A neuroscientist helps you decode a baby's mind

A neuroscientist helps you decode a baby`s mind

Do babies understand fairness vs unfairness?" When Shreya Ghosh a PhD student at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) asks us this question, we jump to answer ‘No', stung by the number of times little nieces and nephews started bawling when we took our share of treats from a pile. Turns out, it was probably us, not them.

Ghosh, who will be hosting a Chai and Why talk this morning, is going to discuss how neuroscience and psychology have collaborated to help us understand infant human's mind better.

Ghosh says experiments have proven that children do understand concepts of fairness. "Researchers have kept puppets in front of toddlers and put sweets in front of the puppets. Sometimes, the sweets would be equally divided, and sometimes not. Very often, the kids would react when the sweets were distributed unevenly," she says. We can only think - wow, they know both morality and mathematics.

In a talk that will extend to two hours, Ghosh will discuss other insights into how kids learn - from how they perceive objects and their properties and what informs their understanding of other humans. Ghosh, a researcher in behavioural neuroscience who runs The Scientific Lens blog, will discuss studies conducted across the world. At her lab, Ghosh studies how stress and trauma early on in life can affect individuals. "However, we conduct our studies on rodents, not humans," she qualifies.

Are you a parent of a young 'un? Or a parent-to-be? Or a teacher perhaps? Or just someone who wants to learn more in order to conduct social experiments at work on boring Wednesdays? You might want to quickly gulp that coffee and get to Juhu.

Chai and Why: Inside a baby's mind
When: 11 AM, September 4
Where: Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu Church Road, Juhu
Call: 26149546