information presentation function

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13.6 Creating an Informative Presentation

Learning objectives.

Discuss the parts of an informational presentation.
Understand the five parts of any presentation.

An informational presentation is common request in business and industry. It’s the verbal and visual equivalent of a written report. Information sharing is part of any business or organization. Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. The type of presentation is often identified by its primary purpose or function. Informative presentations are often analytical or involve the rational analysis of information. Sometimes they simply “report the facts” with no analysis at all, but still need to communicate the information in a clear and concise format. While a presentation may have conclusions, propositions, or even a call to action, the demonstration of the analysis is the primary function.

A sales report presentation, for example, is not designed to make a sale. It is, however, supposed to report sales to date and may forecast future sales based on previous trends.

An informative presentation does not have to be a formal event, though it can be. It can be generic and nonspecific to the audience or listener, but the more you know about your audience, the better. When you tailor your message to that audience, you zero in on your target and increase your effectiveness. The emphasis is on clear and concise communication, but it may address several key questions:

Topic: Product or Service?
Who are you?
Who is the target market?
What is the revenue model?
What are the specifications?
How was the information gathered?
How does the unit work?
How does current information compare to previous information?

Table 13.2 “Presentation Components and Their Functions” lists the five main parts or components of any presentation (McLean, S., 2003).

Table 13.2 Presentation Components and Their Functions

You will need to address the questions to establish relevance and meet the audience’s needs. The five parts of any speech will serve to help you get organized.

Sample Speech Guidelines

Imagine that you have been assigned to give an informative presentation lasting five to seven minutes. Follow the guidelines in Table 13.3 “Sample Speech Guidelines” and apply them to your presentation.

Table 13.3 Sample Speech Guidelines

Key Takeaway

Informative presentations illustrate, explain, describe, and instruct the audience on topics and processes.

Write a brief summary of a class or presentation you personally observed recently; include what you learned. Compare with classmates.
Search online for an informative speech or presentation that applies to business or industry. Indicate one part or aspect of the presentation that you thought was effective and one you would improve. Provide the link to the presentation in your post or assignment.
Pick a product or service and come up with a list of five points that you could address in a two-minute informative speech. Place them in rank order and indicate why.
With the points discussed in this chapter in mind, observe someone presenting a speech. What elements of their speech could you use in your speech? What elements would you not want to use? Why? Compare with a classmate.

McLean, S. (2003). The basics of speech communication . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Business Communication for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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13: Presentations to Inform

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Informative presentations focus on helping the audience to understand a topic, issue, or technique more clearly. You might say, “Is that all?” and the answer is both yes and no. An affirmative response underscores the idea that informative speeches do not seek to motivate the audience to change their minds, adopt a new idea, start a new habit, or get out there and vote. They may, however, inform audiences on issues that may be under consideration in an election or referendum. On the other hand, a negative response reaffirms the idea that to communicate a topic, issue, or subject clearly is a challenge in itself and shouldn’t be viewed as a simplistic process.

13.1: Functions of the Presentation to Inform There are distinct functions inherent in a speech to inform, and you may choose to use one or more of these functions in your speech. Let’s take a look at the functions and see how they relate to the central objective of facilitating audience understanding.
13.2: Types of Presentations to Inform Speaking to inform may fall into one of several categories. The presentation to inform may be: (1) an explanation, (2) a report, (3) a description, or (4) a demonstration of how to do something. This section explores each of these types of informative speech.
13.3: Adapting Your Presentation to Teach Successfully delivering an informative speech requires adopting an audience-centered perspective. Imagine that you are in the audience. What would it take for the speaker to capture and maintain your attention? What would encourage you to listen? In this section we present several techniques for achieving this, including motivating your audience to listen, framing your information in meaningful ways, and designing your presentation to appeal to diverse learning styles.
13.4: Diverse Types of Intelligence and Learning Styles The theory of multiple intelligences proposes that different people are intelligent in different domains. For example, some people may excel in interpersonal intelligence, or the ability to form and maintain relationships. Other people may excel in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, or physical coordination and control. Still others have a high degree of musical intelligence or of logico-mathematical intelligence. Some psychologists argue that these are actually talents or aptitudes instead.
13.5: Preparing Your Speech to Inform Now that we’ve covered issues central to the success of your informative speech, there’s no doubt you want to get down to work. This section discusses five final suggestions to help you succeed.
13.6: Creating an Informative Presentation An informational presentation is common request in business and industry. It’s the verbal and visual equivalent of a written report. Information sharing is part of any business or organization. Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. The type of presentation is often identified by its primary purpose or function. Informative presentations are often analytical or involve the rational analysis of information.
13.7: Additional Resources

Thumbnail: pixabay.com/photos/analyzing...rming-3441040/

Learning Objectives

Discuss the parts of an informational presentation.
Understand the five parts of any presentation.

A sales report presentation, for example, is not designed to make a sale. It is, however, supposed to report sales to date and may forecast future sales based on previous trends.

Topic: Product or Service?
Who are you?
Who is the target market?
What is the revenue model?
What are the specifications?
How was the information gathered?
How does the unit work?
How does current information compare to previous information?

Table 13.2 “Presentation Components and Their Functions” lists the five main parts or components of any presentation (McLean, S., 2003).

Table 13.2 Presentation Components and Their Functions

You will need to address the questions to establish relevance and meet the audience’s needs. The five parts of any speech will serve to help you get organized.

Sample Speech Guidelines

Table 13.3 Sample Speech Guidelines

Key Takeaway

Informative presentations illustrate, explain, describe, and instruct the audience on topics and processes.

Write a brief summary of a class or presentation you personally observed recently; include what you learned. Compare with classmates.
Search online for an informative speech or presentation that applies to business or industry. Indicate one part or aspect of the presentation that you thought was effective and one you would improve. Provide the link to the presentation in your post or assignment.
Pick a product or service and come up with a list of five points that you could address in a two-minute informative speech. Place them in rank order and indicate why.
With the points discussed in this chapter in mind, observe someone presenting a speech. What elements of their speech could you use in your speech? What elements would you not want to use? Why? Compare with a classmate.

McLean, S. (2003). The basics of speech communication . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Business Communication for Success: Public Speaking Edition Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Chapter 7: Presentations to Inform

49 Creating an Informative Presentation

An informational presentation is common request in business and industry. It’s the verbal and visual equivalent of a written report. Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. Table 7.1 below describes five main parts of a presentation to inform.

Table 7.1. Presentation Components and Their Functions. Lists the five main parts or components of any presentation (McLean, S., 2003).

Sample Speech Guidelines

Imagine that you have been assigned to give an informative presentation lasting five to seven minutes. Follow the guidelines in Table 7.2 below and apply them to your presentation.

Table 7.2. Sample speech guidelines. Seven key items.

Informative presentations illustrate, explain, describe, and instruct the audience on topics and processes.

Communication for Business Professionals Copyright © 2018 by eCampusOntario is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Unit 33: Informative and Persuasive Presentations

Learning objectives.

describe the functions of the speech to inform
provide examples of four main types of speeches to inform
understand how to structure and develop a speech to inform
identify and demonstrate how to use six principles of persuasion
describe similarities and differences between persuasion and motivation
identify and demonstrate the effective use of five functions of speaking to persuade

Introduction

Regardless of the type of presentation, you must prepare carefully. Are you trying to sell life insurance to a group of new clients, or presenting a proposal to secure financing to expand your business operation? Are you presenting the monthly update on the different sales divisions in your company, or providing customers with information on how to upgrade their latest computer purchase. Your future career will require you to present both to inform or to persuade. Knowing the difference between these two types of presentations and knowing how to construct each type of presentation will be beneficial to your future careers.

Presenting to Inform

At some point in your business career, you will be called upon to teach someone something. It may be a customer, coworker, or supervisor, and in each case, you are performing an informative speech. It is distinct from a sales speech, or persuasive speech, in that your goal is to communicate the information so that your listener understands. The informative speech is one performance you’ll give many times across your career, whether your audience is one person, a small group, or a large auditorium full of listeners. Once you master the art of the informative speech, you may mix and match it with other styles and techniques.

Informative presentations focus on helping the audience to understand a topic, issue, or technique more clearly. There are distinct functions inherent in a speech to inform, and you may choose to use one or more of these functions in your speech. Let’s take a look at the functions and see how they relate to the central objective of facilitating audience understanding.

Share: The basic definition of communication highlights the process of understanding and sharing meaning. An informative speech follows this definition when a speaker shares content and information with an audience. As part of a speech, you wouldn’t typically be asking the audience to respond or solve a problem. Instead, you’d be offering to share with the audience some of the information you have gathered related to a topic.

Increasing Understanding: How well does your audience grasp the information? This should be a guiding question to you on two levels. The first involves what they already know—or don’t know—about your topic, and what key terms or ideas might be necessary for someone completely unfamiliar with your topic to grasp the ideas you are presenting. The second involves your presentation and the illustration of ideas. The audience will respond to your attention statement and hopefully maintain interest, but how will you take your speech beyond superficial coverage of content and effectively communicate key relationships that increase understanding? These questions should serve as a challenge for your informative speech, and by looking at your speech from an audience-oriented perspective, you will increase your ability to increase the audience’s understanding.

Change Perceptions: How you perceive something has everything to do with a range of factors that are unique to you. We all want to make sense of our world, share our experiences, and learn that many people face the same challenges we do. For instance, many people perceive the process of speaking in public as a significant challenge, and in this text, we have broken down the process into several manageable steps. In so doing, we have to some degree changed your perception of public speaking.

When you present your speech to inform, you may want to change the audience member’s perceptions of your topic. You may present an informative speech on air pollution and want to change common perceptions such as the idea that most of North America’s air pollution comes from private cars. You won’t be asking people to go out and vote, or change their choice of automobiles, but you will help your audience change their perceptions of your topic.

Gain Skills: Just as you want to increase the audience’s understanding, you may want to help the audience members gain skills. If you are presenting a speech on how to make a meal from fresh ingredients, your audience may thank you for not only the knowledge of the key ingredients and their preparation but also the product available at the conclusion. If your audience members have never made their own meal, they may gain a new skill from your speech.

Exposition versus Interpretation: When you share information informally, you often provide your own perspective and attitude for your own reasons. The speech to inform the audience on a topic, idea, or area of content is not intended to be a display of attitude and opinion.

The speech to inform is like the classroom setting in that the goal is to inform, not to persuade, entertain, display attitude, or create comedy. If you have analyzed your audience, you’ll be better prepared to develop appropriate ways to gain their attention and inform them on your topic. You want to communicate thoughts, ideas, and relationships and allow each listener specifically, and the audience generally, to draw their own conclusions. The speech to inform is all about sharing information to meet the audience’s needs, not your own.

Exposition: Exposition means a public exhibition or display, often expressing a complex topic in a way that makes the relationships and content clear. The goal is to communicate the topic and content to your audience in ways that illustrate, explain, and reinforce the overall content to make your topic more accessible to the audience. The audience wants to learn about your topic and may have some knowledge of it as you do. It is your responsibility to consider ways to display the information effectively.

Interpretation and Bias: Interpretation involves adapting the information to communicate a message, perspective, or agenda. Your insights and attitudes will guide your selection of material, what you focus on, and what you delete (choosing what not to present to the audience). Your interpretation will involve personal bias.

Bias is an unreasoned or not-well-thought-out judgment. Bias involves beliefs or ideas held on the basis of conviction rather than current evidence. Beliefs are often called “habits of the mind” because we come to rely on them to make decisions. Which is the better, cheapest, most expensive, or the middle-priced product? People often choose the middle-priced product and use the belief “if it costs more it must be better” (and the opposite: “if it is cheap it must not be very good”). The middle-priced item, regardless of the actual price, is often perceived as “good enough.” All these perceptions are based on beliefs, and they may not apply to the given decision or even be based on any evidence or rational thinking.

We take mental shortcuts all day long, but in our speech to inform, we have to be careful not to reinforce bias.

Point of View: Clearly no one can be completely objective and remove themselves from their own perceptual process. People express themselves and naturally relate what is happening now to what has happened to them in the past. You are your own artist, but you also control your creations.

Objectivity involves expressions and perceptions of facts that are free from distortion by your prejudices, bias, feelings or interpretations. For example, is the post office box blue? An objective response would be yes or no, but a subjective response might sound like “Well, it’s not really blue as much as it is navy, even a bit of purple.” Subjectivity involves expressions or perceptions that are modified, altered, or impacted by your personal bias, experiences, and background. In an informative speech, your audience will expect you to present the information in a relatively objective form. The speech should meet the audience’s needs as they learn about the content, not your feelings, attitudes, or commentary on the content.

Types of Informative Presentations

Speaking to inform may fall into one of several categories. The presentation to inform may be an explanation, a report, a description, or a demonstration . E ach type of informative speech is described below.

Explanation: Have you ever listened to a lecture or speech where you just didn’t get it? It wasn’t that you weren’t interested, at least not at first. Perhaps the presenter used language you didn’t understand or gave a confusing example. Soon you probably lost interest and sat there, attending the speech in body but certainly not in mind. An effective speech to inform will take a complex topic or issue and explain it to the audience in ways that increase audience understanding.

No one likes to feel left out. As the speaker, it’s your responsibility to ensure that this doesn’t happen. Also, know that to teach someone something new—perhaps a skill that they did not possess or a perspective that allows them to see new connections—is a real gift, both to you and the audience members. You will feel rewarded because you made a difference and they will perceive the gain in their own understanding.

Report: As a business communicator, you may be called upon to give an informative report where you communicate status, trends, or relationships that pertain to a specific topic. The informative report is a speech where you organize your information around key events, discoveries, or technical data and provide context and illustration for your audience. They may naturally wonder, “Why are sales up (or down)?” or “What is the product leader in your lineup?” and you need to anticipate their perspective and present the key information that relates to your topic.

Description: Have you ever listened to a friend tell you about their recent trip somewhere and found the details fascinating, making you want to travel there or visit a similar place? Describing information requires an emphasis on language that is vivid, captures attention, and excites the imagination. Your audience will be drawn to your effective use of color, descriptive language, and visual aids. An informative speech that focuses on the description will be visual in many ways. Use your imagination to place yourself in their perspective: how would you like to have someone describe the topic to you?

Demonstration: You want to teach the audience how to program the applications on a new smartphone. A demonstrative speech focuses on clearly showing a process and telling the audience important details about each step so that they can imitate, repeat, or do the action themselves. Consider the visual aids or supplies you will need.

By considering each step and focusing on how to simplify it, you can understand how the audience might grasp the new information and how you can best help them. Also, consider the desired outcome; for example, will your listeners be able to actually do the task themselves? Regardless of the sequence or pattern you will illustrate or demonstrate, consider how people from your anticipated audience will respond, and budget additional time for repetition and clarification.

Creating an Informative Presentation

An informational presentation is a common request in business and industry. It’s the verbal and visual equivalent of a written report. Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. Table 33.1 below describes five main parts of a presentation to inform.

Table 33.1. Presentation Components and Their Functions. Lists the five main parts or components of any presentation (McLean, S., 2003).

Sample Speech Guidelines: Imagine that you have been assigned to give an informative presentation lasting five to seven minutes. Follow the guidelines in Table 33.2 below and apply them to your presentation.

Table 33.2 Sample speech guidelines. Seven key items.

Informative presentations illustrate, explain, describe, and instruct the audience on topics and processes. Now let’s watch an example of an informative speech.

The Persuasive Presentation

No doubt there has been a time when you wanted to achieve a goal or convince someone about a need and you thought about how you were going to present your request. Consider how often people want something from you? When you watch television, advertisements reach out for your attention, whether you watch them or not. When you use the internet, pop-up advertisements often appear. Most people are surrounded, even inundated by persuasive messages. Mass and social media in the 21st century have had a significant effect on persuasive communication that you will certainly recognize.

Persuasion is an act or process of presenting arguments to move, motivate, or change the mind of your audience. Persuasion can be implicit or explicit and can have both positive and negative effects. Motivation is different from persuasion in that it involves the force, stimulus, or influence to bring about change. Persuasion is the process, and motivation is the compelling stimulus that encourages your audience to change their beliefs or behaviour, to adopt your position, or to consider your arguments. Let’s view the video below for an overview of the principles of a persuasive presentation.

Principles of Persuasion

What is the best way to succeed in persuading your listeners? There is no one “correct” answer, but many experts have studied persuasion and observed what works and what doesn’t. Social psychologist Robert Cialdini (2006) offers us six principles of persuasion that are powerful and effective: Reciprocity , Scarcity , Authority , Commitment and consistency , Consensus , and Liking . These six principles are covered in more detail in Unit 27 .

Developing a Persuasive Presentation

Persuasive presentations have the following features, they:

When you focus on stimulation as the goal of your speech, you want to reinforce existing beliefs, intensify them, and bring them to the forefront. By presenting facts, you will reinforce existing beliefs, intensify them, and bring the issue to the surface. You might consider the foundation of common ground and commonly held beliefs, and then introduce information that a mainstream audience may not be aware of that supports that common ground as a strategy to stimulate.

