By admin 
Since the dazzling technological advances in brain imaging in the 1990s, neuroscience has allowed cognitive science to make a giant leap forward. By observing the mechanisms of the brain in action, we can now confirm or refute certain hypotheses on which our understanding of learning and our ways of teaching have been built. Neuroscience has the power to make us progress considerably in education, without rejecting all of our educational heritage or repressing the contribution of teachers in this great march forward, on the contrary.
Here, through the prism of Olivier Houdé and some of his colleagues, is why the education of today and tomorrow benefits from being enlightened by neuroscience, and how to achieve this for the greatest benefit of all.
Neuroscience 101
The field of neuroscience focuses on the study of the nervous system, from neurons to behavior, and draws on a wide range of disciplines ranging from biology to chemistry, mathematics and computer science. This field is very abundant and is itself divided into several branches or sub-disciplines. To name a few of the best known, we find in particular molecular and cellular neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience — which is of particular interest to us in education —, medical neuroscience and computational neuroscience.
Cognitive neuroscience, affective neuroscience and social neuroscience are three branches that give us access to a new angle of observation and analysis of the mechanisms of cognition and learning. Cognitive neuroscience combines neuroscience with cognitive sciences, including psychology and psychiatry, in order to better understand the functions and dysfunctions of the neural systems involved in behavior and cognition. They use neuropsychological tests, cognitive tasks and psychophysics, but also the most sophisticated brain imaging techniques to try to unravel the mysteries of higher mental functions (perception, memory, language, etc.). Affective neuroscience, for its part, is interested in the behavior of neurons in relation to emotions, while social neuroscience aims to understand social processes and behaviors through biological mechanisms.
Finally being able to observe intelligence in action in vivo
The rise of cutting-edge brain imaging techniques at the end of the last century, particularly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has brought a great leap forward in our knowledge of the brain, making it possible to visualize its structure and functioning live and safely. Not to mention that brain imaging has brought a significant advantage to the research process itself by making it possible to observe the learner at work without having to interrupt them to question them.
Researchers have since been able, among other things, to uncover the brain mechanisms involved in the acquisition of school learning such as reading and arithmetic (Dehaene, 2007 , 2011 ), specify the conditions necessary for learning ( the 4 pillars ), confirm the existence of brain plasticity , grasp the importance of emotions in cognition and learning, and reveal the cognitive inhibition system , the third system of thought and “key to human intelligence” according to its discoverer, Olivier Houdé (1995, 2000). What is particularly interesting for the advancement of knowledge in education, according to Steve Masson, professor at the Faculty of Education at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) and director of the Neuroeducation Research Laboratory (LRN), is the fact that we are no longer limited to the functioning of the brain. “More and more researchers […] are also trying to understand how this functioning develops and how learning can influence this development,” he explains in an article entitled .
New cognitive sciences 2.0
Cutting-edge neuroimaging has seen a major shift since the recent launch of the Iseult MRI, the most powerful of its kind in the world, with a magnetic field reaching 11.7 teslas (T). Built to better understand the human brain, the device provides images of our gray matter that are 100 times more precise than with a standard MRI. The giant cylinder, the size of a five-story building, is located in France at the NeuroSpin brain imaging center, led by neuroscientist Stanislas Dahaene. Added to this are the dazzling advances in artificial intelligence (AI), which, among other things, make it possible to analyze very large quantities of data obtained by MRIs.
The proper use of neuroscience in education
This scientific access to the workings of our most complex and fascinating organ has not only generated resistance from those who see it as a reductive approach to understanding the human mind.