How do we learn?
By: Abdul Etibaroglu
Tags: Neuroscience, Learning, Brain, Virtual Reality, Online Education

The motivation of this writing was to explore how learning our learning shaped by mirror neurons.

We sought answers to the following questions:

How does online education might influence our learning? Mirror neurons at a very early age, adaptations, or inheritance? What mirror neurons do? Leaving speculations and overgeneralizations behind.

This year was phenomenal in the way to change our perspective toward many issues. We started the year with the virus which hit the medical system, tourism, and more education and research sectors. It is almost the end of the year, and everybody seems to get used to online teaching. But the question is its efficiency compared to the classroom environment?

The research published in 2017 indicates that classroom environments provide better learning outcomes than online classes. They back up their opinion on our brain comprehension in class. During real lectures, our brain takes spatial, temporal, and social disruptions. However, we lack these characteristics during online classes. When children observed a train that moved by an actor, they had greater sensorimotor activation, rather than an independently moving object. However, that method did not show effectiveness during classes. The same effect was observed in toddlers as well. Interestingly, these events showed mu suppression, which happens when a person observes someone doing it (or does himself).

Later authors indicate that as our perception is multidimensional, and our learning as well. The reasons for poor comprehension during CCTV or online classes are unrealistic sizes (of teacher or presenter), lacking of social interaction. As mentioned in the paper, the more interaction, the more learning. Although all of them taught online, children exhibited more learning with a human than robotic and android “teachers”. In another experiment, children were provided with TactileVR. By wearing VR tools they were able to touch and pick physical objects in virtual reality. Shapira and companions found out that children learned better with TactileVR, than simple online classes. The mirror neuron system showed inaccuracy while perceiving which is probably due to unmatched temporal and spatial information received from the frame. Human Mirror Neurons facilitated learning if spatial, temporal information was provided correctly, and the “presenter” is human. When considering children’s performance during online classes and assigning mirror neurons to the only perception can cause slips in vital situations.

The mirror neurons fire in case of contextual features is explained. Attention is an important player as well. Before we apply our knowledge of mirror neurons to the educational approach, we first need to get rid of generalizations. Over-generalization often mislead psychologists and neuroscientists. Properties of mirror neurons are either inherent (from birth) or developed by epigenetic factors. Epigenetic factors such as environmental, societal, and other factors influence more than our DNA sequence. For example, our adaptation to a new place or activity depending on how epigenetic factors activate/deactivate our DNA.

One example of generalizations about mirror neurons is the “correspondence problem.” During infancy, a baby develops an association between the mother’s hand when picking him and grasping. That combination repeats many times, and visuomotor neurons activate. This pathway falsely is defined for mirror neurons. The “Correspondence problem” appears when neuroscientists try to explain the newborn’s facial expression as it was “copied” from his mother. The infant is not able to identify their gestures because he did not see himself yet. There is an assumption that a newborn mirrors the mother’s gestures. Later this concurrency develops in a variety of contexts.

Let’s assume that mirror neurons take part in the copying of actions. Do they play a role in the process of perceiving actions themselves? In an experiment, mothers were asked to mirror the infant’s mouth opening and smiling more often. EEG of these children showed greater activation when they see mouth opening and happy stimuli than the control group. The experiment proves the action-perception role of mirror neurons. When mothers smiled more, children demonstrated activation in the right hemisphere of their brain. Another prove that mirror neurons use emotional processing is that children showed more sad expressions if their mothers were depressed during early infancy.

The plasticity of mirror neurons is not highly associated with the sensorimotor system. Rather than occasions such as birds singing, human language are depends on the context. These actions are highly plastic which means can improve faster with repetitions and related to one’s own experience.

We indeed possess mirror neurons from birth but their functions are not genetically determined as many assume. If functions are purely determined genetically, human beings should be in the same sensitivity during their lifetime. We all know that at different ages, we tend to be more or less sensitive.

Mirror neurons do not only copy observations, but they are highly essential in the coding of action and build spatial connections. In brain areas that are associated with coding and space relation mirror occurs and connects with these neurons. It would be confusing if we assert only sensorimotor function to mirror neurons when they also do space coding and object processing. Mirror neurons work in a context-dependent manner and have many unexplored characteristics. They help to learn and take part in the adjustment of the brain.

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