Creativity and Science

NW Noggin volunteers headed to Southeast Portland this afternoon, to enjoy rather deep and thoughtful discussions about brain development and behavior with engaged and enthusiastic middle school students at Portland Public’s Creative Science School

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We were welcomed by Brandan McClain, a Language Arts teacher who helped arrange our visit, and made certain his students were well-informed about neuroscience!

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We met with three successive classrooms of about 50 students each, and when we asked them what they already knew, they launched into detailed explanations of how subcortical structures like the amygdala generate rapid fear reactions, while the pre-frontal cortex helps them respond with slower, more complex, and more effective behavior in response to the demands of their ever-expanding social worlds..!

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These conversations grabbed attention, as we discussed the inevitability of social mistakes, and the opportunities that bad decisions offer for learning and adapting information flow through frontal lobe networks in more productive ways…

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Allie Clark, Alex Voigt, Wendy Miller, Adrienne Lawrence and Gaile Parker, all summer outreach participants from Portland State University, expertly fielded student questions about drugs, sleep, nutrition, phantom limbs, the functional roles of discrete cortical lobes, and memory.  They introduced additional subcortical structures, like the nucleus accumbens, a target of dopamine pathways engaged when we encounter stimuli that predict the delivery of some reward.

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Then Jeff asked students what skills they’ve felt improving over the last year  –  what had they felt themselves getting better at  –  and the students wrote their responses on colored sticky notes.  With knowledge of the functional roles of various brain regions, they then placed their responses, including skills in sports like soccer and basketball, dancing, graphic design, math, music, reading and speaking, making friends  –  on areas where neural networks in their own brains were changing…

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Once they had placed their skill, they proceeded to a table to examine those same cortical regions, and others, in our preserved human brains…

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As successive classrooms filled in brain regions with details of their expanding abilities, a distinct pattern began to emerge… 🙂

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Students quickly identified the frontal lobes as brain areas undergoing the most dramatic change in network connectivity, improving their ability to inhibit and more effectively channel impulsive amygdala and accumbens responses, and making them more adept and successful and creative at sports, friendships, and activities and interests both in and out of school…

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When our classes ended, we enjoyed reading through the remarkable posters, adorned with pipe cleaner neurons, that students had prepared with their teachers both before and after meeting with our NW Noggin volunteers.  These were really good!

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Many thanks to Brandan and his smart, involved students, and his fellow teachers at Creative Science for an enjoyable and educational afternoon.  Read more about this experience from Creative Science by clicking here… 🙂

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