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Opening Music - Brain Power! Talk about your fine machine.
Brain Power! Makes you thoroughly unique.
With the power to think you can learn anything. Brain Power!
One hundred billion neurons.
(Corty) Hey, Kids. How doodle-de-do?
(Corty) Have you got some time to help me out with something?
(Julia) We always have time for you, Corty.
(Corty) Great, because I just got four e-mails from four different scientists.
(Corty) Each e-mail has a word with a description
and I'm not sure what to do with them.
(Julia) Sounds like a mission to me.
(Max) Let's see them.
(Corty) The words are: Experiment, Conclude, Observe, and Predict.
(Corty) Why don't you write the words down on poster board and put them by the wall.
[Music]
(Julia) I'm stumped.
(Max) Well maybe they are in the wrong order or something.
(Max) Lets try moving them around.
[Music]
(Julia) I'm more confused than when we started out.
(Max) Hi. (Beth) Hi.
(Juan and Julia) Hi.
(Max) Boy, are we glad to see you.
(Beth) There is a first time for everything I guess.
(Juan) What's going on?
(Max) Well, Corty got some of these definitions and some e-mails
and we're trying to figure out what they mean.
(Beth) Sounds like a mission to me.
(Julia) That's what I said. I'm starting to think like a scientist.
(Juan) Well, maybe we can look the definitions up in the computer.
You can find just about anything on the internet.
(Max) Good idea!
[Siren]
(Corty) Hi, Junior Scientists.
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, huh?
(Juan) What are you so happy about, you gave us a tough challenge this time.
(Corty) But now, I'm going to help you out.
(Corty) I'm going to introduce you to some friends of mine.
They are scientists.
(Max) What kinds of scientists?
(Corty) Scientists who study different drugs,
and how they affect our brains and bodies.
(Julia) Ok, but I don't get what that has to do with the definitions of those words,
observe, predict, experiment, conclude?
(Corty) Well, lets meet with our first scientist
and see if we can find out what those words mean.
(Corty) One of the first things scientists do is "Observe".
Dr. Chudler does this when he begins solving any problem.
He looks at the problem very carefully and writes down what he sees.
(Dr. Chudler) My name is Eric Chudler,
and I work in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Washington.
I am in the Department of Anesthesiology
because I am trying to find out how the brain feels pain.
Why do people feel pain?
(Dr. Chudler) I'm a neurophysiologist.
And what I do is I record from nerve cells in the brain.
And in my research lab here, they're set up with lots of equipment
so that I can record from those small nerve cells in the brain.
(Dr. Chudler) In my experiments I use rats because a rat nerve cell
works the exact same way as a nerve cell in a person.
(Corty) When Dr. Byas-Smith has a problem,
he has to make guesses about how to solve it.
(Corty) Predicting is like making a good guess.
(Dr. Byas Smith) Hi. I'm Michael Byas-Smith.
I work at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
I, I'm a physician with a sub-specialty in pain management.
And I also do research here. And, so I work with patients.
And in a hospital where we put people to sleep for surgery.
(Dr. Byas Smith) We have to do experiments.
And the experiments that we do, we can't do them all on humans,
so we come up with models to test our ideas, what we call hypotheses.
(Dr. Byas Smith) We also look at how animals respond to some of the medications.
Of course, animals have brains also.
So we can look in their brains
and see how their brains respond to different drug exposures.
(Dr. Byas Smith) Unfortunately our rats are sleepy today,
and we can't disturb them right now,
so we got our friend, Yoda, to come.
(Dr. Byas Smith) This is a little teddy bear of mine,
to come and demonstrate what we do when we image our rats.
There are some experiments that we can't perform on the humans easily.
(Dr. Byas Smith) So we can do some things with the rats that we can't do with the humans.
(Corty) Another word was "Experiment."
Dr. Jackson experiments in her lab to find out if her guesses are right.
(Dr. Denise Jackson) My name is Denise Jackson and I work
in the psychology department at Northeastern University.
Basically, at Northeastern, I am a teacher slash researcher.
And as far as research goes,
our laboratory focuses on the effects of prenatal *** exposure
on brains in animals.
We use rats, and we use what's known as a Long Evans rat.
It's not a typical white ratâ it's actually a hooded rat.
So the rats have black fur on top and then their bellies are white,
so they're actually pretty fur rats. [laugh]
(Dr. Denise Jackson) As a child, I had always loved research,
and I started off actually in high school
with an interest in marine biology.
(Dr. Denise Jackson) I just love looking at different species of marine life,
and classifying the different species,
and so I always loved the lab and the microscope.
(Dr. Denise Jackson) I think that inquiry is, is always within me in terms of wondering about "what if."
And I think that "What if" is a question that scientists ask themselves continually.
(Corty) And the last word we have is "Conclude."
Dr. Kimes has spent a lot of time working on a problem and experimenting.
She uses all of the information she's collected to "Conclude,"
to come up with a answer.
(Dr. Alane Kimes) My name is Alane Kimes,
and I work at the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
(Dr. Alane Kimes) As a neuroscientist, I'm interested in how the brain functions.
A PET scan shows what parts of the brain are working,
and what parts of the brain are perhaps working harder than other parts of the brain.
(Dr. Alane Kimes) I'm hoping that through my research and that of my colleagues,
we'll be able to find out what causes drug abuse,
and how we can help drug abusers stop being drug abusers.
(Corty) So these words talk about steps
all scientists have to take to learn new things.
And just like other people who have different jobs,
these scientists have families and interests just like everyone else.
(Dr. Byas Smith) Most of my time outside of work is spent with my children.
We play a lot of games, we read books.
My children are musicians, they play the piano, the violin, and the cello,
and lately I've been trying to learn how to play the guitar.
(Dr. Alane Kimes) I also have some hobbies,
and probably the kinds of hobbies that I like to do most are skiing,
and I like to garden, and I like to decorate cakes.
(Corty) Ok Junior Scientists,
why not take a break now to talk about these words,
and see if you can figure out what order they should be in.
[Music]
(Julia) Well now we've met some scientists and we know what these words mean,
but we don't know the correct order they go in. This is hard.
(Beth) But we can figure it out.
When you're a scientist, the first thing you do is observe.
(Beth) You check out the problem.
Like we had the problem of finding out what these definitions were.
So we looked over them.
We read them, and we thought about them.
(Max) Then we predicted. We made a good guess of what the solution was.
We guessed the words, maybe, had something to do with science.
(Julia) Next, we experimented. That's the fun part.
The experiment tells you if your guess is right.
We experimented by checking in with some scientists,
and they told us that these really are words that have to do with science.
(Juan) And finally, we concluded.
We put the pieces together to figure out what they meant.
And then we had the answer to the question we started out with.
Ta Da!!
(Beth) We're good.
(Juan) And so are the scientists.
(Julia) I didn't realize that scientists did so many things.
(Max) Or that science can be so much fun.
Ending Music - Brain Power! Talk about your fine machine.
Brain Power! Makes you thoroughly unique.
With the power to think you can learn anything. Brain Power!
One hundred billion neurons. Hey! You've got a lot of nerve.
Got their own communication. Transmitting information.
It's electrical. Thoroughly chemical. Brain Power!
Talk about your fine machine. Brain Power!