Background:Educational neuroscience is a relatively new discipline. However, many obstacles persist in delaying the success of an interface between neuroscience and education. One such major obstacle has been the spread of neuromyths.Purpose:The main aim of this study was to verify whether Portuguese teachers are susceptible to misinterpreting neuroscientific findings and believe in neuromyths that might ultimately impair their teaching – or simply waste time investing in techniques that will not aid their students.Sample:A sample of 583 Portuguese teachers from different areas of expertise participated in this study. The participants were aged between 25 and 61 years (mean=41; SD=9) and taught at Preschool to High School levels.Design and methods:We designed a questionnaire to assess whether teachers believed in the neuromyths. Non-myth/myth statements were presented, alongside an open-ended question concerning the links between brain and education. Together, these queries afforded a database of the teac...

COVID-19 has come to change societal organization. Due to lockdowns, work typologies have been rethought and telework has gained strength. However, the impact of the constant use of information and communication technologies on the mental health of workers needs to be considered. We aimed to investigate the impact of different work conditions on mental health, to which end we disseminated an online questionnaire during lockdowns to assess imagined surveillance, mobile maintenance expectation, communication overload, feelings of entrapment, depression, anxiety, stress, and flourishing in four groups (employed in telework, employed on-site, employed in layoff, and unemployed). We computed mean comparisons and serial mediations. We show that depression and anxiety were more prevalent in women; parents flourished more than people without children; and people with a higher level of education feel more entrapment. Crucially, we show that telework was associated with imagined surveillance and communication overload, which mediated the association with mobile maintenance expectations and entrapment (which was exacerbated by parenthood), impacting mental health and the quality of life. However, this was also partially observed in the remaining work conditions. Finally, flourishing worked as a protector against mental health issues in all work conditions. We discuss this given the massification of digital migration.

This study examines the impact of gamification on education using a novel gamified digital learning platform and a randomized controlled trial (RCT) protocol. Following established research guidelines (CONSORT, Cochrane Collaboration, EVAT©), we assessed the individual and combined effects of points, badges, and challenges against a control group without gamification. The RCT evaluated participant characteristics (sociodemographics, game habits, player traits) and outcomes in cognition (learning, engagement, webcam-based eye-tracking for visual attention, cognitive load), emotions (affective states, webcam-based facial emotion recognition), and motivation (intrinsic motivation). Results showed significantly higher learning for participants using all game elements versus the control group, while badges alone increased cognitive load compared to the other gamification groups. These findings suggest that gamification is more effective when thoughtfully integrating game elements rather than applying elements in isolation, aligning goal-setting with feedback, and combining intrinsic and extrinsic motivational cues. The absence of significant results in other variables may reflect the novelty effect, emphasizing the importance of aligning gamification with pedagogical goals, considering individual and contextual factors, and designing systems that address usability and long-term impact. Educational implications and design recommendations are provided.

Responses to pictures of famous tennis and soccer athletes are slower when the responding effector is a hand or foot, respectively, indicating that visual recognition of individuals characterized by skilled motor behavior interferes with the motor reactivity of nonproficient observers. By contrast, directly viewing actions induces motor facilitation, suggesting that actions are mapped in the observers’ motor system. Here, we used single-pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to determine 1) whether observing and recognizing the identity of famous tennis and soccer athletes selectively reduce the corticospinal excitability of arm and leg representations (categorization), 2) whether any athlete-related inhibition effect contrasts the facilitation associated with direct action observation (categorization + action), and 3) whether the classic action observation–related facilitation effect is found when viewing “in action” nonathlete models (action). In 3 experiments, we found that amplitude of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from leg and arm muscles gradually shifted from reduction to facilitation, moving from the categorization to the action observation tasks. Thus, semantic derivation of motor skills is reflected in limb-specific reduction of MEP amplitude, indicating that even abstract action knowledge is embodied in the motor system and that mapping others’ actions on the basis of categorization or of their direct observation relies on competing functional mechanisms.