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Neuroscience

How neuroscience could make your presentations better

Today I had a thought about presentation and neurosciences. My main question was: how can neuroscience help presenters tell their stories better to an audience? I see two important things here. the first is using multiple visual slides for each sentence. If you want to do this you should use visuals only and maximum one word per slide otherwise people will lose speed. Secondly you can use these visuals to prime your audience for better comprehension.

During PICNIC Juuso Koponen talked about the speed of the brain interpreting information through different senses. Sight is much faster than hearing (as Juuso mentioned in his speech). This implies that your eyes are processing the information on your slides or prezi much and much faster than your audience can hear you talk. Speedreading in a way is all about using your subconscious or automated brain processes to read. Your eyes can read much faster without you using you ‘inner voice’.

The other angle is that you can use priming to show certain elements in a presentation before you actually mention this element. If you can do a test better if you think about a day in the life of Albert Einstein, you can influence your audience in the same way. Repeat certain images like a returning theme. Use images of happy people if you want the audience to like your ideas. If you want a decision use more red visuals (remember the ties of politicians in election time). Think about your conclusion and use a visual that supports that conclusion.

If you are in my next presentation beware of a lot of slides. An old colleague once used 100+ slides for a 15 minute presentation and left time to spare,so it can be done!

Thanks to lokiv7 for the nice picture on speed!