Neuroscience Role in Enhancing Mathematics Learning

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The implications of Neuroscience
Parts of the brain deals with Numeric
Neuroscience and mathematics learning
Number and Spatial sense
Implications of Neuroscience in Education
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Learning is considered to be a complex cognitive and collective process, with a significance of external environment, internal stimuli, and social motivation is widely affected learning processes. Teaching mathematics is a hard-core job at all levels, its complication allows other research fields to participate in finding the solutions. Knowledge acquiring perspectives in psycho-analytical areas also have been utilized to describe procedures in mathematics education.

There is a serious need for more scientific research into the areas in which children develop mathematical skills which will play a vital role in the future. Not a single research methodology can address the sensitiveness of drive for comprehensive scientific research in education. Also, there are numerous directions of extensive research in mathematics education. Each view will help in solving the ways how children learn mathematics and how this process can enhance their computing skills.

Along with these concepts being used in mathematics teaching study, this research focuses on the question that which areas of the brain deal with numeric. During the study, it will be discussed what role neuroscience plays in enhancing mathematics learning. In the following pages, I will debate that neuroscience can help us in better understanding some phenomena of concern in mathematics education. This knowledge can influence the individual’s behavior and learning practices. Mathematics learning is closely connected with study brain areas involved in memory and computation of numerals.

The implications of Neuroscience

Cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience studies suggest that an appropriate process of quantity representation is found in infants, young children, and adults, with the quantitative changes in this system, the core qualitative system specifications remain the same both across species and over progressing durations (Butterworth, 1999; Dehaene, 1997). Neuro-scientific research is conducted at different levels and in different situations and has been successfully explained typical decision processes.

The methods of neuroscience offer a variety of potential to education, including the early analysis of particular educational requirements, the monitoring and assessment of the impacts of various educational inputs on knowledge acquiring. Quantitative variations may have important well-designed roles and their stoppage or incompletion become an early indicator of mathematical difficulties in the future or even results in mathematics learning disqualification.

Parts of the brain deals with Numeric

The human brain controls the flow of information throughout the body, both voluntary actions like running, writing, and reading, and involuntary responses like sensing and listening. The brain stem joins the spinal cord with the brain. Nerve fibers of medulla oblongata lie in this brain stem transmit every message from brain to spinal cord. The right side of the brain controls the left part of the body while the left part of the brain controls the right part of the body. The cerebrum, which constitutes approximately 90% of the brain, is divided into distinct areas that illustrate sensory responses. The cerebrum is divided into the left hemisphere and right hemispheres. The left hemisphere supports speech, reasoning, writing, and calculation. The right hemisphere on the other hand is related to imaginative powers, arts and crafts, and symbolic structures. In general, this part of the brain involves in all computation and mathematical analyses.

At present, the main apprehension of cognitive neuroscience is the inner depiction of mind actions. Electrophysiological models have provided perception and association studies possible. In addition, intricate cognitive processes like concentration and management have been proved to be associated with action patterns of special cells groups in certain portions of the brain. The neural origin of cognition initiates with complex brain operations.

For mathematics, cognitive neuroscience is launching to go beyond present cognitive models. It has been challenged that there are several neural systems for the demonstration of numbers. An old ‘number sense’ system, established in animals and children as well as older people, appears to support understanding of numbers and their associations (Dehaene, 1999). A diverse kind of numerical data is considered to be stored orally in the language system. (Dehaene, 1999).

Simple arithmetical problems like addition, subtraction are so over-educated that these are considered declarative knowledge. More compound computation seems to occupy visual-spatial regions (Zago, 2001).

More recent studies have revealed new ways of how quantitative information is processed by the brain. According to Science Daily ( Cell Press, 2007), one study shows that the parietal cortex of the brain just above the forehead is used for abstract quantities and numerical symbols. In another paper:

“Roi Cohen Kadosh and colleagues conducted experiments demonstrating that the two hemispheres of the parietal lobe function differently in processing numbers. While the left lobe harbors abstract numerical representations, the right shows a dependence on the notation used for a number, they found. The researchers concluded that “results challenge the commonly held belief that numbers are represented solely in an abstract way in the human brain.” The authors also concluded that their results “advocate the existence of distinct neuronal populations for numbers, which are notation dependent in the right parietal lobe.” (Cell Press, 2007)

In the end, a discrete parietal pre-motor area of the brain is activated for the period of finger computation. This study may put forward that the brain areas initiated during finger counting which acts as a developmental strategy in learning mathematics, finally come to partly emphasize numerical development skills in adults.

