Teachers' Notes - A window on the brain

What's special about your brain?

In this activity the students will be testing their cognitive functioning by a series of online tests developed by Cambridge Brain Sciences. These can be found at: http://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/

Before the students take the test please read the terms and conditions on the Cambridge Brain Sciences website.

The Cambridge Brain Sciences website contains several freely available tests that have arisen from the cognitive neuroscience research funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). It is understood that these tests are provided for public use with no guarantee of validity or accuracy of the results, and are not to be interpreted as diagnostic or indicative of any illness or disability.

Registration:
Some of the tests require a login to access. Read the privacy policy on the Cambridge Brain Sciences website before using these tests with your students. Anyone who registers their details gives consent for their results to be used as part of MRC's research and may be used entirely anonymously in some future publications.

All children should discuss their use of this website with their parent or guardian, and no information should be provided without their consent.

However, not all the tests require a login. If you feel that it is inappropriate for your students to enter their details then you can try a test from each category that you do not need to register for.

Tests that can be done without registering are:

• Spatial Slider (Planning)
• Rotations (Concentration)
• Grammatical Reasoning (Reasoning)
• Monkey Ladder (Memory)

Facilities required: It would be very useful to have access to an ICT suite. If you do not have access to ICT facilities you could allocate the test for students to do as homework.

Timing: This is flexible as the students can do a certain number of tests depending on the time available.

Curriculum links

Organisms and health

• 5d: Chemical and electrical signals enable body systems to respond to internal and external changes, in order to maintain the body in an optimal state.
• 5e: Human health is affected by a range of environmental and inherited factors, by the use and misuse of drugs and by medical treatments.

Go to main page of Teacher's Resource - A window on the brain

View this information in printable format.