In a persuasive speech, the goal is to change the attitudes, beliefs, values, or judgments of your audience. Audience members are likely to hold their own beliefs and are likely to have their own personal bias. Your goal is to get them to agree with your position, so you will need to plan a range of points and examples to get audience members to consider your topic. H ere is a five-step checklist to motivate your audience into some form of action:

1. Get their attention 2. Identify the need 3. Satisfy the need 4. Present a vision or solution 5. Take action

This simple organizational pattern can help you focus on the basic elements of a persuasive message that will motivate your audience to take action…

Include a Call to Action

When you call an audience to action with a speech, you are indicating that your purpose is not to stimulate interest, reinforce and accentuate beliefs, or convince them of a viewpoint. Instead, you want your listeners to do something, to change their behaviour in some way. The persuasive speech that focuses on action often generates curiosity, clarifies a problem, and as we have seen, proposes a range of solutions. The key difference here is there is a clear link to action associated with the solutions.

Solutions lead us to consider the goals of action. These goals address the question, “What do I want the audience to do as a result of being engaged by my speech?” The goals of action include adoption, discontinuance, deterrence, and continuance.

Adoption means the speaker wants to persuade the audience to take on a new way of thinking, or adopt a new idea. Examples could include buying a new product, or deciding to donate blood. The key is that the audience member adopts, or takes on, a new view, action, or habit.

Discontinuance involves the speaker persuading the audience to stop doing something that they have been doing. Rather than take on a new habit or action, the speaker is asking the audience member to stop an existing behaviour or idea.

Deterrence is a call to action that focuses on persuading the audience not to start something if they haven’t already started. The goal of action would be to deter, or encourage the audience members to refrain from starting or initiating the behavior.

Finally, with C ontinuance , the speaker aims to persuade the audience to continue doing what they have been doing, such as keep buying a product, or staying in school to get an education.

A speaker may choose to address more than one of these goals of action, depending on the audience analysis. If the audience is largely agreeable and supportive, you may find continuance to be one goal, while adoption is secondary.

Goals in call to action speeches serve to guide you in the development of solution steps. Solution steps involve suggestions or ways the audience can take action after your speech. Audience members appreciate a clear discussion of the problem in a persuasive speech, but they also appreciate solutions.

Increase Consideration

In a speech designed to increase consideration, you want to entice your audience to consider alternate viewpoints on the topic you have chosen. Audience members may hold views that are hostile in relation to yours, or perhaps they are neutral and simply curious about your topic. You won’t be asking for action in this presentation, simply to consider an alternative perspective.

Develop Tolerance of Alternate Perspectives

Finally, you may want to help your audience develop tolerance for alternate perspectives and viewpoints. Your goal is to help your audience develop tolerance, but not necessarily acceptance, of alternate perspectives. By starting from common ground, and introducing a related idea, you are persuading your audience to consider an alternate perspective.

A persuasive speech may stimulate thought, convince, call to action, increase consideration, or develop tolerance of alternate perspectives. Watch the following video of a persuasive speech with annotation to see the concepts above in action.

Persuasive Strategies

When you make an argument in a persuasive speech, you will want to present your position logically by supporting each point with appropriate sources. You will want to give your audience every reason to perceive you as an ethical and trustworthy speaker. Your audience will expect you to treat them with respect, and to present your argument in a way that does not make them defensive. Contribute to your credibility by building sound arguments and using strategic arguments with skill and planning.

Stephen Toulmin’s (1958) rhetorical strategy focuses on three main elements, shown in Table 33.3 as a claim, data, and warrant.

Table 33.3 Rhetorical strategy.

This three-part rhetorical strategy is useful in that it makes the claim explicit, clearly illustrating the relationship between the claim and the data, and allows the listener to follow the speaker’s reasoning. You may have a good idea or point, but your audience will be curious and want to know how you arrived at that claim or viewpoint. The warrant often addresses the inherent and often unspoken question, “Why is this data so important to your topic?” and helps you illustrate relationships between information for your audience. This model can help you clearly articulate it for your audience.

Appealing to Emotions

Emotions are psychological and physical reactions, such as fear or anger, to stimuli that we experience as a feeling. Our feelings or emotions directly impact our own point of view and readiness to communicate, but also influence how, why, and when we say things. Emotions influence not only how you say what you say, but also how you hear and what you hear. At times, emotions can be challenging to control. Emotions will move your audience, and possibly even move you, to change or act in certain ways.

Be wary of overusing emotional appeals, or misusing emotional manipulation in presentations and communication. You may encounter emotional resistance from your audience. Emotional resistance involves getting tired, often to the point of rejection, of hearing messages that attempt to elicit an emotional response. Emotional appeals can wear out the audience’s capacity to receive the message.

The use of an emotional appeal may also impair your ability to write persuasively or effectively. Never use a personal story, or even a story of someone you do not know if the inclusion of that story causes you to lose control. While it’s important to discuss relevant and sometimes emotionally difficult topics, you need to assess your own relationship to the message. Your documents should not be an exercise in therapy and you will sacrifice ethos and credibility, even your effectiveness, if you become angry or distraught because you are really not ready to discuss an issue you’ve selected.

Now that you’ve considered emotions and their role in a speech in general and a speech to persuade specifically, it’s important to recognize the principles about emotions in communication that serve you well when speaking in public. The video below reviews how to effectively integrate emotion, logic and credibility into your presentation.

DeVito (2003) offers five key principles to acknowledge the role emotions play in communication and offer guidelines for there expression.

Emotions Are Universal: Emotions are a part of every conversation or interaction that you have. Whether or not you consciously experience them while communicating with yourself or others, they influence how you communicate. By recognizing that emotions are a component in all communication interactions, you can place emphasis on understanding both the content of the message and the emotions that influence how, why, and when the content is communicated.

Expression of emotions is important, but requires the three Ts: tact, timing, and trust . If you find you are upset and at risk of being less than diplomatic, or the timing is not right, or you are unsure about the level of trust, then consider whether you can effectively communicate your emotions. By considering these three Ts, you can help yourself express your emotions more effectively.

Emotions Are Communicated Verbally and Nonverbally: You communicate emotions not only through your choice of words but also through the manner in which you say those words. The words themselves communicate part of your message, but the nonverbal cues, including inflection, timing, space, and paralanguage can modify or contradict your spoken message. Be aware that emotions are expressed in both ways and pay attention to how verbal and nonverbal messages reinforce and complement each other.

Emotional Expression Can Be Good and Bad: Expressing emotions can be a healthy activity for a relationship and build trust. It can also break down trust if expression is not combined with judgment. We’re all different, and we all experience emotions, but how we express our emotions to ourselves and others can have a significant impact on our relationships. Expressing frustrations may help the audience realize your point of view and see things as they have never seen them before. However, expressing frustrations combined with blaming can generate defensiveness and decrease effective listening. When you’re expressing yourself, consider the audience’s point of view, be specific about your concerns, and emphasize that your relationship with your listeners is important to you.

Emotions Are Often Contagious: It is important to recognize that we influence each other with our emotions, positively and negatively. Your emotions as the speaker can be contagious, so use your enthusiasm to raise the level of interest in your topic. Conversely, you may be subject to “catching” emotions from your audience.

In summary, everyone experiences emotions, and as a persuasive speaker, you can choose how to express emotion and appeal to the audience’s emotions.

Presenting Ethically

What comes to mind when you think of speaking to persuade? Perhaps the idea of persuasion may bring to mind propaganda and issues of manipulation , deception , intentional bias , bribery , and even coercion . Each element relates to persuasion, but in distinct ways. We can recognize that each of these elements in some ways has a negative connotation associated with it. Why do you think that deceiving your audience, bribing a judge, or coercing people to do something against their wishes is wrong? These tactics violate our sense of fairness, freedom, and ethics.

Figure 33.4 offers eleven points from the book Ethics in Human Communication (Johannesen, 1996). These points should be kept in mind as you prepare and present your persuasive message.

In your speech to persuade, consider honesty and integrity as you assemble your arguments. Your audience will appreciate your thoughtful consideration of more than one view, your understanding of the complexity, and you will build your ethos, or credibility, as you present your document. Be careful not to stretch the facts, or assemble them only to prove yourself, and instead prove the argument on its own merits. Deception, coercion, intentional bias, manipulation and bribery should have no place in your speech to persuade.

Key Takeaway

Understand the function of your informative presentation in order to communicate the right message to the right audience.
Organize your information presentation using the five main parts of an informative presentation
Use the six principles of persuasion to develop your persuasive presentation
Use the Rhetorical Strategy to construct will developed arguments
Integrate emotional appeal to effectively engage your audience

An elevator speech is to oral communication what a Twitter message (limited to 140 characters) is to written communication. An elevator speech is a presentation that persuades the listener in less than thirty seconds, or around a hundred words.

Creating an Elevator Speech

An elevator speech does not have to be a formal event, though it can be. An elevator speech is not a full sales pitch and should not get bloated with too much information. The idea is not to rattle off as much information as possible in a short time, nor to present a memorized thirty-second advertising message, but rather to give a relaxed and genuine “nutshell” summary of one main idea. The emphasis is on brevity, but a good elevator speech will address several key questions:

What is the topic, product or service? 2. Who are you? 3. Who is the target market? (if applicable) 4. What is the revenue model? (if applicable) 5. What or who is the competition and what are your advantages?

The following are the five key parts of your message:

Attention Statement – Hook + information about you
Introduction – What you offer
Body – Benefits; what’s in it for the listener
Conclusion – Example that sums it up
Residual Message – Call for action

Task: Write an elevator speech for your next networking event to introduce yourself to prospective employers.

Comm Studies. (2019). Informative speech example [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StPSgqwCnVk&t=60s

eCampusOntario. (2020). Chapter 7: Presentation to inform . Communication for business professionals. Retrieved from https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/commbusprofcdn/chapter/introduction-5/

eCampusOntario. (2020). Chapter 8: Presentation to persuade . Communication for business professionals. Retrieved from https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/commbusprofcdn/chapter/introduction-6/

Guffey, M., Loewry, D., & Griffin, E. (2019). Business communication: Process and product (6th ed.). Toronto, ON: Nelson Education. Retrieved from http://www.cengage.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&product_isbn_issn=9780176531393&template=NELSON

Littleleague.org. (2020). “Calm” emotions & “positive” feelings: Two keys to stay healthy during self-Isolation. Resources for parents . Retrieved from https://www.littleleague.org/news/calm-emotions-positive-feelings-two-keys-to-stay-healthy-during-self-isolation/

Lyon, A. (2017). Ethos Pathos Logos [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ey232I5nUk

Lyon, A. (2017). How to Organize a Persuasive Speech or Presentation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnfoFN7TBhw

Lyon, A. (2019). Informative vs persuasive [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=85gg_pgij4I

Reciprocity is the mutual expectation for exchange of value or service.

You want what you can’t have, and it’s universal. People are often attracted to the exclusive, the rare, the unusual, and the unique

Trust is central to the purchase decision

People like to have consistency in what is said to them or in writing. Therefore, it is important that all commitments made are honored at all times.

People often look to each other when making a purchase decision, and the herd mentality is a powerful force across humanity

We tend to be attracted to people who communicate to us that they like us, and who make us feel good about ourselves. This principle involves the perception of safety and belonging in communication.

management of facts, ideas or points of view to play upon inherent insecurities or emotional appeals to one’s own advantage

use of lies, partial truths, or the omission of relevant information to deceive your audience

the selection of information to support your position while framing negatively any information that might challenge your belief

giving of something in return for an expected favour, consideration, or privilege

use of power to compel action

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Informative Presentations

Functions of the presentation to inform.

Learning Objectives

Describe the functions of the speech to inform.
Explain the difference between exposition and interpretation.

The basic definition of communication highlights the process of understanding and sharing meaning. An informative speech follows this definition in the aspect of sharing content and information with an audience. You won’t be asking the audience to actually do anything in terms of offering a response or solving a problem. Instead you’ll be offering to share with the audience some of the information you have gathered relating to a topic. This act of sharing will reduce ignorance, increase learning, and facilitate understanding of your chosen topic.

Increase Understanding

How well does your audience grasp the information? This should be a guiding question to you on two levels. The first involves what they already know—or don’t know—about your topic, and what key terms or ideas might be necessary for someone completely unfamiliar with your topic to grasp the ideas you are presenting. The second involves your presentation and the illustration of ideas. A bar chart, a pie graph, and a video clip may all serve you and the audience well, but how will each ingredient in your speech contribute to their understanding? The audience will respond to your attention statement and hopefully maintain interest, but how will you take your speech beyond superficial coverage of content and effectively communicate key relationships that increase understanding? These questions should serve as a challenge for your informative speech, and by looking at your speech from an audience-oriented perspective, you will increase your ability to increase the audience’s understanding.

Change Perceptions

How you perceive stimuli has everything to do with a range of factors that are unique to you. We all want to make sense of our world, share our experiences, and learn that many people face the same challenges we do. Many people perceive the process of speaking in public as a significant challenge, and in this text, we have broken down the process into several manageable steps. In so doing, we have to some degree changed your perception of public speaking. When you present your speech to inform, you may want to change the audience member’s perceptions of your topic. You may present an informative speech on air pollution and want to change common perceptions such as the idea that most of North America’s air pollution comes from private cars, or that nuclear power plants are a major source of air pollution. You won’t be asking people to go out and vote, or change their choice of automobiles, but you will help your audience change their perceptions of your topic.

Gain Skills

Just as you want to increase the audience’s understanding, you may want to help the audience members gain skills. If you are presenting a speech on how to make salsa from fresh ingredients, your audience may thank you for not only the knowledge of the key ingredients and their preparation but also the product available at the conclusion. If your audience members have never made their own salsa, they may gain a new skill from your speech. In the same way, perhaps you decide to inform your audience about eBay, a person-to-person marketplace much like a garage sale in which items are auctioned or available for purchase over the Internet. You may project onto a screen in class the main Web site and take the audience through a step-by-step process on how to sell an item. The audience may learn an important skill, clean out the old items in their garage, and buy new things for the house with their newfound skills. Your intentions, of course, are not to argue that salsa is better than ketchup or that eBay is better than Amazon, but to inform the audience, increasing their understanding of the subject, and in this case, gaining new skills.

Exposition versus Interpretation

This relationship between informing as opposed to persuading your audience is often expressed in terms of exposition versus interpretation. Exposition means a public exhibition or display, often expressing a complex topic in a way that makes the relationships and content clear. Expository prose is writing to inform; you may have been asked to write an expository essay in an English course or an expository report in a journalism course. The goal is to communicate the topic and content to your audience in ways that illustrate, explain, and reinforce the overall content to make your topic more accessible to the audience. The audience wants to learn about your topic and may have some knowledge on it as you do. It is your responsibility to consider ways to display the information effectively.

Interpretation and Bias

By extension, marketing students learn to facilitate the customer “relationship” with the brand. If you come to believe a brand stands for excellence, and a new product comes out under that brand label, you are more likely to choose it over an unknown or lesser-known competitor. Again, your choice of the new product is based on a belief rather than evidence or rational thinking. We take mental shortcuts all day long, but in our speech to inform, we have to be careful not to reinforce bias.

Bias is like a filter on your perceptions, thoughts, and ideas. Bias encourages you to accept positive evidence that supports your existing beliefs (regardless of whether they are true) and reject negative evidence that does not support your beliefs. Furthermore, bias makes you likely to reject positive support for opposing beliefs and accept negative evidence (again, regardless of whether the evidence is true). So what is positive and what is negative? In a biased frame of mind, that which supports your existing beliefs is positive and likely to be accepted, while that which challenges your beliefs is likely to be viewed as negative and rejected. There is the clear danger in bias. You are inclined to tune out or ignore information, regardless of how valuable, useful, or relevant it may be, simply because it doesn’t agree with or support what you already believe.

Point of View

Let’s say you are going to present an informative speech on a controversial topic like same-sex marriage. Without advocating or condemning same-sex marriage, you could inform your audience about current laws in various states, recent and proposed changes in laws, the number of same-sex couples who have gotten married in various places, the implications of being married or not being able to marry, and so on. But as you prepare and research your topic, do you only read or examine information that supports your existing view? If you only choose to present information that agrees with your prior view, you’ve incorporated bias into your speech. Now let’s say the audience members have different points of view, even biased ones, and as you present your information you see many people start to fidget in their seats. You can probably anticipate that if they were to speak, the first word they would say is “but” and then present their question or assertion. In effect, they will be having a debate with themselves and hardly listening to you.

You can anticipate the effects of bias and mitigate them to some degree. First, know the difference between your point of view or perspective and your bias. Your point of view is your perception of an idea or concept from your previous experience and understanding. It is unique to you and is influenced by your experiences and also factors like gender, race, ethnicity, physical characteristics, and social class. Everyone has a point of view, as hard as they may try to be open-minded. But bias, as we’ve discussed previously, involves actively selecting information that supports or agrees with your current belief and takes away from any competing belief. To make sure you are not presenting a biased speech, frame your discussion to inform from a neutral stance and consider alternative points of view to present, compare and contrast, and diversify your speech. The goal of the speech to inform is to present an expository speech that reduces or tries to be free from overt interpretation.

This relates to our previous discussion on changing perceptions. Clearly no one can be completely objective and remove themselves from their own perceptual process. People are not modern works of minimalist art, where form and function are paramount and the artist is completely removed from the expression. People express themselves and naturally relate what is happening now to what has happened to them in the past. You are your own artist, but you also control your creations.

