Page 43 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

We are on the cusp of a new understanding of the brain that transforms a century of conventional thinking about the brain, specifically the role of the brains neurons.... In contrast, the cellular glia, free to wander and probe at will through the tangled knotted network of nerve fibres in our brain, make brain tissue come alive with cellular motion... The ‘other brain’, operating entirely outside our conscious mind shapes the circuitry of the neuronal brain.62 R. Douglas Fields
What is the role of astrocytes in enhancing our learning capacity? It is known that astrocytes locate themselves around our neurons synapses. The neurons, astrocytes and synapses appear to have a strong tripartite (three-way) relationship. In this emerging model, it is proposed that one of the roles of astrocytes is that they are chemically looking for repeating patterns in the neural circuitry of the brain. When astrocytes detect these patterns of neural behaviour, a complex set of processes takes place resulting in the brain immediately mapping the pattern it has recognised into a permanent, long-term memory with no temporary or short term memory system available.
Even more unusual is the fact that our brain can then apply that pattern, it has mapped, without us being any conscious of that process.63 If we take the example of learner drivers navigating roundabouts, we soon see that the learner driver only needs to experience 4-5 roundabouts before the brain maps the underlying pattern (concept) of how to navigate a roundabout. From then on the brain navigates every subsequent roundabout without us having to do any conscious thinking about that process! From this point onwards we carry out this task non-consciously.
Multitasking and Driving
We take it for granted that we can multitask, but no other species has this capability. We saw earlier that concepts allow the brain to make predictions. Some of those predictions are conscious, but most are non-conscious, meaning we are continuously making predictions without consciously thinking about them. We non-consciously eat our dinner, throw a ball an exact distance in a sports game, ride our bike, or navigate a roundabout in our car, all without any conscious thinking processes taking place. We often say we have automated these processes and despite assertions to the contrary, there is no gender difference in this capacity for automaticity.J
Automaticity of our ideas and concepts have provided the human species with a unique ability to carry out several tasks at once and this capability increases our intellectual and practical efficiency, dramatically. If we did not have this capacity, then we could still drive but we would not be able to converse with our passengers without having an accident because conversations are rarely predictable, whereas round-a-bouts are. The brain can only automate and adapt itself to different contexts when there is an underlying predictable pattern (this defines a concept) in the brain. A conversation on the other hand lacks an underlying conceptual pattern so it cannot be automated and, subsequently, it is usually the focus of our attention when we are driving with passengers in the car.
62 Fields, D. (2011). The Other Brain. Simon and Schuster.
63 Franklin, R. J. M. & Bussey, T. J. (2013). Do Your Glial Cells Make You Clever? Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1934590913000581
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We refer to these patterns in how to navigate roundabouts or predict when trees will lose their
leaves, as concepts. Humans have been using this learning system for tens of thousands of years
and consequently it is a very efficient learning system. Only humans have access to the required
number and sophistication of astrocytes to apply this learning system. The human brain
recognises, learns, and maps these patterns (concepts), extremely efficiently and this learning
system is one of the key reasons why humans dominate planet Earth.