Neuroscience and mathematics learning

As we have studied the neural processes implicated in mathematics learning, our target is to recognize the most fundamental and widespread Neuro-psychological processes that underlie computing skills. When we consider numeracy, we commence by exploring the capability to contrast the value of two numbers and the capacity to spot the number of items in an assortment.

The importance of the collaboration between mathematics education in cognitive and neuro-scientific sciences lies in the grounding of research from theory and practical basis from which testable forecasts can be made. Many latest types of research have emphasized how scientists from multiple disciplines of mathematics, cognitive, and neuro-psychology should contribute to each other’s research.

Number and Spatial sense

Young children possess spatial and numerical skills that should be enhanced in education. This spatial sense of and skills could function to stimulate the development of more formal mathematical skills that require number sense. Each person has got an instinctive number intellect, this allows him or her to examine the outer environment in conditions of quantitative distinctiveness, through which people can discriminate small numbers and identify an alteration in a small number of stuff (Dehaene, 1997). The number intellect is a structure for an initial estimate: its output is typically not quick, although it approximates the quick answer.

The growth of figurative number systems was a vital step for mankind. Lack of these abilities may lead an individual to a condition of Dyscalculia. This inability limits us to surmount the boundaries of the natural number sense and to build up edifying mathematics. Children have to be taught number terms, use this terminology to count items and to do computations. But some students experience developmental dyscalculia, apparently an undefeatable discrepancy in arithmetic acquirement.

Implications of Neuroscience in Education

Neuro-scientific study of the development in the human brain has shown that growth in cognitive abilities continues until late childhood. Studies on adult brain images indicate that there are continuing improvements in the developed human brain. The tradition about the brain which are found in education is about working of the brain and each hemisphere, important periods during infancy and childhood, and the importance of enriched surroundings for growing children. These concepts include the continued development of the human brain and the prospects of responsive periods playing role in the simplification of certain types of learning. These sensitive intervals extend as a minimum into the adolescent years, and possibly more. Neuroscience can also propose precise insights into several aspects of skills growth and is commencing to recommend new avenues of investigation in the development of some skills discrepancies. Neuroscience has confirmed earlier psychosomatic theories about the consequence of emotional influences in learning (Goswami, 2004). The students who received enriched educational environments are found to have a greater synaptic density in their brains. It is highly prescribed from this fact that young children should be taught in a suitable environment to augment their learning perspective.

Effective teaching methods should focus on both segments and whole structures because the brain physically associates confined neural activity to circuits that are connected to diverse experimental areas. For instance, in initial mathematics teaching, teaching the addition of numbers independently of mathematical operation and their meaningful daily life use is expected to be less successful than teaching both simultaneously. Opinions for teaching simple skills in segregation presume that scholars can only originally grip simple data and the complex ways should proceed slowly and progressively. But research in this area indicates that the higher-order brain synthesizes the intricate and intangible information and simple information simultaneously.

Conclusion

The prospective for neuroscience to make contributions to educational study is great. Nevertheless, bridges need to be built between neuroscience and basic education research. Cognitive psychologists are commendably placed to put up these bridges. In my view, there can be many ways that enable neuroscience to affect education up to a great extent.

In the first step, an interface should be developed among the fields of Cognitive Neuroscience, and Educational Psychology. This interaction could be widely anticipated and enhance the role of cognitive sciences could play in education. Education would have a neural tool for comparing the effectiveness of different approaches to the teaching of preliminary mathematics learning. This is only one case of the creative application of presently available neuroscience techniques to significant issues in education.

Another way would be the use of recent advances in neurology like increased resolution provided by neural imagery and other latest technologies will impact education by taxing our basic philosophical theories about child development and as a result provide ways to how we train educational researchers, professionals, and eventually instructors.

As education is an applied field that tremendously affects children’s lives, another step is to develop skills like literacy or language in a small period. Neuroscience research put forward positive interventions which can be proved to be efficient. Effective instructional interventions should not be delayed while we develop a complete understanding of the underlying neurological and psychological processes.

References

Cell Press (2007). Studies Yield Insight Into The Numerical Brain. ScienceDaily.
Dehaene, S. (1997). Number Sense. New York/Oxford. Oxford University Press.
Butterworth, B. (1999). The Mathematical Brain. London: Macmillan. p. 183-215.
Goswami, U. (2004). Neuroscience, education and special education. British journal of Special Education. Vol 31. No 4. p. 175-183

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