Objectivity involves expressions and perceptions of facts that are free from distortion by your prejudices, bias, feelings or interpretations. For example, is the post office box blue? An objective response would be yes or no, but a subjective response might sound like “Well, it’s not really blue as much as it is navy, even a bit of purple, kind of like the color of my ex-boyfriend’s car, remember? I don’t care for the color myself.” Subjectivity involves expressions or perceptions that are modified, altered, or impacted by your personal bias, experiences, and background. In an informative speech, your audience will expect you to present the information in a relatively objective form. The speech should meet the audience’s need as they learn about the content, not your feelings, attitudes, or commentary on the content.

Here are five suggestions to help you present a neutral speech:

Keep your language neutral and not very positive for some issues while very negative for others.
Keep your sources credible and not from biased organizations. The National Rifle Association (NRA) will have a biased view of the Second Amendment, for example, as will the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on civil rights.
Keep your presentation balanced. If you use a source that supports one clear side of an issue, include an alternative source and view. Give each equal time and respectful consideration.
Keep your audience in mind. Not everyone will agree with every point or source of evidence, but diversity in your speech will have more to offer everyone.
Keep who you represent in mind: Your business and yourself.

Key Takeaways

The purpose of an informative speech is to share ideas with the audience, increase their understanding, change their perceptions, or help them gain new skills.
An informative speech incorporates the speaker’s point of view but not attitude or interpretation.
Consider the courses you have taken in the past year or two, and the extent to which each class session involved an informative presentation or one that was more persuasive. Do some disciplines lend themselves more to informing rather than interpretation and attitude? Discuss your findings with your classmates.
Visit a major network news Web site and view a video of a commentator such as Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) or Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly (Fox News). Identify the commentator’s point of view. If you were giving a presentation to inform, would you express your point of view in a similar style?
On the same network news Web site you used for Exercise no. 2, view a video reporting a news event (as opposed to a commentator’s commentary). Do you feel that the reporter’s approach conveys a point of view, or is it neutral? Explain your feelings and discuss with your classmates.
What is the difference between an informative presentation and a persuasive one? Provide an example in your response.
Consider a sample speech to inform on a topic where you have a strong opinion. In what ways would you adjust your key points so as not to persuade your listeners? Discuss your ideas with a classmate.
Functions of the Presentation to Inform. Provided by : Writing Commons. Located at : http://writingcommons.org/open-text/genres/professional-business-and-technical-writing/presentations-to-inform/809-functions-of-the-presentation-to-inform . License : CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

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Presentation Design Guide: How to Summarize Information for Presentations

By Midori Nediger , May 15, 2023

Bad presentations. We’ve all had to sit through them. Heck, we’ve probably all given one or two. I know I have.

You know the type: twice as long as they need to be, slides chock-full of text, no visuals in sight.

How can you ensure you don’t fall victim to these presentation faux-pas when designing your next presentation for your team, class, or clients?

In this blog, I’ll walk you through tips on how to design an impactful presentation and how you can deliver it with style to leave a lasting impression.

Let’s get started:

Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design
Identify one core message to center your presentation design around
Eliminate any information that doesn’t immediately support the core message
Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused
Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying
Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide
Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide
Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged
Use text size, weight, and color for emphasis
Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction
Split a group presentation by topic
Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest
Use presentation templates to help you get started
Include examples of inspiring people
Dedicate slides to poignant questions
Find quotes that will inspire your audience
Emphasize key points with text and images
Label your slides to prompt your memory

Watch: How to design a presentation [10 ESSENTIAL TIPS]

Tips for designing and delivering an impactful presentation

What makes a presentation memorable?

It usually comes down to three things:

The main idea.
The presenter.
The visuals.

All three elements work together to create a successful presentation. Just like how different presentation styles serve different purposes, having a good presentation idea will give the audience a purpose for listening. A good presenter communicates the main idea so that the audience cares about it. And compelling visuals help clarify concepts and illustrate ideas.

But how the presenter delivers their presentation and what visuals they use can vary drastically while still being effective. There is no perfect presentation style or presentation design.

Here are some top tips to consider to help you design and deliver an impactful presentation:

Tip #1: Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design

According to David Paradi’s annual presentation survey , the 3 things that annoy audiences most about presentations are:

Speakers reading their slides
Slides that include full sentences of text
Text that is too small to read

The common thread that ties all of these presentation annoyances is text. Audiences are very picky about the text found in presentation slide decks .

In my experiences speaking at conferences and in webinars over the past few years, audiences respond much more positively to presentations that use visuals in place of text.

Audiences are more engaged, ask more questions, and find my talks more memorable when I include lots of visual examples in my slide decks.

I’m not the only one who has found this. We recently surveyed nearly 400 conference speakers about their presentation designs and found that 84.3% create presentations that are highly visual.

A great example of a high visual presentation is the iconic AirBnB pitch deck design , which includes no more than 40 words per slide. Instead of repeating the speaker’s script on the slides, it makes an impact with keywords, large numbers, and icons:

Learn how to customize this presentation template:

To help you take your presentations to the next level, I’d like to share my process for creating a visually-focused presentation like the one above. I’ll give you my top presentation design tips that I’ve learned over years of presenting:

Class presentations
Online courses

You can then apply this process to our professional presentation templates or pitch decks , creating unique presentation decks with ease! Our user-friendly editor tools make customizing these templates a breeze.

To leave a lasting impression on your audience, consider transforming your slides into an interactive presentation. Here are 15 interactive presentation ideas to enhance interactivity and engagement.

We’ll cover the most important steps for summarizing lengthy text into a presentation-friendly format. Then we’ll touch on some pre sentation design tips to help you get visual with your slide decks. Read on for the best creative presentation ideas.

Tip #2: Identify one core message to center your presentation design around

We know from David Paradi’s survey that audiences are easily overwhelmed with lots of text and data, especially when presentations are long.

(You when you see a presentation with lots of text and data and it’s long)

So unlike in a white paper , report , or essay , you can’t expect to tackle many complex ideas within a single presentation.

That would be a recipe for disaster.

Instead, identify a single central message that you would like to communicate to your audience. Then build your presentation around that core message.

By identifying that core message, you can ensure that everything you include in your presentation supports the goal of the presentation .

As seen below, a great presentation tells you exactly what you’re going to learn (the core message), then gets right to the facts (the supporting information).

Nutrition Creative Presentation Template

To ensure you create an asset that’s clear, concise, impactful, and easy to follow, design your presentation around a single core message.

Tip #3: Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused

Think of your outline as a roadmap for your presentation. Creating a strong presentation outline straight away helps make sure that you’re hitting all of the key points you need to cover to convey a persuasive presentation .

Take this presentation outline example:

Introduction and hellos
Vision and value proposition
Financial profit
Your investment
Thanks and questions

These are all things that we know we need to talk about within the presentation.

Creating a presentation outline makes it much easier to know what to say when it comes to creating the actual presentation slides.

You could even include your presentation outline as a separate slide so that your audience knows what to expect:

Topics of discussion presentation outline example template

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

Tip #4: Eliminate any information that doesn’t support the core message

Next, use that core message to identify everything that doesn’t belong in the presentation.

Aim to eliminate everything that isn’t immediately relevant to the topic at hand, and anything remotely redundant. Cut any information that isn’t absolutely essential to understanding the core message.

By cutting these extra details, you can transform forgettable text-heavy slides:

Into memorable slides with minimal text:

Here’s a quick checklist to help you cut out any extra detail:

Get rid of:

Detailed descriptions
Background information
Redundant statements
Explanations of common knowledge
Persuasive facts and figures
Illustrative examples
Impactful quotes

This step may seem obvious, but when you’re presenting on a topic that you’re passionate about, it’s easy to get carried away with extraneous detail. Use the recommendations above to keep your text in check.

Clarity is key, especially if you’re presenting virtually rather than in-person. However, Lisa Schneider (Chief Growth Officer at Merriam-Webster) has had plenty of experience making that adjustment. She recently shared her tips for adapting in-person presentations into virtual presentations on Venngage that you can check out.

Tip #5: Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying

According to presentation guru Nancy Duarte , your audience should be able to discern the meaning of your slides in 6 seconds or less.

Since your audience will tend to read every word you place on each slide, you must keep your text to an absolute minimum. The text on your slides should provide support for what you’re saying without being distracting.

Never write out, word for word, what you’re going to be saying out loud. If you’re relying on text to remember certain points, resist the urge to cram them into your slides. Instead, use a tool like Venngage’s speaker notes to highlight particular talking points. These can be imported into PowerPoint — along with the rest of your presentation — and will only be viewable to you, not your audience.

For the actual slides, text should only be used to reinforce what you’re saying. Like in the presentation design below, paraphrase long paragraphs into short bulleted lists or statements by eliminating adjectives and articles (like “the” and “a”).

Pull out quotes and important numbers, and make them a focus of each slide.

Tip #6: Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide

As I mentioned above, audiences struggle when too much information is presented on a single slide.

To make sure you don’t overwhelm your audiences with too much information, spread out your content to cover one major takeaway per slide.

By limiting each slide to a single simple statement, you focus your audience’s attention on the topic at hand.

My favorite way to do this is to pick out the core message of whatever I’m talking about and express it in a few keywords, as seen in this presentation slide below.

This helps ensure that the visuals remain the focus of the slide.

Using the text in this way, to simply state a single fact per slide, is a sure-fire way to make an impact in your presentation.

Alternatively, pull out a significant statistic that you want to stick in your audience’s minds and make it a visual focus of the slide, as seen in this popular presentation by Officevibe .

This might mean you end up with a slide deck with a ton of slides. But that’s totally ok!

I’ve talked to many professionals who are pressured by their management teams to create presentations with a specific number of slides (usually as few as 10 or 15 slides for a 30-minute presentation).

If you ask me, this approach is completely flawed. In my mind, the longer I spend sitting on a single slide, the more likely I am to lose the interest of my audience.

How many slides should I use for a 10 minute presentation?

A good rule of thumb is to have at least as many slides as minutes in your presentation. So for a 10 minute presentation you should have at least 10 slides .

Use as many slides as you need, as long as you are presenting a single message on each slide, (as seen in the lengthy presentation template below). This is especially important if you’re presenting your business, or delivering a product presentation. You want to wow your audience, not bore them.

Tip #7: Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide

As important as having one major takeaway per slide is having visuals that highlight the major takeaway on each slide.

Unique visuals will help make your message memorable.

Visuals are a great way to eliminate extra text, too.

You can add visuals by creating a timeline infographic to group and integrate information into visual frameworks like this:

Or create a flowchart and funnels:

Or by representing simple concepts with icons, as seen in the modern presentation design below. Using the same color for every icon helps create a polished look.

Using visuals in this way is perfect for when you have to convey messages quickly to audiences that you aren’t familiar with – such as at conferences. This would also make the ideal interview presentation template.

You can alternatively use icons in different colors, like in the presentation templates below. Just make sure the colors are complimentary, and style is consistent throughout the presentation (i.e. don’t use sleek, modern icons on one slide and whimsically illustrated icons on another). In this example, presentation clipart style icons have been used.

Any time you have important stats or trends you want your audience to remember, consider using a chart or data visualization to drive your point home. Confident public speaking combined with strong visualizations can really make an impact, encouraging your audience to act upon your message.

One of my personal favorite presentations (created by a professional designer) takes this “key message plus a visual” concept to the extreme, resulting in a slide deck that’s downright irresistible.

When applying this concept, don’t fall into the trap of using bad stock photos . Irrelevant or poorly chosen visuals can hurt you as much as they help you.

Below is an example of how to use stock photos effectively. They are more thematic than literal and are customized with fun, bright icons that set a playful tone.

The content and visual design of a presentation should be seamless.

It should never seem like your text and visuals are plopped onto a template. The format and design of the slides should contribute to and support the audience’s understanding of the content.

Tip #8: Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged

It’s easy for audiences to get lost during long presentations, especially if you have lots of slides. And audiences zone out when they get lost.

To help reorient your audience every once in a while, you can use something I like to call scaffolding slides. Scaffolding slides appear throughout a presentation to denote the start and end of major sections.

The core scaffolding slide is the agenda slide, which should appear right after the introduction or title slide. It outlines the major sections of the presentation.

At the beginning of each section, you should show that agenda again but highlight the relevant section title, as seen below.

This gives audiences the sense that you’re making progress through the presentation and helps keep them anchored and engaged.

Alternatively, you can achieve a similar effect by numbering your sections and showing that number on every slide. Or use a progress bar at the bottom of each slide to indicate how far along you are in your presentation. Just make sure it doesn’t distract from the main content of the slides.

You can imagine using this “progress bar” idea for a research presentation, or any presentation where you have a lot of information to get through.

Leila Janah, founder of Sama Group, is great at this. Her Innovation and Inspire talk about Sama Group is an example of a presentation that is well organized and very easy to follow.

Her presentation follows a logical, steady stream of ideas. She seems comfortable talking in front of a crowd but doesn’t make any attempts to engage directly with them.

Tip #9: Use text size, weight and color for emphasis

Every slide should have a visual focal point. Something that immediately draws the eye at first glance.

That focal point should be whatever is most important on that slide, be it an important number, a keyword, or simply the slide title.

We can create visual focal points by varying the size, weight, and color of each element on the slide. Larger, brighter, bolder elements will command our audience’s attention, while smaller, lighter elements will tend to fade into the background.

As seen in the presentation template above, this technique can be especially useful for drawing attention to important words within a long passage of text. Consider using this technique whenever you have more than 5 words on a slide.

And if you really want your audience to pay attention, pick a high-contrast color scheme like the one below.

When picking fonts for your presentation, keep this technique in mind. Pick a font that has a noticeable difference between the “bold” font face and the “regular” font face. Source Sans Pro, Times New Roman, Montserrat, Arvo, Roboto, and Open Sans are all good options.

The last thing to remember when using size, weight, and color to create emphasis on a slide: don’t try to emphasize too many things on one slide.

If everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted.

Tip #10: Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction

Audiences are quick to pick out, and focus on, any inconsistencies in your presentation design. As a result, messy, inconsistent slide decks lead to distracted, disengaged audiences.

Design choices (fonts and colors, especially), must be applied consistently across a slide deck. The last thing you want is for your audience to pay attention to your design choices before your content.

To keep your design in check, it can be helpful to create a color palette and type hierarchy before you start creating your deck, and outline it in a basic style guide like this one:

I know it can sometimes be tempting to fiddle around with text sizes to fit longer bits of text on a slide, but don’t do it! If the text is too long to fit on a slide, it should be split up onto multiple slides anyway.

And remember, a consistent design isn’t necessarily a boring one. This social media marketing presentation applies a bright color scheme to a variety of 3-column and 2-column layouts, remaining consistent but still using creative presentation ideas.

Tip #11: Split a group presentation by topic

When giving a group presentation it’s always difficult to find the right balance of who should present which part.

Splitting a group presentation by topic is the most natural way to give everybody the chance to attempt without it seeming disjointed.

When presenting this slide deck to investors or potential clients, the team can easily take one topic each. One person can discuss the business model slide, and somebody else can talk about the marketing strategy.

Tip #12: Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest

Page after page of the same layout can become repetitive and boring. Mix up the layout of your slides to keep your audience interested.

In this example, the designer has used a variety of combinations of images, text, and icons to create an interesting and varied style.

Yellow start up pitch deck presentation template

There are hundreds of different combinations of presentation layers and presentation styles that you can use to help create an engaging presentation . This style is great for when you need to present a variety of information and statistics, like if you were presenting to financial investors, or you were giving a research presentation.

Using a variety of layouts to keep an audience engaged is something that Elon Musk is an expert in. An engaged audience is a hyped audience. Check out this Elon Musk presentation revealing a new model Tesla for a masterclass on how to vary your slides in an interesting way:

Tip #13: Use presentation templates to help you get started

It can be overwhelming to build your own presentation from scratch. Fortunately, my team at Venngage has created hundreds of professional presentation templates , which make it easy to implement these design principles and ensure your audience isn’t deterred by text-heavy slides.

Using a presentation template is a quick and easy way to create professional-looking presentation skills, without any design experience. You can edit all of the text easily, as well as change the colors, fonts, or photos. Plus you can download your work in a PowerPoint or PDF Presentation format.

After your presentation, consider summarizing your presentation in an engaging manner to r each a wider audience through a LinkedIn presentation .

Tip #14: Include examples of inspiring people

People like having role models to look up to. If you want to motivate your audience, include examples of people who demonstrate the traits or achievements, or who have found success through the topic you are presenting.

Tip #15: Dedicate slides to poignant questions

While you might be tempted to fill your slides with decorative visuals and splashes of color, consider that sometimes simplicity is more effective than complexity. The simpler your slide is, the more you can focus on one thought-provoking idea.

Tip #16: Find quotes that will inspire your audience

A really good quote can stick in a person’s mind for weeks after your presentation. Ending your presentation with a quote can be a nice way to either begin or finish your presentation.

A great example of this is Tim Ferriss’ TED talk:

tim ferriss inspiration presentation example

Check out the full talk below.

Tip #17: Emphasize key points with text and images

When you pair concise text with an image, you’re presenting the information to your audience in two simultaneous ways. This can make the information easier to remember, and more memorable.

Use your images and text on slides to reinforce what you’re saying out loud.

Doing this achieves two things:

When the audience hears a point and simultaneously read it on the screen, it’s easier to retain.
Audience members can photograph/ screencap the slide and share it with their networks.

Don’t believe us? See this tip in action with a presentation our Chief Marketing Officer Nadya gave recently at Unbounce’s CTA Conference . The combination of text and images on screen leads to a memorable presentation.

