Year 10 Psychology students get clever and creative for Brain Week
Psychology students in Ms Griffins Year 10 psychology classes enjoyed ‘Brain Week’ this October with projects designed by Ms Bloom. We are studying criminology this term, in particular what makes a criminal’s brain different to a healthy brain. Students were given a project to create a poster and a model of the average human brain and research the differences to a criminal brain. Students used a variety of different materials and textures, even food!
Ms Bloom, Ms Griffin and Ms Naqvi The psychology team
Three students baked different ‘brain cakes’ and iced them with different colours relating to brain areas or sweets on top for each brain area. One student had questions attached to various cupcakes relating to a particular part of the brain. When we answered the question correctly, we got to eat the cupcake!
Students presented interesting and well researched ideas and case studies. Some examples being, if a criminal has a shrunken pre-frontal cortex (which is sometimes the case) this can inhibit them from making logical and rational decisions and therefore this led to them to committing crimes. They are unable to manage impulse control or moral reasoning. If there are issues in their amygdala they will have trouble processing feelings such as guilt and empathy and so can often go on to commit multiple murders or have psychopathic tendencies!
Students had researched very interesting case studies and also found statistics such as the fact that criminals with low activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus have a higher risk of offending. Great work from all Year 10 Psychology students and a very enjoyable week of lessons.
Ms Griffins
