A scorpion by any other name Greetings!  My name’s Dylan, and I’m interning at a company that loves cockroaches here in the land of the Wolverines, where I’m proud to represent Michigan State University’s burgeoning undergraduate neuroscience program. My project involves an examination of scorpion neuroscience, particularly the electrophysiology of their nervous system, and I’m […]

Hello, my name is Olivier and I am a junior in neuroscience at Michigan State University, but for the rest of the summer Ann Arbor is my home as I work on a research project as a Backyard Brains intern! My goal is to improve upon the roboroach by adding further directional control. Left and […]

I’m Alex, a neuroscience major from the wonderful Michigan State University (GO GREEN!)**, down in Ann Arbor for the summer as an intern with Backyard Brains. I’m working to be a behavior trainer of the cockroach, Periplaneta Americana, through means of operant conditioning. What is operant conditioning? In short, operant conditioning is a way of […]

My name is Cort Thompson and I’m one of the incredibly privileged interns working at Backyard Brains this summer. I’m an undergraduate neuroscience student at Michigan State University and this summer I am working to bring the cutting edge technique of optogenetics to the classroom while also observing the courtship behaviors and gustatory system of […]

Hi my name is Marta Mazur! I am a junior majoring in neuroscience at Michigan State University and I’m part of the Backyard Brains Summer Camp (internship program). My goal by the end of the summer is to create an apparatus to measure the circadian rhythm of a cockroach, or rather the natural sleep/wake cycle […]

In case you’re unfamiliar with Backyard Brains, we like Cockroaches. You might even say we love them. Cockroach’s are hardy insects with a knack for neuroscience and performance. The cockroaches we work with are known as Blaberus Discoidalis or False Death’s Head cockroaches (among many common names). They are often bred for reptile food but we […]

Summer is finally shining rays of sunlight on our lovely hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and with it Backyard Brains is welcoming its newest bright minds from Michigan State University’s Undergraduate Neuroscience department. Marta, Olivier, Alex, Cort, and Dylan met in the BYB office at the early hour of 10am (well, early for a college […]