Neuroscience education and outreach

From 2016 to 2018, I worked as the Education and Outreach Officer for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function.In this role I managed the Centre’s public outreach program, The Brain Dialogue, and led the education program.

Outreach and science communication

I led a demonstration of a brain-computer interface (starts minute 22) at the public event Machines that Read your Mind, Melbourne. This event was a keynote of Melbourne Knowledge Week, 1-7 May 2017, presented by the city of Melbourne.

In addition to development and maintenance of The Brain Dialogue’s website, I wrote several lay summaries of brain research produced by the Centre’s researchers:

• Greater flexibility in brain networks helps you solve harder puzzles. The more different your brain networks are between resting and reasoning, the better your chances of solving difficult tasks.

• Honeybees could teach drones a thing or two about safe landing. Bees use the speed at which images move across their eyes to control safe landing.

• A part of the brain specialised in humans helps manage competing goals. This study suggests that a part of the brain called ‘frontopolar cortex’ plays a role in assessing the value of an alternative goal and switching to it if it’s more beneficial.

• Stripes and pinwheels, the fashion for vision. Cells in the visual cortex are organised in a “pinwheel” formation that is altered by visual experience during development — including exposure to stripes.

• A computer program could provide an objective diagnosis for schizophrenia. Your brain’s responses to surprising sounds could help to determine whether you have schizophrenia.

• An active life from birth can prompt quiet brain cells to speak up again. Rearing mice with opportunities for physical exercise and social interactions can restore activity in brain cells that would otherwise have reduced capacity to communicate.

• The brain has a shortcut for quickly identifying threatening images. An alternative pathway carries detailed visual information about threats.

• How honeybees see the dress as black and blue. Bees have three extra eyes on the top of their head, which help them to see colours accurately.

• Hovering hummingbirds’ unique brain adaptation lets them detect rapid motion in multiple directions. Hummingbird brain cells that process visual changes due to body motion respond to all directions of movement. The same cells in other birds only respond to horizontal movement.

• Free! Online simulation lets students experiment with visual brain cells in a virtual world. Virtual experiment lets you stimulate visual neurons in different ways and record and listen to how they respond.

• Plasticity is not the only way the brain adapts to produce a different response to the same stimulus. Mathematical model shows brain networks alone explain some adaptation effects, no structural changes required.

Education program

The highlight of my role here was the National coordination of the Australian and New Zealand Brain Bee Challenge. This involved training and mentorship sessions for all contestants, and organising the national finals during the Australasian Neuroscience Society meeting.