Department Outreach

We connect members of the department with community partners through innovative and collaborative programs and services. Our goal is to offer comprehensive learning opportunities through outreach activities that allow us to share our knowledge and expertise with the larger community. 


Inquire About Outreach

bc.psychneuro.events
@gmail.com

617-552-4100

Inspire

We help children to envision themselves as scientists. We encourage adults to see themselves as lifelong learners.

Inform

We want others to appreciate how scientific discovery, psychological science, and neuroscience help us gain insight into ourselves and the world.

Connect

We look forward to hearing how we can partner with you.

Offerings

For Children

Members of our department can visit your preschool or elementary school and conduct hands-on activities to help children learn about the brain. Depending on the age of the children and the time allotted, activities might include:

  • sculpting brains from clay (and learning about different lobes of the brain)
  • making pipe-cleaner neurons (and learning about how brain cells communicate with one another)
  • egg drop (vegan alternative available) (and learning about importance of head protection)
  • tracing drawings of neurons and learning about Santiago Ramon y Cajal 
  • reading an age-appropriate book about the brain
  • teaching children a neuroscience lullaby
     

Neuroscience Lullaby Examples

For Middle & High School Students

For middle and high school students, we typically combine interactive presentations and hands-on demonstrations. Recent examples include:

  • Talking at a high school assembly, giving students tips to help them study more effectively, and afterwards providing opportunities for them to participate in some mini-experiments to better understand how their memory works.

  • Talking with middle schoolers about the importance of sleep for their mental as well as physical health, and showing them different ways to monitor sleep, from a clinical polysomnography system to a smartphone application.

  • Talking with high school juniors and seniors on “career day” about what a scientific career in academia is like.


We are also happy to serve as lab partners! If you have planned a dissection or other laboratory for students to learn about the nervous system, we can be there to answer student questions in real-time as they complete the laboratory.

For College Students

We love visiting different college campuses to talk about psychology and neuroscience! For example:

  • If you’re hosting a movie night and choose a movie with a theme related to psychology or neuroscience, we can give a talk about the science depicted onscreen. We’ve talked about everything from the sci fi film Dark City to the Disney/Pixar film Inside Out. 
     
  • If you’d like to inspire students to prioritize sleep, or exercise, we can come and talk about the importance of these and other lifestyle factors for mental health. 

  • We are prepared to talk with students about addiction, and the effects of alcohol and drugs on brain function and brain development.  

Intergenerational Events

Visit the BC Campus

Each summer, we host an Intergenerational Science Social (supported by funding from the National Science Foundation). We have a small poster session, where you can learn from our researchers; see demonstrations of some of the tasks and equipment we use in our experiments; and plenty of time to just chat with others interested in psychological science and neuroscience. It’s a great time to bring the family—we love seeing grandparents show up with their grandkids!

Let Us Come to You

We also regularly visit senior centers and retirement villages. We work with you to identify the topics that you think would be of most interest.  We encourage individuals to be lifelong learners and seek to give them science-based knowledge and tips that can be leveraged in their daily life.

Recent topics include:  

  • A discussion of how the mind and brain change with aging
  • Tips for those re-entering school, or making a career transition, later in life

For the General Public

Members of our department hold expertise in a range of topics, and give talks on topics such as:

  • Canine cognition (how dogs think)
  • Cognitive development in childhood (how children learn)
  • Morality and virtue
  • Sleep and cognition
  • Human memory
  • The aging mind and brain
  • The later-life learner
     

Please contact us if you’re interested in scheduling a talk on any of these topics. Or, if you have other ideas in mind, please let us know—we may have someone with the requisite expertise! 

Email Us

For Educators

We are delighted to partner with PK–12 educators in whatever ways would be helpful to you. For example: 

  • We can help you develop effective demonstrations for a particular age group and class size.

  • We can visit your classroom as a guest speaker.

  • On multiple occasions, we’ve first come into a school to talk with the students about the importance of sleep, or with tips for how to remember better, and then been asked back to speak with the teachers and staff (and sometimes also parents) on these topics. 

For Corporations

We enjoy speaking with small teams or with large groups of employees. Examples include:

  • Helping to motivate your team to prioritize self care, speaking about the science-based evidence for the importance of sleep, exercise, or other topics of particular interest to your team.

  • Talking about why memory sometimes fails us and providing tips for how to remember information better.  

  • Discussing ways to harness age-related changes in cognition to maximize the benefits that can come from having an inter-generational team.   

Lab Tours

We can arrange for tours of research laboratories. We generally find that this works best with small groups of students, typically 6th grade or above. Students can see their brainwaves via EEG, see their eye-gaze tracked via an eye-tracker, or see how we record sleep in a sleep laboratory. 

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