey Ramone lamented the unfortunate happenstance of becoming a “teenage lobotomy” and sang: “Now I guess I'll have to tell ‘em that I got no cerebellum.” With that one cutting–edge lyric, Joey became an influence on my choice of college major!
By comparison, today's popular culture seems filled with neuroscience material. For example, a recent New Yorker magazine issue included a full–length article by David Owen about neuroscientific advances in our understanding of the yips—a phenomenon well known to sports psychologists and many athletes in which a person loses the ability to complete what was formerly a familiar, routine behavior. The yips are different from choking under pressure. Hank Haney, Tiger Woods's old golf coach, for instance, suddenly lost his ability to hit formerly routine tee shots in mid–career. Today, neuroscientists and neurosurgeons seem closer to fully understanding the brain–and–behavior causes, and treatments, for the yips.
This interested me because today's neuroscience is helping us understand an increasing number of behavioral concerns. In turn, as Blimling pointed out, higher educators are increasingly likely to find that new discoveries about the biology of students’ brains and nervous systems can help explain some of their puzzling behaviors and decision making while in college. Higher educators historically have taken the lead in learner–centered approaches—taking into account the student's developmental experience, academic needs, and learning approaches. We traditionally have wanted a comprehensive view of our students. Psychologists point out that the most inclusive lens through which to view individuals is a bio–psycho–social one. Whereas our college student theories and practices to date have mostly emphasized the psychosocial, neuroscience is helping fill in the gaps about biology's contributions to behavior. Correspondingly, I think gaining some basic knowledge of contemporary neuroscience can help us better respond to student situations.
While catching up on such topics, I realized that some of the books I've been using as resources might form a good reading list for other higher educators who want to brave the newer world of neuroscientific applications. All of the following books—organized by type of reader interest—seem to me to have the potential to inform our own enrichment as well as our understanding of students. Even better, these books were written mainly for readers who don't have the benefit of a psychology background—they are written for folks who probably weren't science majors but now want to catch up on the latest. Although the books certainly use a lot of technical vocabulary, they are written to take out the intimidation of these terms, tell us what they mean, and make them seem less like a foreign language.
Starters
For professionals looking for accessible entry into the neuroscience domain, my recommended starting–place is with two offerings from the teen bookshelf. First is The Owner's Manual for Driving your Adolescent Brain by JoAnn Deak and Terrence Deak. Even if it has been some time since you operated an adolescent brain, this is a surprisingly and deceivingly valuable read! Yes, this book advertises itself as driver's education for your brain, is directed at tweens and teens, and uses a variety of fonts and colorful pictures to engage its primary audience. Still, I have yet to find another introduction to neuroscience as comprehensive as this one.
More importantly, as we now understand it via neuroscience, adolescence extends through the traditional college years into the mid– to late 20s. The brain during this major developmental period is still growing, changing, and setting in place the cognitive structures needed for adult decision–making and appropriate behavior responses to the post–adolescent social world. This means modern higher educators with a basic grasp of the neuro–developmental contributors to college student academic, social, personal–emotional, and institutional choices and actions along with our existing understanding of the major psychosocial theories of college student development and learning are likely to be more fully responsive to their students’ development, adjustment, and learning needs.
Even if you are newer to neuroscience, you will finish this easy read by JoAnn and Terrence Deak, who are psychology and neuroscience professors, with a full comprehension of basic anatomy (cerebral cortex, limbic system, brainstem, and spinal cord), basic neuronal structure (neurons and synapses, axons and glial cells, inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters), and the like. You will understand processes captured by such new terms as: neurological development, myelination, and learning and consolidation. Unless you already are a relative expert on such seemingly foreign terms as the anterior cingulate cortex and mesolimbic dopamine system, this peppy book that happily celebrates the adolescent brain should not be overlooked.
I also suggest Steven C. Schlozman's The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse. The premise centers on a fictionalized account of an elite United Nations/World Health Organization medical team who are tasked with uncovering the neuro–physiological etiology of a zombie plague that is overtaking the world with breath–taking rapidity. This book is a fascinating example of neuroscience showing up in popular culture. Aimed at the same adolescents who are enthralled with vampire portrayals like Twilight and zombie portrayals like The Walking Dead, it gives us a glimpse into the kind of entertainment and topics currently capturing our students’ attention.
