As a participant of the Brain and Behavior Institute 2001at Bryn Mawr College, I was afforded the opportunity to experience a collaboration between college faculty and classroom teachers to discuss brain function and its implications for student learning and teaching. An interesting statement presented by brain scientist, Paul Grobstein of Bryn Mawr College, has left an enormous impression on how I now look at myself and my world in relationship to the brain and how it functions. Subsequently to me, the view of our world is even more perplexed than I have ever imaged. The brain is a vehicle through which I perceive the world, the universe, myself.

Paul stated that "it is not in fact best to be right, but rather one should try to get it less wrong." As a classroom teacher, this statement is beginning to make a lot more sense to me as it applies to students who have expressed difficulty with reading and learning in general. Can I get students in regard to their processes of learning, to "get it less wrong? How can I get my students to be less wrong? How can I best facilitate better learning for students? Is "getting it less wrong" an external or internal system of processes which will change student learning?

The following information is an attempt to direct the readers attention to the activity of the brain and how it operates with respect to some instances of learning or in this case non-learning. Research has explored various possibilities towards acquiring an understanding of learning and brainactivity. One school of information has been of particular interest to me - the dietary effects on brainactivity. Can what we know about the brain's interaction and dietary effects on the brain serve as a target for the remediation of students who are experiencing learning difficulty.

Brain Activity

A recent study out of Stanford University which may begin to explain the differences in learning as it occurs within the brain, stems from a new method of testing children using brain imaging studies that measure which part of the brain is active as people think. Until now brain imaging studies have not been successful with children because participants were required to stay still for long periods of time. A shorter test was devised with incentives built in to encourage children to lie still. It was found that the brain of dyslexic children showed a clear difference between the brain activity of children succeeding and those failing to read. Researchers of this study furtherly wanted to see if the disrupted brain pattern experienced by dyslexic children could be normalized.

It is quite interesting also to note that most research focusing on problems in learning, has not been of a scientific venue. Professor John Gabrieli, a psychology associate, reports that "the amount of scientific information about such problems [of reading] is modest because the problems have been so mixed up in emotional, political and practical issues. Also, there hasn't been great interest from the scientific community because tools have not been available to study it.Studies like this create a set of tools by which scientists can contribute to the debate."

With this evidence that there is a clear difference between the brain activity of children experiencing successful and unsuccessful attempts at reading, can the activity of the brain be altered effectively through diet, thus promoting "better activity"? Can school administrators, physicians, parents really help students who have experienced learning difficulties "get it less wrong"? Go to Stanford Report

Mouth to Brain

The next level of understanding perhaps to get through a proposed idea that "diet and nutrition"can alter brain activity is looking at how what we eat gets to the brain and effects the brain's functioning. Okay let's give it a try! Neurotransmitters are chemicals that transmit information between neurons, the hundred billion or so brain cells that make up who we are. Most neurotransmitters are made up of amino acids contained in dietary proteins. When the body digests protein, it uses amino acids it needs. Because of the importance of amino acids to all the cells in your body your brain can be at a disadvantage. If the amino acid levels are low, then brain cells have to compete with body cells which have an advantage, because they can easily take up essentail amino acids from your bloodstream. So in essence, not everything you eat gets to the brain cells.

So, is it perhaps that some people who have an extreme deficiency in the amount of amino acids which do not pass through the blood barrier of the brain, effects the conditions of the brain activity, resulting in some form of learning difficulty? What does this all mean? Can nutritionists, food product manufacturers, students themselves get learning to be "less wrong?"

Who's Responsible? -Implications for Better Student Learning

• schools
• physicians
• parents
• nutritionists
• food product manufacturers
• students
• classroom teacher

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