practical applications from neuroscience to coaching - developing 'thinking players'

In previous blogs, I have looked t the science of learning from education research (see here). In this blog I look at some of the practical applications from neuroscience to coaching. 

Readers of past blogs will know that my interest in the science of learning was 'sparked' by the 1999 book, How People Learn (available here), and attempts to understand what it means to develop 'thinking players' since I began to 'play with' the Game Sense approach in the mid-1990s.  

Does our brain create the world we experience? 

Neuroscience seems to suggest that it does.

The brain is incredibly complex - roughly 100 billion neurons each with between 1,000-10,000 synapses. Our brain is clearly not like a computer, for if it were, it would function the same regardless of one's mood, environment, 'energy level', and we would remember everything. 

Cognitive neuroscience suggests experience is processed by our brain. We continue to discover the parts of the brain involved with (responsible for?) our experience of the world and ability to interact with the world. For example, the Broca's area in the left hemisphere of the frontal cortex processes the production of language; if the Wernicke's area in the left side of the temporal lobe is damaged we are unable to understand written or spoken language.

The brain is changeable in response to thoughts, experiences, and actions. This is called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity may be the formation of new neurons, new synapses, or the strengthening of existing synapses. We also lose synapses that are not used. It appears that synaptic neuroplasticity is how we build habits and skills. The process is known as long term potentiation. The result is the brain changes itself in response to what we do. Thinking changes the brain, and what we repeatedly think about gets easier to think about. A habit forms. Habits create 'brain maps' in so far that synaptic connections get faster.

Coaching can be thought of as seeking to influence habits. The 'mechanism' coaches can target to do this is player neuroplasticity. The central premise of Dan Coyle's book the Talent Code (available here) is neuroplasticity, and the role of myelin. laid down by repetition with focussed attention. Attention can be directed voluntarily by the pre-fontal cortex or by a stimulus that can't be ignored. From what I understand, it is the quality of attention that initiates and drives neuroplasticity. Research shows that neuroplasticity is greatest when one pays voluntary attention.

I read recently that the main function of the brain is to calculate the future. The brain creates first what it expects to 'see' and that is why our eyes often deceive us, as we do not pay complete attention to what is 'out there'. We do not 'see' what is 'out there', we 'see' what is understood 'in here' modified by what we perceive 'out there'. We look for what we expect. This is because the brain 'is a pattern detector' and its goal directed search for information is guided by its synaptic connections - or one's 'brain maps'. 

Coaches prime thinking

Build requirements for player thinking from action goals to the context. Prime players thinking using information. This can be achieved by a variation of availability bias, called anchoring: that is, the coach decisions about what information is made available to players. 

Priming has implications for the way coaches frame questions to players. Closed questions always prime the answer. For example, "the ball is either in or out when in touches the line, which one is it?" Closed questions are not open to challenge. They require what Kahneman called System 1 'fast thinking'. If as a coach we want conscious, analytical, reflective, abstract, deliberate, decontextualised or re-contextualised (as when seeking transfer from the known/familiar to an unknown/unfamiliar context) - what Kahneman called System 2 'slow thinking' - we prime thinking by wording our questions differently:

    "tell me more...."

    "give me an example..."

    "describe the situation..."

    "what lead up to this..."

    "what made it work..."

    "how did it happen.."

Priming is an advanced cognitive organiser: it orientates the brain in advance.

In Play with Purpose: Game Sense to Sport Literacy I include Rushall & Siedentop's (1972) shaping strategy as a guide for planning game-based teaching episodes as one of the strategies they emphasise is priming.

Trying to make sense of what neuroscience is telling about brain development, I understand that skills which are at the 'autonomous stage of development' might be considered habits prompted by context triggering neural pathways enabling action to proceed without the perception of thought, and the mechanism for this is the absence of the prefrontal cortex in the decision making. The pre frontal cortex is able to be by-passed as habits come from strengthened neural connections negating the need for choice. To learn or change a habit, the pre frontal cortex gets involved as we are now in the process giving voluntary attention in order to make choices, and this engages neuroplasticity to create new ways of thinking, or new 'mental models'.

In a 2017 paper available here, Toner argued that it is the interaction of conscious learning and unconscious schemata that leads to the development of habitual reflexivity which allows skilled action to develop over time.

The application to coaching: Coaches might be thought of as in the 'business' of making and changing mental models - and thus developing thinking players

Bibliography

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Chang, Y. (2014). Reorganization and plastic changes of the human brain associated with skill learning and expertise. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Available here

Chen, K. et al (2019). Exercise training improves motor skill learning via selective activation of mTOR. Science Advances, 5(7). Available here 

Dayan, E., Cohen, L. G. (2011). Neuroplasticity subserving motor skill learning. Neuron, 72(3), 443-454. Available here

Floyer-Lea, A., & Matthews, P. M. (2005). Distinguishable brain activation networks for short and long term motor skill learning. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94, 512-518.Available here

McKenzie, I. A. (2014). Motor skill learning requires active central myelination. Science, 346(6207), 318-322. Available here

O'Connor, J., & Lages, A. (2019). Coaching the brain: Practical applications of neuroscience to coaching. Routledge. Available here

Rioult-Pedotti, M-S., Pekanovic, A., Atiemo, C. S., Marshall, J., & Luft, A. R. (2015). Dopamine promotes motor cortex plasticity and motor skill learning via PLC activation. PlosOne. Available here

Sampaio-Bapttista et al. (2013). Motor skill learning induces changes in white matter microstructure and myelination. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(50), 19499-19503. Available here

Siedel, O., Carius, ., Kenville, R., & Ragert, P. (2017). Motor learning in a complex balance task and associated neuroplasticity: a comparison between endurance athletes and nonathletes. The Journal of Neuroscience, 118, 1849-1860. Available here