In the book, the formal diagnosis for zombiism is Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome (ANSD). The three big pieces of the fictional syndrome set the stage for the book's story—and thereby serve as a vehicle for helping readers who know very little about the nervous system to understand how biology affects our behavior and adjustment. The medical scientists rely on a rational progressive series of autopsies conducted on humans afflicted as zombies to determine its underpinnings.
Through the course of the novella, the scientists explore the brain anatomy that is at the root of the zombie syndrome: They explore ataxia (ataxia is a real medical term referring to lack of voluntary muscle control; in the book, it describes the condition that causes zombies to move so haltingly). They track down the roots of zombie neurodegeneration (neurodegeneration is a real medical term referring to progressive deterioration in function; in the book, it describes the downward spiral seen in humans the longer they are afflicted). They investigate zombie satiety deficiency (satiety is a real term referring to the recognition that one has eaten to capacity; in the book it is a deficiency in realizing satiety that accounts for the all–encompassing hunger that drives those with the zombie condition), and the delirium and cognitive decline which is experienced (these real–life psychology terms refer to diminished levels of performance in cognitive domains like thinking, memory, learning, and social recognition; the book's zombies experience all of these).
Readers with very little biology background will finish this read with a pretty good understanding of human neurobiology basics. For example, even if you begin The Zombie Autopsies without any prior exposure to alien–sounding terms like prions, hypothalamus, and amygdala, you will gain a valuable understanding of concepts such as the underpinnings of infectious disease; how the body regulates metabolism, hunger, and sleep; and the roles the brain's different regions play in memory and emotion.
As any quick look through the Journal of College Counseling or Journal of American College Health will show, memory, emotion, eating behavior, and sleep are critical aspects of college student adjustment. For instance, more and more is being learned about the role late adolescent brain development plays when our students experience difficulties learning certain classroom material or confront obstacles mastering the young adult tasks of managing their own eating, sleeping, sexuality, and health. It also may help explain why some learners thrive in distance classrooms and others are a better fit for on–campus learning. Along with our existing understanding of the socioenvironmental impact of campus experiences, today's higher educators are likely to be more effective when they have at least a basic knowledge of the biological contributors to these student adjustment factors.
If the leap from zombies to college students seems too fantastic and trivialized to be informative, think again! This book's author, Steven C. Schlozman, is a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist. Through the fictional science team's meticulous documentation of experiments and accurate anatomical diagramming, readers finish Zombie Autopsies with a whole new, accurate vocabulary about the neurobiological structures related to how our students think, act, and react on campus.
In the spirit of full disclosure, as a textbook writer my bias is to rely heavily on popular culture in my own pedagogy (probably I was among the oldest and most male customers in line for the Hunger Games books due to their valuable contributions to women's identity formation themes). Still, Driving your Adolescent Brain is an excellent jump–start and The Zombie Autopsies is a serious anatomical introduction. Either can be read on campus during one or two lunch hours, and either could be assigned to college student readers.
A Little Bit Deeper
In order to move from the basics of neuroanatomy to a deeper discussion of neuroscience and its campus implications, I next recommend two books that on one hand, helpfully overlap, but on the other hand, are unique in the territory each covers. These are: Brain Rules and The Mind & the Brain. Of these, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School is somewhat better known in the popular vernacular. Although Brain Rules’ author, John Medina, is a biologist and brain institute researcher, it was written for the general public.
As the book describes, some of the brain's neural connections have prescribed functions: they operate the basics like breathing and heartbeat and keeping track of where your hand is resting at the moment. Other neural connections are more sensitive to our accumulation of life experiences. I think those which are responsive to experience are most salient for higher educators wanting to better understand their students’ psychosocial developmental processes and learning patterns.
Still other neural connections are not yet well understood. In this context, Brain Rules might be best known for its reporting on the Jennifer Aniston neuron. As the book tells us, in real–life experiments, neurosurgical researchers have uncovered in patients a singular neuron—or brain cell—that “fires” only when the person is shown a photograph of actress Jennifer Aniston. The brain cell doesn't fire when shown pictures of hundreds of other individuals or for any other reason. Colloquially, the cell has become known as the “Jennifer Aniston neuron.” “Halle Berry” and “Bill Clinton” neurons also have been uncovered. Such aspects of the brain, rather than being preset, are dependent on experience.
