Dr. Robert Syl­wester is an edu­ca­tor of edu­ca­tors, hav­ing received mul­ti­ple awards dur­ing his long career as a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor of the impli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence research for edu­ca­tion and learn­ing. He is the author of sev­eral books and many jour­nal arti­cles, and mem­ber of our Sci­en­tific Advi­sory Board. His most recent book is The Ado­les­cent Brain: Reach­ing for Auton­omy (Cor­win Press, 2007). He is an Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Oregon.

I am hon­ored to inter­view him today.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Let’s start with that eter­nal source of debate. What do we know about the respec­tive roles of genes and our envi­ron­ment in brain devel­op­ment?

Robert Syl­wester: Genetic and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors both con­tribute to brain mat­u­ra­tion. Genet­ics prob­a­bly play a stronger role in the early years, and the envi­ron­ment plays a stronger role in later years. Still the mother’s (envi­ron­men­tal) use of drugs dur­ing the preg­nancy could affect the genet­ics of fetal brain devel­op­ment, and some adult ill­nesses, such as Huntington’s Dis­ease, are genet­i­cally triggered.

Nature and nur­ture both require the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions of the other in most devel­op­men­tal and main­te­nance func­tions. We typ­i­cally think of envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors as things that hap­pen to us, over which we have lit­tle control.

Can’t our own deci­sions have an effect in our own brain devel­op­ment? For exam­ple, what if I choose a career in invest­ment bank­ing, vs. one in jour­nal­ism or teaching?

We make our own career deci­sions in life, and most of us make a com­bi­na­tion of good and bad deci­sions, which influ­ence our brain’s maturation.

My father was very unusual in his career tra­jec­tory in that he worked at one place through­out his entire adult life, and died three months after he retired at 91. I’ve always thought that it’s a good idea to make a change every ten years or so and do some­thing dif­fer­ent either within the same orga­ni­za­tion or to move to another one.

It’s just as good for orga­ni­za­tions to have some staff turnover as it is for staff to move to new chal­lenges. The time to leave one posi­tion for another is while you and your employer are still happy with what you’re doing. You’ll take what you learned in your prior job to your new job, and you’ll add com­pe­ten­cies from your new job that you oth­er­wise wouldn’t have developed.

I find that, in an emerg­ing field like cog­ni­tive sci­ence, we need to start by clar­i­fy­ing the lan­guage we use. Can you define some words such as Learn­ing, Edu­ca­tion, Brain Devel­op­ment and Cog­ni­tion.

Sure.

LEARNING: Most organ­isms begin life with most or all of the pro­cess­ing sys­tems and infor­ma­tion that they need to sur­vive. Humans are a notable excep­tion in that an adult-size brain is sig­nif­i­cantly larger than a mother’s birth canal, so we’re born with an imma­ture one pound brain that devel­ops addi­tional mass and capa­bil­i­ties dur­ing its 20 year post-birth devel­op­men­tal tra­jec­tory. Par­ent­ing, men­tor­ing, teach­ing, and mass media are exam­ples of the cul­tural sys­tems that humans have devel­oped to help young peo­ple mas­ter the knowl­edge and skills they need to sur­vive and thrive in com­plex envi­ron­ments. Learn­ing is one the main activ­i­ties we do, even if we often are not aware of it.

EDUCATION: Edu­ca­tion, like the cul­ture it sub­sumes, is a con­ser­v­a­tive phe­nom­e­non. Sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy move rapidly, but edu­ca­tion doesn’t. So if schools often resem­ble the schools of 50 years ago, that should not be sur­pris­ing. Par­ents remem­ber their school expe­ri­ences, and since they sur­vived them, they are typ­i­cally leery about edu­ca­tors exper­i­ment­ing with their chil­dren. This explains in part why schools have not incor­po­rated many of the recent devel­op­ments in neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive psychology.

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT: Child­hood brain devel­op­ment is focused on sys­tems that allow chil­dren to rec­og­nize and remem­ber the dynam­ics of envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges chal­lenges that pro­tec­tive adults will solve for them. Ado­les­cent brain devel­op­ment is more focused on frontal lobe devel­op­ment, the sys­tems that allow us to respond appro­pri­ately and autonomously to the chal­lenges we confront.

COGNITION: Every expe­ri­ence will alter our brain’s orga­ni­za­tion at some level, so our brain’s pro­cess­ing net­works con­tin­u­ally change through­out our life. This process is called brain plas­tic­ity. For exam­ple, since my brain has adapted to my switch from a type­writer to a com­puter, it would now be dif­fi­cult (but not impos­si­ble) for me to write again on a type­writer. Now, cog­ni­tion is linked to other con­cepts: emo­tion is the pro­cess­ing sys­tem that tells us how impor­tant some­thing is; atten­tion focuses us on the impor­tant and away from the unim­por­tant things; problem-solving deter­mines how to respond, partly on the basis of our mem­ory of prior related expe­ri­ences; and behav­ior car­ries out the deci­sion. The gen­eral term cog­ni­tion encom­passes these var­i­ous processes.

You recently pub­lished a book titled The Ado­les­cent Brain: Reach­ing for Auton­omy (2007. Cor­win Press). What advice would you give to par­ents and edu­ca­tors of adolescents?

Bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­ena always oper­ate within ranges. For exam­ple, leaves fall from trees in the autumn, but typ­i­cally not all at once. Devel­op­men­tal changes sim­i­larly do not occur at the same time and at the same rate in all child and ado­les­cent brains. And just as it’s pos­si­ble for wind or tem­per­a­ture to alter the time when a leaf might fall, unex­pected events can alter the time when an ado­les­cent has to con­front and respond to given envi­ron­men­tal challenges.

The impor­tant thing for adults to do is to care­fully observe an adolescent’s inter­ests and abil­i­ties, and insert chal­lenges that move mat­u­ra­tion for­ward at a rea­son­able level. If you push too fast, you end up with a stressed out ado­les­cent. If you do not chal­lenge suf­fi­ciently, you end up with a bored ado­les­cent. No magic for­mula exists for get­ting this just right. This means, for exam­ple, that we cel­e­brate the skills of artists and ath­letes who func­tion beyond typ­i­cal human capac­ity, and we cre­ate judi­cial sanc­tions for those whose behav­ior does not reach cul­tur­ally accept­able lev­els. Most human behav­ior is per­son­ally cho­sen and exe­cuted within wide ranges. We can eas­ily observe this wide range in such phe­nom­ena as polit­i­cal dis­course and reli­gious belief or prac­tice. Ado­les­cents strive towards autonomous adult­hood as they grad­u­ally dis­cover their inter­ests and capa­bil­i­ties, and what is bio­log­i­cally pos­si­ble and cul­tur­ally appro­pri­ate. They adapt their life to wher­ever they’re most com­fort­able within the mar­velous sets of pos­si­ble and appro­pri­ate ranges that exist.

Ado­les­cents take risks, no doubt about that. If you want to even­tu­ally func­tion within any range, you have to locate its outer pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive lim­its. Speed lim­its and other reg­u­la­tions pro­vide direc­tion, but ado­les­cents (and adults) still tend to move towards the lim­its – and maybe just a smidgen beyond. Bad things can then occur. Part of learn­ing, that each per­son needs to learn to self-regulate.

In short, par­ents and edu­ca­tors need to pay atten­tion to observe where adolescent’s inter­ests and abil­i­ties lie, and engage them with expe­ri­ences that will enable them to move for­ward. The­o­rists, such as Howard Gard­ner, Robert Stern­berg, and David Perkins have pro­posed that intel­li­gence involves mul­ti­ple com­po­nents, and can’t be reduced to a sin­gle point on a numer­i­cal scale, as I.Q. attempts to do.

Edu­ca­tion is still a field with many com­pet­ing, frag­mented, approaches. A typ­i­cal ten­sion is between move­ments that advo­cate focus­ing on intel­lec­tual strengths, vs. those that advo­cate train­ing and shoring up weak­nesses, or bot­tle­necks. What is your take?

The answer is prob­a­bly both– but do let me know when you’ve fig­ured out the cor­rect bal­ance in that issue, and I’ll con­tact the folks in Stock­holm who give out the Nobel Prizes.

I take good note of that offer…what are the most excit­ing areas of brain research, and what are some resources for edu­ca­tors to learn about brain and refine teach­ing? Web­sites, books?

The cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sciences are cur­rently so dynamic. It seems that an excit­ing new devel­op­ment occurs every day, and many of these new devel­op­ments are reported in the mass media.

I write a monthly non-technical col­umn on edu­ca­tion­ally sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments in the cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sciences for the Inter­net jour­nal Brain Con­nec­tion. All 90 of my ear­lier columns are archived within the fol­low­ing link, so many ques­tions of read­ers have prob­a­bly been explored in pre­vi­ous columns: here.

Sharpbrains.com is another great resource. Both web­sites will link folks to other use­ful websites.

In terms of books, I always think an author’s most recent book is the best one to read, since it incor­po­rates new devel­op­ments that have occurred since ear­lier books were pub­lished. For exam­ple, I’m now read­ing Steven Pinker’s intrigu­ing new book, The Stuff of Thought: Lan­guage as a Win­dow into Human Nature (2007, Viking). It’s the fifth in 14 years in his series of books for gen­eral read­ers, and I’ve ben­e­fit­ted from each, and from their cumu­la­tive effect. As indi­cated above, my most recent book is The Ado­les­cent Brain: Reach­ing for Auton­omy. I’m cur­rently work­ing on a com­pan­ion book, A Child’s Brain: The Need for Nur­ture, which Cor­win Press will pub­lish in 2009.

One nice thing about com­mit­ting to write a book is that I now have to stay alive or at least lucid for another year or so.

And you will be both. Robert, many thanks for your time, and see you in San Fran­cisco next month.

Same. Always a plea­sure to talk.

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Announce­ments: both Robert Syl­wester and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez will be pre­sent­ing at the upcom­ing Learn­ing & The Brain Con­fer­ence. You can learn more about the con­fer­ence, and the spe­cial dis­count for Sharp­Brains’ read­ers, click­ing here.

You may enjoy some of our pre­vi­ous inter­views in our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series:

- James Zull on the Art of Chang­ing The Brain.

- Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Training.

- Yaakov Stern on Life­long Learn­ing and build­ing a Cog­ni­tive Reserve.

Finally, a reminder that we just released a Whitepa­per titled 10 Brain Fit­ness Myths Debunked, based on the inter­view series: here.