TED Talks have been a part of my brain’s daily diet for years now. This morning, I found this one on neuroscience in my Facebook feed and was captivated by it.
Neuroscience isn’t taught in school because the necessary equipment to teach it is prohibitively expensive. That equipment is only accessible to the few individuals who have already dedicated many years of their lives to neuroscience. It’s not surprising then that relatively few people choose to go into neuroscientific research. In this TED Talk, the presenter, neuroscientist Greg Gage, demonstrates that study and research can be done with simple, do it yourself equipment. Take a look.
The possibilities are limitless. If exposure to the basics of neuroscientific experimentation and research can happen at an early stage of a child’s education, more students’ appetites will be whet for careers studying the brain and how it works. Educating more researchers will produce an increased chance for better treatments and, one day, a cure.
Share this with any young people you know who haven’t chosen a career path yet. Let’s help create the next wave of researchers!
Author’s Note:
For those who aren’t aware, TED is an organization whose primary purpose is to spread ideas. The name TED is an acronym for their three main focus areas: technology, entertainment, and design. The organization has successfully married those fields via thousands of publicly available “TED Talks,” videos of lectures shot at their many conferences worldwide. The “E” part, entertainment, happens when the presenter engages with the audience, and they’re often quite good. In the TED world, there is great value placed on teaching in such a way that people don’t even know they are learning.
TED has had a significant cultural impact as well. In the three decades since the first TED conference in 1984, technological and scientific research themes have become part of mainstream vernacular. Theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku, mathematicians like Benoit Mandelbrot, engineers like Elon Musk and other geniuses have gone from being the heroes of the nerds in the high school A/V Club to being virtual rockstars. I’m not name calling either. In the year 2016, “nerd” is not an epithet but a title worn with pride, as it should be. TED influenced that too.