This March saw the return of the Cambridge Science Festival #csf2018. This is an annual, city wide event which showcases the variety of new and exciting science going on across Cambridge. Members of the Adaptive Brain Lab enjoyed hosting a stall for the day on Saturday 17 March, and Prof. Kourtzi (head of the lab) is giving a talk at Mill Lane Lecture Rooms tonight (Thursday 22 March) at 6pm.
Saturday's stand gave an opportunity for visitors to experience a range of visual illusions, and to discover the science behind their creation. Families, school children and interested adults across the area came to learn about how the brain uses a lifetime of experience to interpret a 2D image (in your eye) in order to understand a 3D world.
Visitors were also wowed by the model TMS head, which demonstrates how, here in the lab, we use brain stimulation by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to study the areas of the brain that affect and how we interpret what we see.
Prof Kourtzi's talk at 6pm tonight will ask: How does the brain piece together information from the senses to interact with a rapidly changing world? How does the brain learn and how does experience re-organise its functions? Does the brain need a personal trainer? Can you get an old brain to learn new tricks? Can we re-wire our brain through training? Open to all.