This course is about how the brain creates our sense of spatial location from a variety of sensory and motor sources, and how this spatial sense in turn shapes our cognitive abilities. Knowing where things are is effortless. But “under the hood,” your brain must figure out even the simplest of details about the world around you and your position in it. Recognizing your mother, finding your phone, going to the grocery store, playing the banjo – these require careful sleuthing and coordination across different sensory and motor domains. This course traces the brain’s detective work to create this sense of space and argues that the brain’s spatial focus permeates our cognitive abilities, affecting the way we think and remember. The material in this course is based on a book I've written for a general audience. The book is called "Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are", and is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or directly from Harvard University Press. The course material overlaps with classes on perception or systems neuroscience, and can be taken either before or after such classes. Dr. Jennifer M. Groh, Ph.D. Professor Psychology & Neuroscience; Neurobiology Duke University www.duke.edu/~jmgroh Jennifer M. Groh is interested in how the brain process spatial information in different sensory systems, and how the brain's spatial codes influence other aspects of cognition. She is the author of a recent book entitled "Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are" (Harvard University Press, fall 2014). Much of her research concerns differences in how the visual and auditory systems encode location, and how vision influences hearing. Her laboratory has demonstrated that neurons in auditory brain regions are sometimes responsive not just to what we hear but also to what direction we are looking and what visual stimuli we can see. These surprising findings challenge the prevailing assumption that the brain’s sensory pathways remain separate and distinct from each other at early stages, and suggest a mechanism for such multi-sensory interactions as lip-reading and ventriloquism (the capture of perceived sound location by a plausible nearby visual stimulus). Dr. Groh has been a professor at Duke University since 2006. She received her undergraduate degree in biology from Princeton University in 1988 before studying neuroscience at the University of Michigan (Master’s, 1990), the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D., 1993), and Stanford University (postdoctoral, 1994-1997). Dr. Groh has been teaching undergraduate classes on the neural basis of perception and memory for over fifteen years. She is presently a faculty member at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences at Duke University. She also holds appointments in the Departments of Neurobiology and Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke. Dr. Groh’s research has been supported by a variety of sources including the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the John Merck Scholars Program, the EJLB Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Whitehall Foundation, and the National Organization for Hearing Research.
TM
It was a fun course. I really learnt a lot, through her lectures, especially the different experiments. Really appreciate Coursera for providing with financial aid for me to take the class :)
JB
Very informative with interesting case studies and researches. Thank you very much for creating this course, Dr. Jennifer Groh and Duke University!
RG
Great course !!! The information provided within the course was complete and easy to understand without oversimplifying the topics along with applicable to daily use concepts and work.
ND
Brilliant! I'm taking this while reading Steven Pinker's 'How The Mind Works' and all the overlap makes the learning experience even more fun.
GO
I found this course to be interesting and informative. Dr Groh does a great job in making the content relatable and easy to understand even without a background in the brain.
TB
I like the details that this course provides about the functionality of the brain. Dr Groh definitely took her time to prepare this course, and she likes to go in depth detail about everything.
BM
Excellent overview.its a pity I would have had to upgrade to submit the assigments, as I don't want to purchase the certificate.it' encouraged me, however, to enrol on another course.
ES
Sincerely, I enjoyed every lesson, the professor has the gift for teaching. I learned a lot. I truly recommend this course.
RC
Enlightening, stimulating, perfect blend of top notch content and understandable videos. Thanks Prof. Groh!!! One of my best courses ever (on/off line)
AH
The curriculum of the course was well structured and the instructor was great. It could have been a bit longer as it was hard to follow sometimes due to its busy schedule.
KS
Taught for beginners in a simple and concise way! I especially liked the real life examples given to help students understand the concepts being explained - made it a lot more engaging!
AA
It was a very interesting and thought-inducing course. The experiments also made it highly interactive. It was time well spent
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Taught for beginners in a simple and concise way! I especially liked the real life examples given to help students understand the concepts being explained - made it a lot more engaging!
I found this course to be interesting and informative. Dr Groh does a great job in making the content relatable and easy to understand even without a background in the brain.
This is an excellent MOOC. I am a PhD candidate studying human intelligence and spatial cognition specifically associated with problem solving. The content is very well structured and clearly communicated through the lectures. Having been briefly introduced to some of the concepts in my own studies prior to this course I am finding the difficulty level to be quite nice (challenging yet very manageable). The inclusion of various experiments throughout the course is a good idea as it makes it all very interesting.
One of the best Neuroscience courses took in my life. The professor is very good at teaching and amazing personality and her research team is very great. Hope one day she would win Nobel Prize
Great course !!! The information provided within the course was complete and easy to understand without oversimplifying the topics along with applicable to daily use concepts and work.
One of the excellent course I've taken ob coursera. Dr. Jennifer's explanation helped me to get a whole new level of view in understanding brain and its activities in space.
