Wednesday, September 11, 2013

How will measuring brain activity help us understand children’s thinking?


Children’s brains grow and change quickly.  These changes, influenced by a combination of biological makeup and life experiences, help children better understand and navigate their surroundings.  In particular, even brain activity involved in making simple decisions helps children learn, grown, and think more deeply about the world and their place in it.  In our study, we are looking at the links between brain activity involved in simple decision-making and more complex types of thinking.        
To study these links, we are using electroencephalogram, or EEG, recordings.  EEG measures naturally occurring electrical signals in the brain that contain information about what is going on inside and outside the body.  EEG is easy to measure and non-invasive, and you cannot feel it working.  It involves wearing an elastic “astronaut” cap that holds the sensors that measure the brain signals.  We use caps that have a lot of sensors in them so that we can get a full picture of the brain.  Here is a picture of what the setup looks like:

We hope that by studying children’s brain activity as they make simple decisions, we can better understand how children develop ways of thinking about what they know.

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