Desmintiendo neuromitos | Johanna Pozo | TEDxLaFloresta
Translator: Julia Behan Reviewer: Trina Orsic “Teacher, I will never be able to read a story.” This are the words said by one of my nine year old students when he came into my office with his teacher. He was crying uncontrollably and the teacher told me that they just didn’t know how to deal with him, because the boy could not learn in class. When he calmed down a bit, he told me he had an attention deficit disorder and that they had told him his learning style was not visual; that images distract him a lot, making it harder to learn to read. He spent years dealing with strange adjustments made by schools based on learning styles. I never expected to see a child crying over something as basic as reading a story. According to Newton and Salvi, 89% of teachers believe in different learning styles and believe that they are based in neuroscience. However, there is no scientific evidence that supports their existence; many think this is a threat to education. Let’s think about that for a moment. What is a teacher to do? Should they foster your learning style or adopt a new one? This could demotivate students who want to be musicians, who simply don’t have an auditory learning style. Or, like my student, who wanted to read but didn’t have a visual learning style. How does a teacher teach a class when there’s more than 72 different learning styles? Neuroscience is one of the fields of greatest interest to teachers, but very few receive training in this area. But who hasn’t heard about learning styles? Or that the left hemisphere is logical and the right is creative. That artists have a more developed right hemisphere, or that Einsetien used 15% of his brain while us mortals only use 10%. Let me tell you that none of this is true. Neuromyths are popular beliefs that don’t have a scientific basis but that have developed from misinterpretation or have a very weak connection to neuroscience. When I worked in education, I realised the influence this lack of information can have on people. And so I started to investigate where these ideas come from. Neuromyths have two main origins: the lack of communication between academia and the general population and the people that take advantage of this and misinformation and use the prefix “neuro” for everything. Everything is interesting with neuro: neuromarketing, neuromyths, neurosalad, neuro-whatever. But this generates exactly the misinformation that fosters the stigma around mental health and harms people psychologically, academically, and even financially. It’s a vicious cycle because it increases the disinformation gap. So, people who try to learn something, find this failure of communication between academia and the general public and believe the available information, whether it’s right or not. And it starts again. Throughout history, two main forms of scientific communication have been defined. The first refers to the work of a single source in which academia serves to inform people, whilst the second invites dialogue and the debate of ideas always based in evidence. But as scientists, very few of us achieve this goal, because our reports often have very complex, obscure words, or the numbers and calculations are extremely difficult and do not garner public interest. Nowadays, if a TikTok video says that looking from side to side shows whether or not you’re lying, it would be far more interesting than reading an article that scientifically refutes this theory. And so, people share the video. But they don’t check if the information is true or where it came from. An example that you have certainly tried at some point in your life, is doing an online personality test in which your answers will tell you which movie character you are most similar to or which Hogwarts house you belong to, or which personality you have according to Winnie the Pooh characters or if you are a hunter, a thinker- according to sixteen different types. But going to a psychologist and doing a valid and reliable personality test with one hundred and sixty questions is far too difficult. So we prefer to go to Slytherin or be Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh or know if Bella Swan is similar to us. That’s why science has to return to being more accesible to the public. We should concern ourselves with the exclusivity of academia and update it to make it interesting for the present day. And this is a two-way street in which science comes to us but we also go towards science. We must premote a culture of curisoity being critical, being curious, asking questions. And you are the ones who have to worry about verifying the information, questioning things. Because of this science has to become accessible to the community. We have to want to eliminate the exclusivity of academia and update science for the present day. And this is a two-way street, in which science comes to us and we go towards science. Because you, the community, must also form part of this exchange- by searching for real information, by being critical, by being curious. We have to promote a culture of curiosity and eliminate this desire to conform to the immediacy of information. This would help avoid kids being frustrated by learning styles, and also musicians who are stuck because they were told they lack a dominant right hemisphere, or mathmaticans or athletes who are outraged by what they were told by alleged academics. Eliminating the gap between academia and the people will help us reduce the stigma surrounding mental health, help us destroy the idea that we are limited in our abilities. And above all, to reduce the presence of pseudosciences in people’s lives. That is too say, of all the ideas presented as real, but that aren’t scientifically proven. It would help us to reduce stress and even avoid financial costs. But also, it would prepare our teachers to be more qualified and generate far more genuine learning. The fact that one of my students cannot read as a result resonates in my head. And it continues to resonate. That is why I invite you to be curious. Question, debate, critique ideas. Be not only the little scientist that you dressed up as, locked away in your laboratory. Go out and be the voice of academia in your homes, in your schools, and in your jobs. Make it interesting again so that it can fulfil its purpose of serving the community. Because it's time to liberate science.