This is an interesting and excellent course on how our nervous system (not just our brain) makes sense of, processes and responds to the external physical space. There is a great and gradual mix of easy, moderate and challenging topics which can cement key concepts (especially those that you can observe or replicate on your own) quite well. For people in or aiming to be in the (allied) medical professions, a lot of the material here can serve as a review in basic neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and/or neuropathology.
A double-edged sword in this offering is the inclusion and description of landmark studies behind the discussed concepts. There is no doubt that by mentioning these studies, the collaborative and building-up nature of (neuro)science is emphasized adequately - that everything in academic textbooks and in this course did not appear in scientists' minds out of thin air. The downside, on the other hand, is that it sometimes left me wondering the proportion of these findings that are definitive or tentative. Considering the issue of replication that hounds all of empirical science research, it would be nice, I think, that future revisions of this course will incorporate statements or discussions on these matters (i.e, whether the findings are robust, or can be explained by other factors/forces beyond chance).
While I would argue that a baseline grasp of neurobiology is needed to maximize understanding of the content (especially when it comes to nuanced details which are often tackled in the quizzes), I will still highly recommend this course to everyone deeply beguiled by the topic (and can commit their attention beyond casual learning). Perhaps, those who have access the Dr. Groh's book serving as the main reference for this course might find their learning experience enhanced.
Absolutely magnificent course! The course is great, and is taught in such an understandable language. I am thirteen years old, and just completed this course, and i feel the need to express my gratitude towards the professor who is teaching this entire course. She is understandable, funny, and manages to teach very complex topics without making them boring, or hard to follow. There are also loads of examples, animations, and images to make the topics easier to understand. Massive kudos to her!
Fantastic instructor. Her ability to clearly communicate dense technical jargon is beyond commendable. She succeeded in making me feel her enthusiasm and fascination with the subject. While I do think the course could use a couple more lectures, or at least some of the lectures dealing with more complex topics could be longer, I still think as is, the course is well worth taking. Kudos to Dr. Groh and "The Brain and Space" team, your love and effort truly shine through.
I like the details that this course provides about the functionality of the brain. Dr Groh definitely took her time to prepare this course, and she likes to go in depth detail about everything.
Excellent overview.
its a pity I would have had to upgrade to submit the assigments, as I don't want to purchase the certificate.
it' encouraged me, however, to enrol on another course.
Brilliant! I'm taking this while reading Steven Pinker's 'How The Mind Works' and all the overlap makes the learning experience even more fun.
Loved it. I took another class from Duke related to visual perception and was equally satisfied with the detail, and pace, of the course.
This course represents a good start in order to study space and brain relationship. However the lack of principles in neuroscience, related topics such as mirror neuron systems, a deeper knowledge on motor cortex culd lead to important misconceptions and limits. It's really a good start but the course need more reliable contents, scientific reasoning and debate.
Your Kindly,
Giulio Bindi
Terrible too much information before a quiz and lack of clarity to make assumptions. TERRRIBLE course. HOW do I unenroll!
I recently completed the The Brain and Space course and it was a fantastic learning experience! The course provided a deep dive into how the brain processes space, navigation, and spatial memory, using a range of fascinating insights from neuroscience. The instructor did an outstanding job of breaking down complex concepts into understandable lessons, and I especially appreciated how they linked theoretical knowledge with practical applications. The course materials were well-organized, and the use of engaging examples and visuals helped solidify the content. The instructor's passion for the subject really shone through, making each lesson both informative and enjoyable. Their ability to explain intricate details about the brain's spatial systems kept me engaged throughout the course. I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in understanding the brain's role in space perception and cognition. A big thank you to the instructor for their dedication and clear teaching style!
He disfrutado enormemente el reto de completar el curso. Por dos motivos prinipales. Mi dominio del idioma inglés es aún, digamos deficiente, así que el absorber conocimientos en otro idioma con el reto y la satisfacción de haber conluido es muy gratificante. En segundo lugar comparto la curiosidad con la Profesora Groh respecto a conocer el cerebro y la mente, ella ha hecho un estupendo trabajo llevándonos en este proceso, gracias por el sombrero, jeje.
This is pretty fun and interesting course! The video lectures are full of very interesting information and if you are interested in learning how the brain works, I am sure you'll be hooked on to it. The exercises sometimes need you to remember concepts, particularly names and I am not a big fan of that. I feel the exercises can be made more interesting and engaging. Dr. Groh regularly links to books and papers to explore more if you want to!
Jennifer's teaching style is refreshingly direct and well illustrated. I learned a lot and confirmed my understanding of many things.
The course also resonates with a cognitive system development platform I have developed, called NeurOS. See www.cognitivity.technology for an overview. As a result of this course, I plan to build some "neural circuits" using this platform that reflect the many neural processes illustrated in this course.
Dr Groh was so inspiring, passionate, clear and precise. She exhibited complete mastery of teaching the course, it was like watching an artist unraveling their craft, no wonder so many artistic pieces were used as examples in the lectures! I enjoyed this very rich and interesting course as a psychomotor therapist and a neurosciences lover, it will definitely help me in my career. The course was so enjoyable that I was sad it ended.