Bringing Excitement about the Brain into the Classroom
Posted March 1, 2016
By Robert Franklin
How Did I Get So Excited about the Brain in the First Place?
The brain is intricate, complex, and full of mystery. I can think of few things more interesting than knowing that there is a direct relationship between the chemical and biological processes in our heads and my thoughts and behaviors. This is why biological psychology is my favorite subfield of psychology.
But almost all of my Introduction to Psychology students don’t see it that way. After hours studying and memorizing terms and topics as riveting as the axon hillock or location of the parietal lobe, it’s no wonder many students are turned off by the brain.
How many future neuroscientists are stopped right here?
I grappled for a long time with this question. And I wondered why I became so interested in the brain. How did I, trained as a social psychologist, become the “brain person” at my university?
It goes back to one moment at the very beginning of grad school. I volunteered to be a test subject for other students testing equipment in the new, expensive EEG lab. I sat as they spent thirty minutes placing a cap of electrodes on my head, waiting as they adjusted them, and readjusted them…and adjusted them again. At this point, when I could hold my boredom out no longer, they stopped, and I saw squiggly lines on a computer screen.
My thoughts, once held secret in my mind, were now laid bare before everyone. And even though it would take hours of data processing before anyone could make any sense out of those squiggly lines, I was hooked. I could see the brain.
How Could I Get My Own Students Excited about the Brain?
Fast forward to my recent experiences as an instructor. My lectures are full of demonstrations, from group conformity to visual illusions. Students do not have to search long to find examples of memory processes. YouTube is full of videos of young children making predictable mistakes trying to understand the world. But I wasn’t able to show the brain in action. The best I could do was show cartoon diagrams that have no relationship to thought or behavior. The technology to demonstrate the brain, like when I was in grad school, could cost up to millions of dollars, which was just barely out of the budget of our small department.
But fortunately technology never stays still. Sensors such as the Neurosky MindWave EEG headset can begin to show the brain for less than $100 for a headset. The headsets use Bluetooth to pair to any computer or tablet, or even an iOS or Android smartphone, and after only seconds of preparation output their data into an app which shows the raw EEG brain waves along with different types of brain waves, such as alpha, beta, and theta waves, as well as a measure of attention and meditation. Through its Mobile Learning Initiative, Anderson University where I teach provides iPads for each of its students, so I had an opportunity to literally let students see their brains in action. However, I was unsure whether such an inexpensive system would even work, let alone give an accurate representation of mental processes.
With a generous grant from the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Excellence in Teaching award, I was able to purchase a classroom set of these headsets. I then developed a lab exercise where students wore the headsets and engaged in several activities, such as resting with eyes closed, doing mental arithmetic, or reading. Students had to try to figure out what brain waves were associated with the different tasks. After that, the student wearing the headset would close their eyes and either rest or do mental arithmetic and the other students in their group would have to guess what they were doing using what they learned from the first part of the exercise.
Even with EEG headsets that were more like a toy than research-grade hardware, students were able to see differences between different activities. Even as the lab ended, the students kept testing out new ideas, for example seeing if listening to different music would lead to different brain activation. They tried raising their meditation scores by relaxing and found out that biofeedback might actually work. Most importantly, the students were excited to learn more about how the brain works and the techniques we use to understand the brain.
I was surprised about how much students liked just seeing their own brain waves, given that the brain waves do not tell us very much about how the brain works or where certain activities are located in the brain. But I suppose I should not have been surprised, given my memory of seeing my brain work for the first time. And I learned how a relatively inexpensive device could possibly encourage a future generation of neuroscientists.
How You Can Let Your Students Experience the Excitement Too
Even though I was able to get a full classroom set of headsets, even one or two of the headsets would be enough to get a class excited about neuroscience. The headsets only take a few seconds to start working, and several people can try the headset in a single class. If only one or two of the headsets are available, or if an instructor has a large classroom, there are many ways to convey that same level of excitement. First, just passing around a tablet that shows another student’s brain waves is enough to put someone’s brain activity literally in a student’s hands. Having students ask a volunteer to do different tasks while watching their brainwaves is an easy way to see how different behaviors change brain activity. For larger classes, the instructor can show the brain waves of a volunteer by installing an application on a presentation computer or by using an app to mirror what a student is seeing on a tablet with the presentation computer in the classroom (such as Apple Airplay). I’ve even done this in class before, watching a volunteer student’s brain waves change as they became drowsy listening to a lecture!
There are a few practical considerations to note. The Mindwave Mobile EEG uses Bluetooth to connect and thus it can be difficult pairing several headsets to tablets at the same time. It is best to pair the headsets to different devices one at a time. I recommend trying out the system with only one or two headsets before trying to use it in a larger classroom. In addition, having alcohol on hand to sanitize the headsets makes it much easier to share the headsets.
I believe the Mindwave EEG headset is a viable way to bring the brain into the classroom and has many ways to excite students, depending on what an instructor needs. The headsets are available on the Mindwave online store (http://store.neurosky.com/) as the MindWave Mobile: Brainwave Starter Kit.
Bio
Dr. Robert Franklin is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Anderson University, in Anderson SC, where he teaches courses in neuroscience, statistics, and research methods. His research interests involve understanding how people read social information from faces and how aging affects these processes. However, one of his greatest passions is increasing student interest in the research process by helping students examine questions they find most relevant and interesting. Robert is also co-author of the Noba learning module Attraction and Beauty.
