How Neuroscience Relates to Board Games
during elementary school
two big things happened in my life i
learned how to play the board game
monopoly
and i began questioning why everything i
did was somehow linked to the brain
while both developments took place
separately
they would later become inexplicably
intertwined
in my journey of exploring
interdisciplinary neuroscience
so let me walk you through my own
version of monopoly
up until high school i did not know much
about the brain
i pictured it as a simple wobbly pinkish
gray little lump that was sitting in my
head
that i wouldn’t necessarily think about
much unless i was heading a soccer ball
or watching a movie about
zombies or just having a headache this
is a similar experience for most of us
we don’t actually delve deeper into
fields such as neuroscience that study
the brain and nervous system
unless something greatly piques our
interest in curiosity
such as learning about a miracle drug
for alzheimer’s disease that came on the
evening news
or experiencing a neurological condition
or mental illness so if at
some point in our lives we all start out
with an equal fifteen hundred dollars
allocated to us at the start of monopoly
equal base no unfair neuroscience
knowledge
perhaps depending on how you’re playing
the game you might include different
distributions of the bill denominations
you might start off with two fifty
dollar bills instead of
one one hundred dollar bill things like
that
we can’t obviously all come from the
same exact scientific background or
expertise of course
some of us are dancers tech experts or
philosophers
these are the differences in our
starting points the various perspectives
from which we approach studying the
brain
now let’s roll the pair of monopoly dice
and advance by the number of spaces
around the board
based on what number we roll the number
of spaces we advance
is completely up to chance just as a
chance event is often
what nudges us to learn about the brain
for example most of us will not wake up
one morning and decide to
enroll in a neuroscience event or
competition but rather
one thing leads to another and another
in my own experience i found out about
this high school neuroscience
competition called the brain bee
through a link for my regional science
fair the bit of information digging i
did afterwards confirmed my interest
in signing up for the event but i
definitely did not open up my search
engine that morning with the attention
of finding neuroscience opportunities
it just happened through a bit of luck
and randomness
which is exactly how monopoly proceeds
every time it is your turn
now previously we rolled the paradise
and we moved forward by
several spaces to say land on a property
that belongs to the orange color group
now in monopoly when you land on and
purchase multiple properties
from the same color group it gives you
an advantage
i will refer to this as depth now on the
other hand
for a rather unlucky player who lands on
a bunch of disparate properties from
different color groups
maybe they have one property from each
of the orange pink green blue
color groups i’ll refer to this as
breath
now in the neuroscience world having
breath is just as important as having
depth
of knowledge if a scientist is involved
in only
one niche area of neuroscience such as
behavioral neuroscience
then this would constitute as having
depth of knowledge
in behavioral neuroscience however
if a scientist has some knowledge
touching upon behavioral neuroscience
neurophysiology neuropharmacology
and such areas then this breath of
knowledge
allows them to understand how an
advancement in one branch of
neuroscience their specific field
can advance developments and others
having this multi-disciplinary lens to
neuroscience
allows scientists to make even more
effectively informed decisions
which leads to a very well-rounded
translation of neuroscience to the real
world
directly affecting patients in clinical
settings
all the way to individuals like us going
about our daily lives
bringing together different branches of
neuroscience and bringing together
properties from different color groups
and monopoly
allows us to build a stronger base to
set ourselves up for success in the
future
no one can truly become the master of
monopoly properties
or the absolute expert in one branch of
neuroscience or stem in general
the chances of that happening are very
low and perhaps the end result is not
the best as well
when we play monopoly most of us enjoy
the time we spend
actually playing the game from start to
finish more so than simply winning
the round of the game that is hoping
that the game doesn’t get too
competitive of course
but the act of playing the game itself
also translates
to the scientific world through the
research process
a large research finding does not
necessarily need to be
the most important or meaningful part of
neuroscience
the scientific process itself can be
highly insightful
and affect other aspects of our life
the journey to a conclusion or result is
meaningful
when we consider the time invested into
expanding our own
personal knowledge highlighting a gap in
existing general neuroscience knowledge
and then working to change or further
the science platform
i believe that younger neuroscience
students and stem students
in general place a large amount of
emphasis on supposed successful science
for youth scientists winning the science
monopoly game translates to
finding a breakthrough miracle drug or
publishing a manuscript in a highly
prestigious journal
rather there’s much more that goes into
that
first it takes failure to get to a
success point
it takes losing that monopoly a few
times to understand how the game works
and science is the same way it takes
trial and error measurements
and experimentation to understand if you
are headed
in the right direction second
neuroscience should not merely focus on
the end result of recognition
because the field is meant to tell us
more about how the human brain functions
in order to understand ourselves and
it’s more meaningful to be able to
translate scientific findings
the general public through science
communication and
empower our communities with evidenced
fact findings to enrich their lives
in high school i found that when we
learn about the scientific process or
work to develop our analytical skills
the system greatly emphasizes coming to
a conclusion pinnacle
placing importance on very concrete
results and being successful
but sometimes we get so blindsided by
only placing our focus
on end results that we forget to live
through the very small experiences
along the way such as receiving a
helpful
monopoly community chest card boost or
just landing a lucky dice roll
neuroscience is more about the
collaboration that occurs every single
day
with a feeling of delight when a program
code for a study
runs correctly after you have spent an
insanely large amount of time
on fixing it now as i furthered my
scientific experiences into college
i strongly believe in paying attention
to each small point of neuroscience and
research
and understanding how it contributes to
the greater whole
after all every single one of my turns
determines my ending outcome
in monopoly so the next time that you
are sitting with your family
around the monopoly board on a fine
winter evening in november
just take a moment to think about how
much smaller impact activities like
board games
can allow us to develop our mindset for
understanding the world
of science and even neuroscience that is
around us
in a much more meaningful personalized
way
thank you