If a fixed mindset is partly built on the belief that intelligence is a static trait, then directly teaching students the actual neuroscience of how the brain physically changes and strengthens through effort and practice should, in principle, shift that belief — and controlled research on exactly this intervention found it does, with measurable downstream effects on real academic behavior, not just self-reported attitude.
The intervention's real value is that it targets the belief itself rather than just the behavior — teaching a specific study technique helps with that technique, but changing the underlying belief about whether effort can actually build ability tends to generalize across many different situations a student encounters afterward.
Researchers built an interactive computer program called Brainology, featuring animated middle-schoolers who learn from a scientist character about how the brain physically grows new connections and strengthens existing ones through study and practice — essentially teaching the neuroscience of the growth mindset directly, rather than just encouraging a growth-oriented attitude. After going through the program, students across twenty schools reported real changes in their actual study habits, taking more ownership of their own learning and reframing mistakes as signals that their brain was in the process of growing, rather than as evidence of a fixed limitation. Teachers independently reported that even previously disengaged students began spontaneously talking about strengthening their memory through deliberate practice.