What can neuroscience offer to educators? Much of the debate has focused on whether basic research on the brain can translate into direct applications within the classroom. Accompanying ethical concern has centered on whether neuroeducation has made empty promises to educators. Relatively little investigation has been made into educators’ expectations regarding neuroscience research and how they might find it professionally useful. In order to address this question, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 educators who were repeat attendees of the Learning (...) & the Brain conferences. Responses suggest that ‘brain based’ pedagogical strategies are not all that is sought; indeed, respondents were more often drawn to the conference out of curiosity about the brain than a desire to gain new teaching methods. Of those who reported that research had influenced their classroom practice, most did not distinguish between neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Responses indicated that learning about neuroscience can help educators maintain patience, optimism and professionalism with their students, increase their credibility with colleagues and parents, and renew their sense of professional purpose. While not necessarily representative of the entire population, these themes indicate that current research in neuroscience can have real relevance to educators’ work. Future ethical discussions of neuroeducation should take into account this broader range of motivations and benefits. (shrink)

What are and where are the ethical limits of neuroeducation? The article reflects on a necessary question for the evolution of cognitive processes through critical deliberation, the delimitation of boundaries and the estimation of progress. On the one hand, it argues that the experimental turn could call into question the ethical and humanistic goal of education; on the other hand, it argues that a systematic renunciation of neuroscientific advances would also mean abandoning the quest for human flourishing. The humanities alone (...) do not provide the biopsychosocial approach from which we must understand our self-realisation. Thus, the first of the limits that is the origin of all the others arises from a scientific-humanist dilemma. The new boundaries to be delimited are the neuroscientific implications in themselves and how these are translated into educational, if they were to be valid in this field. Here neuromyths play an important role. It is precisely neuroethics as an applied ethics or branch of bioethics that takes up these aspects through neuroeducational ethics and educational neuroethics. In its fundamental branch, this discipline opens up the debate on moral neuroeducation. But the possibility of reducing morality and all that we are to our neural bases leads to new limits. To overcome them, he highlights the potential of a sociocultural and biological symbiosis with the notions of 'neuroculture' and 'proactive epigenesis'. Finally, the essay deliberates on the more speculative boundaries between what we are and our possibilities for understanding it on the basis of transhumanism. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________¿Cuále s son y dónde están los límites éticos de la neuroeducación? El artículo reflexiona sobre una cuestión necesaria para el devenir de los procesos cognitivos mediante la deliberación crítica, la delimitación de fronteras y la estimación del progreso. Su hilo argumental proyecta, por un lado, que el giro experimental podría poner en entredicho el objetivo ético y humanista de la educación; por otro lado, que una renuncia sistemática a los avances de las neurociencias supondría, igualmente, abandonar la búsqueda del florecimiento humano. Las humanidades solo no brindan el enfoque biopsicosocial desde el que hemos de entender nuestra autorrealización. Por ende, el primero de los límites que es origen de todos los demás surge dada una disyuntiva científico-humanista. Los nuevos confines a delimitar subyacen de las implicaciones neurocientíficas en sí mismas y de cómo estas se trasladan a la praxis escolar, si es que tuviesen validez en este campo. Aquí los neuromitos juegan un papel importante. Precisamente, la neuroética como ética aplicada o rama de la bioética recoge estos aspectos mediante la ética neuroeducativa y la neuroética educativa. En su rama fundamental, dicha disciplina abre el debate sobre la neuroeducación moral. Pero la posibilidad de reducir lo moral y todo lo que somos a nuestras bases neurales deriva en nuevos límites. Para superarlos, destaca el potencial de una simbiosis sociocultural y biológica con las nociones de ‘neurocultura’ y de ‘epigénesis proactiva’. Finalmente, el ensayo delibera sobre los límites más especulativos entre lo que somos y nuestras posibilidades para entenderlo en base al transhumanismo._____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______HOW TO CITE / CÓMO CITAR: Castillo, P. (2023). Los límites éticos de la neuroeducación. Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, 35(2), 191-208. (shrink)

Researchers are increasingly applying neuroscience technologies that probe or manipulate the brain to improve educational outcomes. However, their use remains fraught with ethical controversies. Here, we investigate the acceptability of neuroscience applications to educational practice in two groups of young adults: those studying bioscience who will be driving future basic neuroscience research and technology transfer, and those studying education who will be choosing among neuroscience-derived applications for their students. Respondents rated the acceptability of six scenarios describing neuroscience applications to education (...) spanning multiple methodologies, from neuroimaging to neuroactive drugs to brain stimulation. They did so from two perspectives (student, teacher) and for three recipient populations (low-achieving, high-achieving students, students with learning disabilities). Overall, the biosciences students were more favorable to all neuroscience applications than the education students. Scenarios that measured brain activity (i.e., EEG or fMRI) to assess or predict intellectual abilities were deemed more acceptable than manipulations of mental activity by drug use or stimulation techniques, which may violate body integrity. Enhancement up to the norm for low-achieving students and especially students with learning disabilities was more favorably viewed than enhancement beyond the norm for high-achieving students. Finally, respondents rated neuroscientific applications to be less acceptable when adopting the perspective of a teacher than that of a student. Future studies should go beyond the acceptability ratings collected here to delineate the role that concepts of access, equity, authenticity, agency and personal choice play in guiding respondents’ reasoning. (shrink)

