4S Visit Reading University Neuroscience Centre

Last week, a group of our year 4 students visited Reading University’s Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) to discover more about how their brains work and to take part in a research project, jointly run by The University of Reading and BrainCanDo.

This research explores the way in which social interactions with peer groups’ impacts on attitudes and motivations over time. The researchers are looking to to understand what motivates students to want to learn and how friendship groups play a part in this process.

Our students spent two hours with the team of psychologists and neuroscientists at Reading University, taking part in an fMRI brain scan and a series of demonstrations. This included learning how to move objects with their minds using state of the art ‘EEG Emotiv’ Headsets. These headsets detect changes in electrical activity in the brain and use these changes in activity to move objects on a computer screen.

This is just one example of how advances in technology and neuroscience have the power to revolutionise the way in which we think and communicate in the future.

This latest trip to the CINN marks the end of a research project, in which around 80 of our year 4 and U4 students have visited Reading University to participate in the demonstrations and brain scans. The project has also involved the research team from Reading University coming to visit all year groups at Queen Anne’s school, to collect additional survey data and to speak to our students during morning assemblies.

All in all, this has been a fantastic experience for our students, as many of them have visited a university for the first time and worked with a team of scientists who are passionate about neuroscience and psychology research. Our girls have each also been given a lasting memento to keep forever – a picture of their very own brain!