Tip #18: Label your slides to prompt your memory

Often, presenters will write out an entire script for their presentation and read it off a teleprompter. The problem is, that can often make your presentation seem too rehearsed and wooden.

But even if you don’t write a complete script, you can still put key phrases on your slides to prompt jog your memory. The one thing you have to be wary of is looking back at your slides too much.

A good presentation gets things moving! Check out the top qualities of awesome presentations and learn all about how to make a good presentation to help you nail that captivating delivery.

Audiences don’t want to watch presentations with slide decks jam-packed with text. Too much text only hurts audience engagement and understanding. Your presentation design is as important as your presentation style.

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The big SlideLizard presentation glossary > Informative Presentations

Informative Presentations

Term explanation • category presentations.

Definition and meaning

An information presentation is created when no solution is currently available. Facts, data and figures or study results are presented and current processes are described.

Live polls in presentations are the perfect feature to interact with the audience and to get a picture of the current mood in real time. With SlideLizard you can insert polls directly in PowerPoint or create them on the fly.

Other glossary terms

Game-based learning.

Game-based learning is a popular approach where the instrument for a learning process is a game. Game-based learning scenarios are often found online - they are often favored because they engage learners in a way that few other learning methods do.

Community Events

Community events are about bringing people together, creating positive change and making new friends.

Formal Communication

formal communication should be used for speeches or at work

Corporate Events

A corporate event is an event organised by a company and intended for employees, stakeholders, customers, a charity event or public. The audience depends on the goal of the event.

The big SlideLizard presentation glossary

The SlideLizard presentation glossary is a large collection of explanations and definitions of terms in the area of presentations, communication, speaking, events, PowerPoint and education.

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What is PowerPoint: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

What is PowerPoint? This blog provides the essence of PowerPoint, a versatile presentation software by Microsoft. Discover its features, uses, and the art of crafting compelling slideshows. Whether you're a student, professional, or simply curious, explore the power of PowerPoint and learn how to create impactful presentations effortlessly.

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According to Glassdoor , a PowerPoint designer's average salary in the UK is about £37,811 annually. In this blog, you will learn What is PowerPoint, its key features, its benefits, and how to use it, as well as learn some tips for creating effective presentations.

Table of contents

1) What is PowerPoint?

2) Understanding the PowerPoint Interface

3) Key Features of PowerPoint

4) How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation?

5) Benefits of PowerPoint

6) Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations

7) Conclusion

What is PowerPoint?

PowerPoint is a versatile and popular presentation software developed by Microsoft (MS). It is a part of the Microsoft Office Suite and offers various features and tools to create visually appealing and engaging presentations. MS PowerPoint allows users to combine text, graphics, multimedia elements, and animations to convey information effectively .

Evolution of PowerPoint

Understanding the PowerPoint Interface

The PowerPoint interface provides a user-friendly environment for creating and editing presentations. Familiarising yourself with its essential components will help you navigate the software efficiently. Here's a breakdown of the MS PowerPoint interface:

1) Ribbon : The Ribbon is located at the top of the MS PowerPoint window and consists of multiple tabs, such as Home, Insert, Design, Transitions, and more.

2) Slides pane : The Slides pane is on the left side of the PowerPoint window. It displays thumbnail images of your presentation slides, allowing you to navigate and rearrange them easily. You can add, delete, duplicate, or hide slides from this pane.

3) Notes pane : The Notes pane is located below the Slides pane. It provides space for adding speaker notes or additional information related to each slide.

4) Slide area : The Slide area occupies the central part of the PowerPoint window. It displays the selected slide, where you can add and arrange content such as text, images, charts, and multimedia elements .

5) Task panes : Task panes are additional panels on the PowerPoint window's right side. They offer various functionalities such as formatting options, slide layouts, animations, etc. Task panes can be opened or closed based on your specific needs.

Understanding the MS PowerPoint interface will help you navigate the software effectively and make the most of its features. Whether you are creating slides, adding content, or applying formatting, having a good grasp of the interface ensures a smooth and productive experience .

Key Features of PowerPoint

When it comes to creating captivating and professional presentations, MS PowerPoint stands out as versatile and feature-rich software. Its array of tools and functionalities enables users to bring their imagination and ideas to life. Moreover, it also helps engage their audience effectively .

1) Slide Templates : PowerPoint provides a collection of pre-designed templates that make it easy to create visually appealing slides.

2) Slide Master : The Slide Master feature allows users to define the overall layout, font styles, and colour scheme for the entire presentation .

3) Animations and transitions : PowerPoint offers various animation effects and slide transitions to add visual interest and captivate the audience .

4) Multimedia integration : Users can embed images, videos, and audio files directly into their presentations, enhancing the overall impact .

5) Collaboration tools : MS PowerPoint allows multiple users to work on a presentation simultaneously, making it ideal for team projects and remote collaboration .

6) Presenter View : The Presenter View feature gives presenters access to speaker notes, a timer, and a preview of upcoming slides, enabling a seamless presentation experience .

These features collectively contribute to PowerPoint's versatility and make it a powerful tool for developing engaging and impactful presentations.

How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation?

Creating a presentation in PowerPoint is a straightforward process. Whether it's simple animations or explainer videos learning H ow to use PowerPoint is an extremely valuable skill. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to create a presentation:

1) Launch PowerPoint and choose a template or start with a blank slide.

2) Add slides by clicking "New Slide" or using the shortcut key (Ctrl + M).

3) Customise slide content by entering text and inserting visuals.

4) Rearrange slides for a logical flow by dragging them in the slide navigation pane.

5) Apply slide transitions for visual effects in the "Transitions" tab.

6) Add animations to objects in the "Animations" tab.

7) Preview your presentation by clicking "Slide Show".

8) Save your presentation and choose a format (.pptx or .pdf).

9) Share your presentation via email, cloud storage, or collaboration tools.

By following these steps, you can create a well-structured and visually appealing presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. Remember to keep your content concise, use engaging visuals, and practice your presentation skills to deliver an impactful presentation .

Benefits of PowerPoint

1) Visual appeal : Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to create visually appealing presentations with its wide range of design tools and features. You can use templates, themes, and customisable layouts to make your slides visually engaging and professional .

2) Easy to use : PowerPoint has a user-friendly interface, making it accessible to users of all levels. The intuitive tools and straightforward navigation make it easy to create, edit, and deliver presentations efficiently .

3) Flexibility : PowerPoint provides flexibility in terms of content creation. You can include various types of content, such as text, images, charts, graphs, videos, and audio files, to enhance your message and engage your audience effectively.

4) Organisation and structure : PowerPoint offers features to help you organise and structure your content. You can create multiple slides, use slide masters for consistent formatting, and arrange the sequence of slides to create a logical flow .

5) Presenter tools : PowerPoint includes built-in presenter tools that aid in delivering presentations smoothly. You can use presenter view to see your notes and upcoming slides while your audience sees only the presentation. Additionally, features like slide transitions and animations add visual interest and help you control the flow of information .

6) Collaboration and sharing : PowerPoint allows for easy collaboration and sharing of presentations. Several users can simultaneously work on the same presentation, making it convenient for team projects. You can also share your presentations via email, cloud storage, or online platforms, ensuring easy access for viewers .

7) Integration with other tools : PowerPoint can seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft Office applications, such as Word and Excel. You can import data and charts from Excel or copy and paste content between different Office applications, saving time and effort .

8) Presenter-audience interaction : PowerPoint provides features that facilitate interaction between the presenter and the audience. You can include interactive elements like hyperlinks, buttons, and quizzes to engage your audience and make your presentations more dynamic.

9) Portable and accessible : PowerPoint presentations can be saved in various formats, such as .pptx or .pdf, making them easily accessible on different devices. This portability allows you to deliver presentations on laptops, tablets, or even projectors without compatibility issues .

10) Time and effort savings : PowerPoint simplifies the process of creating presentations, saving you time and effort. The pre-designed templates, slide layouts, and formatting options enable you to create professional-looking presentations efficiently .

Unleash your creativity to deliver captivating presentations that leave a lasting impact with our Microsoft PowerPoint Masterclass – Sign up now!

Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations

What is PowerPoint Tips for creating presentations

1) Simplicity is key : Keep your slides clean and uncluttered. Use concise bullet points and simple visuals to convey your message effectively .

2) Visuals matter : Incorporate relevant, high-quality visuals such as images, charts, and diagrams to enhance understanding and engagement .

3) Limit text : Avoid overwhelming your audience with excessive text on slides. Use brief phrases or keywords to communicate key points .

4) Choose legible fonts : Opt for clear and readable fonts that are easy to read, even from a distance. Maintain consistency in font styles throughout your presentation .

5) Consistent design : Maintain a consistent design theme, including colours, fonts, and layout, to create a visually appealing and professional presentation.

6) Emphasise important points : Use visual hierarchy techniques, such as font size, colour, and formatting, to draw attention to essential information .

7) Use transitions and animations sparingly : Incorporate slide transitions and animations thoughtfully, focusing on enhancing content and transitions without distracting the audience .

8) S lide notes for guidance : Utilise the slide notes feature to include additional details, explanations, or reminders for a well-prepared and confident presentation.

9) Practice and time yourself : Rehearse your presentation to ensure smooth delivery and stay within the allocated time. Practice helps you refine your content and delivery.

10) Engage the audience : Encourage audience participation through interactive elements, questions, or discussions to foster engagement and make your presentation more memorable.

By implementing these tips, you can create effective MS PowerPoint presentations that capture attention, communicate information clearly, and engage your audience effectively.

Conclusion

We hope this blog has helped you understand What is PowerPoint and how it can help you. It offers powerful features with a user-friendly interface for creating visually appealing presentations. With its tools for organising information, incorporating text and visuals, and delivering impactful content, PowerPoint is a valuable tool for beginners to communicate their ideas effectively .

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15.1: Functions of Presentation Aids

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Learning Objectives

List four reasons why presentation aids are important in public speaking.
Explain two ways in which presentation aids can increase audience understanding of a message.

Presentation aids can fulfill several functions: they can serve to improve your audience’s understanding of the information you are conveying, enhance audience memory and retention of the message, add variety and interest to your speech, and enhance your credibility as a speaker. Let’s examine each of these functions.

Improving Audience Understanding

Human communication is a complex process that often leads to misunderstandings. If you are like most people, you can easily remember incidents when you misunderstood a message or when someone else misunderstood what you said to them. Misunderstandings happen in public speaking just as they do in everyday conversations.

As a speaker, one of your basic goals is to help your audience understand your message. To reduce misunderstanding, presentation aids can be used to clarify or to emphasize.

Clarification is important in a speech because if some of the information you convey is unclear, your listeners will come away puzzled or possibly even misled. Presentation aids can help clarify a message if the information is complex or if the point being made is a visual one.

Figure 15.2 “Model of Communication” is another example of a diagram that maps out the process of human communication. In this image you clearly have a speaker and an audience (albeit slightly abstract), with the labels of source, channel, message, receivers, and feedback to illustrate the basic linear model of human communication.

Figure 15.1 Coriolis Effect

Figure 15.2 Model of Communication

Figure 15.3 Petroglyph

Another aspect of clarifying occurs when a speaker wants to visually help audience members understand a visual concept. For example, if a speaker is talking about the importance of petroglyphs in Native American culture, just describing the petroglyphs won’t completely help your audience to visualize what they look like. Instead, showing an example of a petroglyph, as in Figure 15.3 “Petroglyph”, can more easily help your audience form a clear mental image of your intended meaning.

Emphasizing

When you use a presentational aid for emphasis , you impress your listeners with the importance of an idea. In a speech on water conservation, you might try to show the environmental proportions of the resource. When you use a conceptual drawing like the one in Figure 15.4 “Planetary Water Supply”, you show that if the world water supply were equal to ten gallons, only ten drops would be available and potable for human or household consumption. This drawing is effective because it emphasizes the scarcity of useful water and thus draws attention to this important information in your speech.

Figure 15.4 Planetary Water Supply

Planetary Water Supply. For every one cup of polluted water, there are ten drops of usable water.

Figure 15.5 Chinese Lettering Amplified

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Another way of emphasizing that can be done visually is to zoom in on a specific aspect of interest within your speech. In Figure 15.5 “Chinese Lettering Amplified”, we see a visual aid used in a speech on the importance of various parts of Chinese characters. On the left side of the visual aid, we see how the characters all fit together, with an emphasized version of a single character on the right.

Aiding Retention and Recall

The second function that presentation aids can serve is to increase the audience’s chances of remembering your speech. A 1996 article by the US Department of Labor summarized research on how people learn and remember. The authors found that “83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses—11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch” (United States Department of Labor, 1996). Most of how people learn is through seeing things, so the visual component of learning is very important. The article goes on to note that information stored in long-term memory is also affected by how we originally learn the material. In a study of memory, learners were asked to recall information after a three day period. The researchers found that they retained 10 percent of what they heard from an oral presentation, 35 percent from a visual presentation, and 65 percent from a visual and oral presentation (Lockard & Sidowski, 1961). It’s amazing to see how the combined effect of both the visual and oral components can contribute to long-term memory.

For this reason, exposure to a visual image can serve as a memory aid to your listeners. When your graphic images deliver information effectively and when your listeners understand them clearly, audience members are likely to remember your message long after your speech is over.

Moreover, people often are able to remember information that is presented in sequential steps more easily than if that information is presented in an unorganized pattern. When you use a presentation aid to display the organization of your speech, you will help your listeners to observe, follow, and remember the sequence of information you conveyed to them. This is why some instructors display a lecture outline for their students to follow during class.

An added plus of using presentation aids is that they can boost your memory while you are speaking. Using your presentation aids while you rehearse your speech will familiarize you with the association between a given place in your speech and the presentation aid that accompanies that material. For example, if you are giving an informative speech about diamonds, you might plan to display a sequence of slides illustrating the most popular diamond shapes: brilliant, marquise, emerald, and so on. As you finish describing one shape and advance to the next slide, seeing the next diamond shape will help you remember the information about it that you are going to deliver.

Adding Variety and Interest

A third function of presentation aids is simply to make your speech more interesting. While it is true that a good speech and a well-rehearsed delivery will already include variety in several aspects of the presentation, in many cases, a speech can be made even more interesting by the use of well-chosen presentation aids.

For example, you may have prepared a very good speech to inform a group of gardeners about several new varieties of roses suitable for growing in your local area. Although your listeners will undoubtedly understand and remember your message very well without any presentation aids, wouldn’t your speech have greater impact if you accompanied your remarks with a picture of each rose? You can imagine that your audience would be even more enthralled if you had the ability to display an actual flower of each variety in a bud vase.

Similarly, if you were speaking to a group of gourmet cooks about Indian spices, you might want to provide tiny samples of spices that they could smell and taste during your speech. Taste researcher Linda Bartoshuk has given presentations in which audience members receive small pieces of fruit and are asked to taste them at certain points during the speech (Association for Psychological Science, 2011).

Enhancing a Speaker’s Credibility

Presentation aids alone will not be enough to create a professional image. As we mentioned earlier, impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech. However, even if you give a good speech, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional if your presentation aids are poorly executed. This means that in addition to containing important information, your presentation aids must be clear, clean, uncluttered, organized, and large enough for the audience to see and interpret correctly. Misspellings and poorly designed presentation aids can damage your credibility as a speaker. Conversely, a high quality presentation will contribute to your professional image. In addition, make sure that you give proper credit to the source of any presentation aids that you take from other sources. Using a statistical chart or a map without proper credit will detract from your credibility, just as using a quotation in your speech without credit would.

If you focus your efforts on producing presentation aids that contribute effectively to your meaning, that look professional, and that are handled well, your audience will most likely appreciate your efforts and pay close attention to your message. That attention will help them learn or understand your topic in a new way and will thus help the audience see you as a knowledgeable, competent, credible speaker.

Key Takeaways

Presentation aids should help audiences more thoroughly understand a speaker’s basic message.
There are four basic reasons to use presentation aids. First, they increase audience understanding of a speaker’s message. Second, they help audiences retain and recall a speaker’s message after the fact. Third, they make a speech more interesting by adding variety. Lastly, by making a speaker’s overall speech more polished, presentation aids can increase an audience’s perception of the speaker’s credibility.
Presentation aids help an audience more clearly understand a speaker’s message in two ways: they help clarify and they help emphasize. Presentation aids can help the audience to understand complex ideas or processes and can also show which ideas are most important in the speech.
Look at the outline you have prepared for a classroom speech. Where in the speech would it be appropriate to use presentation aids? Why would presentation aids help at the points you identify?
Presentational slides from speeches are sometimes available online. Search for and evaluate three sets of presentation slides you find online. Identify three ways that the slides could be improved to be more effective presentation aids.

Association for Psychological Science. (2011, May 28). Miracle fruit and flavor: An experiment performed at APS 2010 [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/obsonline/miracle-fruit-and-flavor-an-experiment-performed-at-aps-2010.html

Lockard, J., & Sidowski, J. R. (1961). Learning in fourth and sixth graders as a function of sensory mode of stimulus presentation and overt or covert practice. Journal of Educational Psychology, 52 (5), 262–265. doi: 10.1037/h0043483

United States Department of Labor. (1996). Presenting effective presentations with visual aids . Retrieved from http://www.osha.gov

BUS210: Business Communication

Functions of the Presentation to Inform

These sections review the ways you can maintain objectivity and provide unbiased information to your audience. After you read, try the exercises at the end of the section.

