Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 4AM, Day 3) – Memory and the Brain

Posted by hallep on Wednesday, July 13, 2016 in Grade 3, Grade 4, SAVY.

We had a full day of learning today! Today we began the biology unit of the course by talking all about the brain. The kids had so many good questions! We ran out of time to do everything that I had planned today because we had so many great discussions. Can you answer these true or false questions about the brain? Most people don’t know them all:

True or false:
1.) You only use 10% of you brain
2.) The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body and vice/versa
3.) Your brain has 100 million neurons
4.) Most people are either left brained or right brained
5.) Your brain wouldn’t feel anything if you touched it

We learned about all the different lobes of the brain, and the kids even got to paint lobes on their own brains to take home! Tomorrow we are going to continue our discussion of subcortical brain structures, especially the V.I.P brain region for memory, the hippocampus. The kids will also have the opportunity to see and touch brains from various animals!

There were two questions that I think are fascinating but we didn’t have time to dive deeply into. One is the etymology of the word “brain.” If you would like to read a fascinating article about where that word comes from, here is a link: http://blog.oup.com/2007/02/why_is_the_brai/

The second was a question about brain/machine interfaces for prosthetic limbs and devices. I would highly recommend this TED Talk about the latest advances in bionic devices: https://www.ted.com/talks/todd_kuiken_a_prosthetic_arm_that_feels . I’m looking forward to tomorrow! Make sure to tell your kids to keep those questions coming!