Those present in the auditorium of the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, in São Paulo, on January 26th, witnessed an experience related to music that was very different from traditional concerts. On a small screen, images of the brain of doctor Alicia Kowaltowski, from the Institute of Chemistry of the University of São Paulo (IQ-USP), and neuroscientist Patrícia de Carvalho Aguiar were projected to an audience of 429 students and 71 high school teachers. , a researcher at the Einstein Brain Institute, while they played the violin and cello, respectively. The show was created by statistician and neuroscientist João Ricardo Sato, professor at the Center for Mathematics, Computing and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). Sato has been researching for some time how Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology can be used to record multiple brain activities and explore teaching and learning processes. The same technology is used by him and other researchers at UFABC to study musical cognition in the light of neuroscience. At the event on the 26th, brain, music and education converged in a great spectacle.
fNIRS technology can monitor variations in oxygenation levels in brain areas while the person is moving, an experiment that was unfeasible a few decades ago. To obtain this type of information, the individual needed to enter an MRI machine and hold their head still for some time. With the development of new portable functional spectroscopy technologies, it has become possible to map neuronal activity while participants move naturally, performing different activities.
In one of his studies, published in October 2018 in the scientific journal Frontiers in Psychology, Sato and collaborators used fNIRS technology to test the correlation between the activity of a teacher's and a student's brain areas during an interaction in an educational context. They identified a functional connection between areas of the teacher's and student's brains. “Our finding could provide an innovative way of investigating and understanding the teaching and learning process”, he suggests.
The January presentation at Einstein was part of the neuroscience course, a preparatory event for the São Paulo Neuroscience Olympiad (BrainBee), which will select three representatives from São Paulo for the national stage, to be held in March. Whoever wins the national stage participates in the international competition, which this year will be in South Korea. BrainBee in São Paulo is in its fifth edition, since 2015. Since then, the competition has continued to grow: 53 students from 12 schools signed up the first time. In 2018, this number was 278 students from 65 schools. Students aged 14 to 19 can participate.
Neuroscientist Sérgio Gomes da Silva, a researcher at the Instituto Israelita de Ensino e Pesquisa Albert Einstein, was responsible for convincing the hospital to host and finance BrainBee in São Paulo. The competition was created in 1998 in the United States on the initiative of neuroscientist Norbert Myslinski, from the University of Maryland. Over time, it expanded to other countries. There are currently around 160 Neuroscience Olympiad coordinators distributed across local committees across the world. The objective is to select participants for the global competition.
An innovative aspect of the São Paulo stage is that, to participate, students need to be accompanied by at least one teacher, a type of tutor who follows the student throughout the evaluation process – including in the national and international competition, if they advance. “We want to transform these teachers into multiplier agents, capable of returning to their schools and awakening students’ interest in subjects related to neuroscience”, explains Gomes da Silva.
Most students and teachers know little about the brain. “To prepare them, we recommend books and films and provide educational material for download”, says the researcher. They then participate in the neuroscience course, through which they come into contact with the area in lectures with neuroscientists from research institutions across the country. Biochemist Daniela Martí Barros, retired professor from the Institute of Biological Sciences at the Federal University of Rio Grande (Furg), in Rio Grande do Sul, was one of the guests to speak at the 2019 preparatory course. In her talk, she discussed the molecules responsible for communication between cells of the nervous system.
For almost a decade, Barros has been developing projects to help introduce neuroscience into basic education, through seminars and workshops with public school teachers in Rio Grande, a city just over 300 kilometers south of Porto Alegre. “The idea is to present some of the neurobiological bases responsible for brain functioning and discuss how this can be used in learning,” he says. Retired, today she dedicates herself to lecturing on the subject. In one of them, she deals with the processing of memories and how this knowledge can be used in the classroom. In another, she discusses the paths taken by the brain to reach the state of mindfulness. “The idea is that this knowledge will allow teachers to rethink and improve their teaching based on neuroscience”, she argues.
