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This review has been accessed  times since August 29, 2001
Byrnes, J.P. (2001). Minds, Brains and Learning:
Understanding the Psychological and Educational Relevance of
Neuroscientific Research. New York: The Guilford
Press.
Pp. x + 214
$25 ISBN 1-57230-651-3
Reviewed by Simon M. McCrea
University of Alberta
August 29,2001
Byrnes's much needed recent text on neuroscientific
advances and educational practices is balanced, the
arguments are
well put forth, and the conclusions cautiously measured.
Highly
technical aspects pertaining to the cognitive
neuropsychology of
individual differences are selectively reviewed in an
accessible
style without losing sight of the empirical basis of much of
this
research. Readers are provided with resources in the form of
seminal papers in the reference section if they wish to
review a
critical research area in more detail. The arrangement of
the
text into specific subsections judged to be particularly apt
to
benefit from the influx and applications of this new
knowledge is
commendable for it provides the reader with explanatory
bridges
between basic neuropsychological findings and potential
instructional applications. The reader is provided not only
with
limitations inherent to the methodologies associated with
research in each of the areas of memory, attention, emotion,
reading, math skills but also provided with some insightful
and
potentially useful research questions at the margins of the
disciplines of neuropsychology and educational
psychology.
Perhaps another quickly emerging research area that could
have
clear implications for instructional psychologies are those
recent studies pertaining to social cognitive development in
children. In chapter 5, Byrnes might have directed more
attention
towards exciting new developments in understanding the
detection
of intentional deception and mental state attribution by
others
(e.g., theory of mind) as revealed by child developmental,
lesion
analysis and functional neuroimaging studies. These latter
findings could have far-reaching implications for
understanding a
host of developmental psychopathologies as well as
real-world
planning skills in school age children and adolescents.
In chapter 6, new research using the combined strategies
of
examining the functional neuroanatomical correlates of
reading
sub-skills after reading remediation with functional
magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI), with the goal of understanding
changes
in patterns of functional activation after training, was not
discussed. Similarly high-resolution structural MRI studies
have
now actually identified a plausible neural substrate of
reading
disability using quantitative white matter mapping
techniques. It
remains to be determined if such advanced neuroimaging
studies
can also be used to understand other specific learning
disabilities as well as putative biological correlates of
giftedness within and across domains of knowledge. Again
both of
these two developments have only occurred in the last couple
of
years and highlight the rapid development and implications
of the
fruitful cross-fertilization of ideas if careful scientific
skepticism is exercised--as Byrnes has stressed
throughout.
Byrnes judiciously reviewed some of the problems of just
how
such knowledge will be most effectively disseminated and
implemented in educational circles among non-experts.
Educationalists tend not to be primarily trained in the
biological sciences--not to mention widespread science
teacher
shortages--and sometimes resistance, if not outright
hostility,
is the normal reaction to suggestions that biological
factors
impinging on intellectual development are worthy of study.
Byrnes's
book is a first in that it could be used as an excellent
resource
for graduate students in education across specialties,
dispel
brain myths, and at the same time help to set realistic
expectations about just what such research potentially could
and
clearly cannot accomplish alongside more mainstay cognitive
psychological methods. The book is visionary in that it
provides
an exciting glimpse of some areas for intensive research
within
the near future. At the conclusion of Byrnes's text
the
reader is left with the impression that neuroscientific
research
will undoubtedly begin to have some specific useful
applications
that are beneficial to students--yet at the same time
grasp the
inherent limitation in myopic approaches and wisdom in the
adoption of a multiple systems approaches (e.g.,
biopsychosocial
models).
Byrnes's text should be required reading for every
student in educational psychology at the graduate level as
well
as recommended reading for students in education, child
development, rehabilitation contexts and school psychology.
I
cannot think of another text that has tied together
convergent
themes in these two disparate fields (e.g., neuropsychology
and
education) so succinctly without getting bogged down in
detail
and losing sight of fundamental and practical instructional
imperatives. I agree with Byrnes's assertion that the
areas
of memory, attention, emotion, reading and math skills will
likely be among the first to witness the introduction of
neuroscientific paradigms. On the whole this enterprise is
still
largely academic and public institutions on their own may be
ill
equipped to develop such intensively technology-based
pedagogical
tools. Moreover without teachers who are educated and
trained in
the proper use of such methodologies such technology would
be
useless anyway. Considerable structural impediments exist to
the
further introduction of neuroscientific paradigms into
education.
These obstacles are likely to be best met by broadening the
scope
of graduate education to include relevant neuroscientific
paradigms so that those in need are given the chance to
benefit
from such knowledge and its applications. Byrne's text
is a
benchmark for further development in this emerging
cross-disciplinary field of study and application.
About the Reviewer
Simon M. McCrea
Dept of Biomedical Engineering
University of Alberta, Canada
Simon McCrea is a NSERC post-doctoral fellow in the
Department
of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Alberta. He
is currently involved
in developing whole-brain diffusion tensor magnetic
resonance
imaging (MRI)
maps of age-cohorts of children's brains in conjunction
with
broad spectrum
neuropsychological assessments and school achievement
indices
with the goal of
better understanding biological correlates of cognitive
developmental
processes. He is a member of one of over 40 Canada-wide
research groups
involved in a National Center of Excellence NCE)
initiative
examining literacy
development in children from multiple perspectives.
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