Integrative neuroscience PhD candidate Brianna Gonzalez spent three weeks in Ghana demystifying the mind for college youngsters and members of the general public, and bringing collectively scientists and conventional healers.

Gonzalez’s work is an element of a bigger mission funded by a Dana Basis Planning Grant for a Dana Heart for Neuroscience and Society for International Mind Well being and led by Turhan Canli, a professor of integrative neuroscience within the School of Arts and Sciences Division of Psychology and Gonzalez’s doctoral advisor. 

The funds gave Gonzalez the possibility to work with researchers on the College of Ghana in Accra, contribute to her subject and see a unique a part of the world. It additionally turned her capstone mission for her superior graduate certificates in science communication, a program obtainable solely to Stony Brook graduate college students.

“Having the chance to mix my pursuits in neuroscience and science communication in addition to pave the way in which for future college students to have comparable experiences was so thrilling,” mentioned Gonzalez. “We’ve now established connections in Ghana the place Stony Brook college students can hone their neuroscience-teaching and science communication abilities, and be part of a two-way culturally delicate interplay between the overall inhabitants and neuroscientists the place every group can train and inform the opposite.”

In Ghana, neuroscience is taught as a part of different packages like pharmacy, biology and physiology. When locals search therapy for neurological problems like epilepsy and schizophrenia, they usually flip to conventional healers who use herbs and vegetation as medication. Their strategies usually work, although they haven’t undergone formal scientific trials and should not FDA accredited.

Certainly one of Gonzalez’s initiatives was to construct on earlier work to deliver collectively a few of these conventional healers and educational researchers on the College of Ghana. The mission’s objective is to boost belief and maybe develop collaborations between the 2 teams, whose exchanges have sometimes been fraught due to lack of mutual understanding. Gonzalez helped lead a dialog with the healers to know the shortage of belief on their aspect and what may assist heal the relationships.

“My objective was to evaluate the extent of belief between the healers and the scientists, and the communication between the 2,” Gonzalez mentioned. “It was vital for me to strive to determine these tales behind what occurred prior to now to burn the bridges, however then additionally ask them what will be completed to assist mend this belief and enhance it for the longer term. We hope to have the ability to assist extra of those engagements between educational scientists and conventional healers.”

Past bringing collectively specialists, Gonzalez labored to share a few of her data and, extra importantly, to get others within the mind and neuroscience.

“I actually loved placing my analysis and science communication coaching to the take a look at — midway the world over,” she mentioned. “Along with my work there, I had time to discover the nation, strive the native dishes and meet an unimaginable group of people that made my expertise one of the best it may have been.”

She led a number of experiential video games with schoolchildren throughout the Ghana Mind Bee — a contest very similar to a spelling bee the place native winners advance to additional rounds of competitors. Gonzalez led a “fact or delusion” recreation concerning the mind and an experiment to assist college students discover their blind spots. Each actions had been intentionally easy and immersive so the scholars may share their data, and the experiment, with others.

She additionally was a visitor on a 30-minute science present on an area radio station, the place she answered questions dwell and mentioned the sector of neuroscience in phrases the radio’s normal viewers may perceive and have interaction with.

“To me, science communication is bringing science to any and each viewers, whereas delivering the message in a method that’s comprehensible, relatable and accessible to all,” Gonzalez mentioned. “As a scientist and lifelong learner, I’ve discovered myself listening to hour-long talks filled with jargon that I can’t comply with. I depart feeling discouraged and wishing extra teachers had been educated in science communication. Science advantages everybody, and everybody ought to have a proper to the data scientists have constructed and proceed to construct upon.”