Neuroscience in the Wild | Workshop 2019 (1 of 6) https://youtu.be/ISeOWAAglQ0 Suzanne Dikker | Brains in harmony: Connecting art, neuroscience and education outside of the laboratory
SUZANNE DIKKER
Neuroscience, Utrech University, NL and New York University
Brains in harmony: Connecting art, neuroscience and education outside of the laboratory.
Neuroscience research has produced tremendous insight into how the human brain supports dynamic social interactions. Still, laboratory-generated findings do not always straightforwardly generalize to real-world environments. To fill this gap, I collaborate with scientists, artists, and educators to take neuroscience out of the laboratory, into schools, museums, and underserved neighborhoods. In one series of studies, we partnered with New York City high schools to collect brain data during class. We find that brain-to-brain synchrony among students predicts classroom social dynamics and student engagement, two factors that have been found critical for student learning. In another project, we recorded brain data from thousands of museum visitors as they engaged in face-to-face interactions and find that empathy, social closeness and mood predict brain-to-brain synchrony. More recently, we have begun investigating the neural dynamics underlying adult-child interactions, specifically in bilingual households and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Taken together, our multidisciplinary approach may provide a potential new avenue to investigate social interactions outside of the laboratory.