Manipulating the brain’s ‘gatekeepers’: thwarting obesity and dementia

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology and Chemistry.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Vincent Prevot, a neuroendocrinologist based at the Inserm in Lille, France. He collaborates with Professor Markus Schwaninger and Dr Ruben Nogueiras on the WATCH project, which could help prevent, stall or reverse age-related diseases.
• This resource also contains an interview with Vincent, Markus and Ruben. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The team will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research, and tasks them to think about the role the hypothalamus plays in the brain.
• This resource is also available in Spanish, French and German from the link below.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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