Middle school students get a feel for the brain

On a sunny spring day at Zoo Atlanta, 13-year-old Tamecia Burson literally got hands-on with the human brain.

With the encouragement of Michael Black, a post-doctoral researcher in GSU’s Neuroscience Institute, the seventh grader cautiously reached out to touch the brain’s gyri and sulci, or folds and grooves, before she quickly pulled away.

“I really don’t like touching stuff like that,” she said, “but I’m glad I did it anyway.”

Burson was one of 180 students of Decatur’s Renfroe Middle School who took part in the April 30 Brain Expo, sponsored by the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.

The center, headquartered at Georgia State, is a consortium of seven Atlanta-area universities, dedicated to furthering research into neuroscience, as well as educating students from elementary school through college about a field that explores the mysteries of the mind. The expo has been produced since 2003.

“My students get an opportunity to experience firsthand the things we we’ve talked about in class,” said Susan Brooks, a seventh-grade science teacher at Renfroe whose class attended the event. “The expo is wonderful because I don’t always have the resources to put on an activity like that.”

Students made their way around teaching exhibits, ranging from the opportunity to touch a human brain, to learning about the phantom limb phenomenon — where the brain can still feel a limb even though it might be amputated. They also learned about sleep, memory, and the effects of alcohol on the brain by trying to dunk a basketball through a hoop while wearing visual distortion goggles.

“I really liked the optical illusion [station] and the ‘too drunk to dunk’ one,” said Mirina Garoufalidis, 12. “The opportunity to touch the brain was interesting, and I also liked learning about sleep.”

The expo was also more than an opportunity for middle school students to learn. Undergraduate and graduate students, as well as high school students from Central Gwinnett High School all took responsibility to operate and create the exhibits, learning more about teaching through the process.

Teaching, as the students of GSU’s Biology 4916/6916 course learned through preparation for the expo, is no small task.

For starters, after you’ve learned so much about neuroscience at advanced levels, figuring out how to explain concepts in a simple fashion and to make them accessible to 12 and 13-year-olds isn’t easy.

“It’s hard to explain these concepts to middle school students, and it takes a lot of effort to create exhibits that will help them understand,” said Mahin Shahbazi, a doctoral student at GSU.

In the end, though, all of that hard work pays off when you’ve sparked a student’s interest in science.

“Not only are we helping to develop new knowledge among both populations of students, the visiting middle schoolers and the university students, but we’re also generating a new enthusiasm for science,” said Kyle Frantz, associate professor of neuroscience and Director of the Expo.

The experiences learned through the process will help Ashley Belflower, a graduating senior at Georgia State, pursue her dream of teaching elementary school pupils. She designed and worked a station that demonstrated the importance of learning and physical activity in order to keep the brain active and its connections alive — something that’s important throughout the lifespan.

“The students have to figure out solutions to problems we present, learning which brain parts might be most active during the process,” she said. “I hope that they would like to pursue neuroscience one day, and I hope that they learn that science is important. I want them to realize that it’s fun, not something that’s boring.”

The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience includes Georgia State, Emory University, Georgia Tech, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, the Morehouse School of Medicine and Spelman College.

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Georgia State to offer master’s and doctorate degrees in neuroscience

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia has granted approval to Georgia State University to offer Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Science degrees in neuroscience.

“Through a rigorous academic curriculum and an emphasis on cutting-edge research, those graduating from Georgia State’s new Ph.D. program will add to the greater body of knowledge that will ultimately bring forth new treatments and interventions to neurological diseases and disorders that affect millions across the globe,” said Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Risa Palm.

“Georgia State has long been a national and international center for neuroscience research,” said Dean Lauren Adamson of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The creation of a Ph.D. program in neuroscience will let us take a leading role in educating the next generation of researchers.”

The program begins during the fall semester of 2010. Applications will be accepted starting in mid-November, and the deadline for applications is Jan. 5, 2010.

