Graduate of Clinical Psychology from the UDA wins world award, with a lot of imagination and a telephone tied to a lamp

Johanna Pozo, a graduate of the School of Clinical Psychology of the University of Azuay, won the first prize in the Short Video Contest promoted by the International Society of Neurosciences. 

Johanna spoke with Campus from the United Kingdom, a country she arrived in last September to join the master's degree at University College London in Cognitive Neuroscience.

In this interview, she told us why she was drawn to neurosciences, how the pandemic almost prevented her from participating in the contest, how she had to tie her phone to a lamp to record the video, and how she didn't think she had won.

I always liked knowing how the brain works, I remember in my career the classes of Dr. Alfonso Calderón. The best was when we had the Neuropsychology subject, which is where neurosciences and psychology are related.

When I started working with children and saw the differences in how they learn, I wondered why everyone experiences the learning experience differently.

There I was encouraged by this field of cognitive neurosciences, which is this giant study of how different brain processes influence our thinking, our emotions, our behavior.

And when I knew that I was going to come to this master's degree, I found out about this contest on Twitter, since last year a girl from the same study program won.

I saw the winning video and I thought it was incredible and that I could never do something like that, because I am very technophobic, I am terrible at this technology stuff.

At the beginning of the Scientific Communication course they told us about the contest, but then the pandemic came that changed all the plans, the course, the videos, and we could no longer do things as we had planned.

So I was not going to participate, but with my colleagues we were encouraged to do so. And our institute also encouraged us very much to join the scientific community, to communicate our science.

For those who have not seen your video, what does this project consist of in which a "technophobe" decides to participate?

My video is a very simple production, all made at home, there is nothing amazing about it.

In my video I deal with a cognitive skill called spatial navigation, which is the ability we have to function in different places.

I was going to do it with puppets in different sectors of London, but due to the pandemic that could not happen, because we can only go out one hour a day.

So I said to myself, if I had to explain this cognitive ability to my students in a class where I can't take them for a walk, how would I do it?

Then it occurred to me to use children's drawings that were available on the web. I downloaded the images, cut them into little paper figures, and moved the drawings on a table.

Juggling, I tied my cell phone over a lamp to be able to record because, furthermore, I was alone during the pandemic because my roommates left, so I didn't even have someone to help me record.

And what do you explain exactly?

I explain how spatial navigation works in the brain, through a special network of neurons, which are found in the hippocampus, an area located approximately in the middle of the brain, which is dedicated to memory and spatial location.

There are four special neurons that are going to work space navigation.

Those of place, which are activated when we are in specific places, for example, if we are in Westminster, in London, a neuron will know that we are in Westminster, but if we go to Buckingham Palace another will say: “This is not It is Westminster, it is the Palace ”. And if we go to Big Ben the same.

And this also happens in small spaces. If we are in our house, a neuron of place will identify the bedroom and another the living room. They are very specific.

These neurons work with others called head direction neurons, which tell us where we are looking. These help us a lot for when we remember the place, to be able to appreciate it from different perspectives.

If we go back to London, how do I see Buckingham Palace, from the front, from the side? Or how I see myself in a park from different perspectives.

Then come the network cells, which put together the different memories that we have of places like to put together a map, like those that join the pieces of a puzzle to know which place is next to each other.

And finally there are the border cells, which tell us where the limits of the place where we are are, for example, at the end of a path, or a wall.

These four types of neurons are going to tell us where we are.

And we know this by investigating the brain of rodents, using electrodes.

I'm talking about this and about a fabulous study that Professor Hugo Spiers' lab did on how urban development affects our spatial navigation.

The professor developed a video game that has a lot of levels, where the players have to hunt marine animals. The researchers then analyzed the places where the participants came from with their results in the video game.

And there they discovered that people who came from more organized cities, such as Cuenca, which is shaped like a chessboard, had less developed spatial navigation than people who come from less organized cities or rural sectors.

The researchers suggest that places that are less organized are cognitively more demanding, so the brain has to go through those navigation processes more.

And this is very important because we can see how the environment influences our cognitive abilities.

And how did you find out that you had earned with this project made with a telephone tied to a lamp and drawings downloaded from the internet?

When I participated I never thought I could win, precisely because my video was not so elaborate and science is explained in a very simple way for children to understand.

When the email arrived and I saw the first word - "Congratulations" - I thought it was that classic congratulations for participating, and I did not continue reading. I took a photo of it and sent it to a friend who asked me to read the entire email. And there I saw that he had won first place.

And although they never told me why they made that decision, I think they rewarded precisely that, the simplicity of the video, which explains a very complex subject, without any type of super production or artistic development.

And since the goal of the International Society for Neurosciences is to make neurosciences available to everyone, I think that's what caught their attention.

And then a very homemade production, thought of the children I work with in Ecuador, was what gave us a world award.

Apart from winning this award, Johanna Pozo's video is nominated for another award, which is the people's choice, and people can vote for her video until the end of the month by “liking” this site from YouTube