Hello! My name is Akiira and recently, I’ve been involved in an educational project in Santiago, Chile, related to neuroscience and biology. We focus on teaching young children about how muscles, the heart, the brain, and even plants work. Through simple and fun experiments, children can observe, feel, and hear the different reactions and changes that occur in these systems and organisms. These experiments not only make learning interactive but also foster curiosity and a deep understanding of the human body and the plant world by seeing their similarities.
Version II: Showing Muscle Signals with the Human SpikerBox
As for me, I’m 16 years old and I’m in my second year of high school. I have a great passion for both volleyball (I play the “armador” position) and the arts in their different expressions. In my free time, I really enjoy listening to music, especially K-pop (Itzy, Lesserafim o Blackpink are my favorites), while drawing or spending time playing video games. I consider myself a very energetic and extroverted person, always looking for new activities and challenges that allow me to learn and grow every day.
Left: Me with my volleyball team. Right: Me in Flamenco classes with my Mom.
Jesús
Hello, my name is Jesús Gil, and I study at the Alberto Blest Gana High School. I participate and assist in the neuroscience workshop for grammar school students with professor Angelica Romero and neuroscientist Tim Marzullo, in which we do research on the heart, brain, and plants. For example, the experiments we have done on the heart is knowing what the heart does when the human body is exposed to different temperatures and physical exercises.
Me teaching students the basics of chemistry and voltage to stimulate a cricket leg.
Regarding the plants, we burned a leaf of the plant and saw its electrical response and behaviors through the computer. What I learned in this workshop is working as a team and, above all, a lot about science. I thank professor Angelica and the neuroscientist Tim Marzullo for everything they have taught me and for letting me be part of this community.
I am a 14-year-old teenager, Venezuelan, living in Santiago de Chile for more than 7 years. I live with my parents and my sister. I really like science, and I am a person very dedicated to my studies. I really like to exercise, and my favorite sports are basketball and mountain biking. I am an assistant in the neuroscience workshop at my Alberto Blest Gana school along with my classmate Akira, happy to belong to it.
Me doing one of the things I love, hiking in the Andes Mountains – Lagunillas in Cajón del Maipo
Calls for applications for 2025 Brain Awareness Week are out! Apply by 31st October to get up to $1,250 towards your BAW event that will highlight the importance of neuroscience for our societies.
As you may know already, Brain Awareness Week takes place mid-March annually in just about every corner of the planet. In 2025, it officially falls between March 10th and 16th. If that doesn’t work for you but you’d still like to take part in the global initiative, you can still get the funding as long as your program has to do with neuroscience and carries the official signage of Dana and IBRO.
First of all, any organization can apply! Unlike in previous years, there are no eligibility restrictions in terms of your organization’s legal form. Previously, the focus used to be on organizations registered as public charities, educational institutions or small businesses.
Secondly, while all neuroscience programs are welcome, they’ll prioritize the multidisciplinary ones that have to do with neuroscience and society. They cite the fields of ethics, law, humanities, medicine, arts, social sciences, policy, education, journalism and public engagement as possible intersections. But those are just examples. To them we add robotics, machine learning and brain-machine interfaces like the ones we made this summer!
As always, applicants who work in underserved communities stand the best chance of getting funded. Also, you can use the money towards buying equipment that you get to keep after Brain Awareness Week! Perfect chance to avail your organization of some BYB gear (or even our complete portable lab bundle) if you haven’t already.
How to Apply?
All you need to do is head over here to register. This year, they simplified the process through SurveyMonkey so that you can do it using your Google account. Then, you’ll have to fill out a form with several details about your organization, its past involvement in Brain Awareness Week if any, as well as your proposal for 2025.
As a registered user, you’ll also gain access to a range of IBRO’s other grants, including funding of travel, parenthood and conference.
Yes! Just like every other year, Dana Foundation is partnering up with Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) to offer up to EUR 1,000 per project towards organizing 2025 Brain Awareness Week. The deadline for European applicants is shorter though, and they need to apply by October 3, 2024.
You might want to try and weigh up the cost to a cockroach that loses a leg against the benefit of getting more kids interested in neuroscience so that some could one day become scientists and maybe find a cure for Alzheimer’s.
Showing how plants react to different stimuli including pain can also be part of this discussion. We’ve recently had a peer-reviewed study by high-schoolers who put together an open-source library of plant responses and behavior. The experiment is very easy to do, and best of all, anybody can contribute to the online library with their findings!
How to Make Neuroprosthetics Cheaper & Accessible to Everyone
Another societal question is that of neuroprosthetics as a life-changing technology that still has a long way to go to become universally accessible.
Over the years, we’ve seen many brilliant attempts to build custom prosthetical tools using our gear, like this prosthetic finger made by a high-schooler, or the mirror stimulation attempt by an amateur scientist who wanted to treat his spinal cord injury. These and many other projects have done the first step in science: proving that innovation doesn’t only live in big labs, but in any curious soul.
The 1st edition of our MIT Press book also comes with 50+ open-ended experiments. And if you’re a fan of classic human, animal or plant electrophysiology, we’ve got you covered with 5 of our all-time favorites that have already made an amazing track record in scicomm around the world.
Many of us were staying in the “BYB Barracks”—a beautiful AirBnB that would have been nice for 2-3 people but was a little cramped for 5, on the famous Knez Mihailova street (24 Knez Mihailova, to be exact). When we arrived at the AirBnB, the owner of the apartment, Sanvila Popovic, greeted us in a very friendly, gracious way. When I asked her if she was Serbian, she replied: “Yes, I was born in this building, and my grandfather was an architect who designed this building as well. His name is Branko Popovic, and you can read about him on Wikipedia. He was a bit of a polymath: an architect, the dean of engineering faculty at the University of Belgrade, and a surrealist painter. Unfortunately, with the rise of the communist party in Yugoslavia, he was arrested and killed for his political views in 1944. I never had the chance to know him.”
Given such an interesting, tragic, and personal story that she shared with us, we became text-message friends with Sanvila, exchanging messages about Serbian culture, things to do in Belgrade, and even texting her when we visited the National Gallery in Belgrade and saw some of the paintings of her grandfather Branko.