As Brain Rules explains: “A great deal of the brain is hardwired not to be hard–wired … we are hardwired to be flexible … the brains of [those who know of Jennifer Aniston or Halle Berry or Bill Clinton and those who don't] are wired differently. This seemingly ridiculous observation underlies a much larger concept. Our brains are so sensitive to external inputs that their physical wiring depends upon the culture in which they find themselves” (p. 94). The book explores this theme as it relates to exercise, sleep, and stress; experience and attention; memory and sensory learning; visual, auditory and musical, and emotional learning; gender differences; and curiosity. In turn, the book‘s themes might contribute interestingly to your conversations about student development and learning. You will discover, for instance, ways in which our students are individually different in their brain wiring, why your students’ memories sometimes aren't as reliable as you'd like them to be, and how stress specifically impacts our students’ ability to learn.
The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, authored by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley, a UCLA Medical School neuropsychiatrist and a Wall Street Journal science writer, also addresses the intersection of neurology and experience—with a focus on important evidence about the power of the mind over our hard–wiring. To be more exact, this book's goal is to tackle “the mystery of how something as sublime and insubstantial as thought or consciousness can emerge from three pounds of gelatinous pudding inside the skull” (p. 21).
While this selection, like Brain Rules, is written with a general audience in mind, it uses clinical findings from the authors’ extensive neuropsychiatric work with patients presenting obsessive–compulsive disorders to explore the ways in which individuals can use their cognitive capabilities to positively affect and change their neural circuitry. This is the concept of neuroplasticity and the authors explain it assuming it is brand–new to readers. Like Brain Rules, I include it on my own neuroscience bookshelf because, while so much of neuroscience today aims to understand how our wiring influences our development, learning, and life experiences, this book attempts to illustrate the other side of this two–way street: how our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can be productively used to change our wiring when needed. I think this perspective is especially valuable and enabling in regards to our intentional work promoting student development and facilitating learning.
In particular, this approach supports what we know on the basis of social scientific study and college student development and student learning theory: that how we provide support and challenge inside and outside the college classroom can have lasting effects on our learners’ development and adjustment across their future lifespans. Gaining a better understanding of the bio–neurological aspects of this forward movement across the stages of late adolescent development might eventually make us even better at targeting the student services, supports, learning, and other growth experiences we provide.
Farther Along
Some higher educators might seek more specialized neuroscience reviews. I suggest two such books here. For campus professionals especially interested in neuroscience and learning, there is Educational Neuroscience. This book from Denis Mareschal, Brian Butterworth, and Andy Tolmie, three authors associated with the London Centre for Educational Neuroscience, is a virtual one–stop shop summarizing the current state of investigative educational neuroscience. This is a more scholarly book than the ones I have already mentioned, so you might be hesitant to pick it up. If you are especially interested in how the brain affects the ways our students learn, remember, and use what they've learned, don't be. While the book leans more toward early development and K–12 learning, for higher educators wanting an academic summary of current scholarly findings on learning, this is it. While not written to be as entertaining as the pop culture selections, I think any interested higher educator will find this one useful.
Readers first get a primer on modern neuroscientific methods being used to study education and learning: neuroimaging from EEGs to MRIs, computational models of learning and teaching, genetic approaches, and educational psychology research designs. Next, the text methodically covers what currently is known from a neuroscientific perspective about: language development, literacy development, mathematical development, scientific reasoning development, emotional and social development, and the development of executive functioning. I believe classroom faculty, learning specialists, and curriculum planners will find it especially useful to their work to catch up on the latest findings regarding the two–way street between the neurobiology of learning, and the strategies we use on campus for creating educational environments and experiences.
Similarly, for professionals most interested in the neurobiological underpinnings of personality and emotion—the domain of college counselors and student development practitioners alike—there is Frontal Lobes: Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Neuropsychiatry. This book from one of the field's groundbreaking neuroscientists, R. Joseph, takes an exhaustive look at the frontal lobes—that region of our brains most clearly associated with personality and emotion, language and speech, arousal and attention, depression and mania, and movement and motor control.
