Indiana University Bloomington

We held a one-evening activity for the living-learning center of the Indiana University School of Public Health. The activity focused on prism adaptation, and we brought 4 pairs of goggles with Fresnel press-on prisms. 6 undergraduates came to participate. We started by having a volunteer undergo prism adaptation by throwing balls into a box while wearing the goggles, and we explained how the brain undergoes visuomotor adaptation. Then we let the students try different motor actions with the goggles, such as two students playing catch while each wearing goggles, and eventually we experimented with shifting the press-on prisms in different ways to see if it was still possible to adapt. The students seemed to most enjoy experimenting with the prisms themselves, placing them in odd configurations to see how their visual perception and visuomotor coordination was affected. We achieved our goal of exposing undergraduates in the LLC to brain science, however we had less attendance than expected, possibly due to limited advertising and scheduling the event in a week when many students had midterms.

We will explore more advertising options next time to increase attendance.