We've Got NERVE: A Call to Arms for Neuroscience Education: Figure 1.

Frantz, Kyle J.; McNerney, Colleen D.; Spitzer, Nicholas C.

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0001-09.2009

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Brain Day Auckland is one of six nationwide events coordinated by the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand as part of Brain Awareness Week, an international effort to raise awareness of brain research (Frantz, McNerney, & Spitzer, 2009). Over 82 countries are involved, however, events in NZ attract the largest single audiences in the world (Neurological Foundation of New Zealand, 2013).…”

Section: Brain Day Aucklandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Knowledge Is Power”

Fogg‐Rogers

Bay

Burgess

et al. 2015

Science Communication

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Science festivals enable scientists to engage with publics, but format design reflecting different engagement models is contested. This study gathered mixed-methods data over 3 years (2011-2013) from on-site surveys (N = 661) of a health science festival, exploring audience preferences for dissemination or dialogue formats (lectures, discussions, community expo, lab experiments, and day out). Irrespective of time, age-group, or gender, lectures were significantly ranked the main attraction (76.8%), most highly attended (89.1%), and most useful format (83.8%). Thematic analysis revealed five themes exploring nonformal learning motivations for audiences, highlighting that knowledge/understanding acquisition is perceived as empowering greater health literacy.

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Section: Brain Day Aucklandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Knowledge Is Power”

Fogg‐Rogers

Bay

Burgess

et al. 2015

Science Communication

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“…Insights from neuroscience are also facilitating rapid progress in artificial intelligence (Hassabis et al, 2017;Zador, 2019). Nevertheless, most students receive almost no education in neuroscience and the public's understanding of the brain is lacking (Frantz et al, 2009;Labriole, 2010;Fulop and Tanner, 2012;Sperduti et al, 2012;Dekker and Jolles, 2015). The reasons cited are that the brain is perceived to be too complex, and that the tools needed to study it are too expensive and hard to use.…”

Section: Introducing Educational Neuroroboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurorobotics Workshop for High School Students Promotes Competence and Confidence in Computational Neuroscience

et al. 2020

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Understanding the brain is a fascinating challenge, captivating the scientific community and the public alike. The lack of effective treatment for most brain disorders makes the training of the next generation of neuroscientists, engineers and physicians a key concern. Over the past decade there has been a growing effort to introduce neuroscience in primary and secondary schools, however, hands-on laboratories have been limited to anatomical or electrophysiological activities. Modern neuroscience research labs are increasingly using computational tools to model circuits of the brain to understand information processing. Here we introduce the use of neurorobotsrobots controlled by computer models of biological brains-as an introduction to computational neuroscience in the classroom. Neurorobotics has enormous potential as an education technology because it combines multiple activities with clear educational benefits including neuroscience, active learning, and robotics. We describe a 1-week introductory neurorobot workshop that teaches high school students how to use neurorobots to investigate key concepts in neuroscience, including spiking neural networks, synaptic plasticity, and adaptive action selection. Our do-it-yourself (DIY) neurorobot uses wheels, a camera, a speaker, and a distance sensor to interact with its environment, and can be built from generic parts costing about $170 in under 4 h. Our Neurorobot App visualizes the neurorobot's visual input and brain activity in real-time, and enables students to design new brains and deliver dopaminelike reward signals to reinforce chosen behaviors. We ran the neurorobot workshop at two high schools (n = 295 students total) and found significant improvement in students' understanding of key neuroscience concepts and in students' confidence in neuroscience, as assessed by a pre/post workshop survey. Here we provide DIY hardware assembly instructions, discuss our open-source Neurorobot App and demonstrate how to teach the Neurorobot Workshop. By doing this we hope to accelerate research in educational neurorobotics and promote the use of neurorobots to teach computational neuroscience in high school.

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“…Nevertheless, most students receive almost no education in neuroscience and the public's understanding of the brain is lacking (Dekker & Jolles, 2015;Fulop & Tanner, 2012;Sperduti et. al., 2012;Labriole 2010;Frantz et al, 2009). The reasons cited are that the brain is perceived to be too complex, and that the tools needed to study it are too expensive and hard to use.…”

Section: Introducing Educational Neuroroboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short Neurorobotics Workshop for High School Students Promotes Competence and Confidence in Computational Neuroscience

Harris

Mircic

Reining

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Understanding the brain is a fascinating challenge, captivating the scientific community and the public alike. The lack of effective treatment for most brain disorders makes the training of the next generation of neuroscientists, engineers and physicians a key concern. Over the past decade there has been a growing effort to introduce neuroscience in primary and secondary schools, however hands-on laboratories have been limited to anatomical or electrophysiological activities. Modern neuroscience research labs are increasingly using computational tools to model circuits of the brain to understand information processing. Here we introduce the use of neurorobots -robots controlled by computer models of biological brains -as an introduction to computational neuroscience in the K-12 classroom. Neurorobotics has enormous potential as an education technology because it combines multiple activities with clear educational benefits including neuroscience, active learning, and robotics. We describe an introductory neurorobot workshop that teaches high school students how to use neurorobots to investigate key concepts in neuroscience, including spiking neural networks, synaptic plasticity, and adaptive action selection. Our do-it-yourself (DIY) neurorobot uses wheels, a camera, a speaker, and a distance sensor to interact with its environment, and can be built from generic parts costing about $150 in under 4 hrs. Our Neurorobot App visualizes the neurorobot's visual input and brain activity in real-time, and enables students to design new brains and deliver dopamine-like reward signals to reinforce chosen behaviors. We have tested the Neurorobot Workshop with high school students (n = 3 workshops, 9 students total) and have found that students were able to complete all exercises in under 3 hrs. In a post-workshop survey, students reported having gained the ability to develop neural networks that perform specific functions, including goal-directed behavior and memory. Here we provide DIY hardware assembly instructions, discuss our open-source Neurorobot App and demonstrate how to teach the Neurorobot Workshop. By doing this we hope to accelerate research in educational neurorobotics and promote the use of neurorobots to teach computational neuroscience in high school.

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We've Got NERVE: A Call to Arms for Neuroscience Education: Figure 1.

Cited by 7 publications

References 6 publications

“Knowledge Is Power”

“Knowledge Is Power”

Neurorobotics Workshop for High School Students Promotes Competence and Confidence in Computational Neuroscience

Short Neurorobotics Workshop for High School Students Promotes Competence and Confidence in Computational Neuroscience

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