Barros explains that this type of knowledge about the brain has the potential to help in the educational process. “We observed in some cases that the fact that students learned more about the brain and the role of emotions in learning helped them improve the relationship they had with their teachers in the classroom”, comments the researcher.
Science through education
Barros today dedicates part of his time to the initiatives of the National Science for Education Network, created in November 2014 by a group of 30 researchers from different higher education institutions in the country. The network is coordinated by neuroscientist Roberto Lent, from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (Idor). “The initiative aims to bring together researchers so that they can come together to guide their research projects towards topics related to education, in addition to creating conditions for governments to invest resources to stimulate these projects and insert them in schools”, explains Lent , which since 2013 has been carrying out research to expand and disseminate knowledge about more efficient forms of teaching (see FAPESP Research No. 255). He recently released the book The learning brain – Neuroplasticity and learning (Athenaeus).
The network also works to establish bridges with teachers, absorbing their classroom experience to identify problems and issues that could be the subject of research. “We have more than 120 associated research leaders and this year we started joining other professionals so that this collaborative work gains more momentum.” According to Lent, partnerships like these have allowed the development of pedagogical techniques based on neuroscience and cognitive psychology studies, which improve learning. He cites some examples: spaced practice, which spreads exposure to study content over a certain period of time; intercalation, which alternates study topics; and remembrance, which stimulates the reconsolidation of short-term memory.
Lent's engagement in developing research on science for education led him to participate in a lecture for students and teachers in the preparatory course for the 2018 edition of BrainBee in São Paulo. Always on the day of the competition, while students take the test, their tutors participate in debates about how to introduce neuroscience in schools. The strategy is beginning to bear some fruit. At least two schools in the state of São Paulo are introducing the topic into their curricula. One of them is the Technical College of Campinas (Cotuca), linked to the State University of Campinas (Unicamp).
The person mainly responsible for the initiative is oceanographer Jodir Pereira da Silva, head of the Cotuca Science Department. He says that the school's relationship with neuroscience began in 2017, when one of the students wanted to participate in the São Paulo stage of BrainBee and invited him to be her tutor. “I accepted and we signed up for the preparatory course together,” he says. “Other students were excited about the idea and I decided to open more places.”
“We want to transform these teachers into multiplier agents, capable of returning to their schools and awakening students’ interest in subjects related to neuroscience”, says Gomes da Silva
In the end, 10 students participated in the event that year. After the course, Jodir realized that the level of knowledge required in the Olympics was high. He then decided to team up with other Cotuca professors and some researchers from Unicamp to organize classes on neuroscience for students. “The result couldn’t have been better,” he says. “In our first participation in the neuroscience Olympiad, one of our students took first place and qualified for the national stage.” The three best placed in the state stage qualify for the national stage. The best placed in the national competition represents the country in the world competition.
Back in Campinas, they decided to maintain and expand the course they had created. Classes on neuroscience became weekly and also included the participation of researchers from the Brazilian Institute of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology (Brainn), one of the Research, Innovation and Diffusion Centers (Cepid) funded by FAPESP. “They give lectures and help coordinate study groups on all the basics of neuroscience,” he says. More recently, they obtained resources to acquire a brain model for anatomical studies, in addition to books on brain anatomy. In 2018, Cotuca came first again in the São Paulo stage of BrainBee.
Introducing neuroscience into schools also became the mission of 17-year-old Jonathan Batista Ferreira. At 12, he was a medalist in the National Mathematics Olympiad. The achievement encouraged him to undertake a junior scientific initiation at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Experimental Neurology at USP in Ribeirão Preto. It was there that he came into contact with the world of neuroscience and scientific communication. “I decided to do a project with the purpose of engaging students and teachers from public schools in the region in issues related to the brain.” Under the guidance of physiologist Norberto Garcia Cairasco, from the Department of Physiology at USP-RP, Ferreira created a course on the history of neuroscience that should be applied in some schools in the city in the first half of this year. “In addition, we created open-air events in city squares, in which we presented neuroscience to the public.”
