respond to this with 250 words and ask a question and 2 apa citations: Brain plasticity indicates the potential modifiability of a person’s cognitive abilities and brain activities (Karbach & Verh

respond to this with 250 words and ask a question and 2 apa citations:

Brain plasticity indicates the potential modifiability of a person’s cognitive abilities and brain activities (Karbach & Verhaeghen, 2020). Plasticity on average has found modularity to positively predict behavioral outcomes across a variety of interventions. Recent studies have shown that the modularity of brain networks may be a biological sign of cognitive control plasticity, which can not only be used to evaluate the effects of cognitive control interventions but can also provide better predictions to help individuals make more knowledgeable clinical decisions concerning intervention choices (Bonkhoff, Schirmer, Bretzner & Rost, 2020).  Additionally, Bonkhoff et al, discuss that the relationship between modularity and cognitive control benefits, modularity was found to be a very stable predictor across populations from patients with brain damage to healthy individuals and intervention methods such as aerobic exercise, and it was not influenced by educational background, age, initial cognitive ability, or brain volume. 

According to Yue, Martin, Fischer-Baum, Ramos-Nunez, Ye & Deem (2017), previous studies have shown that the human brain is organized into different subnetworks, termed modules that support different aspects of behavioral function, for example, modules for visual perception, motor control, and attentional processing which leads to modularity. Yue et al, go on to discuss that modularity characterizes the community structure of the network in terms of the relative strength of within and between module connections. The relationship between individual differences in whole-brain modularity and performance varies as a function of task complexity. For example, in a recent study by Yue et al, (2017) low-modularity individuals showed an advantage in complex tasks, whereas high modularity individuals showed an advantage in simple tasks.  

The brain employs two strategies for learning and retaining information. One is experience-expectant storage which is often associated with critical periods in development and the other is experience-dependent storage which generally occurs unconstrained by critical periods (Fox, 1999). Critical Periods are certain experiences that need to happen early in life in order to allow brain growth and development to proceed in a normal manner, and if these experiences are absent, or occur later in development, brain growth and development is substantively altered. Synapses are the points of communication between neurons that mainly develop postnatally in a process characterized by overproduction in infancy followed by “pruning” throughout childhood and adolescence. The age at which synapse number is high which is about adult level coincides with so-called critical periods during which certain types of learning, including language learning, are enhanced (Fox, 1999).

A Bridge Too Far

            What I think A Bridge Too Far means in terms of the application of brain science to teaching practice is that brain activity is not guiding education, it is merely guiding sets of behaviors that may scale-up to relevant educational outcomes (Horvath & Donoghue, 2016). The effectiveness of the program by dividing the "bridge" into more easily traversed spans could be to measure the transfer of the repetitious skills of behaviors obtained to the larger behavioral goals of education.

References

Bonkhoff, A., Schirmer, M., Bretzner, M. & Rost, N. (2020). From <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331427608_Brain_Modularity_A_Biomarker_of_Intervention-related_Plasticity>  

Fox, N. (1999). The Role of Early Experience in Infant Development. From

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.456.7088&rep=rep1&type=pdf#page=33 

Horvath, J. & Donoghue, G. (2016). A Bridge Too Far – Revisited: Reframing Bruer’s Neuroeducation Argument for Modern Science of Learning Practitioners. From https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00377/full

Karbach, J. & Verhaeghen, P. (2020). Making working memory work: a meta-analysis of executive control and working memory training in older adults. Psychological Science, vol. 25, no. 11, pp. 2027–2037, 2014. From http://06203qq7i.mp01.y.http.web.a.ebscohost.com.prx-keiser.lirn.net/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=2ce7f582-bbcf-4230-ba3c-dab3d29c5594%40sdc-v-sessmgr01 

 Yue, Q., Martin, R. C., Fischer-Baum, S., Ramos-Nuñez, A. I., Ye, F., & Deem, M. W. (2017). Brain modularity mediates the relation between task complexity and performance. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(9), 1532–1546.  https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01142 . From <http://06203qq7i.mp01.y.http.web.a.ebscohost.com.prx-keiser.lirn.net/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=2ce7f582-bbcf-4230-ba3c-dab3d29c5594%40sdc-v-sessmgr01>