Is the Brain to Blame?

This NY Times opinion piece, co-authored by a neuroscientist and psychologist, proposes that many people hold the fallacious belief that psychological causes (intention) and biological causes (the physical laws that govern our brains) for behavior are completely separate. The reason that intention and biology are not completely separate causal functions is deceptively simple: all psychological states have simultaneously occurring biological ones.

While this piece was written in the context of the horrific recent shootings in Colorado, the point has led me to a series of questions related to best educational practices. For example, are all biological states associated with specific psychological states? Another way to ask this is if there is 1:1 correspondence between psychological and biological states (since we know that all psychological states have an associated biological state, but not if the biological states are unique to each psychological state), and if so, is it generalizable within or between individuals. If these pairs/connections exist, it could change the way we structure educational practices to be more responsive to the biological states of students' brains - a goal we already pursue based on what we know about their brains. For example, if we could implement activities that physiologically tuned brains into certain states most receptive to specific learning experiences (as we attempt to do by psychologically tuning student brains to feel safe, comfortable, and un-anxious), that would increase the effectiveness of the educative process.

Another thread of this that interests me is if brain characteristics can actually cause automatic behavior that is not reflective of the "true" person - what might be considered temporary insanity from a physiological, rather than psychological, standpoint. This could potentially provide a scientific basis for understanding the experiences of individuals going through periods of extreme neural growth or change, and lead to shifts in the way we deal with a variety of discipline and classroom management issues.

The implications of this understanding for character education are a third area for investigation. Just as we are educating students to be self-aware and reflective scholars who understand and make intentional choices about their learning habits to maximize their success, helping students begin to understand how the physical neurology of their brains impacts their psychological states, and thus their behaviors, rises to new prominence.