OPDC Career Development Fellows Natalie Connor-Robson, Dayne Becanno-Kelly and administrator Melanie Witt visited a local Woodcraft Folk Elfins group in Dementia Action Week this May to talk about our work to better understand the brain. The group of 6-9 year olds listened carefully as Dayne and Natalie introduced ideas of how the brain works, how sometimes things can go wrong in conditions like Parkinson's, and how we are trying to better understand what is happening so we can try to fix it.
They started with some brain hats for the children to wear and thought about different jobs the brain does and looked at models of brains of other animals and how they varied. The children wore goggles to turn their world upside down and found out how much more difficult things become when your world is upside down and made their very own neuronal network with pipe-cleaners. After the traditional Woodcraft Folk songs, we served up a jelly-brain and discovered there were a few zombies among the group.
We would like to thank the children and adults for making us so welcome in the group.