The brain robot "herr tie": Discovering basic principles of brain function at primary school

Abstract

TOPICS regarding the brain are rarely found in curricula of primary schools (ages 6-11 yr). There are several potential reasons for the lack of neuroscientific contents at the primary school level: the brain is a complex subject, it receives little attention in teachers' education, and there is a lack of appropriate teaching material. Therefore, there is a need to develop and provide methods to teach basic knowledge of the brain. Hands-on methods and inquiry-based learning have received a lot of attention in science education in general (5, 8, 12) and in neuroscience education in particular (2, 7). However, the majority of the projects and studies described target students at secondary school or undergraduate university level (4, 11). Obviously, it is a challenge to address processes that occur in the central nervous system by hands-on activities. Due to the methodological and intellectual barriers, for primary school students there is no way of examining a functional or active brain. Therefore, the topic can seemingly only be addressed by talking about reduced models at an abstract level. In the present study, we propose an approach that allows for guided inquiry-based learning of very basic and simple processing and organization principles of the brain. A custommade autonomous robot, named "Herr Tie," serves as an examination object to make a rather abstract process comprehensible for students. The name Herr Tie (German for "Mr. Tie") is derived from a wordplay with the name of the Hertie Foundation. Herr Tie gives insights into the basic concepts of sensory processing: The sensory information perceived with our peripheral sensory organs is transmitted to the central nervous system. Processing of the information in cortical areas results in behavioral reactions. Herr Tie is equipped with visual, somatosensory, and auditory senses. With those, the robot can navigate in the classroom without running into obstacles. The brain of the robot is accessible, and sensory cortical areas involved in the processing of visual, somatosensory, and auditory information can be switched "on" or "off" (see Fig. 1). The students, on their own, decipher the function of the cortical regions and their role in sensory processing: without activity in different areas of the brain, the robot cannot navigate properly in its environment. The experiment highlights two facts about the brain that are learned by the students: 1) we need the brain for processing sensory information and reacting to our environment and 2) there are specialized regions in the brain that are relevant for different processes. 1043-4046/16