Jonathan was also one of the speakers at the Alberto Einstein Hospital preparatory course. He spoke about how neuroscience can help students and teachers improve the learning environment, in addition to talking about his still short career as a scientific communicator.
Young neuroscientists
Many students who have these experiences choose to pursue a career in neuroscience. This is the case of Caroline Magalhães, finalist in the first two editions of the Paulista Neuroscience Olympiad. In the first, in 2015, she came second. In 2016, first. “At school, I really liked biology and genetics, but I became more and more interested in neuroscience as I prepared for BrainBee,” she says.
Given her good performance in both competitions, she decided, while still in high school, at the Estádio de Campinas school, to do a junior scientific initiation project on childhood epilepsy. Caroline Magalhães sent it to medical geneticist Iscia Lopes-Cendes, coordinator of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Unicamp, who agreed to guide her informally. After completing her research and high school, the young woman was invited by Stage to tutor students who intended to participate in BrainBee. The experience, however, was short-lived. Months later she was admitted to Columbia University, in the United States, where she moved in 2018. At 19 years old, Caroline is now studying neuroscience and developing a research project on Parkinson's disease.
According to Lent, partnerships between neuroscientists and teachers have allowed the development of pedagogical techniques based on neuroscience and cognitive psychology studies, which improve learning.
Giovanna Lemos de Oliveira, 19 years old, also has a CV that is the envy of many researchers. She says she prepared herself for the São Paulo stage of BrainBee in 2015. She won not only the regional stage but also the national stage, qualifying for the world competition in Australia. “It was a sensational experience,” she says. “I returned to Brazil knowing that was what I wanted to do.” The student then began to get involved in research and scientific events. She did short internships at the USP Institute of Psychiatry and the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel. In 2017, she got a scholarship to study neuroscience at the North American university Johns Hopkins.
Neuroscience, music and performing arts
Just like the students and teachers who attended the concert at Albert Einstein Hospital in January this year, those who saw the Santo André Symphony Orchestra, at the city's Municipal Theater, two years ago, on September 23, 2017, witnessed a presentation very different from the conventional one. Just like in São Paulo, a screen installed on the stage projected images of pianist Elza Gushikem's brain activity in real time, captured using colored sensors connected to a black cap she wore. The public could observe the oxygenation of areas of her brain while she and her colleague, pianist Patrícia Vanzella, performed Or carnival two animais, by French composer Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921). Two years earlier, the same pianists had performed in the same way in the UFABC auditorium. At the time, they played works by classical and contemporary composers, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and John Cage (1912-1992).
These shows are part of the extension activities of the Neuroscience and Music project at UFABC, coordinated by Vanzella. In addition to being a pianist, she is a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Neuroscience at UFABC. Created in 2015, the project aims to study musical cognition in the light of neuroscience. “The idea is to try to understand the importance of music for human beings, what happens in the brain when we listen to it or practice it, how the nervous system processes these stimuli, how music evokes memories and to what extent the brain functions involved in musical processing they are related to other cognitive functions, such as language processing”, he explains.
To answer these and other questions, the researcher and her team use several technologies, including fNIRS. The idea, according to her, is to study how music is processed in our nervous system and how it can modulate it. The pianist says that music involves several mental functions, such as motor planning, memory, attention, empathy and decision making. “These processes are also present in our social interactions and can be studied through musical practice,” she says. One of her studies, published in February in the scientific journal Frontiers in Psychology, compared the brain activity of violin duos to assess whether it would be possible to identify, from a neural point of view, the roles of leader and follower in a musical ensemble. “When we compared data from musicians playing alone and together, we found that only the brain of the violinist in the role of follower showed higher levels of oxygenation in areas linked to social interaction and prediction of motor behavior.”
The emergence of the UFABC nucleus, of which Vanzella is a member, occurred amidst a broad context of development of brain imaging technologies capable of inferring brain activity. In countries in Asia, Europe and the United States, over the last few decades, there has been a multiplication of study centers and laboratories dedicated to investigating the neurophysiological bases of musical processing and its relationships with other cognitive-behavioral aspects. One of them is the Brain and Creativity Institute, based at the University of Southern California, in the United States, where researchers study the effects of musical processing on the developing brain, the structuring of narratives and the processing of feelings.