Learning Objectives

Describe the functions of the speech to inform.
Explain the difference between exposition and interpretation.

Informative presentations focus on helping the audience to understand a topic, issue, or technique more clearly. You might say, "Is that all?" and the answer is both yes and no. An affirmative response underscores the idea that informative speeches do not seek to motivate the audience to change their minds, adopt a new idea, start a new habit, or get out there and vote. They may, however, inform audiences on issues that may be under consideration in an election or referendum. On the other hand, a negative response reaffirms the idea that to communicate a topic, issue, or subject clearly is a challenge in itself and shouldn't be viewed as a simplistic process. There are distinct functions inherent in a speech to inform, and you may choose to use one or more of these functions in your speech. Let's take a look at the functions and see how they relate to the central objective of facilitating audience understanding.

The basic definition of communication highlights the process of understanding and sharing meaning. An informative speech follows this definition in the aspect of sharing content and information with an audience. You won't be asking the audience to actually do anything in terms of offering a response or solving a problem. Instead you'll be offering to share with the audience some of the information you have gathered relating to a topic. This act of sharing will reduce ignorance, increase learning, and facilitate understanding of your chosen topic.

Increase Understanding

How well does your audience grasp the information? This should be a guiding question to you on two levels. The first involves what they already know - or don't know - about your topic, and what key terms or ideas might be necessary for someone completely unfamiliar with your topic to grasp the ideas you are presenting. The second involves your presentation and the illustration of ideas. A bar chart, a pie graph, and a video clip may all serve you and the audience well, but how will each ingredient in your speech contribute to their understanding? The audience will respond to your attention statement and hopefully maintain interest, but how will you take your speech beyond superficial coverage of content and effectively communicate key relationships that increase understanding? These questions should serve as a challenge for your informative speech, and by looking at your speech from an audience-oriented perspective, you will increase your ability to increase the audience's understanding.

Change Perceptions

How you perceive stimuli has everything to do with a range of factors that are unique to you. We all want to make sense of our world, share our experiences, and learn that many people face the same challenges we do. Many people perceive the process of speaking in public as a significant challenge, and in this text, we have broken down the process into several manageable steps. In so doing, we have to some degree changed your perception of public speaking. When you present your speech to inform, you may want to change the audience member's perceptions of your topic. You may present an informative speech on air pollution and want to change common perceptions such as the idea that most of North America's air pollution comes from private cars, or that nuclear power plants are a major source of air pollution. You won't be asking people to go out and vote, or change their choice of automobiles, but you will help your audience change their perceptions of your topic.

Gain Skills

Just as you want to increase the audience's understanding, you may want to help the audience members gain skills. If you are presenting a speech on how to make salsa from fresh ingredients, your audience may thank you for not only the knowledge of the key ingredients and their preparation but also the product available at the conclusion. If your audience members have never made their own salsa, they may gain a new skill from your speech. In the same way, perhaps you decide to inform your audience about eBay, a person-to-person marketplace much like a garage sale in which items are auctioned or available for purchase over the Internet. You may project onto a screen in class the main Web site and take the audience through a step-by-step process on how to sell an item. The audience may learn an important skill, clean out the old items in their garage, and buy new things for the house with their newfound skills. Your intentions, of course, are not to argue that salsa is better than ketchup or that eBay is better than Amazon, but to inform the audience, increasing their understanding of the subject, and in this case, gaining new skills.

Exposition versus Interpretation

When we share information informally, we often provide our own perspective and attitude for our own reasons. But when we set out to inform an audience, taking sides or using sarcasm to communicate attitude may divide the audience into groups that agree or disagree with the speaker. The speech to inform the audience on a topic, idea, or area of content is not intended to be a display of attitude and opinion. Consider the expectations of people who attend a formal dinner. Will they use whatever fork or spoon they want, or are there expectations of protocol and decorum? In any given communication context there are expectations, both implicit and explicit. If you attend a rally on campus for health care reform, you may expect the speaker to motivate you to urge the university to stop investing in pharmaceutical companies, for example. On the other hand, if you enroll in a biochemistry course, you expect a teacher to inform you about the discipline of biochemistry - not to convince you that pharmaceutical companies are a good or bad influence on our health care system. The speech to inform is like the classroom setting in that the goal is to inform, not to persuade, entertain, display attitude, or create comedy. If you have analyzed your audience, you'll be better prepared to develop appropriate ways to gain their attention and inform them on your topic. You want to communicate thoughts, ideas, and relationships and allow each listener specifically, and the audience generally, to draw their own conclusions. The speech to inform is all about sharing information to meet the audience's needs, not your own. While you might want to inform them about your views on politics in the Middle East, you'll need to consider what they are here to learn from you and let your audience-oriented perspective guide you as you prepare.

Interpretation and Bias

Interpretation involves adapting the information to communicate a message, perspective, or agenda. Your insights and attitudes will guide your selection of material, what you focus on, and what you delete (choosing what not to present to the audience). Your interpretation will involve personal bias. Bias is an unreasoned or not-well-thought-out judgment. Bias involves beliefs or ideas held on the basis of conviction rather than current evidence. Beliefs are often called "habits of the mind" because we come to rely on them to make decisions. Which is the better, cheapest, most expensive, or the middle-priced product? People often choose the middle-priced product and use the belief "if it costs more it must be better" (and the opposite: "if it is cheap it must not be very good"). The middle-priced item, regardless of actual price, is often perceived as "good enough". All these perceptions are based on beliefs, and they may not apply to the given decision or even be based on any evidence or rational thinking. By extension, marketing students learn to facilitate the customer "relationship" with the brand. If you come to believe a brand stands for excellence, and a new product comes out under that brand label, you are more likely to choose it over an unknown or lesser-known competitor. Again, your choice of the new product is based on a belief rather than evidence or rational thinking. We take mental shortcuts all day long, but in our speech to inform, we have to be careful not to reinforce bias. Bias is like a filter on your perceptions, thoughts, and ideas. Bias encourages you to accept positive evidence that supports your existing beliefs (regardless of whether they are true) and reject negative evidence that does not support your beliefs. Furthermore, bias makes you likely to reject positive support for opposing beliefs and accept negative evidence (again, regardless of whether the evidence is true). So what is positive and what is negative? In a biased frame of mind, that which supports your existing beliefs is positive and likely to be accepted, while that which challenges your beliefs is likely to be viewed as negative and rejected. There is the clear danger in bias. You are inclined to tune out or ignore information, regardless of how valuable, useful, or relevant it may be, simply because it doesn't agree with or support what you already believe.

Point of View

Let's say you are going to present an informative speech on a controversial topic like same-sex marriage. Without advocating or condemning same-sex marriage, you could inform your audience about current laws in various states, recent and proposed changes in laws, the number of same-sex couples who have gotten married in various places, the implications of being married or not being able to marry, and so on. But as you prepare and research your topic, do you only read or examine information that supports your existing view? If you only choose to present information that agrees with your prior view, you've incorporated bias into your speech. Now let's say the audience members have different points of view, even biased ones, and as you present your information you see many people start to fidget in their seats. You can probably anticipate that if they were to speak, the first word they would say is "but" and then present their question or assertion. In effect, they will be having a debate with themselves and hardly listening to you. You can anticipate the effects of bias and mitigate them to some degree. First, know the difference between your point of view or perspective and your bias. Your point of view is your perception of an idea or concept from your previous experience and understanding. It is unique to you and is influenced by your experiences and also factors like gender, race, ethnicity, physical characteristics, and social class. Everyone has a point of view, as hard as they may try to be open-minded. But bias, as we've discussed previously, involves actively selecting information that supports or agrees with your current belief and takes away from any competing belief. To make sure you are not presenting a biased speech, frame your discussion to inform from a neutral stance and consider alternative points of view to present, compare and contrast, and diversify your speech. The goal of the speech to inform is to present an expository speech that reduces or tries to be free from overt interpretation. This relates to our previous discussion on changing perceptions. Clearly no one can be completely objective and remove themselves from their own perceptual process. People are not modern works of minimalist art, where form and function are paramount and the artist is completely removed from the expression. People express themselves and naturally relate what is happening now to what has happened to them in the past. You are your own artist, but you also control your creations. Objectivity involves expressions and perceptions of facts that are free from distortion by your prejudices, bias, feelings or interpretations. For example, is the post office box blue? An objective response would be yes or no, but a subjective response might sound like "Well, it's not really blue as much as it is navy, even a bit of purple, kind of like the color of my ex-boyfriend's car, remember? I don't care for the color myself". Subjectivity involves expressions or perceptions that are modified, altered, or impacted by your personal bias, experiences, and background. In an informative speech, your audience will expect you to present the information in a relatively objective form. The speech should meet the audience's need as they learn about the content, not your feelings, attitudes, or commentary on the content. Here are five suggestions to help you present a neutral speech:

Keep your language neutral and not very positive for some issues while very negative for others.
Keep your sources credible and not from biased organizations. The National Rifle Association (NRA) will have a biased view of the Second Amendment, for example, as will the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on civil rights.
Keep your presentation balanced. If you use a source that supports one clear side of an issue, include an alternative source and view. Give each equal time and respectful consideration.
Keep your audience in mind. Not everyone will agree with every point or source of evidence, but diversity in your speech will have more to offer everyone.
Keep who you represent in mind: Your business and yourself.

Key Takeaways

The purpose of an informative speech is to share ideas with the audience, increase their understanding, change their perceptions, or help them gain new skills.
An informative speech incorporates the speaker's point of view but not attitude or interpretation.
Consider the courses you have taken in the past year or two, and the extent to which each class session involved an informative presentation or one that was more persuasive. Do some disciplines lend themselves more to informing rather than interpretation and attitude? Discuss your findings with your classmates.
Visit a major network news Web site and view a video of a commentator such as Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) or Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly (Fox News). Identify the commentator's point of view. If you were giving a presentation to inform, would you express your point of view in a similar style?
On the same network news Web site you used for Exercise no. 2, view a video reporting a news event (as opposed to a commentator's commentary). Do you feel that the reporter's approach conveys a point of view, or is it neutral? Explain your feelings and discuss with your classmates.
What is the difference between an informative presentation and a persuasive one? Provide an example in your response.
Consider a sample speech to inform on a topic where you have a strong opinion. In what ways would you adjust your key points so as not to persuade your listeners? Discuss your ideas with a classmate.

13.6 Creating an Informative Presentation

Learning objectives.

Discuss the parts of an informational presentation.
Understand the five parts of any presentation.

A sales report presentation, for example, is not designed to make a sale. It is, however, supposed to report sales to date and may forecast future sales based on previous trends.

An informative presentation does not have to be a formal event, though it can be. It can be generic and nonspecific to the audience or listener, but the more you know about your audience, the better. When you tailor your message Zeroing in on your target audience. to that audience, you zero in on your target and increase your effectiveness. The emphasis is on clear and concise communication, but it may address several key questions:

Topic: Product or Service?
Who are you?
Who is the target market?
What is the revenue model?
What are the specifications?
How was the information gathered?
How does the unit work?
How does current information compare to previous information?

Table 13.2 "Presentation Components and Their Functions" lists the five main parts or components of any presentation. McLean, S. (2003). The basics of speech communication . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Table 13.2 Presentation Components and Their Functions

You will need to address the questions to establish relevance and meet the audience’s needs. The five parts of any speech will serve to help you get organized.

Sample Speech Guidelines

Imagine that you have been assigned to give an informative presentation lasting five to seven minutes. Follow the guidelines in Table 13.3 "Sample Speech Guidelines" and apply them to your presentation.

Table 13.3 Sample Speech Guidelines

Key Takeaway

Informative presentations illustrate, explain, describe, and instruct the audience on topics and processes.

Write a brief summary of a class or presentation you personally observed recently; include what you learned. Compare with classmates.
Search online for an informative speech or presentation that applies to business or industry. Indicate one part or aspect of the presentation that you thought was effective and one you would improve. Provide the link to the presentation in your post or assignment.
Pick a product or service and come up with a list of five points that you could address in a two-minute informative speech. Place them in rank order and indicate why.
With the points discussed in this chapter in mind, observe someone presenting a speech. What elements of their speech could you use in your speech? What elements would you not want to use? Why? Compare with a classmate.

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12.2 Functions of Presentation Aids

Why should you use presentation aids? If you have prepared and rehearsed your speech adequately, shouldn’t a good speech with a good delivery be enough to stand on its own? While it is true that impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech, a good speech can often be made even better by the strategic use of presentation aids. Presentation aids can fulfill several functions: they can serve to improve your audience’s understanding of the information you are conveying, enhance audience memory and retention of the message, add variety and interest to your speech, and enhance your credibility as a speaker. Let’s examine each of these functions.

Improving Audience Understanding

Human communication is a complex process that often leads to misunderstandings. Most people can easily remember incidents when they misunderstood a message or when someone else misunderstood what they said to them. Misunderstandings happen in public speaking just as they do in everyday conversations.

One reason for misunderstandings is the fact that perception and interpretation are highly complex individual processes. Most of us have seen the image in which, depending on your perception, you see either the outline of a vase or the facial profiles of two people facing each other. Or perhaps you have seen the image of the woman who may or may not be young, depending on your frame of reference at the time. This shows how interpretations can differ, and it means that your presentations must be based on careful thought and preparation to maximize the likelihood that your listeners will understand your presentations as you intend them to do so (you can see these images at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Drawing/vases.htm ).

As a speaker, one of your basic goals is to help your audience understand your message. To reduce misunderstanding, presentation aids can be used to clarify or to emphasize.

If your speech is about the impact of the Coriolis effect on tropical storms, for instance, you will have great difficulty clarifying it without a diagram because the process is a complex one. The diagram in Figure 12.1 (“Coriolis effect”) would be effective because it shows the audience the interaction between equatorial wind patterns and wind patterns moving in other directions. The diagram allows the audience to process the information in two ways: through your verbal explanation and through the visual elements of the diagram. By the way, the Coriolis Effect is defined as “an effect whereby a mass moving in a rotating system experiences a force (the Coriolis force) acting perpendicular to the direction of motion and to the axis of rotation. On the earth, the effect tends to deflect moving objects to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern and is important in the formation of cyclonic weather systems.” You can see why a picture really helps with this definition.

Figure 12.2 (“Model of Communication”) is another example of a diagram that maps out the process of human communication. In this image, you clearly have a speaker and an audience with the labels of source, channel, message, receivers, and feedback to illustrate a basic model of human communication. As with most models, it is simplified (can you remember what two components of the communication process, explained in Chapter 1, are missing here?).

a person speaking to two people from a podium

Another aspect of clarifying occurs when a speaker wants to help audience members understand a visual concept. For example, if a speaker is talking about the importance of petroglyphs in Native American culture, just describing the petroglyphs won’t completely help your audience to visualize what they look like. Instead, showing an example of a petroglyph, as in Figure 12.3 (“Petroglyph”) can more easily help your audience form a clear mental image of your intended meaning.

Emphasizing

When you use a presentational aid for emphasis, you impress your listeners with the importance of an idea. In a speech on water conservation, you might try to show the environmental proportions of the resource. When you use a conceptual drawing like the one in Figure 12.4 (“Planetary Water Supply”), you show that if the world water supply were equal to ten gallons, only ten drops would be available and drinkable for human or household consumption. This drawing is effective because it emphasizes the scarcity of useful water and thus draws attention to this important information in your speech.

Another way of emphasizing that can be done visually is to zoom in on a specific aspect of interest within your speech. In Figure 12.5 (“Chinese Lettering Amplified”), we see a visual aid used in a speech on the importance of various parts of Chinese characters. On the left side of the visual aid, we see how the characters all fit together, with an emphasized version of a single character on the right.

So, clarifying and emphasizing are two roles that support the “Improving Audience Understanding” purpose of presentation aids. What are other purposes?

Aiding Retention and Recall

The second function that presentation aids can serve is to increase the audience’s chances of remembering your speech. An article by the U.S. Department of Labor (1996) summarized research on how people learn and remember. The authors found that “83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses—11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch.”

For this reason, exposure to an image can serve as a memory aid to your listeners. When your graphic images deliver information effectively and when your listeners understand them clearly, audience members are likely to remember your message long after your speech is over. Moreover, people often are able to remember information that is presented in sequential steps more easily than if that information is presented in an unorganized pattern. When you use a presentation aid to display the organization of your speech (such as can be done with PowerPoint slides), you will help your listeners to observe, follow, and remember the sequence of information you conveyed to them. This is why some instructors display a lecture outline for their students to follow during class and why a slide with a preview of your main points can be helpful as you move into the body of your speech.

Adding Variety and Interest

A third function of presentation aids is simply to make your speech more interesting. For example, wouldn’t a speech on varieties of roses have greater impact if you accompanied your remarks with a picture of each rose? You can imagine that your audience would be even more engaged if you had the ability to display an actual flower of each variety in a bud vase. Similarly, if you were speaking to a group of gourmet chefs about Indian spices, you might want to provide tiny samples of spices that they could smell and taste during your speech.

Enhancing a Speaker’s Credibility

Presentation aids alone will not be enough to create a professional image. As we mentioned earlier, impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech. Even if you give a good speech, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional if your presentation aids are poorly executed. Conversely, a high quality presentation will contribute to your professional image. This means that in addition to containing important information, your presentation aids must be clear, clean, uncluttered, organized, and large enough for the audience to see and interpret correctly. Misspellings and poorly designed presentation aids can damage your credibility as a speaker. In addition, make sure that you give proper credit to the source of any presentation aids that you take from other sources. Using a statistical chart or a map without proper credit will detract from your credibility, just as using a quotation in your speech without credit would. This situation will usually take place with digital aids such as PowerPoint slides. The source of a chart or the data shown in a chart form should be cited at the bottom of the slide.

