Thank you!

The team members of the Michigan State University M.A.P. Project are very pleased to announce that we have finished our initial data collection for the study! We hope to continue pursuing our goals in developing a better understanding of children's thought processes and how these processes relate to their patterns of brain activity. For those of you who participated in our study, please be on the lookout for another project newsletter later this fall where we will describe the final results!

It has been a wonderful experience working with each and every one of you! So we would like to say thank you to all of the families that participated over the last year and a half, we couldn't have done it without your help!

Positive and Negative Thinkers' Brains

Research conducted by Michigan State University psychologist, Jason Moser, shows that positive and negative thinking may actually be hardwired in the brain. To read more about these findings in the MSU Today, please click here . Dr. Moser also develop the neurophysiological measures used here at the MSU M.A.P. Project! 

Picture of the Week!

We will be posting fun pictures to keep you updated on the project. Below is a picture of a recent participant following complete EEG setup: 

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.