Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Brain Healthy: Empowering High School Students through Brain Health and Wellness Investigations

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Cate Schultz¹ (schultcg@bc.edu), Ido Davidesco¹, Wendy Suzuki²; ¹Boston College, ²New York University

“Brain Healthy” is a new high school program designed to empower students to make data-informed decisions to improve their brain health and wellness. In this program, students learn about brain plasticity and how positive (e.g., physical exercise) and negative (e.g., chronic stress) life experiences impact their brains. Students use data collected from fitness trackers, surveys, and computerized tasks to explore how brief periods of meditation and physical exercise affect their heart rate, stress, mood, and cognitive performance. Students then design data-driven investigations utilizing a de-identified community science database collected across all participating schools. Using this database, students explore questions of interest, such as how fitness level relates to cognitive performance and how sleep duration relates to mood. Currently, data is being collected at four implementing schools, with over 20 schools projected to participate in the program in the next three years. The effectiveness of the program is assessed using a mixed-methods design, which consists of surveys, students interviews, and classroom observations. Project findings will inform future neuroscience-related curriculum development and generate an extensive community-based database on adolescent health and wellness.

Topic Area: THINKING: Decision making