Avoiding Problems with Presentation Aids

Using presentation aids can come with some risks. However, with a little forethought and adequate practice, you can choose presentation aids that enhance your message and boost your professional appearance in front of an audience. One principle to keep in mind is to use only as many presentation aids as necessary to present your message or to fulfill your classroom assignment. The number and the technical sophistication of your presentation aids should never overshadow your speech.

Another important consideration is technology. Keep your presentation aids within the limits of the working technology available to you. Whether or not your technology works on the day of your speech, you will still have to present. What will you do if the computer file containing your slides is corrupted? What will you do if the easel is broken? What if you had counted on stacking your visuals on a table that disappears right when you need it? Or the Internet connection is down for a YouTube video you plan to show?

You must be prepared to adapt to an uncomfortable and scary situation. This is why we urge students to go to the classroom well ahead of time to test the equipment and ascertain the condition of the items they’re planning to use. As the speaker, you are responsible for arranging the things you need to make your presentation aids work as intended. Carry a roll of masking tape so you can display your poster even if the easel is gone. Test the computer setup. Have your slides on a flash drive AND send them to yourself as an attachment or upload to a Cloud service. Have an alternative plan prepared in case there is some glitch that prevents your computer-based presentation aids from being usable. And of course, you must know how to use the technology.

More important than the method of delivery is the audience’s ability to see and understand the presentation aid. It must deliver clear information, and it must not distract from the message. Avoid overly elaborate presentation aids. Instead, simplify as much as possible, emphasizing the information you want your audience to understand.

Another thing to remember is that presentation aids do not “speak for themselves.” When you display a visual aid, you should explain what it shows, pointing out and naming the most important features. If you use an audio aid such as a musical excerpt, you need to tell your audience what to listen for. Similarly, if you use a video clip, it is up to you as the speaker to point out the characteristics in the video that support the point you are making—but probably beforehand, so you are not speaking over the video. At the same time, a visual aid should be quickly accessible to the audience. This is where simplicity comes in. Just as in organization of a speech you would not want to use 20 main points, but more like 3-5, you should limit categories of information on a visual aid.

It’s About Them: Public Speaking in the 21st Century Copyright © 2022 by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Open access
Published: 30 August 2023

Critical dynamics arise during structured information presentation within embodied in vitro neuronal networks

Forough Habibollahi 1 , 2 , 3 na1 ,
Brett J. Kagan ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3355-7553 1 na1 ,
Anthony N. Burkitt ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5672-2772 2 &
Chris French ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1445-8704 3 , 4

Nature Communications volume 14 , Article number: 5287 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Computational neuroscience
Dynamical systems
Information technology
Learning and memory
Neural stem cells

Understanding how brains process information is an incredibly difficult task. Amongst the metrics characterising information processing in the brain, observations of dynamic near-critical states have generated significant interest. However, theoretical and experimental limitations associated with human and animal models have precluded a definite answer about when and why neural criticality arises with links from attention, to cognition, and even to consciousness. To explore this topic, we used an in vitro neural network of cortical neurons that was trained to play a simplified game of ‘Pong’ to demonstrate Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI). We demonstrate that critical dynamics emerge when neural networks receive task-related structured sensory input, reorganizing the system to a near-critical state. Additionally, better task performance correlated with proximity to critical dynamics. However, criticality alone is insufficient for a neuronal network to demonstrate learning in the absence of additional information regarding the consequences of previous actions. These findings offer compelling support that neural criticality arises as a base feature of incoming structured information processing without the need for higher order cognition.

Critically synchronized brain waves form an effective, robust and flexible basis for human memory and learning

Vitaly L. Galinsky & Lawrence R. Frank

Fast and energy-efficient neuromorphic deep learning with first-spike times

J. Göltz, L. Kriener, … M. A. Petrovici

If deep learning is the answer, what is the question?

Andrew Saxe, Stephanie Nelli & Christopher Summerfield

Introduction

How do our brains process information? It has been hypothesised for some decades that neural systems operate in or near a “critical state” 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 with well-defined dynamical properties characterised by inter alia, stability of neuronal activity, optimised information storage, and information transmission 4 , 7 . The presence of “neuronal avalanches” (cascades of propagating activity governed by power laws) as one hallmark of criticality is widely reported in the spontaneous activity of in vivo cortical networks 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 . While there is some evidence of neuronal avalanches in vitro in local field potentials (LFPs) of spontaneous activity in slice cultures 5 , 14 , cultured mouse neurons 15 , 16 , and neurons differentiated from cultured human stem cells 17 , the characteristics and extent is still unclear. Moreover, the specific role of neural criticality, along with why and when it occurs, remains a matter of significant controversy 18 , 19 .

Early work identified a link between the balance of excitatory and inhibitory inputs and the critical phase transition 20 . Anticipating this critical transition and the proximity of a network to criticality informs network robustness and can even approximate risk factors of network failures such as epileptic seizures 21 . Moreover, cortical networks express a dynamic equilibrium regime associated with criticality, including: 1) the absence of runaway gains, in which balanced activity is maintained in the neuronal networks such that the neuronal activity does not saturate or become quiescent 3 ; 2) a wide coverage in both spatial (mm to cm) and temporal (ms to min, h, etc.) scales during information encoding and transmission 3 ; 3) wide dynamical range 22 , 23 ; and 4) maximized information transmission in terms of mutual information 24 , 25 and information storage and processing capabilities 26 , such as elevated sensitivity and susceptibility to input. While in the context of population dynamics these criteria have been postulated to be a homeostatic set point for biological neural networks (BNNs), questions about the utility remain 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 .

Previous modelling of neuronal avalanches and of cortical slice cultures suggest that information is more optimally transmitted and stored as a result of neuronal networks being tuned near criticality 5 , 31 . Therefore, criticality has been proposed as a set-point for the self-organization of cortical networks 32 . Nevertheless, some theoretical works have proposed that criticality only benefits the performance in complex cognitive tasks, while resting state conditions are less likely to benefit from these network dynamics 33 . Further support for this view identifies that healthy adults undertaking working memory and cognitive tasks have reported power-law scaling of response time fluctuations 34 , 35 . Further, some forms of neurological dysfunction have been ascribed to impairment of critical dynamics 36 , 37 , 38 . While indicative, it has also been recognised that power laws are insufficient to infer criticality, since they can emerge from noise 39 . Further findings identifying linkages between criticality and stimulus discrimination, attention, language acquisition, fluid intelligence, and even conscious (awake) behaviour further complicate interpretations 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 .

Consequently, there is still a lack of experimental evidence demonstrating whether criticality is a general property of biological neuronal networks, possibly generated by homeostatic mechanisms, or whether it is related to the brain’s response to mere informational load, or a more complex association with cognition. A question that still remains to be answered is whether cortical neuronal networks display a near-critical state during spontaneous activity or whether they only display near-critical states with structured information input - which for in vivo processing would typically occur when undertaking cognitive processing. An additional concern here is that functionally defined neural networks are rarely isolated from the many other connected networks of the intact brain, making it difficult to discern truly local critical functional dynamics as opposed to patterns derived from other regions 47 .

To determine how criticality may arise without these overlapping compensatory mechanisms requires simplified models that are able to be presented and respond to structured information. To address this requirement and better evaluate these questions on the role of neural criticality, data was analysed from an in vitro neural network of cortical neurons which was trained to play the game ‘Pong’. We utilized DishBrain , a novel system shown to display goal-directed activity changes by harnessing the inherent adaptive computation of neurons to show what has been termed Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI) 48 . As such, this work also serves as a useful demonstration of the utility of these closed-loop SBI systems over spontaneous activity alone. We hypothesise that near-critical network behavior emerges when neural networks receive structured sensory input and that this system would develop a network structure closer to critical states with successful task acquisition.

Cortical cells, either differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) or derived from E15 mouse embryos, were subjected to the Gameplay and Rest conditions in the DishBrain system as previously described in ref. 48 . Hit-to-miss ratio and distance from the critical state were compared in different experimental conditions - see Supplementary Information section 1.1 – 1.4 and Supplementary Fig. S1 . The measurements were carried out in both the conditions of (i) Gameplay , where cells adjusted paddle position through activity changes and received information about the position of the ball and the closed-loop response to their control of it, and (ii) Rest , where neuronal activity adjusted the paddle position, but received no input, in order to give a matched control. For more details, see Supplementary Information section 1.4 – 1.5 and Supplementary Fig. S3 .

Neuronal avalanches were identified in network recordings. The scale-free dynamics of detected neuronal avalanches, as well as the Deviation from Criticality Coefficient (DCC), Branching Ratio (BR), and Shape Collapse error (SC error) were evaluated to identify whether the recordings were tuned near criticality. Figure 1 a–f provide a visual overview of the framework utilized in this study to investigate how far the dynamics of in vitro networks of cortical neurons are from criticality and whether this distance can accurately distinguish between task-present and task-absent states being processed by the neurons. Table 1 summarises these metrics of criticality and their formulations (see Section 'Data analysis' and Supplementary Figures S6 , S7 and refs. 3 , 49 , 50 ). At criticality, BR of the network is tuned near 1.0 while DCC and SC error diminish to 0.

a) Showing cortical cells harvested from embryonic rodents. b) & c) The recorded population activity from these cortical cells is then binned to 50 ms bins during both Gameplay and Rest sessions. The neuronal avalanches are cascades of network activity that surpass a certain activity threshold for a certain duration of time, which are then extracted by bin. d) & e) Avalanches are utilized to examine the criticality metrics in the neuronal network’s activity patterns to identify the working regime of each recording in terms of being sub-, super-, or near-critical. f) The same measures of criticality are used to cluster the recordings between two groups of Gameplay and Rest . g ) & h) Illustration of the experimental pipeline in which cultured cortical networks are recorded during Gameplay and Rest states. The recorded neuronal activities are then employed to extract the 3 metrics of criticality (namely Branching Ratio (BR), Deviation from Criticality Coefficient (DCC), and Shape Collapse error (SC error)) which are found to move towards the critical point during Gameplay g ) and move further from that point during Rest h ).

Cultured cortical networks show markers of criticality when engaged in a task but not when resting

Data from 14 different cultures integrated on HD-MEAs during 308 experimental (192 Gameplay ; 116 Rest ) sessions were recorded and discretized into 50 ms bins. For full details about the number of cultures and number of experiments performed on each culture, please see Supplementary Information section 1.6 and Supplementary Fig. S5 . The sum of activities from all the recording channels in each time bin denotes the network activity. The network state was then evaluated using each of the described measures of criticality.

Figure 2 illustrates the fitted PDF functions to avalanche size and duration and the associated pair of exponents ( τ and α ); the exponent is the slope of the line in a log-log plot. The associated DCCs extracted from the network are also represented. Data from two sample cultures are displayed to illustrate the comparison between the network’s dynamical state during Rest and Gameplay . Fitted power law distributions, DCC values, and the span of distributions in both size and duration domains are visualized in a Rest session (e.g., Session 1) against a Gameplay session (e.g. Session 4.)

Avalanche size and duration PDF plots and the calculated DCC values for 2 representative sample cortical cultures at a ) Rest (i.e. Session 1) and b) Gameplay (i.e. Session 4) of the same experiment and the corresponding α and τ exponents. DCC is given by ∥ β pred − β fit ∥ ; for details, see Table 1 and section Exponent relation and Deviation from Critically coefficient (DCC).

Additionally, BR and SC error were also extracted for all cultures in recording sessions 0 to 4.

Figure 3 a–c illustrate a general comparison between the critical and non-critical dynamics in terms of each of the introduced criticality metrics, DCC ( 3 a), BR ( 3 b), and SC error ( 3 c). An Alexander-Govern approximation test was run to investigate the significance of the differences between the two groups for each extracted metric. Figure 3 d–f illustrate the distribution of the criticality metrics in different recording sessions of the experiments. Comparison of the Rest (colored in teal) and Gameplay (colored in pink) sessions indicates the shift of cultured cortical network dynamics towards criticality during the task-present sessions. The Gameplay “Hit to Miss Ratio” (H/M ratio) - the number of accurate “hits” to the number of “missed” balls - was also found to be significantly higher than during Rest . A summary of the statistical comparisons including the comparison of H/M ratio is given in Fig. 3 g.

a) Illustration of the course of the expected change in the DCC measure when transitioning between near-critical and non-critical regimes. b) Comparison of the shape collapse error while scaling avalanche shapes in 2 sample recording sessions. Scaled avalanches across a range of durations show little error around the polynomial fit in the upper row (indicative of a near-critical regime) while this error increases significantly in the data represented at the bottom row (indicative of a non-critical regime). c) Effect of branching ratio (BR) on activity propagation through a network over time. In critical regimes, BR = 1.0 and, on average, activity neither saturates nor decays across time. d – f) DCC, BR, and SC error extracted for all the recordings and compared between Gameplay and Rest . The illustrated trend in all measures supports the conclusion of the system tuning near criticality during Gameplay . The Gameplay recordings display DCC and SC error values closer to 0 and branching ratios closer to 1; features which are missing in the Rest recordings. Box plots show interquartile range, with bars demonstrating 1.5X interquartile range, the line marks the median and the black triangle marks the mean. Error bands, 1 SE. *** indicates p < 5 × 10 −4 and **** indicates p < 5 × 10 −5 . g) Summary of the key characteristics of a critical system compared between all Rest and Gameplay sessions as well as the corresponding performance level in terms of the observed H/M ratio. Error bars, SEM. **** indicates p < 5 × 10 −5 . The sample sizes of the box and bar plots are equal to the number of independent Gameplay recordings ( n = 192) and Rest recordings ( n = 116). Alexander-Govern approximation test with p = 7.836 e − 06, p = 5.667 e − 13, p = 2.460 e − 07, and p = 3.356 e − 06 for DCC, BR, SC error, and H/M ratio in Gameplay vs Rest . h) A weakly significant negative correlation was found between DCC and the neuronal culture performance in terms of H/M ratio ( r = − 0.13, p < 0.05, Pearson Correlation test). i) A strongly significant positive association was observed between BR and H/M ratio ( r = 0.24, p < 0.00005, Pearson Correlation test). j) A strongly significant negative correlation was found between SC error and H/M ratio ( r = − 0.17, p < 0.005, Pearson Correlation test). Shades represent the 95% confidence intervals. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

These results indicate the shift towards self-organized criticality of the neural cultures in these experiments when exposed to external structured information such as the game environment of ‘Pong’. In contrast, cultured cortical networks deviated from the critical state during Rest sessions when the paddle was solely affected by the neurons’ spontaneous activities. When the cells were not presented any external information about the status of the ball or the game (such as in Rest conditions), the network parameters indicated a sub-critical system. These results suggest that during task-present conditions (here accompanied by learning, which is reflected in the improved H/M ratio of experimental cultures), the cultured cortical network tunes itself near criticality.

Notably, deviation from criticality was also measured in time-shuffled data acquired from the Gameplay sessions. These data preserved the spatial correlations but randomized the temporal structure and obtained a significantly higher DCC value compared to the original data, indicating a larger deviation from criticality compared to the original data (DCC for time shuffled and original recordings: 0.627 ± 0.087 and 0.296 ± 0.015 respectively, p < 0.0005, Alexander-Govern approximation test). Specifically, we sought further control data by analysing time-shuffled data to detect the sensitivity to the ensemble activity’s temporal structure. This control is important since the comparison can then eliminate the potential role of temporal random effects in detecting the critical dynamics.

Furthermore, to determine whether the identified criticality metrics correlated with game performance, exploratory uncorrected Pearson’s correlations were computed for criticality metrics and H/M ratio for all recording sessions (see Fig. 3 h–j). While a significant negative correlation was found between DCC and H/M ratio ( r = − 0.13, p < 0.05, Pearson Correlation test) as well as SC error and H/M ratio ( r = − 0.17, p < 0.005, Pearson Correlation test), a strong positive association was observed between BR and culture performance represented by H/M ratio ( r = 0.24, p < 0.00005, Pearson Correlation test). This indicates that network dynamics closer to criticality may be related to better performance.

