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By Dr Barry Seemungal

The importance of public engagement for the scientific community cannot be overstated. It is vital for us that the public understands that what we do is of direct relevance to their busy adult lives. To inculcate the idea that science and scientists are part of the community and not divorced from it is also important for making science an obvious and realistic career ambition. Our future economy will need the minds of the young being enthused, inspired and turned onto science right now if we are to prosper in the future.

But public engagement also impacts upon the work of scientists today. The internet has propelled public opinion into a force that drives the political agenda in virtually all societal areas, not just science. It would be very difficult to conduct science into an area that the public deems useless or unethical. It is thus up to us to drive this agenda by communicating our work to the public so that society can make an informed opinion about our work.

With this in mind (!) we in the Neuro-Otology Unit have presented our work in a serious but fun way to audiences of all ages in varying situations. In May 2012 we presented the amazing spinning umbrella, constructed by post-doc . We demonstrated that a spinning umbrella can sweep you off your feet just by looking into it.

In September, I presented a similar device (more Heath-Robinsonesque; below right) with post-doc at the Natural History Museum’s Science Uncovered evening. This event started quite soberly (literally) but by the end of the evening the audience had change somewhat to a young adult audience whose balance function was confusingly much worse than the older adults who visited our stand earlier. A scientific explanation was forthcoming when we realised that the museum had been turned into a giant bar for the evening.

In February, I was asked by the to front their exhibition of pirouetting without dizziness. I presented some of our recent work that is currently under review by our peers done by PhD student Yuliya Nigmatullina. This involved our scanning the brains of nearly 50 people, half of whom were ballerinas. We wanted to know how the brain can suppress dizziness by exploring the brain mechanisms used by dancers who are notoriously resistant to dizziness.

The answer we discovered was that ballet training leads to a structural brain change in a specific region (the cerebellum) which is intimately connected to our balance organ in the ear. This change leads to other quite impressive changes in the perceptual parts of the brain.

This month (April 2013), post-doc Ed Roberts lead our now weary band of public engagers at the at the Barbican. We presented a 21^st Century version of the spinning umbrella device thanks to a Wellcome Trust grant. So after many hours of demonstrations, hoarse throats and bleary eyed kids, we hope to have done a small bit to communicate the relevance of research into the brain functions underlying balance and dizziness.