Why do humans have two ears? How do the properties of sound help with directional hearing? Students learn about directional hearing and how our brains determine the direction of sounds by the difference in time between arrival of sound waves at our right and left ears. Student pairs use experimental set-ups that include the headset portions of stethoscopes to investigate directional hearing by testing each other's ability to identify the direction from which sounds originate.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Understanding how human decision-making and preferences manifest before conscious thought has long challenged researchers focused on cognitive and information science. Now, the field of neuromarketing – a discipline that looks at the neurocognitive underpinnings of consumer behavior – is starting to uncover, in amazing detail, exactly how the brain goes about recognizing a brand. An international research team based in Auckland University of Technology and Nottingham Trent University has devised a new machine learning method that tracks brain responses to logos on the millisecond timescale…even before conscious thoughts are formed. Their results shed light on the early spikes in brain activity that are tied to brand awareness. The method utilizes one of the most promising recent trends in artificial intelligence research: spiking neural networks. These networks use algorithms loosely modeled on the behavior of the human brain to recognize patterns in sets of streaming data..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Do poems think? Recurrent images of the poet as an inspired lunatic, and of poetry as a fundamentally irrational art, have often fostered an understanding of poets and their work as generally extraneous to the work of the sciences. Yet poets have long reflected upon and have sought to embody in their work the most elementary processes of mind, and have frequently drawn for these representations on the very sciences to which they are thought to stand - and sometimes do genuinely stand - in opposition. Far from representing a mere departure from reason, then, the poem offers an image of the mind at work, an account of how minds work, a tool for eliciting thought in the reader or auditor. Bringing together readings in British poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with writings from the emergent sciences of psychology and the physiology of the brain, this interdisciplinary course will explore the ways in which British poets, in years that witnessed the crucial development of these sciences, sought to capture an image of the mind at work. The primary aim of the course is to examine how several prominent genres of British poetry - the lyric, for instance, and the didactic poem - draw from and engage in this period with accounts of cognition within the sciences of psychology, physiology, and medicine. More broadly, the course aims to give undergraduates with some prior experience in the methods and topics of literary study an introduction to interdisciplinary humanistic research.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Proteins in the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) family are known to regulate the immune system in cancers, and trials targeting these proteins are currently being conducted. However, the TNF family profile in glioma, the most common cancer originating in the adult central nervous system, is unclear. A recent study analyzed the TNF family profile and clinical characteristics of 1749 glioma cases using data from four public datasets. The expression levels of most TNF family members were positively correlated in the gliomas and were linked to patients’ overall survival. A TNF family signature was identified based on the expression levels in 702 of the cases and validated in the other cases, and a prognostic model was developed to predict 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival for individual patients with glioma. The TNF family-based signature was related to clinical, molecular and genetic characteristics of the patients..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Your brain doesn't fully develop until the early 20's. During development it has been discovered that the teen years are when much of development takes place. This can be a potentially hazardous time in some peoples lives. This article goes into detail about the developing teen brain and shows where problems can occur.

With the challenge to program computers to mimic the human reaction after touching a hot object, students program LEGO® robots to "react" and move back quickly once their touch sensors bump into something. By relating human senses to electronic sensors used in robots, students see the similarities between the human brain and its engineering counterpart, the computer, and come to better understand the functioning of sensors in both applications. They apply an understanding of the human "stimulus-sensor-coordinator-effector-response" framework to logically understand human and robot actions.

Student pairs first act out the instructions a robot is given with one person providing instructions and the other person following the instructions. This activity helps students understand how robots are programmed and with what type of precision commands must be given. Then students program LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT taskbots to navigate a simple maze. The goal is to teach students that robot computers simply follow directions exactly as they are given, thus one must be very clear and logical with programming instructions.

This activity helps students understand how a LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robot moves using motors and wheels. Then students relate the concepts of decision-making actuation and motion in humans to their parallels in mechanized robots, and understand the common themes associated with movement.

