For some Christians, brain science and talk of “caring for your brain” can be uncomfortable. It smacks of a physicalist conception of reality in which all we are is our physical bodies. As Christians, we believe in the reality of the soul and a transcendent immaterial world. To focus myopically on the brain may cause us to lose sight of the spiritual aspect of what it means to be human and the hope we have for eternal life.
Moreover, some Christians fear, utilizing brain science to boost cognitive performance through strengthening the brain sounds like a mad scientist’s version of humanistic self-help. In our secular age, God-talk has been pushed to the margins and human innovation has taken center stage. The good news, we are told, is that with the right life plan in place, we can grow strong enough to turn our lives around on our own.
How, as Christians, can we maintain our convictions about the reality of a spiritual realm and our desperate need for God’s grace while simultaneously availing ourselves to the best of current neuroscience? What insights might scientifically-observable processes like neurogenesis and neuroplasticity yield in our calling to conform ourselves to the image of Christ?
In this blog, I will draw connections between recent findings in neuroscience with the aims of a liberal arts education. Along the way, I will consider the relationship between the body and soul, including the brain and the mind, within the context of growing spiritually and morally. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate that a working knowledge in how to care for one’s brain is one way we can steward our human bodies well and to lead lives of virtue and wisdom in service to Jesus Christ.
Growing New Brain Cells Through a Love for Learning
One of the most stunning insights from current neuroscience is that we can grow new brain cells. As humans age, we lose brain cells over time, which is partially what leads to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Aging, of course, is unpreventable and irreversible, but the research is clear that caring for our brains can slow the aging process. By adjusting the way we eat, sleep, and exercise, we can create new brain cells that actually grow one’s brain and increase one’s cognitive capacity.
In Biohack Your Brain (HarperCollins, 2020), Dr. Kristen Willeumier (PhD, UCLA) offers practical tips for increasing neurogenesis, that is, growing new brain cells. Some of these tips include eating blueberries, learning new words, and writing with your nondominant hand (22). Interestingly, Dr. Willeumier writes, cultivating curiosity is another way for spurring neurogenesis. When humans learn for the sake of pure joy and a love for knowledge, new brain cells are created and neural connections are strengthened (184).
One of the key aims of a liberal arts education, of course, is precisely this: to cultivate a love for learning. As Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain have demonstrated in The Liberal Arts Tradition, a fantastic summary of Christian, classical education, tuning the heart is a critical stage that precedes training in the liberal arts. This stage they call “musical education” and it serves as the soil for knowledge of God, humanity, and creation to later flower (7).
It is thus important to point out that the goal of cultivating a love for learning in the earliest years of education has both affective and neurological benefits. As we put specimens of goodness, truth, and beauty before our students for them to love and pursue, their hearts (metaphorically-speaking) and brains grow.
Cultivating Intelligence and Intellectual Virtue Through the Trivium
Not only can we grow new brain cells with certain practices, but there is growing research that we can actually increase intelligence. Dr. Willeumier writes, “In terms of intelligence, research shows we can change our brain to boost intellect in a number of ways. Primary among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is by learning new information and skills, which helps to strengthen neuronal communication and rewires parts of the brain responsible for cognitive thinking” (42). Additionally, research shows we can increase intelligence by how we eat, sleep, exercise, and handle stress.
There are many ways to think about intelligence, but we all have three main types. First, we have what is called crystallized intelligence: the knowledge, facts, and skills we have accumulated over time. Second, we have fluid Intelligence: the ability to problem solve. Finally, we have emotional intelligence: the ability to interact and connect socially with others.
Interestingly, it turns out that reading long-form narratives is the best way to boost all three.1 Reading for extended amounts of time, at least thirty minutes, improves overall neuronal connectivity and the integrity of white matter in the brain (188). Along with reading, several other modes of language acquisition strengthen cognitive capacity. Learning new vocabulary, studying a new language, and writing all contribute to strengthening memory, growing new brain cells, and staving off neurodegenerative diseases.
In the liberal arts tradition, the language arts are known as the Trivium. These are tools for fashioning, or producing, knowledge, as opposed to subject areas, or sciences, to be studied in theory only. In other words, they are the skills for learning and using language. However, the purpose of the Trivium is not merely to increase one’s intelligence. It is growing in wisdom and intellectual virtue, ultimately to service God and neighbor (47).
