What Teachers Need to

Know About Their Students'

Brains
Why it's crucial to move physical activity from the
playground to the classroom
Posted Sep 17, 2016

Recent research on improving cognitive abilities of autistic children has shed new
light on development of normal childrens brains and has profound implications for
improvingeducation at all grade levels for all types of students.
A sweeping statement, I know, but one that is warranted by the exciting results.
Ill summarize the results of the new research, outline the implications, explain
theneuroscience underlying the cognitive improvements, then conclude with specific
recommendations for getting better results in the classroom.
Multi-sensory and motor enrichment in autistic children
Heres what Cynthia Woo and colleagues of the Neurobiology and Behavior
Department at UC Irvine found last year and why its so important.
Building on a wealth of animal research showing that enriched sensorimotor
experiences early in life significantly improve brain development and cognitive
abilities, Woos teamcompared IQ scores of autistic children ages 3-6 who either had
standard care or 6 months of enriched sensorimotor experience.
Sensorimotor enrichment included activities such as

Scented bath and massage with oil

Walking on foam pad or pillow

Smelling different pairs of scents among a selection of lemon, lavender,

vanilla, anise, orange, apple, and hyacinth

Drawing shapes, tracking moving colored objects

Viewing paired images and sounds

In all, children in the enriched group received 37 different sensorimotor stimuli over 6
months, including extensive movement and multi-sensory associations of touch,
temperature, smell, sight, sound, proprioceptive feedback, vestibular stimulating
activities and social interaction.
The result? On average, kids in the enriched group raised their IQ scores 7 points
relative to those in a standard care control group. More importantly, 20% of children
in the enriched protocol improved enough to move out of the autistic classification,
while none of the standard care group changed classification.
Broader implications of sensorimotor stimulation
The dramatic improvement resulting from sensorimotor enrichment is significant on
many levels.
First, improvements in IQ occurred even though nothing was explicitly taught to the
children.
This finding adds to a fast growing body of data showing that activities that generally
strengthen the brain as a whole, rather than developing a specific part of the brain
(e.g. localized brain regions for music, spoken language, written language or motor
coordination), are beneficial to a broad range of specific skills such as reading,
quantitative skills and spatial skills measured on IQ tests.
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Simply put, when it comes to brain function, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Second, although Woos research focused on autistic children, its highly relevant to
normal children because:

The chief mechanism by which sensorimotor enrichment enhanced brain

function in autistic children-- formation of novel synaptic connections (e.g.
with pairing of novel combinations of smells, sights, sounds and
movement)has also been shown to enhance performance and memory in
normal brains, including those of mature adults. These novel connections
are created based on the well-established principle of brain plasticity that
neurons that fire together, wire together. Thus, when a developing brain
is presented with novel combinations of smell, sight, touch and sight, a
new network is formed of neural pathways carrying signals in each of those
sensory pathways. The greater the number of sensory channels
stimulated, the more complex and rich the new neural network.

Woos research reinforces recent research showing that multi-modal

(simultaneous activation of multiple sensory and motor pathways) is an
effective way to strengthen and literally grow the brain (e.g. children
who experience coordinated sights, sounds and motor stimulation of
playing a musical instrument have larger than normal regions of temporal
cortex, the brain region that process music, and larger than normal
representation of the fingers that play the instrument in their
somatosensory cortex, the brain region that processes tactile information).

Finallyand perhaps most important for education-- the amazing power of

sensorimotor stimulation has also been recently shown to improve the teaching of
math and spelling skills in normal children.
Writing the Journal Pediatrics this year, Marijke J. Mullender-Wijnsma and
colleagues of Groningen University in the Netherlands directed 2nd and 3rd grade
students to physically act-out arithmetic and spelling lessons.
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The specific exercises were performed when the children solved an academic task.
For example, the word dog must be spelled by jumping in place for every mentioned
letter or the children had to jump 6 times to solve the multiplication 2x3.
After two years, of such embodied learning exercises, students advanced their
spelling and arithmetic skills by 4 full months over a matched control group.

And embodied learning works for much older students as well. University of Chicago
researchers showed that college students studying physics who physically
experienced the concept of angular momentum by holding spinning vs. stationary
bicycle wheels, scored significantly higher on later quizs about the subject than
students who learned about angular momentum through conventional passive
techniques.
Heres an everyday example of embodied learning that you can relate to. Notice that
when you are a passenger being driven by someone else to a new location, its much
harder to remember the new route than when you are the driver.
The neuroscience of cognition and learning
The image below is a model of human cerebral cortex showing a dense network
pyramidal nerve cells and their dendrites (the neuronal fibers that receive inputs from
other neurons). Pyramidal cells in the cortex which do a lot of the heavy lifting of
sensing, thinking and behaving, have elaborate dendritic trees (colored fibers) that
receive inputs from sensory relays such as the Thalamus buried deep in the brain and
from other parts of the cerebral cortex.

