Brains and the people who use them

In our last episode, we started with:
Brain-Based Learning:
Possible Implications for Online Instruction
Stephanie A. Clemons
http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm

And moved on to:
Following are some of the findings from brain research (Stevens and Goldberg, 2001)
1. Brains are specialized and are not equally good at everything. (Nine more statements follow.)

So I said to myself:
It is a collection of highly abstract statements, possibly section headings in a chapter. Just the kind of thing a person might run into while studying. Suppose I play the role of a person who is studying this material and meets this list at the beginning of a chapter.

I decided to start with the study sparks page from the Thinkerer:
http://www.thinkerer.org/HeadView/HeadStudySP.htm

My first pick from the study sparks was: Un: Do you believe this stuff? Why?

Not a random choice. The voice of the Un. The perennial adolescent. One of my favorites. No doubt reflecting some specialized feature of my brain. Now on to my answer.

Believe it? I don’t even understand it. I assume that the reference is to human brains. But this could generic statement: “Human brains are specialized for doing human things and would not be equally good at running a dog’s life.” Or it could be an individualistic statement: “Each human brain is uniquely specialized and not equally good at doing everything [that humans in the aggregate can do].”

I suspect the latter is the intent, especially since item 7. (“Each brain is unique.”) seems to say the same thing. (That conveniently implies a 10% reduction in what I will have to learn here.) But there is a problem. The top level claim is that this is a finding from brain research. I know that brain research has established the existence of anatomical and functional difference between brains. But the evidence for specialization seems to come primarily from behavioral research and common observation.

On further examination of the list, I find several other statements that seem to come from behavioral rather than brain research. Thus I conclude that I was working in the wrong frame of reference. As a psychologist, I distinguish between behavioral and brain research. These authors seem to assume that evidence from behavioral research is about the brain. I would not dispute that. So I assume that these statements are about brains and the people who use them.

Now that I understand the statement better, I do believe it. I am not sure what guidance it offers for brain-based learning. But that is another episode. To quote another line from the Thinkrer:

Never take on a big job. Take on a set of little jobs that will add up to a big job.