Title: Non-invasive modulation of brain activity
Description: The mind, brain, and education field has long held that linking neuroscience and education is "a bridge too far" (Bruer, 1997). Yet newer tools such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have the potential to examine brain-behavior relationships in a revealing manner. Current cognitive neuroscience research has relied heavily on imaging technologies that relate psychophysical data to imaging correlates. However, imaging does not and cannot directly assess causality. Brain stimulation may help build a new kind of bridge, one that more directly links neuroscience to education, and may also better connect the research and practice communities. TDCS can temporarily enhance or block the function of a particular brain region. By designing studies based on existing neurocognitive theory, researchers will be able to conduct hypothesis-driven experiments that observe causal relationships between focal brain stimulation and cognitive-behavioral performance. Because tDCS affects observable cognition and behavior, it may be a brain technology that is understood particularly intuitively by educators; this may help educators enter into richer dialogue with the neurocognitive research community.

I make the case that brain stimulation will illuminate three important elements of brain function relevant to educators: connectivity between multiple brain regions; causality in brain-behavior relationships; and constraints the brain imposes on higher-order cognitive processing. Special populations may take advantage of the direct effects of brain stimulation in therapeutic settings, stimulating the growth of a subfield of "clinical neuroeducation." I contend that the most unique affordance of tDCS may be its ability to examine inhibitory and disinhibitory neural dynamics in complex cognition: reductions of activity in one brain region can disinhibit, and increase, activity in other regions. Importantly, these more direct brain-behavior relationships may foster new ways of thinking about cognition. Thus brain stimulation may have "upstream" effects on theory in neuroscience, psychology and education. For these reasons, brain stimulation may become an important theory-building tool in mind, brain and education research.
Subjects: Cognitive learning, Brain stimulation, Cognitive psychology, Experimental Psychology