Chair: Dr. Catherine Lebel (University of Calgary)

Speakers: Dr. Sophia Vinci-Booher (Vanderbilt University), Dr. Michael Skeide (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences), Dr. Bruce Mccandliss (Stanford University), Dr. Rachael Elward (London South Bank University)

To start off, we’d love to hear a bit about your path into developmental cognitive neuroscience. What first sparked your interest in the field? Were there any key moments that shaped your path?

I was always really interested in science, but my first real exposure to neuroscience research was as an undergraduate summer student in an MRI lab. That lab focused mostly on the technology itself, which I thought was really fascinating, and was considering pursuing for graduate studies. Then, after my undergraduate degree, I spent 5 months volunteering in a school in northern Canada where I worked with children with learning challenges. This is what really sparked my interest in the developmental and cognitive aspects of neuroscience, as I wanted to understand how and why some children struggle with learning.

How would you describe your research to someone without a scientific background?

I study how the brain changes with age, under both healthy and atypical circumstances. I am really interested in how a child’s environment (for example, prenatal alcohol exposure) may cause their brains to grow and function differently. Additionally, I work to understand how brain structure and function, and how their maturation over time, support learning and behaviour in children.

In your view, what are some of the most pressing or exciting challenges in developmental cognitive neuroscience today? 

A key challenge that is especially prominent in developmental neuroscience (compared to adult neuroscience) is data collection. In recent years, the field has emphasized the importance of big samples, and I was glad to see a recent Nature paper highlight the importance of good quality control. Both large samples and stringent quality standards are essential for advancing the science, but they are expensive goals and particularly difficult to achieve when working with atypical samples. As a field, I think we need to carefully balance these goals, to maximize good science to ultimately better support children.

It is also becoming increasingly important for us to articulate clearly how and why science is important, and why it should be valued by the general public.

You’ll be chairing the symposium “Insights from Cognitive Neuroscience for Learning & Education” at Flux this year. What can attendees expect from this session? 

I’m excited to be chairing this symposium! Here, we’ve brought together diverse experts in cognitive neuroscience and asked them to talk about their research as it relates to learning. We move from infants to school age children, from typical development into a disorder, cover both EEG and MRI, and will hear about memory, attention, language, and motor learning. All of our presenters have rich longitudinal data to share, and I am particularly excited to hear about how their work (and DCN work more broadly) is relevant to educational settings.

From your perspective, what is the most valuable contribution that cognitive neuroscience can make to our understanding of learning and education?

Cognitive neuroscience of course has many valuable contributions to make toward education and learning. But perhaps the closest to my heart is how neuroscience can be used to help identify how individual brain variability relates to individual learning variability, and provide context for better/earlier identification, interventions, and supports. Not all individuals and groups learn the same way, and by better understanding the neurobiological basis for differences, we can start to better support individuals who need it most, when and how they are most likely to benefit.