How Critical Thinking Skills Develop: A Brainy Overview
By: The Juice
Tags: Learning, Education, Brain, Edtech, Critical Thinking

While the brain takes nearly 25 years to fully develop, its most rapid changes occur during adolescence making it a critical period for students to engage in stimulating activities that promote thinking.

The Prefrontal Cortex: Home to Higher-Order Thinking

Put your hand on your forehead (as if you have a headache) — the area behind your hand is where your prefrontal cortex is located. The prefrontal cortex regulates our thoughts, emotions, and actions through extensive connections to other neural structures, and is the main center for critical thinking. Without it, we would not be able to perform many executive functions like problem-solving, reasoning, self-motivation, planning, decision-making, self-control, and the list goes on.

Compared to all other animals, the human brain has the greatest volume of prefrontal cortex — which is why humans have the greatest potential to think critically!

The prefrontal cortex is the last neural structure to mature. During adolescence, the prefrontal cortex both grows in a process called myelination and shrinks in a process called pruning.

The Growing Adolescent Brain

New neural networks form when we repeat activities and link ideas. In a process called myelination, fatty “myelin sheaths” insulate connecting neurons to increase the speed and efficiency of the flow of information from one neural region to another. While myelination begins early in life and continues into adulthood, the production of myelin sheaths escalates during adolescence. Becausemyelination facilitates faster long-range connections in the brain, adolescents gain an increased ability to think abstractly and bring ideas together from different locations in the brain.

The Shrinking Adolescent Brain

During childhood and adolescents the brain soaks up information like a sponge, but there is only so much storage space in the brain. As a result, “ synaptic pruning” occurs. This process is often referred to as the “ use it or lose it “ philosophy — the neural pathways that are underutilized are pruned or removed from the brain.

Basically, the brain decides which neural links to keep depending on how often they are used. So, if you want to speak a foreign language, play a musical instrument, or become a great athlete, you should engage in those activities before and during adolescence.

Neurons that Fire Together, Wire Together

During this period of rapid neural development, learning actually changes how the adolescent brain is structured and how it functions. As teachers, parents, and mentors it is our responsibility to provide students with the foundational information and learning opportunities necessary to stimulate their developing neural networks of executive functions.

Neurons that fire together, wire together. Basically the more often you stimulate a neural-circuit in your brain, the stronger that circuit becomes. This phenomena explains why it becomes easier to speak a foreign language with practice and why learning how to play a second musical instrument is easier than learning how to play an instrument for the first time — practice strengthens the involved neural circuits.

Given that schooling occurs when the brain is undergoing its most rapid period of growth, caregivers and educators play a critical part in changing adolescents’ neural structures and shaping their brain function. Research shows that “a well-developed prefrontal cortex with strong Executive Functions can improve both academic and life outcomes.”

Students, even if they don’t know it or admit it, need help in order to take full advantage of this transformational period in their development.