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Metacognition refers to higher order thinking that involves active control over the thinking processes involved in learning.
Activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward task completion are metacognitive in nature. Because metacognition plays a critical role in successful learning, it is important for both students and teachers.
Both knowledge and strategy components are important.
Knowledge is considered metacognitive if it is actively used in a strategic manner to ensure that a goal is met. Metacognition is often referred to as "thinking about thinking" and can be used to help students “learn how to learn.”
Metacognitive knowledge involves executive monitoring processes directed at the acquisition of information about thinking processes. They involve decisions that help:
• identify the current task,
• check on current progress of that work,
• evaluate that progress, and
• predict the outcome of that progress.
Strategies are goal oriented. Cognitive strategies help to achieve a particular goal, while the metacognitive type are used to ensure that the goal has been reached. Both types involve executive regulation processes directed at regulating the course of thinking. They involve decisions that help:
• allocate resources to the current task,
• determine the order of steps to be taken to complete the task, and
• set the intensity or the speed at which one should work the task.
Cross-species occurrence. The ability to consciously think about thinking appears to be a unique characteristic of sapient species. There is some evidence that monkeys and apes can make accurate judgments about the strengths of their memories of fact.
However, attempts to demonstrate metacognition in birds have been inconclusive. A 2007 study provided some evidence for metacognition in rats.
Baltimore, MD, USA. Humans think about thinking because we actively control the thinking processes involved in learning. But how do we suspend that capacity, called metacognition, and why should we do so in the first place? After all, metacognition structures how we plan our approach to learning tasks, monitors comprehension, and evaluates our progress toward task completion. Perhaps some problems break precendent and pose new challenges met only through our creative faculties.
Recent research used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the possible neurological underpinnings of the highly creative and spontaneous activity known as improvisation. The fMRI is an imaging tool that measures the amount of blood traveling to various regions of the brain as a means of assessing the amount of neural activity in those areas. The study is published in the journal PLoS One.
Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation. Charles J. Limb1,2 and Allen R. Braun. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1679. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0001679.
Scientists have found that when the musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow. A large region of the brain involved in monitoring one’s performance is shut down, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviors is highly activated. The researchers propose that this and several related patterns are likely to be key indicators of a brain that is engaged in highly creative thought.
“It’s a remarkable frame of mind,” Limb adds, “during which, all of a sudden, the musician is generating music that has never been heard, thought, practiced or played before. What comes out is completely spontaneous.” Though many recent studies have focused on understanding what parts of a person’s brain are active when listening to music, Limb says few have delved into brain activity while music is being spontaneously composed.
Limb is a trained jazz saxophonist himself. Curious about his own “brain on jazz,” he and a colleague, Allen R. Braun, M.D., devised a plan to view in real time the brain functions of musicians improvising. Braun is with the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).
For the study, they recruited six highly trained jazz musicians. Three came from the Peabody Institute, a music conservatory where Limb holds a joint faculty appointment. Other volunteers learned about the study by word of mouth through the local jazz community.
“The ability to study how the brain functions when it is thinking creatively has been difficult for scientists because of the many variables involved,” said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., the NIDCD director.
“Through some creative thinking of their own, these researchers designed a protocol in which jazz musicians could play a keyboard while in the confines of a functional MRI scanner by designing a special keyboard so the researchers could make direct observations of those areas of the brain that respond to various stimuli and identify which areas are active while a person is involved in some mental task, for example.
Because fMRI uses powerful magnets, the researchers designed the unconventional keyboard with no iron-containing metal parts that the magnet could attract. They also used fMRI-compatible headphones that would allow musicians to hear the music they generate while they’re playing it.
And in doing so, they were able to pinpoint differences in how the brain functions when the musicians are improvising as opposed to playing a simple melody from memory.”
Each musician first took part in four different exercises designed to separate out the brain activity involved in playing simple memorized piano pieces and activity while improvising their music.
The Scale paradigm
The first scenario, called the Scale paradigm, was based on a simple C major scale. While lying in the fMRI machine with the special keyboard propped on their laps, the pianists all began by playing the C-major scale, a well-memorized order of notes that every beginner learns. Using only their right hand, the volunteers first played the scale up and down in quarter notes, an activity they, as accomplished musicians, had performed many times before.
With the sound of a metronome playing over the headphones, the musicians were instructed to play the scale, making sure that each volunteer played the same notes with the same timing.
Next, they were asked to improvise, though they were limited to playing quarter notes within the C major scale. They were asked to use quarter notes on the C-major scale, but could play any of these notes that they wanted. “Although the musicians were indeed improvising, it was a relatively low-level form of improvisation, musically speaking,” said Limb.
The Jazz paradigm
The second scenario, called the Jazz paradigm, addressed higher level musical improvisation. This paradigm was based on a novel blues melody written by Limb that the volunteers had memorized beforehand. Again, using only their right hand, the musicians would play the tune exactly as they had memorized it, only this time accompanied through headphones by a pre-recorded jazz quartet. When they were asked to improvise, the musicians listened to the same audio background, but they were free to spontaneously play whatever notes they wished.
