On the morning of October 22, 11th-grade student Harrison gave a speech on the topic of “My Love towards Neuroscience”. Neuroscience is a field of science that mainly observes the workings of the nervous system, combining knowledge and methodology from areas that range from physiology to anatomy or even mathematical modeling.

Harrison opened the speech with an intriguing experiment presenting a quote he had made by himself: ‘The biggest mystery lies not in the sky but in ourselves’. The quote appeared alongside a picture of a random, serious-looking man in a suit. Then he explained how most of the audience would assume that this quote was made by that man who was presumably a known scholar, when, in reality, it was made by himself; the presumptive knowledge wired into our brains, such as how showing a quote from a famous person is what presenters typically do in the beginning of a speech, led us to reach that false conclusion.

Then, the student detailed the complexities of the brain that made it capable of such intricate reasoning processes – the hundred billion neurons forming it allows us to imagine actions and reactions, or, in a word, think, and gives two-year-old children and adult scientists alike the ability to simulate real-world occurrences in our minds in the form of imagined scenarios. Thus, we were able to observe the quote and the picture presented and react to it mentally, combining them with our preconceived knowledge on how presentations work and thinking that it must be the words of a famous individual.

Harrison also emphasized the prevalence of neuroscience in our lives, citing it as the reason for why its study is so important. He listed some practical benefits of neuroscience as well, such as fighting the harmful misconceptions that surround people with neurological disorders and opening up new possibilities and prospects for research. He encouraged any students who had more questions regarding the field to personally contact him, and additionally invited those who were interested in the field to join his club about neurology, the Myelin Club. Let’s hope that many students at SHSID can get to learn neuroscience and are more aware of the neuroscience around us!

(Written by 11-3 Jane Pictures by 11-1Winnie Xiong Supervised by Jialong Liu Reviewed by Qian Zuo)