Brain Mapping!

Funded Oct 15, 2015

Thank you for your generosity in assisting me with the materials needed for this project! My students and I are very grateful. As most of you know, I teach Psychology and use this project to help my students understand the structure of the brain. Years ago when I began teaching this subject I found that most of my students were not grasping how the brain was structured by merely reading about it or creating diagrams on paper. This, in turn, affected them detrimentally in learning about how each part functions in relation to the various areas of the body. Therefore, I came up with this idea of using the Styrofoam heads. I have found that once students complete this project they have a better understanding of how a real brain might appear and therefore function.

As always, my students are excited when they initially receive their "heads". They quite often give them names, become creative with how they map the brain, and in some cases I have had students apply make-up, false eyelashes, etc. to give the faces a real-life look. It is always fun for me to see what they came up with when the projects come due!

So what's next? Once we have the structure down, we look at how each part of the brain affects human behavior. We then look at what happens when parts of the brain are injured or damaged. Lastly, we tie it all together by looking at how the motor aspects of the brain tie into the "thinking" areas and how they work together.

Psychology is the study of human behavior and this project really assists my students in understanding how the brain really does make us just that, human!”

With gratitude,

Dr. Meier