Classroom Questions

Questions for “Study is first to link brainwaves to certain forms of thought”

a photo of a boy sitting at a table in a library and daydreaming

Is your mind focused? Daydreaming? Wandering freely? A new study finds that brainwaves can now answer that. And letting minds wander may signal people who are creative and better at solving tricky problems.

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By Science News Explores

To accompany “Study is first to link brainwaves to certain forms of thought”

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1.  Why do researchers use brain scans? For example, what can those scans show?

2.  When does your mind tend to wander? Do you think that’s a good trait, a bad trait or neither one?

During Reading:

1.  Loren Frank at the University of California, San Francisco says the new study has found signatures of what?

2.  How many people did the new study recruit and what test did the researchers have them perform?

3.  What are EEGs and what do they measure?

4.  What are alpha waves?

5.  To what were those alpha waves linked in the new study? And what part of the brain showed the strongest link?

6.  When were the alpha waves strongest? When were they weakest?

After Reading:

1.  Why do you think the authors are interested in using brainwaves to learn what someone’s mind is up to? If you could use brain scans to tell you something about the mind and thought, what would you want to know? Explain why.