Neuroscience influences education, and these two areas have converged in a new field denominated “Neuroeducation.” However, the growing interest in the education–brain relationship does not match the proper use of research findings. In 2007, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned of the misunderstandings about the brain among teachers, labeling them as neuromyths. The main objective here is to observe the prevalence of the neuromyths in educators over time. After two decades of publications of research on neuromyths among in-service (...) or prospective teachers, this work presents a systematic scientific review. To select the articles, we used the words: “teachers,” “preservice teachers,” “neuromyths” combined with the Boolean data type “and.” The search was filtered according to the following criteria: identifiable author, written in English, Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese, word neuromyth in title, abstract, or keywords, research with a participant's survey, sample focused on educators, peer-review publication index in JCR, SJR, or ESCI. The documents were found through Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Dialnet, ProQuest, EBSCO-host, and Google Scholar. After the search, 24 articles were identified as being of sufficiently high quality for this systematic review. This result highlights that neuromyths are still the subject of attention almost two decades after their definition. The findings present neuromyths as the consequence of a lack of scientific knowledge, a communicative gap between scientists and teachers, and the low-quality information sources consulted by teachers. In addition, the data on protectors and predictors of neuromyths is inconsistent. There is also no standard scientific methodology nor a guideline to determine a new neuromyth. The results show the need to improve the scientific content in higher education and the importance of in-service teacher training. This research justifies the requirement for university professors to be active researchers and to establish a close link with educators from other fields and levels. Neuroeducation will be the bridge that unites scientific knowledge and practical application in education, with a rigorous, standard method for the entire scientific-educational community. (shrink)

For a decade or so there has been a new ‘hype’ in educational research: it is called educational neuroscience or even neuroeducation —there are numerous publications, special journals, and an abundance of research projects together with the advertisement of many positions at renowned research centres worldwide. After a brief introduction of what is going on in the ‘emerging sub-discipline’, a number of characterisations are offered of what is envisaged by authors working in this field. In the discussion that follows various (...) problems are listed: the assumption that ‘visual proof’ of brain activity is supposedly given; the correlational nature of this kind of research; the nature of the concepts that are used; the lack of addressing and possibly influencing the neurological mechanism; and finally the need for other insights in educational contexts. Following Bakhurst and others, a number of crucially relevant philosophical issues are highlighted. It is argued that though there are cases where neuroscience insights may be helpful, these are scarce. In general, it is concluded, not a lot may be expected from this discipline for education and educational research. A reminder is offered that the promise of neurophilia may be just another neuromyth, which needs to be addressed by philosophy and education. (shrink)

Brain imaging provides ever more sensitive measures of structure and function relevant to human psychology and has revealed correlates for virtually every psychiatric disorder. Yet it plays no accepted role in psychiatric diagnosis beyond ruling out medical factors such as tumors or traumatic brain injuries. Why is brain imaging not used in the diagnosis of primary psychiatric disorders, such as depression, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? This article addresses this question. It reviews the state of the art (...) in psychiatric imaging, including diagnostic and other applications, and explains the nonutility of diagnostic imaging in terms of aspects of both the current state of imaging and the current nature of psychiatric nosology. The likely future path by which imaging-based diagnoses will be incorporated into psychiatry is also discussed. By reviewing one well-known attempt to use SPECT scanning in psychiatric diagnosis, the article examines a real-world practice that illustrates several related points: the appeal of the idea of image-assisted diagnosis for physicians, patients and families, despite a lack of proven effectiveness, and the mismatch between the categories and dimensions of current nosology and those suggested by imaging. (shrink)

Animal models are used in experiments in the behavioural neurosciences that aim to contribute to the prevention and treatment of cognitive and affective disorders in human beings, such as anxiety and depression. Ironically, those animals that are likely to be the best models for psychopathology are also likely to be considered the ones that are most morally problematic to use, if it seems probable that (and if indeed they are initially selected as models because) they have experiences that are similar (...) to human experiences that we have strong reasons to avoid causing, and indeed aim to alleviate (such as pain, anxiety or sadness). In this paper, against the background of contemporary discussions in animal ethics and the philosophy of animal minds, we discuss the views that it is morally permissible to use animals in these kinds of experiments, and that it is better to use less cognitively complex animals (such as zebrafish) than more complex animals (such as dogs). First, we criticise some justifications for the claim that human beings and more complex animals have higher moral status. We argue that contemporary approaches that attribute equal moral status to all beings that are capable of conscious strivings (e.g. avoiding pain and anxiety; aiming to eat and play) are based on more plausible assumptions. Second, we argue that it is problematic to assume that less cognitively complex animals have a lesser sensory and emotional experience than more complex beings across the board. In specific cases, there might be good reasons to assume that more complex beings would be harmed more by a specific physical or environmental intervention, but it might also be that they sometimes are harmed less because of a better ability to cope. Determining whether a specific experiment is justified is therefore a complex issue. Our aim in this chapter is to stimulate further reflection on these common assumptions behind the use of animal models for psychopathologies. In order to be able to draw more definite conclusions, more research will have to be done on the influence of cognitive complexity on the experience of (human and non-human) animals. (shrink)

Ulrich Herrmann, 1993, claimed concerning the Enlightenment that there is a close relationship between educational theory and politics. On the one hand, in itse.