• Question: what is your favourite thing to study in science, whats the most interesting thing you've found out

    Asked by anon-181887 on 18 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      My favourite thing to study is Psychology, I love all different aspects of the brain and the mind, it is truly fascinating. I am still at the start of my academic career, so have not discovered too much. But my favourite thing I have learned so far is about split-brain patients (people who have an extremely severe operation to remove epilepsy by severing their corpus collosum – the bit that connects the two sides of the brain). I did not even know it was possible to live with the brain cut into two separate parts! But the people who have undergone this surgery are able to do some things that we are unable to do because there is no interference from the other side of the brain. E.g. draw two different, accurate, pictures with each hand at the same time (which is incredibly difficult for people who have not undergone this operation to do).

    • Photo: Claire Donald

      Claire Donald answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      This is a really tricky question to answer as there are lots of interesting things I have learned from science! My favourite subject in science to study is infectious diseases. These are caused by germs like bacteria, viruses and parasites. Millions of people are infected every year and can have some really nasty symptoms. I enjoyed learning about them so much at university that I now study them for a living.

      I currently work on diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and I recently learned about a spider (Evarcha culicivora- otherwise called the vampire jumping spider!) which likes to eat mosquitoes. Specially, it likes to eat mosquitoes that have recently bitten someone so they are full of blood! Scientists hope that they can use this spider in the fight against malaria. I just hope these spiders don’t decide to skip eating mosquitoes and go direct to the source of the blood themselves….

    • Photo: Laura Hemming

      Laura Hemming answered on 24 Jun 2018:

      My favourite thing to study is Psychology – I find it fascinating to learn about people and why we do the things that we do! For me, I think the most fascinating thing I’ve learnt about is multiple personality disorder. This is where a person experiences several different personalities in one body. What I find absolutely fascinating about it is that each personality has skills and difficulties that the other personalities do not. For instance, one personality may be able to speak different languages, whilst another personality may be a younger age and may not even be able to fully speak one language yet. And yet, all the personalities share the same brain – it’s totally fascinating!

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