Lectures

2026

"Brainstorms: the neuroscience of learning, tantrums and the modern world”

Speaker:

Professor Sam Wass

. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscientist, University of East London, Director of the Institute for the Science of Early Years and Youth (ISEY) at UEL

This talk explores how childhood is changing. During early development, young brains learn best from slow, predictable environments. But the modern world, via changes such as urbanisation and digital environments, is increasingly exposing children to fast-paced unpredictable environments. Professor Wass presents research on how modern fast-paced experiences push children into high alert states, and what caregivers and educators can do to help meet the needs of today’s children.

2025

"Weaving a Colourful Cloth: The Science of Emotions, Brain Development, and Effective Teaching”

Speaker:

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

, Professor of Education, Psychology & Neurosciernce at the University - of Southern California

In recent years, huge strides have been made in the science of how the brain develops, how that development enables thinking, and the fundamental roles of social relationships, emotions, culture, and cognitive opportunities. This talk will deep-dive into our new studies of teen brain development, showing the power of “transcendent” thinking. Next, we will examine some of our new brain, interview, and classroom observation data from secondary teachers as they teach, grade students’ work, provide student feedback, and the like. Together, the findings present new ways to think about the emotional and social work involved in meaningful learning and skilled teaching. The findings underscore the necessity of supporting students’ humanity—their character, citizenship, belonging, intellectual engagement and purpose—to optimally support their academic growth.

2023

“How We Learn: Why brains learn better than any machine….for now”

Speaker:

Stanislas Deheane

. Professor Stanislas Dehaene is a French cognitive neuroscientist. He holds the Chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at Collége de France in Paris and is the director of NeuroSpin, France’s advanced brain-imaging research centre.

Stanislas Dehaene’s research uses behavioural and brain-imaging techniques to probe how the human brain acquires new capacities through language and education. Focusing on how we learn to read words and numbers, he has demonstrated that many of these processes can unfold unconsciously, and he proposed a precise theory of the brain mechanisms for conscious processing. By comparing the abilities of human adults, children, and non-human primates, as well as contrasting literate and non-literate people, his research attempts to separate evolutionarily ancient cognitive computations versus recent, possibly human-specific ones. In 2018, Stanislas Dehaene became the president of the newly created French Scientific Council for Education, which advises the French government on scientific approaches to learning and teaching. He is the author of multiple books including Reading in the Brain (2009) and How We Learn (2020), which were translated into more than fifteen languages.

2022

"Neurodiversity: acceptance and affirmation in the classroom"

Speaker:

Sue Fletcher-Watson

, Professor of Developmental Psychology and Director of the Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre at University of Edinburgh

Neurodiversity is a simple idea at heart: that we are all different in how our brains process information, and these differences shape our experience of the world. But, when we build on this basic scientific fact, the educational implications quickly become radical and complex.” Sue will cite evidence and she will aim to show why she thinks a shift in conventional thinking is badly needed.

2021

"Socio-Economic Inequality and Children's Brain Development"

Understanding the impact of socioeconomics on children's cognitive, emotional and neural development in the first three years of life”
Speaker: Kimberly Noble, Professor of Neuroscience and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, a board-certified paediatrician whose work has received international attention

Socioeconomic disparities in childhood are associated with differences in cognitive and socio-emotional development during a time when dramatic changes are occurring in the brain. Recent work has focused on understanding the neurobiological pathways through which socioeconomic factors shape development. A theoretical model will be presented whereby differences in the home language environment and family stress likely impact particular brain systems, which in turn support distinct neurocognitive skills. Evidence for the model, as well as ongoing and future work testing aspects of the model, will be discussed. Finally, early findings from Baby's First Years, the first clinical trial of poverty reduction in early childhood, will be presented.

2020

"From neuroscientific theories to effective practice in the classroom"

Speaker: Denis Mareschal, Professor of Psychology, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development School of Psychology, Birkbeck College

Drawing on the experiences of the UnLocke @UnLockeCEN project, Professor Mareschal asks:
• How easy is the translation from research to practice?
• Randomised controlled trials: advantages and disadvantages...?
• How best to understand whether a neuroscientific consideration is impacting classroom behaviour?
• How best to decide whether an intervention works or not?

2019

“Supporting Struggling Learners: Beyond the label. Understanding why some kids struggle in school”

Speaker: Dr Duncan Astle, Programme Leader at the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of Robinson College University of Cambridge

Our understanding of learning difficulties largely comes from children with specific diagnoses or individuals selected from community/clinical samples according to strict inclusion criteria. This overemphasizes how similar these children seem, amplifies between-group differences, and fails to capture comorbidity. Instead we studied a large group of struggling learners using machine learning. Children were referred to the Centre for Attention Learning and Memory (CALM) by health and education professionals, irrespective of diagnosis or comorbidity, for problems in attention, memory, language, or poor school progress (n = 530). Children completed a battery of cognitive and learning assessments, underwent a structural brain scan, and their parents completed behaviour questionnaires.

2018

"Diagnosis, what diagnosis?”

Speaker: Professor Susan Gathercole OBE, Director of MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge

Pitfalls and prospects for supporting the struggling learner.

In this lecture Professor Gathercole discusses the challenges faced by families, practitioners and policy-makers in supporting children who are struggling to learn.

Major hazards include social inequities, difficulties in identifying underlying problems in children whose first language is not English, haphazard routes to professional help, dependence on diagnoses that are of limited value, and an unrealistic emphasis on cure rather than compensation.

Some of these challenges will be illustrated by research on struggling learners indicating that dimensions of cognition and behaviour are more important than diagnoses, and evidence that the benefits of intensive cognitive training arise from learning to do something new and not simply overcoming a core problem.

Ways that these issues can be addressed through policy and practice in education and health and in the research community will be discussed.

2017

“Building the Mathematical Brain”

Speaker - Dr Daniel Ansari, Professor and Tier 1 CIHR CRC in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience & Learning - Applied Psychology, Western Ontario University

In this talk Professor Ansari provides an overview of what insights have been gained from recent research in Developmental Psychology and Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience on the building blocks of mathematical competence. Specifically, he discusses research that has shown that basic number processing (such as comparing which of two numbers is larger) is related to individual differences in children’s arithmetic achievement. Furthermore, children with mathematical disabilities (Developmental Dyscalculia) have been found to perform poorly on basic number processing tasks. In this talk Professor Ansari reviews evidence for an association between basic number processing and arithmetic achievement in children with and without mathematical difficulties. By doing so, he will also discuss whether individual differences in mathematical abilities are driven by innate differences in a ‘number sense’ that humans share with other species or whether such variability is related to the acquisition of uniquely human, symbolic representations of number (e.g. Arabic numerals). He draws on evidence from both brain and behaviour and discusses the implications of this research for assessment, diagnosis and intervention and reviews research on Mathematics Anxiety and Gender Differences in numerical and mathematical development.

2016

“Genetics & Education”

Speaker - Professor Michael Thomas, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Birkbeck, University of London

This lecture explores the potential contribution of modern genetic methods and findings to education. It is familiar to hear that the ‘gene’ for this or that behaviour has been discovered, or that certain skills are ‘highly heritable’. Can this help educators? Can knowing what abilities are more or less heritable directly help improve teaching techniques or educational outcomes? To explore this question, Professor Thomas describes the contemporary methods used to relate genetic variation to individual differences in high-level behaviours such as academic skills and educational achievement. These methods include twin studies and genome-wide association studies. He then addresses the key question of what genetic data imply about the ability of educators to optimise educational outcomes for children across the range of abilities.