Culture Gameplay vs Rest status is predicted by criticality metrics and H/M ratio

Binary classification of the data was performed to predict group membership of each recording session and assign it to either the Rest or Gameplay classes. Three different classification algorithms were utilized: Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines (SVM), and Random Forests. Table 2 represents the mean prediction accuracy for various classification methods as well as different approaches in assigning feature vectors to the data points. 4-Metrics refers to the case where a 4 dimensional vector of all the 4 metrics represented in Fig. 3 g were used to represent each data point. 3-Criticality metrics indicates a case where only 3 criticality metrics are used to form the feature vectors. The conditions where each metric is separately used to represent the data points is also included. The results demonstrate that the highest accuracy of prediction can be achieved using all 4 criticality metrics accompanied by the culture’s H/M ratio. Nevertheless, it was also found that merely employing the criticality measures is sufficient for an accurate prediction (up to 92.41%) of the culture’s status in terms of it being task-present or task-absent (i.e., the default resting state). These findings suggest that knowledge about a neuronal network’s distance from criticality may be adequate for distinguishing between task-present and task-absent states and whether the input information is being optimally processed. Data representations were visualized using the obtained feature vectors. Since the 4-Metrics representation proved to be the most effective representation given the results in Table 2 , we considered this case for the visualization task. A standard t-SNE algorithm 51 visualized the data representations as per Fig. 4 a. A 2-dimensional visualization of the sessions is obtained with each recording session represented as a colored dot. The pairwise dissimilarities between each data point (i.e. each recording session) and their corresponding projections in the resulting 2-dimensional mapping were then calculated. The Kullback-Leibler divergence as a measure of this dissimilarity between distributions was 0.373, which indicates an accurate network representation.

a) Visualization of the extracted representation for each data point using the t-SNE algorithm in a 2-dimensional space (i.e., dimensions t- S N E 1 and t- S N E 2 ). The two Rest and Gameplay classes are illustrated with different colors. b) DCC, c ) BR, and d ) SC error variations between Rest and Gameplay sessions in separate motor and sensory regions of the cultures. The illustrated trend in all three measures on the subpopulations is in line with the previous conclusion about the entire population. A similar pattern in these results also states that during Gameplay the neuronal ensembles move near criticality while in Rest , they are further from a critical state. *** p < 10 −3 , **** p < 10 −5 . Box plots show interquartile range, with bars demonstrating 1.5X interquartile range, the line marks the median and the black triangle marks the mean. Error bands, 1 SE. The sample sizes of the box and bar plots are equal to the number of independent Gameplay recordings ( n = 192) and Rest recordings ( n = 116). Alexander-Govern approximation test with p = 8.172 e − 4, p = 8.839 e − 6, and p = 7.139 e − 6 for DCC, BR, and SC error in the motor region and p = 5.627 e − 12, p = 4.637 e − 7, and p = 1.442 e − 6 for DCC, BR, and SC error in the sensory region in Gameplay vs Rest . e) Comparing the average DCC measure calculated in different feedback conditions with the Rest sessions. *** p < 5 × 10 −3 , **** p < 10 −10 . Error bars, SEM. The sample sizes of the bar plots are the number of independent recordings during Rest or different feedback conditions, that is n = [209, 113, 119, 95] for Rest , Stimulus , Silent , and No-feedback . Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

Motor and sensory subpopulations inherit the criticality characteristics of the entire neuronal ensemble

In the DishBrain system configuration, a specific frequency and voltage are applied to key electrodes in the predefined sensory areas, as described in ref. 48 . Then, different predefined motor region configurations are examined to select the configuration that maximises performance. The paddle moves in a corresponding direction based on the region with the higher activity (For more details, please see Supplementary Fig. S2) .

We assessed the activity dynamics of the overlaid neuronal subpopulations on each of the predefined region of electrodes. Consequently, the introduced criticality metrics were measured from the recorded activities of each of these subpopulations separately. Figure 4 b–d demonstrates that these subpopulations also exhibit similar features of a near-critical system when exposed to the Gameplay setting. Yet both motor and sensory neuronal populations were identified to be statistically significantly closer to criticality compared to Rest session recordings from the same neuronal subpopulations ( p < 10 −3 for DCC in the Motor subpopulation and p < 10 −5 for all other comparisons, Alexander-Govern approximation test). Supplementary Table S1 presents full details on all multivariate statistical tests performed in relation to these figures.

Feedback is required for improved game performance in a critical system

Biological neuronal networks typically require feedback for learning to occur - i.e., a closed-loop between action and consequence. In a closed-loop system, feedback is provided on the causal effects of the neuronal culture’s behavior 48 . Three different feedback conditions were employed in this study. Condition 1 ( Stimulus ), is where predictable and unpredictable stimuli are administered when the cultures behaved desirably or not, respectively (results reported previously). Condition 2 ( Silent ), involves the above stimulus feedback being replaced with a matching time period where all stimulation was withheld. Condition 3 ( No-feedback ), involves a more drastic change to the gameplay environment, where the ability for the ball to be missed was removed, so when the paddle failed to intercept the ball, the ball bounced instead of triggering a reset, and the game continued uninterrupted 48 (see Supplementary Information section 1.4 and Supplementary Fig. S4) . Performance of the cultures in terms of their H/M ratio, as well as their criticality characteristics, were measured under all three feedback conditions and then compared to the Rest sessions. Table 3 represents the results (Mean ± SE) for 14, 15, and 12 different cultures under Stimulus , Silent , and No-feedback conditions respectively. These additional experiments were done beyond the recordings used in the previous analysis (For full details about the number of cultures and number of experiments performed on each culture in each feedback type, please see Supplementary Information section 1.6 and Supplementary Fig. S5) . Overall 113, 119, and 95 sessions were recorded under the Stimulus , Silent , and No-feedback conditions respectively, and were compared to 209 Rest sessions obtained from the total of 41 cultures under experiment. The reported p −values represent the significance of the difference between the obtained measures in each feedback condition and the Rest cultures. It is very interesting to observe that the Silent condition shows significant performance in the game (H/M ratio) as well as showing dynamical features that are indicative of a near-critical system. The deviation from criticality (DCC) is significantly lower in the Silent condition compared to Stimulus or No-feedback ( p < 0.005, Alexander-Govern approximation test) conditions (see Fig. 4 e. This difference was not significant when comparing Stimulus and No-feedback conditions. While comparing the gameplay characteristics of the cultures (H/M ratio), the Stimulus and Silent conditions both significantly outperform the No-feedback conditions ( p < 0.0005 and p < 0.005, Alexander-Govern approximation test). While the No-feedback system also represents features characterizing near-critical dynamics (although to a lesser extent compared to the other two closed-loop systems), the game performance significantly deteriorates in this case (no significant outperformance compared to the Rest state, p = 0.085, Alexander-Govern approximation test). This demonstrates that fine-tuning near criticality may be necessary for optimal information processing when facing an increased load. Nonetheless, criticality may not be sufficient for a neuronal network to achieve its learning and memory goals in the absence of additional information regarding the consequences of previous actions, i.e., feedback. All details for post-hoc follow-up tests in relation to this figure are presented in Supplementary Table S2 .

Critical dynamics show nuanced differences based on bursting patterns of activity

Prior studies have demonstrated that dissociated cortical cell cultures display a diverse range of activity patterns 52 . The bursting patterns observed in these cultures exhibit developmental changes and significant variability across different cultures. These findings highlight the value of utilizing multiple preparations in any investigation involving neuronal cultures. We utilized the burst (or avalanche) classification methods and metrics introduced by 52 to extract quantitative details from the detected avalanches during Rest recordings. Our aim was to distinguish between cultures based on their bursting patterns and investigate whether any of the criticality metrics examined in our research exhibited significant differences between the different classes of cultures. The following criteria were extracted from the spontaneous activity of the cultures during the Rest recordings: 1) Size distribution of avalanches, 2) Burst (avalanche) rates, and 3) Superbursts. These measures were employed as classifiers to identify the bursting pattern of each culture. For definitions of these criteria and their quantification, see Section 'Burst pattern analysis' and ref. 52 .

Based on our measurements, we observed that none of the recordings in our dataset exhibited superbursts during the Rest state. However, there were notable differences in terms of the size distribution and burst rates among the recordings. Specifically, two types of size distributions, ‘bimodal’ and ‘irregular’, were identified across various recordings (no ‘fixed’ distributions were found). Additionally, the burst rates were classified into two groups, ‘highly variable’ and ‘not variable’. Figure 5 illustrates the DCC, BR, and SC error extracted for all the recordings during Gameplay and Rest , and compares them between different classes of size distribution or burst rates. Supplementary Table S1 presents full details on all multivariate statistical tests performed in relation to this figure.

a – c) DCC, BR, and SC error of all Rest and Gameplay sessions for different size distributions of avalanches observed during Rest recordings of each culture. d – f) DCC, BR, and SC error of all Rest and Gameplay sessions for different types of burst rates observed during Rest recordings of each culture. Alexander-Govern approximation test was utilized. *** p < 5 × 10 −3 with a ) p = 8.335 e − 4 during Rest , b ) p = 4.705 e − 3 during Gameplay , c ) p = 1.064 e − 4, and p = 6.423 e − 8 during Gameplay and Rest respectively, e ) p = 4.815 e − 3 during Gameplay , and f ) p = 9.514 e − 5, and p = 1.068 e − 5 during Gameplay and Rest respectively. Box plots show interquartile range, with bars demonstrating 1.5X interquartile range, the line marks the median and the black triangle marks the mean. Error bands, 1 SE. The sample sizes of the box plots are equal to the number of independent Gameplay recordings ( n = 192) and Rest recordings ( n = 116). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

During the Gameplay sessions, several metrics did not exhibit a statistically significant difference between the classes. However, the BR and SC error metrics showed indications of being in a closer proximity to a critical state, as evidenced by higher BRs and lower SC errors, when avalanches had an ‘irregular’ size distribution and ‘not variable’ burst rates. In a near-critical system, we anticipate observing avalanches of various sizes that span multiple orders of magnitude. The presence of an ‘irregular’ size distribution during Rest is suggestive of a system in which bursts of varying sizes occur, and is consistent with the hallmarks of a system that can achieve near critical dynamics. Therefore, this observation could be expected. Moreover, the findings suggest that the ‘not variable’ burst rates in the spontaneous activity of the cultures were also indicators of cultures that achieved more proximate dynamics to criticality.

Based on analysis of the Rest state recordings, the ‘irregular’ size distribution exhibited indications of being in closer proximity to criticality, as evidenced by lower DCC and SC error. This data provides a nuanced perspective for how spontaneous electrophysiological characteristics may influence the expression of criticality dynamics in vitro. The difference in criticality at Rest for cultures with ‘irregular’ and ‘not variable’ firing patterns is suggestive that these cultures may have more complex interconnectedness that could facilitate critical dynamics even at Rest . Yet, when embodied in a structured information landscape through gameplay, the differences between these cultures are greatly ameliorated, potentially because more complex informational flows are available to the culture through the simulated environment. Nevertheless, these results should be considered as preliminary evidence at best, as the lack of concordance between all metrics for criticality prevents any robust conclusions.

When considering how neural systems process information, near-critical dynamics in the brain remain a fascinating phenomenon. The primary hypothesis that near-critical network behaviour emerges when neural networks receive structured sensory input was strongly supported. Criticality was readily observable for in vitro neuronal cultures when embodied in a virtual environment 48 through structured stimulation. As evidenced through multiple features expected of a near-critical system, we found that cultured networks of cortical neurons self-organized to display these key markers when receiving structured information, but not when unstimulated. Through this it was robustly observed that in vitro cortical neurons exhibited markers of criticality when actively engaged in a task and receiving feedback contingent on neuronal activity modulating the simulated world.

Comparing the data from this study with previous literature investigating neural criticality in vitro, some key observations can be made. Previously most studies finding evidence of criticality in vitro conclude that criticality would arise in some cultures after maturation 5 , 15 , 16 , 17 . Consistent with this, we did discover closer to critical dynamics on some metrics in cultures with certain bursting patterns - specifically those that exhibited more variable and irregular activity. Whether this is occurring in cultures that showcase more complex networks is unclear and beyond the scope of this single study, yet forms an important direction for future research. Nevertheless, here we found that in vitro neuronal networks show particularly robust markers of criticality only when presented with structured information through electrical stimulation. In contrast, while in the default resting state of in vitro neuronal networks, i.e., not embodied within a game environment, despite spontaneous activity exhibiting neuronal avalanches, cultures no longer display dynamics that were as close to criticality across all metrics. This finding that even though evidence of avalanches were identified within spontaneous activity, they did not show consistency across more robust measures of criticality, may explain the difference between this work and the previously described in vitro measures of criticality that focused predominately on power laws. While relying on identifying power-law scaling in temporal and partial domains is common historically 34 , 35 , power laws have more recently been shown to also have the potential to emerge from noise 39 . Better practice is to have power laws accompanied by independent stochastic surrogates, such as disconnected nodes in a complex system 39 . Here we co-analysed the described three established markers of criticality on spiking data generated in this system 39 , 49 . We observed an exceptionally high degree of qualitative concordance between these different measures, adding confidence to the internal validity of the results. Likewise, we find the extent of this difference based on markers of criticality alone was stark enough to predict whether a given culture was actively engaged in gameplay or resting with a 92.41% accuracy. When performance data was included this accuracy increased to 98.21%, further supporting the dramatic difference between resting and active cultures. The additional finding that these markers of criticality were persistent across sub-populations defined by their external relationship to the game-world for the neuronal cultures, suggests a network-wide coordination of activity. This does not mean that no critical dynamics were present in previous work 5 , 15 , 16 , 17 , rather it may suggest that there are differences in the extent of critical dynamics under different conditions, where criticality is best conceptualised as a spectrum. Therefore, it can be coherently accepted that as the neural cell cultures matured, they possibly underwent a transition towards critical dynamics without external stimulation. Furthermore, by placing the cultures in a closed-loop structured information environment, they may have moved even closer to criticality. Given the importance of the excitatory-inhibitory balance in maintaining critical dynamics 20 , 53 coupled with tendency for inhibitory pathways to become more prominent over time 54 , such a finding would indeed be expected and forms an interesting direction for future research.

Furthermore, the finding that significantly closer to critical dynamics are observed in vitro when cortical networks are integrated with in silico computing via HD-MEA to experimentally explore the notion of criticality under task-present compared to task-absent states can also be applied to a in vivo context. It has been proposed that certain features of learning, including information capacity and transmission, are optimized at criticality 55 . Indeed, many studies have identified in vivo that cortical networks typically function near a critical point 4 , 5 , the extent of which shows key correlations with performance 3 . Taken in concert with past research identifying power-law-like behaviour in brain activity of humans undergoing cognitive tasks, this is indicative of a network-wide fundamental computation underlying information processing which may be ongoing in these cultures only when actively engaged in a task or otherwise presented structured information 34 , 35 . For example, the importance of critical state dynamics in language acquisition has been highlighted 42 , 43 . Moreover, resting-state fMRI data of neurotypical adults with varying IQs has found a connection between high fluid intelligence and close proximity to a critical state in a spin-glass model 40 . In addition, conscious states of mind have been linked to near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics, suggesting that the disruptions in information processing during unconscious states are due to the transition of low-frequency cortical electric oscillations away from the critical point 41 . In contrast, several studies demonstrate more ambiguous results around the relationship between electrical brain response to increased cognitive load 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 . Moreover, while numerous studies have observed critical dynamics from spontaneous activity in vivo 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , the neural regions measured are not isolated from external input, including input from other unmeasured neural regions, even when anesthetized. This makes it infeasible to determine whether in vivo neural systems are spontaneously tuned towards critical dynamics, or if this arises through a dynamic interplay between systems where critical points can generalize to critical regions 60 . Moreover, in the majority of these previous studies, the observation of power laws was regarded as the primary indicator of criticality. As noted above, the criticisms of this approach 49 , 61 , 62 makes it infeasible to robustly establish that these in vivo neural systems are certainly operating at criticality, or to what extent criticality is displayed relative to other states if so.

Our results can also be compared to the increasing evidence linking near-critical dynamics in the brain with cognitive-like behaviour 63 , 64 , 65 . The secondary part of our hypothesis was that the neural cell activity would develop a network structure closer to a critical state with successful task acquisition. Although there was some support for this hypothesis, the data suggests a more fundamental role of criticality, where criticality may be considered a necessary but not sufficient conditions for dynamic cognitive-like behaviours - such as successful task acquisition to arise. While the results did find consistent and significant positive correlations between performance and critical dynamics, it was also found that under different conditions that did not result in learning (i.e., the N o-feedback condition), neural activity was still closer to criticality than at rest. Yet, rather than challenging these previous studies, we believe this data offers a pathway to unify results under a broader perspective. Specifically, that criticality is not tied to general processing, learning, or cognition, but is rather optimised for specific tasks or types of information processing. Previously, criticality was found to be linked to stimulus discrimination, yet decreased stimulus detection 44 . In our data this would be supported by the observed variation in mean DCC between different feedback types for when the neuronal networks were engaged in Gameplay . Most notably, the finding that the open-loop N o-feedback condition, where modulated activity from the culture was unable to affect the game outcome or alter the feedback received, showed considerably closer dynamics to criticality than when cultures were resting is interesting. This suggests that structured information input alone may be sufficient to induce these near-critical states in neuronal systems, however, information alone is insufficient in creating an evolving learning system as feedback is required as well. Furthermore, feedback does not necessarily need to be a positive addition to the system as identified in the experiments utilizing Silent feedback conditions. Taken in the context of attentional engagement and criticality, it is possible that facilitating an external source of information to impact the internal neural dynamics is necessary to drive these characteristics observed here and may also relate to in vivo results 45 , 46 . Indeed, a parallel may be made between groups of biological systems such as bird flocks and insect swarms, which have also been shown to exhibit criticality in movement patterns - presumably without a collective cognition. Yet in these cases, external information sources act upon the systems as a whole to shape the broader response, as in the case of the embodied neurons in this work.

