lesson

Students play a game that models the unknown potential for individual addiction, as well as some scientific inquiry processes. This lesson is based on information originally from the NIH curriculum The Brain: Understanding Neurobiology through the Study of Addiction.

Grade Level: 9-12

Lesson Length: 1 class period

This lesson allows students to apply engineering principles in the science classroom. Students learn how neurons convey information through designing and building a physical model of neurotransmission.

Grade Level: 9-12

Lesson Length: 1 class period

The ability to identify with and understand another person's situation, feelings, or motives is called empathy. Recent developments in neuroscience have focused on a system within the brain called "mirror neurons" as a likely explanation for emotional empathy.

In this lesson students explore emotions and the behavioral aspects of empathy through mirroring the emotions of other students while watching emotionally evocative videos.

The brain physically changes when exposed to drugs. This activity utilizes scientific thinking and assessment without the need for laboratory equipment. Students investigate how neurons change their connectivity when exposed to the drug morphine.

Exploring how vision can alter self-perception

Students will make bead neurons and use them as models to understand the specialized cellular structure and function of neurons and how neurons communicate with each other.

Grade Level: 5-12

Lesson Length: 1 class period

Students design, conduct, and analyze a controlled experiment testing the effects of alcohol on the roundworm C. elegans.

Students observe and dissect a Manduca sexta caterpillar to learn about the structure and function of an invertebrate nervous system.

Students construct a wax model of the nervous system of the caterpillar, Manduca sexta.

In this activity, students learn about memory capacity and different ways to remember things.