Swift and agile musclework and bladework is all you need to be a good fencer. Or is it? As it turns out thanks to Supriya Nair, an eighth-grader from Redmond, WA, the brain and heart have their fair share in it too! The young scientist’s research project on neurofencing just won her yet another first […]

— Written by Tim Marzullo — Backyard Brains’ mission is to spread neuroscience around the world. Our motto is Neuroscience for Everyone! So naturally, when a group of MIT undergraduate students led by Jiwon Kim contacted us, telling us that they were interested in our equipment for some classes they were teaching at Yeomyung School […]

What’s the effect of our warming climate on Venus flytrap, a carnivorous, bloodthirsty (or shall we say fly-thirsty?) yet vulnerable plant? And how can we help preserve this amazing species? These questions were asked by 18-year-old Mulin Huan from Princeton High School in New Jersey, whose research project made it to top 300 high school […]

— Written by Tim Marzullo — All vertebrate animals have hearts (and many invertebrates too), and many have EKGs that can be non-invasively recorded as commonly done in humans. We have fairly hairless bodies, so we can easily put sticker electrodes on our wrists or chests to record our EKG.  However, many of us share […]

Are you part of an organization registered as public charity in the US or Canada? If yes, now is the time to apply for up to $1,500 that you can use towards planning out an outreach for next year’s Brain Awareness Week (March 14 – March 20, 2022)! If awarded, you could use this money […]

— Written by Natalia Díaz — Hello. I’m here again! And this will be my last update on my neuromathematical project. If you don’t remember me, I’m Natalia Díaz, and I’m doing my university internship at Backyard Brains. (If you’re wondering what I’m talking about when I say neuromathematics, check out my first and second […]

— Written by Fredi Mino — Welcome to the final update on my TinyML Robot Hand project! After collecting sEMG (surface electromyography) data, feeding them into a neural network, and producing a machine learning model that can accurately classify different hand gestures, I can proudly say that my eagle has landed! Deploying and integrating the […]

— Written by Sofia Eisenbeiser — Well, folks, we made it.  The last week, the final frontier, time to sink or swim.  Luckily, I’ve spent the past 10 weeks with the most expert swimmers of all, our BYB fish.  And, boy, have they taught me well.  So, let’s dive in! Alright, where were we?  In […]

— Written by Nour Chahine — Before I start discussing my updates, I have an announcement to make: I solemnly swear that I will solely be working with SSVEPs for the remainder of my project! Over the past few weeks, I worked on feeding different forms of data into the neural network. I mainly applied […]

— Written by Ariyana Miri — Welcome back FOMO gang! If you’ve been following along with my FOMO glasses journey, then you know I’m trying to build a pair of glasses that capture a photo every time you blink. In my first post, we discussed the idea behind my project, and the implications the success […]

— Written by Sachin Pillai — Hello to everyone out there! This is Sachin here again with updates on your very own portable poker bluff detector. I ended my last blog post mentioning how I developed the capability to collect electrodermal activity during full rounds of poker. This has allowed me to amass a large […]

— Written by Samuel Kuhn — So, the summer is coming to an end, and I have faced off against a behemoth of a challenge. The readiness potential has proved elusive at every turn. I have tried different hardware, software, different electrode locations and experimental locations, different participants with different hair lengths, and yes, I […]