Pedagogical Strategies for the Enhancement of Medical Education

Abstract

Clearly, memory and learning are essential to medical education. To make memory and learning more robust and long-term, educators should turn to the advances in neuroscience and cognitive science to direct their efforts. This paper describes the memory pathways and stages with emphasis leading to long-term memory storage. Particular stress is placed on this storage as a construct known as schema. Leading from this background, several pedagogical strategies are described: cognitive load, dual encoding, spiral syllabus, bridging and chunking, sleep consolidation, and retrieval practice.

Advances in the understanding and enhancement of the human cognitive functions of learning and memory

“…When new information acquired to be committed to memory is congruent with an existing schema, that information is more likely to be memorized and remembered as it is more likely to get integrated. The way mnemonic devices aid memorization is that individual bits of information are set up into their own schemas [2]. This is known as chunking, and has been demonstrated to be effective for the memorization of information [2].…”

“…The way mnemonic devices aid memorization is that individual bits of information are set up into their own schemas [2]. This is known as chunking, and has been demonstrated to be effective for the memorization of information [2]. Repeated study, involving rereading and active memorization, of new information also stimulates the cingulate gyrus to continually transform recent memory from the hippocampus to long-term memory in the association cortex, effectively cycling the Circuit of Papez to promote storage of long-term memory in the association cortex [2].…”

“…It is thought that during the slow wave sleep (SWS) stage of non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep, information transfer from the hippocampus to the association cortex is activated. The K-complexes produced by the hippocampus during SWS are clustered by the thalamic spindles, which then results in the initiation of rapid repetition of long-term potentiation in the association cortex [2,41]. The synaptic consolidation thus drives systems consolidation resulting in the increase in neocortical LTM as well as the concurrent decline in hippocampal 283 recent memory [2].…”

“…The K-complexes produced by the hippocampus during SWS are clustered by the thalamic spindles, which then results in the initiation of rapid repetition of long-term potentiation in the association cortex [2,41]. The synaptic consolidation thus drives systems consolidation resulting in the increase in neocortical LTM as well as the concurrent decline in hippocampal 283 recent memory [2]. Also, during "offline" brain states such as non-REM sleep, sharp wave-ripples (SWRs) that occur in the hippocampal CA1 region have been reported to promote memory consolidation as well as memory retrieval [42][43][44][45].…”

“…Long-term memory is broadly categorized into declarative (explicit) and non-declarative (implicit or procedural) memory. Most knowledge we gain that enter long-term memory are through two main sensory modalities, images and speech [13], which respectively engage the visual and auditory cortices [2]. Information from long-term memory has to be retrieved back into working memory for it to be useful.…”