This selection includes: a short historical primer on neuroscientific investigations across the ages; a detailed review of normal frontal lobe anatomy; coverage of the known physiological etiology of many psychological and psychiatric problems; and discussions of the mind, brain, and frontal lobes from evolutionary and free will perspectives. There is an exceptional collection of anatomical diagrams and photographs to help readers map the topography of the frontal lobes. As with Educational Neuroscience, this is a more straightforward book than those previously mentioned. The text is a solid academic summary of the frontal lobe domain and its importance to our and our students’ psychosocial functioning. Here again, while the focus is not on overly entertaining its readings, this book is written as an introduction, and a degree in biology is not needed to benefit from its amazing coverage of brain topics.
This book matters because work of many of us in higher education—student development specialists, college health and mental health practitioners and educators, and others—focus closely on students’ development. During their college development, our learners undergo a variety of changes toward more complex thought and behavior; gain more effective mastery of life's increasingly challenging demands; and experience fundamental advancements in their ways of viewing people, situations, and events. Since healthy development of the frontal lobe region now is known to be so important to our traditional–aged students’ formation of abilities such as managing emotions, establishing intimate relationships, and constructing mature identities, what we learn from books such as Frontal Lobes is likely to become critical to our everyday practices.
For Neuroskeptics
Still skeptical? If so, you are not alone. While some colleagues may be fascinated by the seemingly limitless possibilities of neuroscience to improve our personal lives and our professional impact, others are not so sure about the degree to which brain science will really unlock new potential – on campus or elsewhere. I recommend two engaging books to inform your neuroskeptical dialogues with colleagues and students: Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience and A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us about Ourselves.
In Brainwashed, authors Sally Satchel and Scott Lilienfeld—a Yale psychiatrist and Emory clinical psychologist—remind us to be critical consumers of the neuroscience literature. In fact, they attempt to “reveal how many of the real–world applications of human neuroscience gloss over its limitations and intricacies, at times obscuring … the myriad factors that shape our behavior and identities.” Likewise, Robert Burton, the author of A Skeptic's Guide, who is also a well–known psychiatrist, provokes us to see that “while some neuroscience observations are real advances, others are overreaching, wrongheaded, self–serving, or just plain ridiculous, and often have the potential for catastrophic personal and social consequences” (both quotations are from the books’ inside front covers descriptions). As Brainwashed says, in spite of the modern growth in neuroscience, these books’ writers still put “mind over gray matter” (p. vii). We expect our students to become critical thinkers. These two texts remind us that we should be, too. To me this means not abandoning decades of compelling social science data concerning college student learning and development in favor of the latest fad; instead, we should judiciously integrate the best findings of neuroscience with the best of our extant knowledge base. Psychologists emphasize this when they portray the bio–psycho–social model and a reading of these two neuroskeptical books suggests it as an excellent path for higher educators to take.
Final Thoughts
Over the past several decades, higher educators have taken the lead in attempting to understand students from a multidimensional, integrative perspective. Over those decades, a strong, solid knowledge–base has accumulated. As Lee Knefelkamp and Carol Widick articulated early on in their 1978 book, Applying New Developmental Findings, higher educators require knowledge about—and are at the forefront of discovering—who the college learner is in developmental terms, how college learning and development occur, and how those working in the college environment can build campuses that have a positive impact on student learning and development.
In order for learners to receive the support and assistance needed to achieve the greatest possible campus outcomes, “the scientific study of the student” must continue to evolve (p. viii). So far, higher educators have been most closely involved with the psychological and social aspects of the bio–psycho–social model. Now, with the rapid advances in neuroscience, we have a chance to further improve our comprehension and facilitation of student learning and development by utilizing what is emerging from the biological aspects of the equation. So excite your brain by reading some or all of these books and discussing them with colleagues. You will make new synaptic connections and campus connections. At a minimum, knowing more about brain anatomy, you will be able to correct Joey Ramone's song lyric: as a teenage lobotomy he's actually got to tell ‘em he's got no cerebrum.