ByB brings Spikes to the Society for Neuroscience
Backyard Brains recently spent five days in Chicago for the Society for Neuroscience conference, which is the primo place to be to show off your latest discoveries on the workings of the mysterious brain. 30,000 people! and ByB is proud to say they were probably the first poster presenters since the annual meeting began in 1971 to do actual recordings at the conference! We brought a veritable lab to our exhibit.
And quite the crowd came to see Greg demonstrate our prototypes
And, via our newest collaborator and colleague Alex Wiltschko, we officially announced a new iPhone app for recording spikes! Now you don’t even need a computer to do your neuroscience. See Greg showing it off below..
The official Spanish speaking liaison of Backyard Brains, Mrs. Jennifer Trigger Marzullo, talked about the SpikerBox to some of our fellow Neuroscientists from Mexico and Argentina. “Lo hacemos en el garaje!”
Backyard Brains was also proud to announce its first sale! Gina Poe, faculty member at the University of Michigan and a thesis committee member from Tim’s PhD dissertation, gave us a down payment on the first SpikerBox. Thanks Gina! We’re on it! 😉
Of course, with so many of our hero neuroscientists present, Backyard Brains recruited hard. We tried unsuccessfully to convince George Paxinos, author of famed Rat Atlas in Sterotaxic Coordinates, to make a new book on the cockroach. He was kind enough, though, to let us take a picture with him.
And, to Tim’s delight, ByB ran into Eberhard Fetz. One could quite easily argue Tim’s whole PhD Dissertation was based on work done by Professor Fetz. Operant Conditioning of Unit Activity? Done in 1969, better than you. Investigation of LFPs and spikes in Motor Cortex? Done in 1996, better than you. Simultaneous Recording and Stimulation for Closed-Loop Control? Done in 2008, better than you. Even Backyard Brain’s new use of a smartphone as a data acquisition device? Done in 2006, better than you.
But, with a huge smile and a sigh of relief on our parts, Professor Fetz liked the SpikerBox and iPhone app and gave us a thumbs up. Keep us sharp Eb!
Now back to work and getting to production!