Profile – Erbium Zone

Education:

Central Newcastle High School 1998 – 2004, Sunderland University 2006 – 2009, Northumbria University 2012 – 2013, Durham University 2013 – 2014,
Qualifications:

A Levels (English Language, Psychology and Physics), BSc (Hons) Psychology, Primary Postgraduate Certificate in Education, MSc Cognitive Neuroscience
Work History:

In between my undergraduate degree and my PGCE I worked as a support worker for stroke patients, and a teaching assistant in a local primary school.
Current Job:

I’m a first year PhD student.

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If you think back to when you were a baby, you probably can’t remember much until you were about 5 years old. It’s important that we remember things about what has already happen to us, because we can use this information to predict what will happen in the future. For example, if I touched something hot and burnt my hand, I would need to remember what happened so that I didn’t do the same thing again! This ability to think about our past or predict what will happen to us in the future is called mental time travel… so technically we are all time travellers! Between the age of 3 and 5, children develop this ability for mental time travel, and I am trying to learn about whether this is linked to the way they learn from others, since this also changes around that age.
My Typical Day:

Every day is different – I could be reading lots of scientific papers, deciding on my next experiment, helping to teach undergraduate students or doing puzzles and playing games with the children who come into our lab.
What I'd do with the prize money:

I’d buy some new equipment so we could make our neuroscience outreach sessions even more fun and exciting.

Jen Machin