© Pint of Science, 2024. All rights reserved.
Have you ever wondered what happens to the brain after you are born? How does the brain develop? What happens if an infant is exposed to stimuli he should not experience? How does the brain react to that? How do memories form? Come along to learn about the Brain after birth! This event will be held in the basement and there will be Pint of Science goodies to be won!
What can brain waves tell us about touch and pain in premature babies?
Dr Lorenzo Fabrizi
(Senior Research Fellow)
Our senses are essential for interacting with the world. The brain has areas dedicated to decoding different stimuli and allowing us to distinguish between a light touch or a sharp needle. However, how the brain acquires these capabilities remains unclear. The brain of a newborn changes week by week in an adaptable way. Some changes are necessary for maturation, but those caused in prematurity by stimuli that do not naturally occur in the womb, may be detrimental. In this talk I will look at the developing human brain in order to understand how we learn to feel different sensations.
Spatial Orientation: The GPS of the Brain.
Dr Francesca Cacucci
(Reader in Neuroscience)
We want to know how the hippocampus, in our brains, manages to work both as a mapping system (telling us where we are and how to get to interesting places) and a memory system (holding our memories). How does the brain assemble such a sophisticated mapping/memory system, as, presumably, all it has to work with, at birth, is a jumble of sensory inputs? This is the question I will fail to answer, but hopefully you can feel inspired enough to give us a hand (sorry but the Nobel Prize was already awarded to this field in 2014, so you will have to do it for the passion, rather than the glory!)
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.