If you are nearby Oaxaca this coming weekend (March 22-23), we will be at the Maker Faire demonstrating neuroscience and also running Make and Take Workshops.  ¡Vamos a la tierra de Nahuatl y Chapulines! ¡Vengan ustedes para ver las espigas de neuronas y músculos!

Over the past year, we have worked on writing up our earthworm conduction velocity experiments for formal scientific publication. After one round of peer-review, we are pleased to announce the paper is now out! It is in the journal Advances in Physiology Education, published by one of our favorite organizations, the American Physiology Society. Read […]

If you came by our booth at the Society for Neuroscience meeting last November in San Diego, perhaps you saw (and participated in) our newest experiment – the “human-human-interface.” When one person contracts their muscles, we use our EMG SpikerShield amplifier paired with an Arduino to cause a partner’s muscles to contract as well. Our […]

During the days of January 8,9, and 10, 2014, Backyard Brains ran its most ambitious workshop yet – three days of teaching high school teachers how to build their own labs and teach neuroscience in their classroom. During this workshop, 6 teachers from Dunalistar High School in Las Condes, Santiago, learned: -How to record electrical activity […]

We are big believers in the power of 3D printing to allow labs and scientists to share their inventions around the world, making experiments easier and scientific progress faster. We bought our first MakerBot in April of 2012, and our current “Fleet” of 3D printers at Backyard Brains now numbers three (two MakerBot Replicator Originals […]

These past few months we’ve been hard at work adding more experiments to our online library. We just released two new ones! New Experiment I: Why do your muscles get tired?, illustrated by Cristina Mezuk, our resident favorite artist in Ann Arbor New Experiment II: What is the effect of temperature on conduction velocity?, illustrated by a Chilean […]

We recently spent 2 days at SONA, the Society of Neuroscience Africa conference that occurs every two years. This year, it was in Rabat, Morroco, and we had a talk on low cost ways to do high tech neuroscience. We brought a ton on inventory with us, and we are happy to report we have scientists in […]

Years in the making, we officially launch our “Completo,” which combines our Manipulator, RoachScope, SpikerBox, and beautiful poplar wooden steel table into a single rig for those neuroscientists on the go. We have successfully used it to record muscle potentials from fruit flies, carefully position electrodes on earthworm nerves, and measure adaptation rates in cockroach sensory neurons. What […]

We have had our own custom Android and iPhone apps for quite some time now, but if wanted to use a PC or laptop, we’d turn to Audacity, the free open-source audio processing program. It works well but is not made for neural recording. Hence, today, we announce the beta release of our first custom […]

We are on the road! Kyle and Tim just arrived in San Antonio for the “National Science Teachers Association” conference this week from Thursday April 11th – Sunday April 14th. If you are a high school teacher at the conference, come by our booth 2041 and record the neural activity of neurons and your own […]

When demoing our RoboRoach to the public, people (often parents) ask us, “It’s amazing you can temporarily control the movement of a cockroach, but can you expand this device to control my 5-year old child / husband?” We listen to our customers and the public, as many of our products come from innocuous suggestions.  From […]

One of the first ways neuroscientists were able to measure the “speed” of neural computation was via reaction time. A typical human reaction time, in which you push a button after seeing a light, is ~150-200 ms. With our new EMG SpikerBox, students can now measure the electrical activity of their muscles during movements. Thus, […]