Your Brain on Silence
Level 1, Unit 2 

Unit 2: Your Brain on Silence

This unit invites students to explore the profound relationship between neural architecture and contemplative practice, revealing how moments of intentional stillness can fundamentally reshape our cognitive landscape. Moving beyond simplistic understandings of the brain, we examine how each person's unique neurological makeup processes and responds to silence differently—challenging the normalized cacophony of our hyper-stimulated educational environments.

Students will investigate the neuroscience of attention while simultaneously questioning whose cognitive patterns are privileged in traditional learning spaces. By exploring how different brains experience quiet, we disrupt dominant narratives about "ideal" focus and create space for neurodivergent experiences to be honored rather than pathologized.

The unit positions silence not as a luxury but as a fundamental right—a form of cognitive justice in educational settings that rarely honor students' needs for genuine pause. Through embodied experiments with different sound environments, students will document their own distinctive responses, developing personalized approaches to creating restorative quiet within oppressive noise.

Key themes woven throughout this exploration:

• Neurological diversity in processing sensory information

• Environmental design as a form of cognitive liberation

• Cultural and historical relationships to silence and sound

• The politics of attention in educational institutions

• Sound as both oppression and resistance

By understanding the science of silence while critiquing who has historically been granted access to quiet, students reclaim stillness not just as a biological necessity but as a powerful tool for academic sovereignty and collective wellbeing in an inequitable world.