A noted neuroscientist will visit NE Campus Feb. 4 to discuss her brain research with students.

Dr. Janet Zadina, reading specialist and former high school and college teacher, has researched developmental language disorders through MRI brain scans and is an assistant professor in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Florida-Tampa and Tulane University.

Sponsored by student activities and the natural science department, the presentation will be 6-7 p.m. in NSTU Center Corner.

One of the main topics Zadina will discuss is how the brain thinks.

“Thinking involves both gray matter and white matter,” she said in a video seminar at http://www.brainresearch.us. “Gray matter consists of neurons in the brain. These neurons hold information.”

For the brain to work, neurons must work together.

“When we think, all of the neurons on a subject must communicate with each other,” she said in the video.

Zadina said for the brain to grasp something, it has to have a pathway.

“When we fire a group of neurons enough, we develop fluency into the brain,” she said. “Things like driving a car and reading give the brain fluency.”

Zadina said that for people to remember anything, their neurons must connect to something that is familiar.

Zadina said it is important for students to use the information they learn or they can lose it quickly.

“The materials must relate,” she said. “Materials must be important to the learner, and connections must be strengthened.”

NE student Bob Krzyzewski said his curiosity about the brain would lead him to the seminar.

“I like to wonder how the brain is made and how it contains information over time,” he said.

— Marley Malenfant