• Question: are you more interested in the brain behavior of children or adults?xx

    Asked by rosieeexxx to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi @rosieeexxx
      Good question – at the moment I do something called ‘lifecourse epidemiology’ so I’m looking at people’s behaviour throughout their lives. In particular though I am interested in behaviour as teenagers.

      Hope this answers your question, I can tell you more if you’re interested, let me know 🙂

    • Photo: Simon Bennett

      Simon Bennett answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hello,

      I am mainly doing about the developing brain at the moment but this could help us to understand how it works at any age.

      Thanks.

    • Photo: Rachael Ward

      Rachael Ward answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Interesting question.

      Personally, I’ve always studied the adult brain. However, it is important that we study all ages, from the developing brain in the womb through to babies, kids, teenagers, adults and the elderly as different things affects the brain at different times in our lives.

    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi @rosieeexxx

      I’m most interested in how our brains change what we can do as we get older. Adults can do lots of things that babies can’t and I find it most exciting to try and understand what changes when children become adults, so most of my research is with children. Many of my studies look at changes in language and brain activity as children develop over several years. We get to see the same children change as they get older.

      I hope that answers your question.

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Linguists who study brain behaviour (they’re often called neurolinguists or psycholinguists, which doesn’t mean people who’ve appeared in horror films in lots of languages) are interested in both children and adults, depending on the experiment they’re doing. Some examples:

      – A lot of linguistic science is done about how people learn language (whether it’s babies learning to speak for the first time or people learning foreign languages later). That part of linguistics is called language acquisition. If they’re studying how first languages are acquired, obviously babies are more interesting!

      – If you do the kind of science I do, sociolinguistics, then often babies’ language isn’t the most interesting – in fact, the most interesting thing is often teenagers’ language! That’s because, whenever there’s a language change going on – a new bit of an accent, or a new word being used – then often teenagers are the ones to catch on to the new fashion first, and do it most. So, if only for that reason, it would be really interesting for me to actually talk to you! Maybe in future IAS can have a voice-chat bit …

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