“The program will help to increase Georgia State’s visibility nationally and internationally in a field that is very important to both biotechnology development in the state, as well as biomedical research,” said Walter Wilczynski, professor and director of the Neuroscience Institute.

The program will also allow Georgia State to build better neuroscience collaborations with other universities in the state, such as Emory University, the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and the Medical College of Georgia, Wilczynski said.

The program will be based in Georgia State’s Neuroscience Institute, an interdisciplinary unit within the College of Arts and Sciences, which includes faculty from biology, chemistry, psychology, physics and astronomy, computer science, mathematics and statistics, and philosophy. Additional faculty and students will be drawn to the institute from other areas such as computer information systems, and educational psychology and special education.

Officials are developing a curriculum of core courses to be added alongside GSU’s existing courses in fields such as biology and psychology. Students in the Ph.D. track will earn the M.S. degree as they complete the doctoral program. About 14 students per year are expected to graduate from the program.

Neuroscience graduate students at GSU can become active members of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, headquartered at Georgia State. The CBN is a multi-disciplinary community of neuroscientists across seven metro Atlanta colleges and universities, for broader educational training. As CBN members, graduate students participate in collaborative research and groups that take multi-disciplinary approaches to complex research questions.

The CBN also affords opportunities for graduate students to participate in neuroscience education efforts that range from elementary school through the graduate level.

This past spring, Georgia State partnered with Georgia Tech to establish the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, which provides expert brain imaging facilities to support research in basic and clinical human neuroscience, including a research-dedicated functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner.

For more information about the Neuroscience Institute, visit http://neuroscience.gsu.edu.

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At the zoo, teachers learn ways to improve science education

The crowd assembled at Zoo Atlanta’s Wildlife Theatre, just like many others before them. They watched as a trainer induced a macaw to speak, and as a crow used its beak to paint a colorful, Jackson Pollock-like piece of abstract art.

But unlike the typical tourist, the crowd was a group of Georgia middle and high school teachers, getting a lesson in animal behavior as part of a teacher professional development program to improve neuroscience literacy, held June 8-12 and sponsored by the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, headquartered at Georgia State University.

The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience is a collaboration between Georgia State and other Atlanta-area universities, devoted to expanding knowledge in the basic neurobiology of social behaviors.

“It’s really very interesting, and it has allowed me to be able to answer the ‘why’ questions in my labs," said Rebecca Durham, a seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Heritage School in Coweta County. “It allows me to address what mechanisms in our brains cause certain behaviors.”

Laura Carruth, assistant professor of neuroscience and coordinator of the workshops, said that the program is aimed at helping teachers teach science using current information, as well as to foster better experiences for students.

“The goal of the program is to encourage their students to develop a love of science, and to think scientifically, as well as to develop an appreciation for animals, animal classes and animal behavior,” said Carruth.

Teachers spent the week in workshops devoted to neuroscience and teaching, and also received up-close opportunities to learn more about animal behaviors. They will receive professional development unit credits as part of the workshops, and will also return in November to learn more about amphibians and reptiles, and to follow up on what they’ve learned through the presentation of lesson plans.

Carruth said the teachers will be able to apply what they’ve learned on multiple levels in the classroom.

“Depending upon what teachers’ needs are, educators teaching older students can bring in science at multiple levels, ranging from anatomy and structures of the brain, all the way to functions and behaviors,” she said. “Younger teachers can focus on topics such as behaviors, classification and diversity.”

Improving teacher education is critical to producing students who are better able to take on critical positions in the sciences in an economy that is more dependent on science and math knowledge, according to a report released June 10 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, entitled “The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy.”

The report urges teachers to work with scientists, as well as other professionals in technical fields to show students the relevance and application of science in their lives -- something which the June CBN workshop helped to do.

Another summertime CBN program includes the Institute on Neuroscience, from June 8 to July 31, where high schoolers are gaining an opportunity to learn more about neuroscience, through hands-on activities and discussions directed by faculty members, post-doctoral researchers, and undergraduate and graduate students from CBN member institutions, followed by five weeks of mentored laboratory research.

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