What is Mad Cow disease?!

On Tuesday 23 of April, 2 wonderful scientists came from University College, of the University of London, to give talks on their brain research, and their personal science journey. They talked about different topics such as firing of Neutones, EEG (Electroencephalograms), brain structure and function and Prion Disease.  One of activities the students had to do, was to work out who had a brain disease from counting sugar pearls. This was to show the basis of diagnosis.  So fascinating! 39 students attended the schoolwide workshop on the brain. They were so amazing, and interested in what the scientists had to say, I was really proud of them. The students asked the scientists interesting questions. One of the students asked how strokes were caused, and another student asked what the biological cause of ADHD was. One of the activities the students did was a short-term memory test, at the start of the workshop, they then recorded their score, and then at the end of the talks, they then did a post short-term memory test, and compared their scores. Only 8 students found that their short-term memory had improved, as opposed to 23 students whose short-term memory had decreased!!!!! Oh dear!  Six students' short-term memory stayed the same. We had proved in our research that listening to scientific talks reduced short-term memory. 

Of course, this was a one-off experiment, and we would have to do it several times to get a mean, as you all know! The students got a chance to see their own brainwaves, after seeing what the Elite scientists have been up to since October 2023.  They have been doing a project on the "Effect of various activities on Brainwave Patterns of year 7-9 students".  The Elite scientists will be giving their research findings to Imperial College (May),  The Great Exhibition Road Festival (June 15-16) and the IRIS conference (June) at the Quakers meeting house in Euston.  All the students that attended got lots of freebies. 

Well done everyone! :-)   

I want to say thank you to:

Ms Lili Szilagyi and Dr Iryna Benilova,for their time, effort and wonderful talks.  

Mr Dhiresh Mepani for technical help! 

Ms Kapila Science Teacher and Leader of Elite Scientists