Medonly News

Children's Day: Exploring the "Mysteries of the Brain" with a 6-Year-Old

On the afternoon of June 1st, Children's Day, right after the Shanghai Science and Technology Festival, United Imaging specially invited an expert team from the School of Biomedical Engineering, ShanghaiTech University, to join 30 little explorers (with an average age of 6) from Yungu Road Kindergarten in Jiading New Town for an enlightenment journey into medicine and the brain.
How does the brain carry out intelligence work? The children played the role of messenger neurons to complete the key "passing of the ball".
The Infant Brain Development Cohort is one of the major projects under the "Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Research" initiative of the Science and Technology Innovation 2030. Led by ShanghaiTech University and jointly participated by multiple universities, hospitals, and United Imaging Group, the project plans to track the brain development trajectories of over a thousand children for 5 years, reveal genetic and environmental factors affecting development, explore the mechanisms of brain and behavioral development under the combined action of genes and environment, and build China's first large-scale cross-disciplinary cohort of normally developing infants aged 0-6, creating a "golden benchmark for the brain" for 300 million children.
The brain is related to children's social skills, expression, memory, and other aspects, serving as the foundation for lifelong psychological and learning activities. Modern parents have more advanced parenting concepts and methods, and are more concerned about their children's all-round development. To assess brain and intellectual development, there is an urgent need for an infant brain atlas as a "golden benchmark" to reveal genetic and environmental factors affecting development and explore the mechanisms of brain and behavioral development under the combined action of genes and environment. This is also the original intention of the Children's Brain Project.
"In the interesting games designed by Professor Zhang Han from the School of Biomedical Engineering, ShanghaiTech University, and engineer Quan Feiyu, along with the witty and enthusiastic interactions with the children, vivid images of the brain emerged through answers like 'The brain is as heavy as a cabbage' and 'The brain is home to thinking elves'. By understanding how the brain is shaped and its division of labor and collaboration, it is believed that children will better get along with this 'human body commander' in the future.
Some children, like 'young Picassos', created abstract paintings, while others, like 'little Da Vincis', drew hard-core anatomical-style depictions of organs such as the heart, brain, and lungs, showcasing their wonderful imagination about the inner world of the body.