As Christian, classical educators, we want to promote the pursuit of objective truth, beliefs that correspond to reality. It is encouraging, and not surprising, to see that language acquisition has been shown neurologically to increase one’s intelligence. But let us not lose sight of the fact that intelligence is not the end goal for Christians. We are to use our minds to honor and serve the Lord, especially the way we use language. While all humans will use language whether they receive a classical education or not, the Trivium prepares students to use language wisely and in service to others.
The Brain and Gymnastic Education
For time immemorial, philosophers have argued about the relationship between the mind and body. How do these two parts of a person relate? Are they ultimately one thing or two? More recently, this debate has taken a scientific edge. Are mental states reducible to firing neurons?
In an article for Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, “Neuroplasticity and Spiritual Formation”, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA, offers an interesting take on the relationship between the mind and the brain. The brain, he believes, serves as the passive recipient of experience, taking in the sensory data of the natural world. The mind, on the other hand, serves the active role of making decisions and choices about how to focus one’s attention.
Applying this approach to a current issue, Dr. Schwartz writes, “Many people are concerned about the effects of the internet on our distractibility. If ever there was an era in which the brain could be readily recognized as constantly putting out a call, ours is it. Because of this, more than ever, we now have to bring in the mind to decide what to listen to. A lot of what the brain is putting out calls about is not particularly good to listen to—certainly not to focus on.”
In this quotation, Dr. Schwartz suggests that while the brain serves as the central station for receiving sensory data, the mind’s job is to determine which data to focus on. In this way, Dr. Schwartz seems to conceive of the mind as the seat of the will, conscience, and affections. However, what Dr. Schwartz does not emphasize, at least in this article, is that the brain, neurologically-speaking, is very much active in these moments as well.
What I want to suggest is that perhaps we should think of training the brain as a form of gymnastic education, the broader training of the body. Clark and Jain write, “Education is not merely an intellectual affair, no matter how intellect-centered it must be, because human beings are not merely minds. As creatures made in God’s image, we are composite beings–unions of soul and body. A full curriculum must cultivate the good of the whole person, soul, and body” (29).
If Clark and Jain are right about the importance of promoting a fully-orbed Christian anthropology, and I believe they are, then it seems that caring for and training the brain is to be included. Fortunately, given the close connection between the mind and the brain, our lessons already lend themselves to this sort of training. As I have already shown above, training in the language arts grows new brain cells and strengthens neural networks. But it is worth stating and remembering that God has given us brains, which are physical organs, and we should care for them as we do other parts of our physical bodies.
Physicality and Christian Formation
There is one final point I would like to make about the relationship between the brain and liberal arts education. It is the idea that Christian formation, which is ultimately a spiritual process, often occurs through physical means.
In “The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Formation and Flourishing”, Dr. Brad Strawn and Dr. Warren Brown, psychology professors from Fuller Theological Seminary, write, “Humans cannot be reduced to disembodied souls or immaterial minds. We are embodied and embedded creatures. Our physicality matters, including our brains. Humans are formed and transformed through embodied and embedded experiences. Personhood is not the immaterial reality, but an embodied one.”
There is much to unpack in this quotation, and I do not agree with all of their philosophical conclusions, but I do think they point out something important. Sometimes when thinking about how to help students grow spiritually, we think of their relationship with God in individualistic and gnostic terms. In other words, we summarize Christian formation as a private encounter between God and their individual souls. But what these psychologists helpfully remind us is that often our relationships with God grow in communal settings. Whether it be the weekly church gathering, summer Bible camp, or small group Bible studies, we grow as Christians through embodied and communally-embedded moments.
Thinking about how adults grow in these settings as much as children, the psychologists write, “Many of the same formative social processes are at work in adults as in children: imitation, attachments, and life-forming narratives. What is at stake in ongoing adult development is the degree to which wisdom and virtue come to characterize persons.”
As we seek to cultivate wisdom and virtue in our students, as well as ourselves, we should remember that this endeavor, though moral and spiritual in nature, has a connection to our physicality. We should think through how we can harness physical experience to form our students in wisdom and virtue.
Conclusion
There is a lot more that could be said here. As we educate the hearts, minds, and souls of our students, how should we understand what is happening to the brain? In this blog, I have reflected on the relationship between neuroscience and the liberal arts. As educators, I believe we can use the insights of modern brain science to not only take better care of our physical bodies. We can use these insights to strengthen the liberal arts education we offer our students to help them grow in wisdom and virtue, and ultimately, in service to Jesus Christ.
Endnotes
- Kidd DC, Castano E. Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind in Science (6156): 377-380)