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Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter.
In this issue:
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Neuroscience for Kids had several new additions in October including:
A. October Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news2610.html
B. New Neuroscience in the News
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/inthenews.html
C. Visit or follow my Instagram site with neuroscience facts and trivia:
https://www.instagram.com/ericchudler/
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The Neuroscience for Kids "Site of the Month" for November is the "web site of artist Angela Palmer" at:
https://www.angelaspalmer.com/portraitAngela Palmer is an artist whose work has been displayed at The Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK), The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (Washington, DC), The National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh, Scotland) and The National Botanic Garden of Wales (Llanarthne, UK). For her 2012 exhibit titled "Life Lines," Palmer used computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging scans to create sculptures of the head and brain on glass. She has even used images of her own brain in a series of self-portraits.
Palmer's web site has photographs of her Life Lines exhibit and other work. Perhaps these images will give you some ideas for the new Neuroscience for Kids Drawing Contest (read below).
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Get out your pencils, pens and markers! The 2023 NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS DRAWING CONTEST is now open to students in kindergarten through high school, teachers and parents. Use your imagination to draw a picture about the nervous system and you might win a prize. The complete set of rules and the official entry form for the contest are available at:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/contest23.html
Good luck to everyone!__________________________________________________________
The United States has a problem with its paper money (banknotes). I am not talking about the exchange rate of the dollar or interest rates. Instead, I am referring to how difficult it is for people who are blind or visually impaired to identify paper money of different denominations (e.g., $1, $5, $10, $20, etc.). In the US, all paper money, regardless of its denomination, is the same size, color, and shape. Therefore, there is no way for someone who cannot see to tell the difference between paper money of different values by touch alone. Some people who have visual impairments fold banknotes of different denominations in different ways to identify their value. There are also some apps and devices that can be used to identify paper currency.
But why make it so difficult for people who are blind or visually impaired to identify their money? Other countries have addressed this problem with some simple features that allow people to know what banknotes they have just by the way the money feels. For example, many countries use different-sized banknotes for different values: banknotes with higher value are larger. Other countries print their banknotes of different denominations with different colors so they are easier to see and some banknotes have raised print that is easy to feel. Adding features such as raised print to US banknotes has been discussed for a long time, but there has been very little progress. Such additions to US paper money seem to be fairly simple and would significantly benefit people who are blind or visually impaired.
Sources:
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Earlier this year, scientists published research that showed how sleep was important for children's brain health. The research compared the mental health, cognition, behavioral problems and brain structure in two groups of children aged 9-10 years old: children who got at least nine hours of sleep and children who got less than 9 hours of sleep. The data showed that children who slept less had more mental health (e.g. depression, anxiety) and behavioral problems (e.g., aggression, learning difficulties) than children who slept more. Differences in the amount of sleep were associated with differences in the anatomy of the brain. These brain changes may be responsible for the increased mental health and behavioral problems seen in children who slept less.
Reference: Yang, F.N., et al., Effects of sleep duration on neurocognitive development in early adolescents in the USA: a propensity score matched, longitudinal, observational study. Lancet Child Adolesc. Health. 2022 Oct;6(10):705-712. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35914537/)
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A. Check the cover the November 7-14, 2022 issue of TIME magazine. It's an afterimage visual illusion! I think the illusion would work better with a white second page instead of a gray second page used by the magazine. See more afterimages at Neuroscience for Kids (http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chvision.html#stare).
B. "What is an adrenalin rush" (POPULAR SCIENCE magazine, Fall, 2022).
C. "Some people who appear to be in a coma may actually be conscious" (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, November 2022).
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A. Mantis shrimp can see visible, ultraviolet and polarized light (Source: McDonald, M.S., et al., Ultraviolet vision in larval Neogonodactylus oerstedii, J. Exp. Biol. 225 (3): jeb243256, 2022).
B. Neuro tools (https://www.paulmitchell.com/neuro) are professional hairstyling products produced by Paul Mitchell. Apparently these tools will provide intelligent hair styling -- whatever that is!
C. Sharks can navigate by comparing the time at which smells arrive at each of their nares (Source: Gardiner, J.M. and Atema, J., The function of bilateral odor arrival time differences in olfactory orientation of sharks, Current Biology, 20:1187-1191, 2010).
D. The New Zealand Parliament has banned the following phrase from its debates because it considers the words to be unbecoming and unparliamentary: "His brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides." (Source: https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/history-and-buildings/special-topics/unparliamentary-language/)
E. The Nobel Prize medal that was awarded to neuroscientist Alan Lloyd Hodgkin in 1963 was sold at auction in 2015 for $795,614 (Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physiology-pioneer-s-nobel-prize-sells-for-nearly-800-000/).
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Chudler at: chudler@u.washington.edu
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Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and the "Neuroscience for Kids" web site are always welcome. If there are any special topics that you would like to see on the web site, just let me know.
Eric
Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.