The objective for week 2 application is to relate brain research and brain function to the learning process. To accomplish this objective, I reviewed two articles. The first article is entitled “The Ghost of Brain States Past: Remembering Reactivates the Brain Regions Engaged during Encoding” from the Walden Library at http://web.ebsohost.com.eap.waldenulibrary.org/ehost/pdf?vid=26&hid=3&sid=734feb33-d234-42 . This was an interesting article in that it was a review of several previous studies conducted on measuring brain activity during the encoding and retrieval of information. Danker & Anderson divided the studies into two major groups. The first group were of empirical studies “indicating when people retrieve an episode or association of memory, the regions of the brain involved in originally processing that episode or association are reactivated.” The second group demonstrated “that which regions are activated at test is influenced by what strategic processes were engaged during study. These studies investigated the retrieval of material encoded through several strategies, including enactment, verbal mnemonic, and the mnemonic used of mental imagery (2010).” Lastly, Danker & Anderson questioned then answered their questions about the reactivation process from the studies they reviewed.
Although great advances in medical technology have occurred over the past decade or so, there is still very little known about the brain and how learning occurs. The technology used to measure brain activity in the studies included: an event-related potential (ERP) which measures electrical activity at the scalp, a positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which measure blood flow in the brain. These tests were not without their limitations and had explicit encoding manipulations. The methodology used in each study was described in detail.
In conclusion, Danker & Anderson concluded 1) There was substantial evidence in the literature to support that sensory regions are reactivated during the retrieval of sensory associations. 2) Different processing modules within the visual system are reactivated during the retrieval of specific kinds of visual associations and 3) Emotional regions of the brain are activated during the retrieval of emotional associations (2010). They answered questions such as “How is reactivation affected by the accessibility of retrieved information? They found no answer to this question but suggested future research should be directed toward determining what factors influence reactivation of encoded regions during retrieval more generally and not just during the retrieval of visual information.
The information presented in this article is complex and very technical. Reading it can be a little difficult; for example, reading through multiple citations in one sentence to get to the important details. However, reviewing the different methods used in the studies to determine how information is retrieved will help an instructional designer develop a training program that will enhance a learner’s ability.
The second article entitled “The Information Processing Approach to Cognition” can be found at http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/infoproc.html. This resource simplifies chapter 3 in our course text. What I liked about the article is that it provided additional theory models and informational web links. What I learned new was that according to the author (Huitt, 2003), “a created memory is very short (less than ½ second for vision; about 3 seconds for hearing).”
