Saturday, September 12, 2015

Great new videos from SfN

The Society for Neuroscience has just announced the winners of their 2015 Brain Awareness Video Contest. The three winners are posted below and not only are all three great, they are perfect for teaching high school psychology.

ALSO - before I get to the winners - note that the Society is asking people to vote for the People's Choice Award winner between now and September 29. There are nine videos altogether (including the the three winners) - the other videos are about prosopagnosia, language, hearing, memory, and how technology affects out brain. Go here to get links to all nine videos and vote!


First place winner: Do We See The Same Red? by Matthew Sugrim. In addition to answering the title question, this was an excellent video because it explained the function of cones in the context of neural and brain activity.


Second place winner: How Powerful Illusions Reveal Coding in Your Brain by Guillaume Riesen. Another nice explanation of the function of cones, but this time also explaining (and showing) effects of afterimages and motion illusions. I thought the last minute went a little beyond high school psych with the discussion of population coding, but it's not bad to show them a peek at more advanced ways to study vision.

Third place winner: Your Sixth Sense by Allison and Michael Caldwell. I don't know about you, but for me, proprioception is one of those areas I never do much with. I also just assumed it was the same as kinesthesia, but proprioception is more about body position while kinesthesia is more about body movement. This video is different in style from the previous two in that the narrator is speaking directly you, and there are many fewer graphics here. But there are nice explanations and examples of how proprioception works, and good demonstration for learning about the Pinocchio illusion. (Did you know about this?)

I have not looked at the other six videos, and would LOVE for any reader out there to check out one of those and post your feedback in the comments. Or just let us know what you thought of these three above!


posted by Steve

2 comments:

mvita said...

LOVE the first place video!! Discusses so many complex terms like long wavelengths vs short and cones, bi-polar, ganglion cells, and opponent process theory. Thanks Steve!! But also love the proprioception one. While I have seen a different version of the Pinocchio demo where its fingers tapping on noses NOT one finger on nose and a friend tapping bicep - these are RAMACHANDRAN illusions http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/06/start/mess-with-your-head I LOVE THEM!!!!

I will check out the other vids Thanks for the post

mvita said...

The language video is interesting: It is an animated talk. It discusses:
a) "lateralization" of language in the left hemisphere for 93% of people.
b) Aphasia
c) Broca's area
d) Wernicke
e) bi-lingual areas in brain
*Could be a quick 4-minute way to introduce students to language in the brain! Thanks again Steve! These videos are great!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2dpHDRcWEc&feature=youtu.be