Baby Senses: A Sensory Neuroscience Primer for All Ages shares with readers the world of nervous systems and how they have developed into the senses we have. Why was this an important book for you to write?

Thank you for this great question! I’ve always been passionate about making science engaging, relatable, and accessible to the interested lay audience. As an artist, I’ve also found the actual forms in biology incredibly complex and beautiful. As a tutor with Reading Partners, I wanted to share my love of neuroscience, art, and reading with the kids I was tutoring, but a search of the existing neuroscience books for children left me disappointed in the lack of truly engaging neuroscience content for beginning/emerging readers. And there a germ of an idea was born – to illustrate and write a children’s neuroscience book with accurate visual representations of sensory systems. I wanted my book to also impart fundamental principles of the scientific endeavor, for example, to convey that knowledge is built over time, with many researchers from diverse backgrounds working together (or apart) to gather facts in small steps. Related to this was my desire for Baby Senses to be a stand-alone educational resource for classrooms and families laid out in a scientific format. I think than an early introduction to how diversity in nature makes all animals special is important to encourage an appreciation of our ecosystem and why its delicate balance needs to be conserved. This was coupled with the intent to spread the subtle message that what makes us different is often our strength and neurodiversity is to be celebrated.

How much research did you undertake for this book, and how much time did it take to put it all together?

As an auditory and visual neuroscientist, I was already very familiar with several sensory systems before I decided to write Baby Senses. Some of the facts included in the glossary are in fact inspired by my doctoral dissertation. There were some systems I was less familiar with before writing my book, and for these I read several research articles and textbooks to gain a deeper understanding of each of these systems. I then condensed them down into narratives and ‘fun facts’ to highlight, as well as how contemporary research into these areas relate back to the lay audiences’ daily lived experiences.

The idea of writing Baby Senses really crystallized for me during the COVID-19 global pandemic. I’d been working on creating a series of neuroart paintings since 2018. The realization that I’d created a series of paintings that tied together into a narrative about the beauty and complexity of the many ways in which brains have evolved to do extraordinary things, coupled with the realization that there are not many neuroscience books available to early readers, really motivated me to sit down and start working on this project. I took about 8 months to finish my first draft of the book including the expanded glossary, the rhyming dialogues, and all the illustrations. I then spent several months researching publishing options and timelines, choosing my publisher, revising my book, and working on the cover images. Overall, it took a year and 5 months for my book to be published from when I started working on it.

What were some goals you set for yourself as a writer in this book?

In my experience, children are easily inspired or discouraged from pursuing further learning in topics based on demographics and gender, as well as how scientific topics are taught. An important goal for me was to make neuroscience engaging and intuitive so that children are inspired to pursue it, regardless of gender or demographics. When I take a step back to look at the bigger picture, the challenges facing neuroscientific endeavors are complex and large. To solve them requires team-science efforts, new ideas, collaboration within and across diverse teams, and an open-science, data sharing approach. All of these require that people from diverse backgrounds are drawn to and remain in research careers, and in the long-run, I hope that Baby Senses will contribute to that goal.

Another major goal for me in writing Baby Senses was to use multi-modal ways to engage diverse minds (neurotypical and neuroatypical), and of all ages. I wanted to maintain the balance between writing an engaging and relatable narrative while not shying away from scientific terminology. To do so, I used subtle cues like the parent-child bond as the context of these question-and-answer conversations to make the content relatable. More scientific choices like including the full references list were also deliberate. A related goal for me was to dispel scientific misconceptions, such as the all-pervasive idea that humans only have ‘5 senses’ and that having a ‘6th sense’ was somehow an anomaly. As humans, we have more than 5 ways to sense our internal and external environments, with research still ongoing to better characterize all the ways in which we sense our environment; for instance, how our gut microbial environment influences our brains through the gut-brain axis is an active area of research.

What is the next book that you are writing, and when will that be published?

I would certainly like to write more – I’ve a couple of ideas I’m playing around with right now. As a first-time indie author, I’ve learned a lot about the publishing process and am still learning so much with Baby Senses, so I am not ready to completely move onto the next project yet. I also have ideas about further expanding the reach of Baby Senses by for example, turning it into a sing along project. A lack of ideas has never been an issue for me so stay tuned for updates on my website https://babysensesbook.com/, where you can also sign up to receive my newsletter with events and updates or follow me on social media platforms!

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