My name is Nick Weston and I am an intern in the summer program at Backyard Brains.  I’m an an undergraduate student studying neuroscience at Michigan State University and during this internship I plan on trying to capture neuronal spiking activity from the internal organs of a crickets ear while also trying to record and […]

Welcome! This is Kylie Smith, a Michigan State University undergraduate writing to you from a basement in Ann Arbor. I am studying behavioral neuroscience and cognition at MSU and have been fortunate enough to have landed an internship with the one and only Backyard Brains for the summer. I am working on The Consciousness Detector […]

Coming soon to a backyard near you. At least, that’s the idea. We’re sure the technology will catch up if we give it enough prodding and throw an intern or two its way. And hey if not? There’s still lasers, sounds like a win/win to me. Wait we don’t get lasers either? This is really […]

Have you ever wanted to take a picture of something you saw under a microscope to share with friends, family and colleagues? If so, then you’ll know it’s almost impossible to do! Well… not anymore! Backyard Brains is offering a beta-version of our smartphone microscope code-named “The RoachScope”. Our new scope is designed with a […]

During experiments on the giant axons of the Longfin Inshore Squid (loligo pealei) at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA; we were fascinated by the fast color-changing nature of the squid’s skin. Squids (like many other cephalopods) can quickly control pigmented cells called chromatophores to reflect light. The Longfin Inshore has 3 different […]

While most of us were enjoying our relaxing summer vacations, our developer Nate was hard at work porting our Backyard Brains mobile application to the Android platform.  We have just released our first version to the Android Market, and Yes! it’s a free download.  We are happy to now add the android phones to our […]

After a month of exhausting collective bargaining negotiations, the Backyard Brains labor union has emerged with a new deal which brings not only organic/locally-grown lettuce for the cockroaches plus two new soldering irons for production, but more importantly the addition of 4 new faces to the Backyard Brains team! Please join us in welcoming our […]

Finances are on our collective minds as we all hurry to send in our taxes to the IRS this week, therefore we think this is a great time to announce somefinancialnews of our own. Starting with this year’s tax filing, we are making Backyard Brains open books, meaning that all employees (both of us) and […]

In a deal noted by many industry insiders as “a neurotechnology coup,” Karl Deisseroth, professor and physician at Stanford, has moved to Detroit, MI to join Backyard Brains as its first salaried employee. Vinod Khosla, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, noted "it’s common practice for high tech firms in the Bay Area, whether SquareUp or Anybot, to […]

Our engineering department is working hard on the next generation of the SpikerBox. The chief user request we’ve received is to make the SpikerBox louder; in fact, loud enough for large classrooms. Below is the audio component of our circuit, using the infamous LM386. Making this audio component both loud AND stable has been a […]

We’ve often been told “I’d love to make a SpikerBox kit, but I can’t solder!” Well, if you live near the Backyard Brains World Headquarters (a living room in Ann Arbor, MI) you are in luck. We are putting on a “Make and Take” workshop on Sunday, December 5th. This workshop will teach you everything […]

Here at Backyard Brains, we often get the question “Is that leg really still alive?” to which we respond “Why yes… that’s why you hear the Spikes”. The follow up question “How does it stay alive?” was often replied with similar authority: “They have tiny holes called spiracles that allow them to ‘breathe’ through their […]