Abstract

Historically, the understanding of the brain-based mechanisms of learning in young children has relied on well-controlled lab-based experiments. This was for good scientific reasons. First, there was a drive to isolate individual causes of behaviours and therefore to carefully control the environments in which children behaved during a study.

Moreover, the equipment required to assess the neural correlates of behaviours were cumbersome and difficult to move so children’s mobility had to be restricted. Recent developments in wearable and wifi-enhanced technologies have now allowed us to literally “untether” children and explore their brain and behaviour as they move around and interact naturally. This has opened new avenues for research, but has equally revealed important new challenges to the way that we approach developmental sciences.

In this seminar, I will draw on my lab’s recent work on children’s sensory cue integration, neural synchrony during children’s collaborative problem solving and the trials and tribulations of translating basic cognitive neuroscience research into real-world effective classroom interventions to highlight some of the challenges that contemporary developmental sciences faces.

Speaker bio:

Professor Denis Mareschal is Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, at Birkbeck University of London, and a founding member of the Centre for Educational Neuroscience. After completing a BA in Natural Science at Cambridge, he moved on to studying learning—initially in the form of an MA in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at McGill in Montreal, Canada and then through completing a DPhil in Psychology at Oxford.

Professor Mareschal’s research has focussed on identifying the mechanisms of learning and development in infancy and childhood through the combined use of behavioural studies, computational modelling and neuroimaging. He has received a number of awards for his work, including the Marr Prize from the Cognitive Science Society, the Young Investigator Award from the International Congress on Infant Studies and the Margaret Donaldson Prize from the BPS Developmental Section.

Over the last 10 years he has led the UnLocke project (Unlocke.org) developing a neuroscience-based primary school maths and science education intervention. He is committed to taking neuroscience out of the lab and into the real-world, in terms of primary research and in terms of translational impact.