Students learn about electric motors and rotational sensors. They learn that motors convert electrical energy to mechanical energy and typically include rotational sensors to enable distance measuring. They also learn the basics about gear trains and gear ratios. Students create a basic program using the LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT interface to control a motor to move a small robot. Then, through a 10-minute mini-activity, they make measurements and observations to test a LEGO rotation sensor's ability to measure distance in rotations. This prepares them for the associated activity during which they calculate how many wheel rotations are needed to travel a distance. A PowerPoint® presentation, worksheet and pre/post quizzes are provided.

Students gain a rigorous background in the primary human "sensors," as preparation for comparing them to some electronic equivalents in the associated activity. A review of human vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch, including the anatomies and operational principles, is delivered through a PowerPoint® presentation. Students learn the concept of "stimulus-sensor-coordinator-effector-response" to describe the human and electronic sensory processes. Student pairs use blindfolds, paper towels and small candies in a taste/smell sensory exercise. They take pre/post quizzes and watch two short online videos. Concepts are further strengthened by conducting the associated activity the following day, during which they learn about electronic touch, light, sound and ultrasonic sensors and then "see" sound waves while using microphones connected to computers running (free) Audacity® software.

Student teams act as engineers and learn about systems thinking and scale by reassembling the separated pages of the engaging picture book, “Zoom,” by Istvan Banyai. The book is a series of 31 wordless pictures that start very close-up and then zoom out—from a rooster’s comb to outer space. Like a movie camera, each subsequent page pulls back to reveal the context of the previous scene as something different than what you originally thought. When the 31 un-numbered pages are jumbled, it is a surprising challenge for teams to figure out how the pictures connect. The task prompts students to pause and look closer so as to adjust to new points of view and problem solve to find a logical sequence. It requires them to step back and take a broader view. Students learn that engineers work together as teams and look at things very closely so that they see different things and come up with more than one solution when problem solving. To conclude, students go outside and practice their skills by imagining and then drawing their own Zoom-like small booklet stories inspired by items found in nature. The classic duck/rabbit ambiguous drawing is provided as a kickoff visual aid.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Normally bound to the microtubules that give neurons their structure, the protein tau becomes detached in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. That leads to the fibrillary tangles that have become the hallmark of the disease. Most textbooks explain that post-translational modifications, or PTMs, in the form of excessive phosphorylation trigger the formation and growth of these bundles. But new findings propose a subtle though crucial refinement. Researchers from the Brain Mind Institute at the EPFL in Switzerland have discovered that while phosphorylation does trigger tau detachment, it doesn’t appear to promote tangle growth. It actually protects against it. Their findings offer a new perspective on the role of phosphorylation in tau pathologies, while encouraging the design of therapeutics that target tau detachment. Numerous studies have homed in on hyperphosphorylation as a trigger for tau pathologies. Unfortunately, they’ve done so with relatively poor resolution..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Accumulating evidence suggests that psilocybin – the primary psychedelic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms – can be used to safely treat a range of psychiatric conditions. Prior studies have shown that just one or two doses of psilocybin can have a rapid and lasting positive impact on mental health, but the associated brain mechanisms aren’t well understood. Now, researchers based in the United Kingdom have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to map the brain activity of nineteen patients with treatment-resistant major depression who were given psilocybin. The results shed light on how the compound changes human brain function. The patients were dosed with the drug as part of an open-label clinical trial. Before and one day after treatment, the researchers used fMRI to look at cerebral blood flow and brain functional connectivity – a measure of how different regions of the brain interact..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Inflammation in the brain is a hallmark of many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. One of the key orchestrators of neuroinflammation is IL-6, a cytokine secreted by brain-resident cells called astrocytes. While low levels of IL-6 support neurons and synapses in the brain higher levels of IL-6 are produced in response to injury or infection, triggering a series of proinflammatory signaling cascades. Unfortunately, how astrocytes regulate IL-6 expression remains unclear. A recent study evaluated signaling pathways involved in IL-6 gene regulation, including β-catenin, TCFs/LEF, C/EBP, and NF-κB. Using human astrocytes, researchers silenced or overexpressed the signaling proteins and measured IL-6 levels. They found that TCF/LEF induces IL-6 in the presence of ATF2, while β-catenin inhibits IL-6 by interacting with TCF/LEF. Interestingly, neither of these signaling pathways is known to regulate IL-6 in other cell types..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.