“We decided to create a similar research center in Brazil”, says Vanzella. In addition to music, the neuroscience research carried out at UFABC is also related to the performing arts. In his post-doctoral internship at the Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Neuroscience at UFABC, actor and doctor of performing arts Gustavo Garcia da Palma, known artistically as Gustavo Sol, works on the development of what he calls an interface for capturing and identifying states of poetic presences. An electroencephalography (EEG) device captures electrical variations in your brain and facial expressions and transforms them into numbers using software. “From there,” he explains, “a computer reacts to this data and transforms it into projections in the form of light, videos and sounds that help compose the scene.” This is intended to create a more organic environment between the actor and the audiovisual elements that surround him.
Sol became interested in the interface between art and neuroscience during his master's degree. During his doctorate, which began in 2013 at USP's School of Communication and Arts (ECA), he began working on the development of this interface, which relies on artificial neural network algorithms to recognize neurophysiological patterns associated with four types of poetic states: performance art , realistic theater, epic theater (a theatrical genre) and dances. He managed to establish these standards using equipment initially developed to increase user immersion in digital games. The researcher explains that the system can infer neural patterns related to some basic emotions, such as frustration, while the individual is playing.
Using this information, and associating the data with a heart rate meter, Gustavo Sol's interface infers neurophysiological patterns during the scene and identifies poetic states, improving the immersive experience of interpreters and performers.
The development of this interface, in part, took place when Sol was in France, during a sandwich doctorate period. There he came into contact with researchers Laurent Berger and Gabriele Sofia, from the University of Montpellier III. The two participate in a study group on issues of art and the contemporary world. “Sofia develops work around the relationship between theater and neuroscience”, he explains. “Through Berger, she did a residency with Daniel Romero, multimedia artist and director of the Arts and Technology Laboratory at the National Dramaturgy Center in Montpellier.” Together, they began testing with artificial intelligence.
Next, Sol began to dedicate himself to the creation and development of the interface for recognizing poetic states. He was at the Epilepsy Center in Zurich, Switzerland, where he interned with the team of neurologist Thomas Grunwald. It was the Swiss researcher who helped him with the issues of signal processing and interpretation of EEG tracings. The actor says that the interface he developed could help pave the way for the creation of new works and transversal creative processes, involving live neurophysiological data. “At the same time, we can use this technique to create new teaching and research methodologies in art, something I have called digital dramaturgy.”
His work, says the researcher, develops in the wake of a line of research that began to take shape in the 1960s, based on works such as that of musician and performer Alvin Lucier. In the 1990s and 2000s, other artists, such as Australian Tina Gonçalves, began an effort to detect public states. One of his most notable works is the responsive video art installation Chameleon, which seeks to explore ideas of emotional contagion. Sol explains that the project is the result of a collaboration with British neuroscientists Hugo Critchley and Chris Frith, from the University of Sussex, and computer scientists Rosalind Picard and Rana El Kaliouby, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the United States.
Now, in his post-doctorate, Gustavo Sol is using fNIRS and higher resolution equipment to understand the relationship between emotions expressed in performance, action planning and the construction of the self. The idea is to have a more detailed report of the body's reactions during performance, such as pupil dilation, respiratory flow, heartbeat, among others, and, thus, create new methodologies for teaching, research and creation in art.
Scientific article
VANZELLA, P. et al. fNIRS responses in professional violinists while playing duets: Evidence for distinct leader and follower roles at the brain level. Frontiers in Psychology. Feb. 2019.
BROCKINGTON, G. et al. From the laboratory to the classroom: The potential of functional near-infrared spectroscopy in educational neuroscience. Frontiers in Psychology. oct. 2018.
BALARDIN, Joana B. et al. Imaging brain function with functional near-infrared spectroscopy in unconstrained environments. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. mai. 2017.
This text was originally published by FAPESP Research according to the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND. read the original here.
