Learning by Heart or with Heart: Brain Asymmetry Reflects Pedagogical Practices

Abstract

Brain hemispheres develop rather symmetrically, except in the case of pathology or intense training. As school experience is a form of training, the current study tested the influence of pedagogy on morphological development through the cortical thickness (CTh) asymmetry index (AI). First, we compared the CTh AI of 111 students aged 4 to 18 with 77 adults aged > 20. Second, we investigated the CTh AI of the students as a function of schooling background (Montessori or traditional). At the whole-brain level, CTh AI was not different between the adult and student groups, even when controlling for age. However, pedagogical experience was found to impact CTh AI in the temporal lobe, within the parahippocampal (PHC) region. The PHC region has a functional lateralization, with the right PHC region having a stronger involvement in spatiotemporal context encoding, while the left PHC region is involved in semantic encoding. We observed CTh asymmetry toward the left PHC region for participants enrolled in Montessori schools and toward the right for participants enrolled in traditional schools. As these participants were matched on age, intelligence, home-life and socioeconomic conditions, we interpret this effect found in memory-related brain regions to reflect differences in learning strategies. Pedagogy modulates how new concepts are encoded, with possible long-term effects on knowledge transfer.

Keywords: Montessori education; brain asymmetry; cortical thickness; education; pedagogy; semantic memory.

Figure 1

CTh AI of the temporal lobe (left) and its development (right) for Montessori− and traditionally schooled participants: Data points are the values predicted by the model that takes into account the effects of gender and SES.

Figure 2

Development of the CTh AI of the PHC subregion for the whole sample (left) and for Montessori− and traditionally schooled participants (right): Data points are the values predicted by the model that takes into account the effects of gender and SES.