Source: Hermann Cuntz/PLOS Computational Biology.

Through these diverse inputs, individual neurons can be turned on (or off) by multiple
sensory channels, such as vision, touch and acoustic signals, as well as by inputs from

nerve cells in motor cortex that command our muscles to move. In this image, nerve
cells receiving inputs from different sensory and motor channels are depicted in
different colors (turquoise for vision, blue for audition, green for both vision and
audition, etc.), underscoring the multi-sensory nature of this section of cerebral
cortex.
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Taken together, cortical neurons and synapses (connections) between neurons form a
vast neural network that perceives, decides, judges, imagines, learns and acts. The
bigger and more richly interconnected the network, the more capable the network is.
For example, recent research has shown that people with above
average intelligencehave a thicker than normal cerebral cortex like that shown below,
containing bigger neurons with larger numbers of interconnections. Especially
significant are generalized thickenings in so-called association areas of the brain
where multiple senses and motor channels come together.

Source: Eric Haseltine/Hermann Cuntz

Fortunately, it turns out that the size and richness of such neural networks can be
increased through mental exercise and learning. Such enhancement of cortical neural
networks is exactly what happened with Woos autistic children, and with the
embodied learning students in the Netherlands: the simultaneous use of multiple
senses along with motor involvement improved both general cognitive skills and
learning of arithmetic and spelling.

The graphic below depicts a simple way of thinking about sensorimotor enrichment in
the classroom.

Source: Eric Haseltine/Kopfproportionen

Think of the neural networks inside a students brain as a web. Every student has a
basic matrix of neural connectivity, shown as the spokes of the web. As novel
connections are formed among different sensory and motor pathways, a new ring is
added and the web thickens and becomes denser.
When new information is presented to a childs brain through a single sensory
channel, such as reading, a simple neural network of synaptic connections is
enhanced, shown on the far left. Synchronizing visual and auditory information, as
occurs with multimedia presentations, adds another ring to the web. Finally,
incorporating motor behavior and other senses, including touch, smell, taste and
proprioceptive (feedback on limb and head and eye position), the neural net web
grows very dense.
Now imagine that when you teach a student, you are attempting to throw new ideas,
concepts and information at a web in their brain. The denser the web, the greater

likelihood that the lesson you are teaching will be caught and will stick in the
students brain.
One caveat: multi-sensory presentations and motor involvement during learning must
be carefully coordinated, synchronized and integrated with the task at hand. For
instance, having a student perform random physical exercise while learning, might
actually distract the child by increasing what human factors specialists call task
loading.
And motor behavior needs to fit the lesson, as when students jump up and down to
demonstrate the addition of two numbers.
Similarly, it is important to avoid sensory overload when presenting information
through multiple sensory channels: sights, sounds and tactile sensations must synch
up in a natural way and belong together, as when a child holds pet that presents
natural sights, sounds, odors and feels furry to the child.
Recommendations for teachers
The concepts of coordinated, synchronized sensorimotor stimulation and embodied
learning suggest that:

Whenever possibleand within the constraints of keeping classes under

controlstudents should physically act out lessons. An added benefit of
such physical activity is increased blood flow to the brain, which, by itself,
improves learning and general cognitive abilities. In other words, radically
redefine physical education moving physical activity from the playground
into the classroom

Add tactile stimulation, smells and tastes to lesson plans. If possible, keep
adding new sights, sounds, tastes and smells, because novel stimuli form
novel, denser connections. The brain craves novelty!!

Have students take new seats every week: sitting in novel locations, with
different classmates to interact with, will help students brains grow new
synapses

All of this added multi-sensory and motor components of instruction will not only
improve learning and retention of specific lessons, but will also likely elevate general
cognitive abilities in the same way that Woos sensorimotor helped autistic children.
And changing things around all of the time in the classroom, experiencing new
smells, tastes, sights and sounds and physically demonstrating what students should
do, will grow healthy neural nets in teachers brains as well as those of their students.
Research has shown that such strengthening of neurological reserves delays or even
prevent cognitive decline with age.
Remember, when it comes to brain function, a rising tide lifts all boats!

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