All of this was accomplished while the musicians lay on their backs with their heads and torsos inside an fMRI scanner and their knees bent upward. The plastic keyboard, which was shortened to fit inside the scanner and which had its magnetic parts removed for safety, rested on the musicians’ knees. A mirror placed over the volunteers’ eyes, together with the headphones, helped the musicians see and hear what they were playing. The resulting fMRI scans recorded the amount of change in neural activity—increases and decreases—between the improvised and memorized versions.
Turning Off ‘the Monitor’
Limb and Braun then analyzed the brain scans. Since the brain areas activated during memorized playing are parts that tend to be active during any kind of piano playing, the researchers subtracted those images from ones taken during improvisation. Left only with brain activity unique to improvisation, the scientists saw strikingly similar patterns, regardless of whether the musicians were doing simple improvisation on the C-major scale or playing more complex tunes with the jazz quartet.
One notable finding was that the brain scans were nearly identical for the low-level and high-level forms of improvisation, thus supporting the researchers’ hypothesis that the change in neural activity was due to creativity and not the complexity of the task. If the latter were the case, there would have been a more noticeable difference between the Scale and Jazz paradigms, since the Jazz paradigm was significantly more complex.
Three-dimensional surface projection of activations and deactivations associated with improvisation during the Jazz paradigm. Medial prefrontal cortex activation, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex deactivation, and sensorimotor activation can be seen. The scale bar shows the range of t-scores; the axes demonstrate anatomic orientation.
Abbreviations: a, anterior; p, posterior; d, dorsal; v, ventral; R, right; L, left. Figure 3 from paper.
Much of the change between improvisation and memorization occurred in the region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides. This is the part of the brain that helps us think and problem-solve and that provides a sense of self. The area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests. During the study, the prefrontal cortex showed a slowdown in activity, shutting down completely during improvisation.
The much smaller, centrally located region at the foremost part of the brain (medial prefrontal cortex), which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe, increased in activity. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in self-initiated thoughts and behaviors. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.
The researchers explain that, just as over-thinking a jump shot can cause a basketball player to fall out of the zone and perform poorly, the suppression of inhibitory, self-monitoring brain mechanisms helps to promote the free flow of novel ideas and impulses. While this brain pattern is unusual, it resembles the pattern seen in people when they are dreaming.
Another unusual finding was that there was increased neural activity in each of the sensory areas during improvisation, including those responsible for touch, hearing and vision, despite the fact that there were no significant differences in what individuals were hearing, touching and seeing during both memorized and improvised conditions. “It’s almost as if the brain ramps up its sensorimotor processing in order to be in a creative state,” said Limb. The systems that regulate emotion were also engaged during improvisation.
“One important thing we can conclude from this study is that there is no single creative area of the brain—no focal activation of a single area,” said Braun. “Rather, when you move from either of the control tasks to improvisation, you see a strong and consistent pattern of activity throughout the brain that enables creativity.”
“Jazz is often described as being an extremely individualistic art form. You can figure out which jazz musician is playing because one person’s improvisation sounds only like him or her,” says Limb. “What we think is happening is when you’re telling your own musical story, you’re shutting down impulses that might impede the flow of novel ideas.”
Limb notes that this type of brain activity may also be present during other types of improvisational behavior that are integral parts of life for artists and non-artists alike. For example, he notes, people are continually improvising words in conversations and improvising solutions to problems on the spot. “Without this type of creativity, humans wouldn’t have advanced as a species. It’s an integral part of who we are,” Limb says.
Limb and Braun plan to use similar techniques to see whether the improvisational brain activity they identified matches that in other types of artists, such as poets or visual artists, as well as non-artists asked to improvise.
Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation. Charles J. Limb1,2 and Allen R. Braun. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1679. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0001679.
Abstract. To investigate the neural substrates that underlie spontaneous musical performance, we examined improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. By employing two paradigms that differed widely in musical complexity, we found that improvisation (compared to production of over-learned musical sequences) was consistently characterized by a dissociated pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex: extensive deactivation of dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions with focal activation of the medial prefrontal (frontal polar) cortex. Such a pattern may reflect a combination of psychological processes required for spontaneous improvisation, in which internally motivated, stimulus-independent behaviors unfold in the absence of central processes that typically mediate self-monitoring and conscious volitional control of ongoing performance. Changes in prefrontal activity during improvisation were accompanied by widespread activation of neocortical sensorimotor areas (that mediate the organization and execution of musical performance) as well as deactivation of limbic structures (that regulate motivation and emotional tone). This distributed neural pattern may provide a cognitive context that enables the emergence of spontaneous creative activity.
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Robot Violinist. A robot plays Pomp and Circumstance on the violin. The robot used its mechanical fingers to push the strings and bowed with its other arm.
The 152 cm (five foot) performer can perform a variety of tasks with its hands and arms, each of which has 17 joints.
Using precise control and coordination to achieve human-like agility, the robot could also be used to assist with domestic duties or nursing and medical care.
“When jazz musicians improvise, they often play with eyes closed in a distinctive, personal style that transcends traditional rules of melody and rhythm,” says Charles J. Limb, M.D., assistant professor in the 
“Through some creative thinking of their own, these researchers designed a protocol in which jazz musicians could play a keyboard while in the confines of a functional MRI scanner by designing a special keyboard so the researchers could make direct observations of those areas of the brain that respond to various stimuli and identify which areas are active while a person is involved in some mental task, for example. 
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