NETwork Interventions Blog

NETwork Interventions strives to collaborate with parents in achieving success for their children and families. Our goal is to teach parents how to apply behaviour analysis in each situation they encounter, allowing them to gain control over programming and ultimately require less and less professional services. Read more...

ABAI: Behavioural Neuroscience. Dr David W. Schaal

In May Shelley and I attended the 37^th annual convention for Applied Behaviour Analysis International in Colorado. This series of blog posts is based on the inspiring lectures and research we encountered.

Dr. Schaal’s delivery of his lecture was enough to make Shelley swoon AND make behavioural neuroscience accessible which is quite an achievement. One key to the success of his communication was the clarity of his approach to the subject matter, outlined simply as:

Environment - - - Nervous system - - - Behaviour

By looking at the middle phase, the nervous system, we can understand its functional relationship to the both the environment and our behaviour. As a result of this functional approach two fascinating insights were given.

• Repeated stimulation of one area of the brain physically alters the cell structures and synapse. Basically this means that repeated exposure to an environment directly influences the way we think about it.
• Dopamine responses in the brain depend on our ability to predict positive reinforcement. This means that when we are surprised by a positive rewarded for our behaviour our brain lights up and says “It’s time to learn! We should definitely try that behaviour again!” Whereas when a reward is routine and anticipated (for example “if... then...” statements) the brain only glows, dimly and less learning take place.

Hopefully this information is as interesting to you as it was to us and it provides you with food for thought. If you have any comments or questions on this topic or any other from this series of blogs head to the forum and post your thoughts in the ABAI feed.