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What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil

The field of Neuroscience has experienced a growing interest in recent decades, which has led to an exponential growth in the amount of related information made available online as well as the market for Neuroscience-related courses. While this type of knowledge can be greatly beneficial to people w...

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Autores principales: Arévalo, Analía, Simoes, Estefania, Petinati, Fernanda, Lepski, Guilherme
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930840/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35308611
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.798967
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author Arévalo, Analía
Simoes, Estefania
Petinati, Fernanda
Lepski, Guilherme
author_facet Arévalo, Analía
Simoes, Estefania
Petinati, Fernanda
Lepski, Guilherme
author_sort Arévalo, Analía
collection PubMed
description The field of Neuroscience has experienced a growing interest in recent decades, which has led to an exponential growth in the amount of related information made available online as well as the market for Neuroscience-related courses. While this type of knowledge can be greatly beneficial to people working in science, health and education, it can also benefit individuals in other areas. For example, neuroscience knowledge can help people from all fields better understand and critique information about new discoveries or products, and even make better education- and health-related decisions. Online platforms are fertile ground for the creation and spread of fake information, including misrepresentations of scientific knowledge or new discoveries (e.g., neuromyths). These types of false information, once spread, can be difficult to tear down and may have widespread negative effects. For example, even scientists are less likely to access retractions of peer-reviewed articles than the original discredited articles. In this study we surveyed general knowledge about neuroscience and the brain among volunteers in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. We were interested in evaluating the prevalence of neuromyths in this region, and test whether knowledge/neuromyth endorsement differs by age, region, and/or profession. To that end, we created a 30-item survey that was anonymously answered online by 1128 individuals. While younger people (20–29-year-olds) generally responded more accurately than people 60 and older, people in the North responded significantly worse than those in the South and Southeast. Most interestingly, people in the biological sciences consistently responded best, but people in the health sciences responded no better than people in the exact sciences or humanities. Furthermore, years of schooling did not correlate with performance, suggesting that quantity may surpass quality when it comes to extension or graduate-level course offerings. We discuss how our findings can help guide efforts toward improving access to quality information and training in the region.
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spelling pubmed-89308402022-03-19 What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil Arévalo, Analía Simoes, Estefania Petinati, Fernanda Lepski, Guilherme Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience The field of Neuroscience has experienced a growing interest in recent decades, which has led to an exponential growth in the amount of related information made available online as well as the market for Neuroscience-related courses. While this type of knowledge can be greatly beneficial to people working in science, health and education, it can also benefit individuals in other areas. For example, neuroscience knowledge can help people from all fields better understand and critique information about new discoveries or products, and even make better education- and health-related decisions. Online platforms are fertile ground for the creation and spread of fake information, including misrepresentations of scientific knowledge or new discoveries (e.g., neuromyths). These types of false information, once spread, can be difficult to tear down and may have widespread negative effects. For example, even scientists are less likely to access retractions of peer-reviewed articles than the original discredited articles. In this study we surveyed general knowledge about neuroscience and the brain among volunteers in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. We were interested in evaluating the prevalence of neuromyths in this region, and test whether knowledge/neuromyth endorsement differs by age, region, and/or profession. To that end, we created a 30-item survey that was anonymously answered online by 1128 individuals. While younger people (20–29-year-olds) generally responded more accurately than people 60 and older, people in the North responded significantly worse than those in the South and Southeast. Most interestingly, people in the biological sciences consistently responded best, but people in the health sciences responded no better than people in the exact sciences or humanities. Furthermore, years of schooling did not correlate with performance, suggesting that quantity may surpass quality when it comes to extension or graduate-level course offerings. We discuss how our findings can help guide efforts toward improving access to quality information and training in the region. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8930840/ /pubmed/35308611 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.798967 Text en Copyright © 2022 Arévalo, Simoes, Petinati and Lepski. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Arévalo, Analía
Simoes, Estefania
Petinati, Fernanda
Lepski, Guilherme
What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil
title What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil
title_full What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil
title_fullStr What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil
title_full_unstemmed What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil
title_short What Does the General Public Know (or Not) About Neuroscience? Effects of Age, Region and Profession in Brazil
title_sort what does the general public know (or not) about neuroscience? effects of age, region and profession in brazil
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930840/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35308611
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.798967
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