Ultimately, here we found that by allowing cultures to be embodied and alter the environmental stimulation through action substantially pushes cultures closer to a critical dynamic compared to purely spontaneous activity. Not only does this showcase the utility of SBI systems for investigating these otherwise intractable questions but offers support for the idea of considering criticality as a spectrum. We propose that this work allows us to demonstrate one end of this spectrum, where criticality requires the input of structured information to a system to arise. This finding is entirely consistent with all rigorous studies into criticality, yet highlights - albeit with preliminary evidence - the importance of not relying solely on investigating criticality in a steady state of activity, such as spontaneous activity which is commonly done. Future work is still needed to further explain the more specific role of criticality in information processing and cognition - both in vivo and in vitro. This early work also helps provide an understanding of how work with embodied neural systems can be developed in an ethically appropriate manner by improving our understanding of these neurocomputational metrics and how they may or may not reflect given traits of interests 66 , 67 . Yet while questions about how neural criticality is linked with human cognition remain, ultimately, this work has suitably established that closeness to criticality appears as a fundamental property to neuronal assemblies, especially when influenced by the input of structured information in a closed-loop system. This provides additional compelling data to better understand the critical aspects of how our brains process information and may offer insight into more nuanced methods to understand this dynamic for future investigations.

Cell culture & MEA setup

Neural cells were cultured either from the cortices of E15.5 mouse embryos or differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) via a dual SMAD inhibition (DSI) protocol or through a lentivirus based NGN2 direct differentation protocols as previously described in ref. 48 . MaxOne Multielectrode Arrays (MEA; Maxwell Biosystems, AG, Switzerland) were coated with either polyethylenimine (PEI) in borate buffer for primary culture cells or Poly-D-Lysine for cells from an iPSC background before being coated with either 10 μ g/ml mouse laminin or 10 μ g/ml human 521 Laminin (Stemcell Technologies Australia, Melbourne, Australia) respectively to facilitate cell adhesion. Approximately 10 6 cells were plated on MEA after preparation as per ref. 48 . Further details are described in Supplementary Information sections 1.1 & 1.2 .

Dishbrain platform and electrode configuration for input and output

The current DishBrain platform is configured as a low-latency, real-time MEA control system with on-line spike detection and recording software as described previously in ref. 48 . Stimulation is applied in a topographically consistent manner across 8 electrodes for the relative position of the simulated ball to the simulated paddle in the simplified pong game. Counterbalanced pre-designated regions were defined, where greater activity across one set of regions would cause the simulated paddle to move in one direction, while greater activity in the other regions would prompt the paddle to move inversely. Additional stimulation input was delivered as feedback in response to the paddle either ’hitting’ or ’missing’ the simulated ball. These details are described fully in Supplementary Information sections 1.3 – 1.5 .

Data analysis

The avalanche analysis is performed in order to study the network in terms of its distance from criticality. The start and stop of an avalanche are determined by crossing a threshold of network activity 3 . An avalanche can be initiated by spikes from any and all neurons within a region of interest. The number of contributing spikes in each avalanche ( S ) and the total duration of the event ( D ) are then measured. To demonstrate the distance from criticality in a cultured cortical network, the presence of the following markers were investigated in the dynamics of our data: 1) Power law observables; 2) Exponent relation; 3) Branching ratio parameter; and 4) Scaling function. Certain criteria on these markers are the necessary conditions of a critical regime and meeting those criteria can indicate with a high confidence whether the system lies near a critical point 5 , 49 .

Power law observables

A critical system has interacting components (here, neurons) that show some fluctuation in their activity while also maintaining a level of correlation between their individual activities (here, individual spiking). Criticality implies that the system is defined by scale free dynamics and that events in both the spatial and temporal domains obey power laws 61 , 68 , 69 . For the networks considered here, events are contiguous cascades of spiking activity, rather than limited local bursts of spiking activity or huge network-wide spiking events. These contiguous cascades of spiking activity are called neuronal avalanches .

To investigate this property in our BNN system, binary spike trains of each neuron’s activity were utilized. The whole duration of each recording session was discretized to 50 ms bins. The sum of all cells’ activities in each time bin was used as the network activity. Next, a threshold of 40% of the median spiking activity in the network among all time bins was introduced. The start and end points of an avalanche were defined as the time points when the network activity crossed this threshold value from below and then above 53 . Our results were statistically robust across a range of activity thresholds between 30% and 70%. The size of an avalanche, S , is the total number of spikes during the avalanche. The avalanche duration, D , is the time between threshold crossings. Similar to 3 , maximum likelihood estimation was used to fit a truncated power law to the avalanche size distribution:

where τ is the power law exponent corresponding to avalanche sizes. For a neuronal recording session in which N A avalanches are detected, the fitting process to obtain the above equation is the following iterative procedure 70 :

Find the maximum observed avalanche size \({S}_{\max }\) .

Evaluate the three different power law exponents, τ , for the 3 smallest avalanche sizes observed, \({S}_{\min }\) .

Calculate the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test for this estimation to determine the goodness-of-fit between the fitted power law and the empirical distribution.

Among the obtained KS values, choose the smallest one, together with the corresponding τ and \({S}_{\min }\) values.

Complete the estimation if KS \( < \frac{1}{\sqrt{{N}_{A}}}\) or otherwise repeat steps 2 to 5 with \({S}_{\max }\) reduced by 1 until this condition is met.

Steps 3 to 5 are necessary to ensure the data distribution indeed comes from a power law rather than another candidate heavy-tailed distribution, such as log normal and stretched exponential forms 71 . Applying the exact same procedure to the set of D of the avalanche events, the corresponding power law exponent of α was calculated for the entire avalanche duration distribution.

To test the validity of a power law fit to avalanche distributions, hypothesis testing was performed as described in ref. 3 . For this purpose, the power law exponent, the number of detected avalanches, and the minimum and maximum avalanche sizes were set the same as the experimental avalanche distribution to generate 1000 artificial power law distributions. We generated these surrogate distributions using the inverse method as \(S={S}_{min}{(1-r)}^{\frac{-1}{\tau -1}}\) where r was a random number sampled from a uniform distribution between 0 and 1. Then any surrogate distribution was upper-truncated at the maximum cut-off equivalent to S m a x from the empirical data. The KS statistics was then employed to estimate the distance between the simulated surrogate distributions and a perfect power law. The p value determining the significance level was then equal to the ratio of the surrogate distributions with KS values smaller than the KS value of the corresponding experimental avalanche distribution. With significance level set to 0.05, p < 0.05 implies a rejection of the power law hypothesis while p ≥ 0.05 suggests the power law hypothesis was not rejected (the fit was good).

Exponent relation and deviation from criticality coefficient (DCC)

In critical systems, there is another exponent relationship between the power law parameters ( α and τ ) and the exponent of mean avalanche sizes (〈 S 〉), given their duration, D 72 . We first find this third power law exponent of the system, β , from the experimental data using linear regression given the following exponent relation is present in a critical system:

This third power law exponent also relates the size and duration distributions of the avalanches and is predicted by:

Comparing the fitted value from the empirical data ( β fit ) and its estimation using α and τ exponents ( β pred ), a new measure is derived to evaluate the Deviation from Criticality Coefficient (DCC), parameterised as d C C :

where β pred and β fit are the predicted and fitted values of β respectively. Consequently, a smaller DCC value indicates a more accurately fit power law distribution to the empirical data.

Branching ratio

The branching ratio is defined as the ratio of the number of units (neurons) active (spiking) at time step t + 1 to the number of active units (neurons) at time step t . Since a critical regime is naturally balanced and avoids runaway gains, the critical branching ratio is 1. Consequently, on average, network activity neither saturates nor dampens over time.

Suppose that N active neurons are detected in total and the number of active neurons in each time step t is defined by N ( t ). A fixed branching ratio of m , gives:

where 〈 ∣ 〉 is the conditional expectation and h is the mean rate of external drive. The activity decreases if m < 1, whereas it grows exponentially if m > 1, meaning that m = 1 separates these two regimens and represents a critical dynamic point. A precise prediction of m helps to assess the risk that N ( t ) will develop large and devastating avalanches of events such as epileptic seizures.

Under the circumstances when the full activity N ( t ) is known, m can be conventionally estimated using linear regression. Nevertheless, when using subsampling, when only a fraction of neurons in a neuronal network are sampled, this conventional method will be biased to some extent. The bias vanishes only if all units are sampled, because it is inherent to subsampling and cannot be overcome by obtaining longer recordings. Instead, inspired by the method introduced in 49 the subsampled activity n ( t ) is utilized, where the fraction of recorded units to all cells is defined as a constant μ . n ( t ) here is a random variable whose expectation is proportional to the real N ( t ) and 〈 n ( t ) ∣ N ( t )〉 = μ N ( t ) + ξ , where μ and ξ are constants. The bias value for the conventional linear estimator can now be calculated as:

To overcome this subsampling bias, the method introduced by Wilting and Priesemann 49 was utilized. Instead of directly using the biased regression of activity at time t and t + 1, multiple linear regressions of activity between times t and t + k were performed with different time lags \(k=1,\ldots,{k}_{\max }\) . Each of these k values returns a regression coefficient r k with r 1 being equal to the result of a conventional estimator of m . With subsampling, all these regression slopes are biased by the same factor \(b=\frac{{\mu }^{2}{{{{{{{\rm{var}}}}}}}}(N(t))}{{{{{{{{\rm{var}}}}}}}}(n(t))}\) . In these circumstances, instead of the exponential relation r k = m k which is expected under full sampling, the equation generalizes to:

Having multiple calculated r k values, both b and m are estimated, which are constant for all k .

Figure S6 compares the estimated branching ratio parameter from 6 different cultured cortical networks during a Gameplay and a Rest session.

Scaling function

Another feature of critical dynamics is that avalanche shapes show fractal properties and all avalanche profiles of different sizes are scaled versions of the universal same shape. According to 72 , the value of β obtained from the exponent relation analysis can be used to calculate a scaling function for the avalanche shapes. For any given avalanche duration D , the average number of neurons firing at time t (within D seconds) is defined by s ( t , D ). The following relations hold in this system:

where \(F\left(\frac{t}{D}\right)\) is a universal function for all avalanches and γ = β − 1. Hence in this process, an initial β is used to predict γ and using this γ and the first term in Equation ( 8 ), \(F\left(\frac{t}{D}\right)\) is obtained as \(\langle \frac{s(t,D)}{{D}^{\gamma }}\rangle\) . Here 〈.〉 denotes the average over all avalanches with duration D . A collection of \(F\left(\frac{t}{D}\right)\) functions are extracted for various D durations. The error for this process is described as:

Repeating this process with various values for β , the exponent that produces the smallest error in Equation ( 9 ) is selected as the final scaling factor. In principle, we expect to obtain similar (if not the same) β values from this analysis and the estimates in Section 'Exponent relation and Deviation from Critically Coefficient (DCC)' near the critical point. We report the difference between these two β values as the SC error. The NCC toolbox in MATLAB 50 was utilized to perform shape collapse on data. This shape collapse error is expected to be minimized under critical conditions. For shape collapse, avalanches with durations from 4 to 20 bins (200 to 1000 ms) were considered. Across the time course of our recordings, there were not enough avalanches to conduct meaningful shape collapse analysis, beyond these cutoffs.

The schematic in Figure S7 summarizes the main attributes of a near-critical system compared to super/sub-critical states.

Burst pattern analysis

Inspired by the methods and metrics for classification of bursts (or avalanches) introduced in ref. 52 , we extracted the following quantitative details from the Rest state recordings of each in vitro culture which were applicable to our dataset. These measurements were then used as classifiers to distinguish between cultures based on their bursting patterns and finally to identify whether any of the criticality metrics studied in our paper showed a significant difference between the classes of cultures with different bursting behaviors. The 1) Size distribution of bursts (or avalanches), 2) Burst Rates of avalanches, and 3) Superbursts were the quantitative criteria extracted from all of the rest state spontaneous activity of the cultures to classify them.

Below is a brief explanation of each calculated criteria:

Size distribution: Within some recordings, bursts exhibited highly similar sizes, while in others a broad range of burst sizes was observed. The range of burst sizes varied among recordings, with some displaying a continuum of sizes and others having distinct clusters of large and small bursts with very few bursts of intermediate size. In every recording from a specific culture, let N * denote the number of spikes in the third-largest burst. Bursts containing at least 75% of N * spikes were classified as large, while those with at least 25% but less than 75% of N * spikes were classified as medium. Bursts containing fewer than 25% of N * spikes were labeled as small. If the number of medium bursts exceeded the number of large bursts, the burst size was considered ‘ variable ’ or ‘irregular’ . Conversely, if the number of small bursts exceeded the number of large bursts, the burst size distribution was considered ‘bimodal’ . If the number of large bursts exceeded that of medium or small bursts, the burst size was deemed ‘fixed’ . To avoid confusion with the terms employed to classify distinct forms of bursting rates, we chose to use the term ‘irregular’ instead of the original term (‘variable’) proposed by 52 .

Burst Rates: The categorization of burst patterns was further expanded based on their burst rates, which were usually consistent over time and could exhibit either regular or more chaotic intervals. A burst rate was considered ‘highly variable’ if the maximum rate, calculated from the shortest time interval that contained 10 inter-burst intervals, differed by a factor of 10 or more from the minimum rate, calculated from the longest time interval that contained only 3 inter-burst intervals. Otherwise, the burst rate was classified as ‘non-variable’ .

Superbursts: A recording was classified as being dominated by superbursts if at least half of all large and medium bursts occurred within tightly clustered intervals, where the inter-cluster intervals were at least 10 times longer than the intra-cluster intervals. Superbursts were categorized as ‘regular’ if the variance of the number of bursts per superburst was small, i.e. less than half of the average. If the variance exceeded this threshold, the superbursts were classified as ‘short’ if the mean number of bursts per superburst was less than 10, or ‘long’ otherwise.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

All data generated for or used within this manuscript have been deposited at Open Science Framework (OSF) and are publicly available here: https://osf.io/ncvpq/?view_only=8fc5fc5aad254fce92a79390ae84b81c . Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All code for data analysis to generate the results in this manuscript have been deposited at Open Science Framework (OSF) and are publicly available via https://osf.io/ncvpq/?view_only=8fc5fc5aad254fce92a79390ae84b81c .

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Acknowledgements

F.H. was supported by the Melbourne Research Scholarship. A.N.B. was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (Project DP220101166). C.F. was supported by the RMH Neuroscience Foundation.

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These authors contributed equally: Forough Habibollahi, Brett J. Kagan.

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Biomedical Engineering Department, University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, VIC, Australia

Forough Habibollahi & Anthony N. Burkitt

Neural Dynamics Laboratory, Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, VIC, Australia

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Neurology Department, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia

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Conceptualization, B.J.K., F.H., C.F., A.B.; methodology, F.H., C.F., B.J.K., A.B.; software, F.H., B.J.K.; analysis, F.H., B.J.K.; cell culture, B.J.K.; data curation, F.H., B.J.K.; writing–original draft preparation, F.H., B.J.K.; writing–review and editing, F.H., B.J.K., C.F., A.B.; visualization, F.H., B.J.K.; project administration, C.F., B.J.K., A.B.; supervision, C.F., B.J.K., A.B.

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B.J.K. and F.H. are employees of Cortical Labs. B.J.K. is a shareholder of Cortical Labs and holds an interest in patents related to the use of criticality in neural cell cultures as a metric of interest. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Habibollahi, F., Kagan, B.J., Burkitt, A.N. et al. Critical dynamics arise during structured information presentation within embodied in vitro neuronal networks. Nat Commun 14 , 5287 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41020-3

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Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. The type of presentation is often identified by its primary purpose or function. Informative presentations are often analytical or involve the rational analysis of information. Sometimes they simply "report the facts" with ...
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An informational presentation is common request in business and industry. It's the verbal and visual equivalent of a written report. Information sharing is part of any business or organization. Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions.
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8.6 Creating an Informative Presentation
Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. The type of presentation is often identified by its primary purpose or function. Informative presentations are often analytical or involve the rational analysis of information. Sometimes they simply "report the facts" with ...
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13.6 Creating an Informative Presentation
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Unit 33: Informative and Persuasive Presentations
Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. Table 33.1 below describes five main parts of a presentation to inform. Table 33.1. Presentation Components and Their Functions. Lists the five main parts or components of any presentation (McLean, S., 2003).
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12.2 Functions of Presentation Aids
The second function that presentation aids can serve is to increase the audience's chances of remembering your speech. An article by the U.S. Department of Labor (1996) summarized research on how people learn and remember. The authors found that "83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses—11% ...
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13.6 Creating an Informative Presentation

Sample Speech Guidelines

Key Takeaway

13: Presentations to Inform

Learning Objectives

Sample Speech Guidelines

Key Takeaway

49 Creating an Informative Presentation

Sample Speech Guidelines

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Unit 33: Informative and Persuasive Presentations

Introduction

Presenting to Inform

Types of Informative Presentations

The Persuasive Presentation

Developing a Persuasive Presentation

Persuasive Strategies

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Presenting Ethically

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Informative Presentations

Increase Understanding

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Exposition versus Interpretation

Interpretation and Bias

Point of View

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Tip #12: Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest

Tip #13: Use presentation templates to help you get started

Tip #14: Include examples of inspiring people

Tip #15: Dedicate slides to poignant questions

Tip #16: Find quotes that will inspire your audience

Tip #17: Emphasize key points with text and images

Tip #18: Label your slides to prompt your memory

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What is PowerPoint: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

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What is PowerPoint?

Evolution of PowerPoint

Understanding the PowerPoint Interface

Key Features of PowerPoint

How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation?

Benefits of PowerPoint

Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations

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15.1: Functions of Presentation Aids