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Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter.
In this issue:
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Neuroscience for Kids had several new additions in October including:
A. October Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news2910.html
B. New Neuroscience in the News
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/inthenews.html
C. Visit or follow my Instagram site with neuroscience facts and trivia:
https://www.instagram.com/ericchudler/
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The Neuroscience for Kids "Site of the Month" for November is "PsyToolkit" at:
PsyToolkit was created by psychologist Professor Gijsbert Stoet as a storehouse of experiments and questionnaires for cognitive-psychological research projects. The site hosts more than 50 different experiments and more than 100 different surveys. Choose from many memory tests, mental rotation tasks, multitasking experiments and other experiments that demonstrate various psychological and cognitive processes.
The PsyToolkit resources are all free to use for noncommercial purposes. If you are a student, you can use PsyToolkit materials for educational or research purposes without asking for further permission from the developers. The tests and experiments could be used for a classroom activity or a science fair project.
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High school students often write to me for advice about how they can get research experience in a neuroscience lab. I try to be encouraging in my response, but at the same time, I let them know the challenges they could face as a high school student who wants to work in a university lab. For example, at the University of Washington (UW) where I work, there are many federal, state and university rules and regulations that must be followed when people under the age of 18 years old (minors) work or volunteer on campus (see: https://www.washington.edu/youth/policy/). For example, at the UW, minors must be supervised by authorized personnel at all times while they are in the lab. This may make it difficult for a lab to always have someone in the lab when a high school student is working. High school students will also likely be competing with undergraduate students for limited research positions. Undergraduate students pay tuition and may need research credits for their degrees. Therefore, labs may give preference to undergraduate students over high school students who are looking for research experience.
Nevertheless, many high school students have found research positions in university labs. Some researchers welcome younger students into their labs and believe it is important for scientists to get an early start. I know some high school students who have conducted research projects virtually and therefore they do not need on-campus supervision. It may take time and many emails to find a lab before a high school student finds a position, but it is possible.
Another way for high school students to gain research experience is through summer programs. Some programs pay students for their work while other programs require the students to pay to participate. Some applications for 2026 summer programs are already available and others will open soon. Here is a small sample of high school neuroscience summer programs from across the US:
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Did you know that approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are colorblind? It's true - about 8% of men and 0.5% of women have difficulty seeing the difference between certain colors. The most common cause of colorblindness is a person's genetics, but eye injuries and problems with the optic nerve may also result is color vision problems.
Perhaps you have seen Ishihara plates to test for colorblindness. These are pictures with patterns of colored dots that form a number or shape that can be seen by a person with normal color vision. A person with color vision deficiency cannot see the number or shape. Ishihara plates were first published by Shinobu Ishihara in 1917.
I recently learned that there are reverse colorblindness tests. These look similar to Ishihara plates, but in reverse colorblindness tests, a person with normal color vision cannot see the number or shape embedded into the pattern of dots while a person with color vision deficiency can see the shape or pattern. See (or not see) for yourself some examples of Ishihara plates and reverse colorblindness tests:
http://www.wonderfulcolors.org/blog/ishihara-color-test/
https://medium.com/@iristech.co/how-does-reverse-color-blind-test-work-a3376d76d8e
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A. "The Slippery Slope of Ethical Collapse - And How Courage Can Reverse It" (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, November, 2025).
B. "Rethinking Adult ADHD" (AMERICAN SCIENTIST, November/December, 2025).
C. "Blood Tests are Now Approved for Alzheimer's: How Accurate are They?" and "People with Blindness Can Read Again After Retinal Implant" (NATURE NEWS, October 17 and October 20, 2025).
D. "Understanding the Rise of Adult ADHD" (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, November, 2025).
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A. While a high school student in West Hartford (CT), Roger Walcott Sperry set an all-state record in the javelin throw. Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain (Source: Voneida, T.J., Roger Wolcott Sperry, 20 August 1913 -17 April 1994, Biogr. Mem. Fellows R. Soc. 43:461-470, 1997).
B. Hummingbirds have an excellent memory of flowers they have visited; these small birds also have a large hippocampus compared to other birds (Source: Ward, B.J. et al., Hummingbirds have a greatly enlarged hippocampal formation, Biol. Lett., 8:657-65, 2012).
C. November is Alzheimer's Awareness Month and National Epilepsy Awareness Month.
D. Creative activities such as dancing, painting, singing, playing a musical instrument and gaming may help keep your brain young (Source: Coronel-Oliveros, C., et al. Creative experiences and brain clocks. Nat. Commun. 16, 8336, 2025; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-64173-9).
E. Fish can detect color and brightness with their pineal gland (Source: Shen, B., et al., Light intensity-dependent arrestin switching for inactivation of a light-sensitive GPCR, bistable opsin, iScience, Volume 28, Issue 2, 111706).
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Chudler at: chudler@u.washington.edu
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Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and the "Neuroscience for Kids" web site are always welcome. If there are any special topics that you would like to see on the web site, just let me know.
Eric
Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.