Must say I wasn't sure how to shape the message for an audience of non-neuroscientists, but it resulted: got many questions and discussions continuing well into the apéro afterwards and beyond. An amazing feeling, to be able to explain in as lay terms as I could muster what the brain is for and some broad dashes of how it works. Here I credit years of experience as a university lecturer, although undergraduates in biology aren't quite representative of the general public.
Likewise I recently gave a seminar for young teenagers in Catalan – an even higher bar, not just for the age of the audience but because while Catalan is my native language it hasn't been my professional language since I completed graduate school in Barcelona in mid 2005. Quite the feeling to start a talk not knowing whether I'd find the right terms and idioms to deliver the message across. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHDgKb2fLmo
It's only understandable. But I do feel strongly that we ought to be translating text books or writing them up in our native languages to begin with. Looking forward to it as soon as kids take off – still quite some years to go but not that many.
True. Recently interviewed a number of 17-year-olds for Pembroke college, and I was shocked and humbled. These teenagers know at 17 way more than myself or anybody in my circles at their age. Most of them (~75%) from state schools. Gives me hope for the future.
@brembs@albertcardona
But, please, please stop spreading this urban legend that adult sea squirts do not have behaviour and a nervous system. They do, furthermore: "most parts of the ascidian larval CNS, except for the tail nerve cord, are maintained during metamorphosis and recruited to form the adult CNS"
Add comment