Mind and Brain Interest Group at Brookline High

Mind and Brain Interest Committee - Brookline High School

Welcome to the home page of the Brookline High School Mind and Brain Interest Committee.  The Mind and Brain Interest Committee was created by Adi Flesher a graduate student studying Mind, Brain and Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and a group of  High School students at Brookline High School’s School within a school (SWS). 

The goal of the Mind and Brain Interest Committee is to explore the nature of minds and brains in a hope of imagining a ways this topic could be taught/explored in school settings.

Our initial discussions have taken place over the fall of 2009.  This page will serve as a way to continue and record those discussions.  You do not need to be a member of the Mind and Brain Interest Committee to post here. Anyone who cares about this topic and would like to become part of the conversation is invited to do so.

Exhibits

The following are some topics that we explored over the fall.

We began our exploration with a poem by Emily Dickenson. Our discussion lead us to interesting questions about mind, brain, spirit, God, and a whole set of interesting mathematical notations of the realtionship between these things.

Visual Illusions and the nature of reality. We explored a whole host of illusions and asked how they might inform how we think about reality.

People particularly loved this illusion: 

For an explanation of the color spiral illusion, visit the Discover Blog. 

People were also loved this illusion, which is based on the hollow face illusion.

Synesthesia. Some of our discussion centered around the topic of Synesthesia and what it might tell us about the way our brain makes sense of the world.  

Several of our group members play in "Noise Music" bands.  They shared some of their music with us. This lead to an exploration of the concept of noise in both seeing and hearing. We spent some time discussing this exhibit. 

Compass School Project

Several years ago I helped my brother design a similiar class for a school he teaches for in Vermont.  At the end of the course the students put together the following journal. 

Discussion: 

What questions about minds and brains most interest you? 

What questions/issues do you believe are most important to be addressed in a high school setting.