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Asked by witchdoctor101 to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 13 Jun 2011.
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Simon Bennett answered on 10 Jun 2011:
Hello,
The type of research I do is sometimes called bluesky, which means it does not have an immediate application. You are probably only going to see my research in an academic journal, but it is still important to learn more about the brain and it may form the foundation of some research with a more obvious outcome. A good way to think about it is that you would not ask someone to fix your car if they did not understand how an engine works.
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Suzi Gage answered on 10 Jun 2011:
Hi @witchdoctor101
The research I do at the moment is quite often mentioned on TV or in newspapers, so you might see things about it there. In fact only this week there was a programme on about cannabis use, presented by an actor from Eastenders.
Because cannabis is illegal, but quite widely used, there is a lot of disagreement about its effects. This means it’s often reported about on the news.I hope this answers your question 🙂
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Tim Fosker answered on 13 Jun 2011:
Hi witchdoctor101,
I study how children develop spoken and written language and you can see them anywhere. Like me you probably find it hard to remember what it was like to learn to read, but if you have a younger brother or sister you may have seen them struggle with reading. Most children learn to read quite well by the age of 7, but some children have difficulties reading that continue into adulthood. There are many news reports on projects trying to help these children. The first job of scientists is to understand what brain problems can cause reading difficulties. You may think that if you find a problem in the brain that causes children to struggle with reading then we should be thinking up some type of surgery to help. In fact the brain is what we call ‘plastic’, meaning that behaving in a certain way can actually change the parts of your brain. Measuring changes in the brain when children learn to read can help us decide what tasks to get other children to do to ‘train’ their brain’s to read. We look at training all sorts of skills, but especially ones like listening to different sound patterns. You may have seen similar training games on the Wii or DS.
I hope that answers your question.
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Damien Hall answered on 13 Jun 2011:
Hi @witchdoctor101!
I think the really good thing about the science I do is that you can see it everywhere, because everyone uses language! (Including deaf people – you can study sign language scientifically as well.) So, people I work with have worked out figures that show that, if you’re a boy, you probably “drop your g’s” more (saying “workin’ “, “goin’ “, “doin’ ” and so on), and if you’re a girl you probably say “working”, “going” and “doing” more, so you don’t drop your g’s. There’s all sorts of language science that gives some mathematical evidence for things we all instinctively feel about the language we speak.
On CSI and programmes like that, they often show scientists working with language, as well – when they take a really fuzzy recording, play it through some machinery, and get an amplification of a background voice, with no noise, to give them evidence about a crime. It’s not usually as simple as that, but things that are a little bit like that are possible, and do get used in the courts sometimes.
If you wanted something to go and see about language science, there was a bit of that in the Evolving English exhibition at the British Library recently. It’s not on any more, unfortunately, but you can still look at its website!
http://www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish/maplisten.html
There are also other online projects, like BBC Voices
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