Unlocking the Brain

As part of Brain Awareness Week 2014, Merton Supernumerary Fellow Professor Andrew King and his colleagues took part in Unlocking The Brain, five days of family-friendly activities, games and interactive experiments at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science.

Professor King's team from the auditory neuroscience group at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics ran a series of activities, which included visualizing speech sounds and demonstrating how our ears and brains process these sounds. Exhibits from other neuroscientists in the University allowed visitors to test their reaction times, explore visual illusions, see how functional imaging can provide a window into the working of the brain, learn how diet affects the brain, build plasticine models of the brain - and even attempt to use their brainwaves to move an object.

Brain Awareness Week is an annual worldwide event, which this year took place from 10-16 March. Its aim is to promote public awareness of progress in brain research and of the benefits that this brings. Several of Merton's Fellows and a number of our graduate students conduct research in different aspects of neuroscience.