Can robots think and feel? Can they have minds? Can they learn to be more like us? To do any of this, robots need brains. Scientists use “neurorobots” – robots with computer models of biological brains – to understand everything from motor control, and navigation to learning and problem solving. At Backyard Brains, we […]

Hi I’m Yifan, a senior studying Computer Science at University of Michigan. I’m working on the Rainforest Wildlife Recording Project. This project is a continuation of 2017 fellow Zach’s Songbird program. Me and my teammates also worked on this during last semester, and will continue to improve it in the coming semester. We have already […]

Hi Everyone. Juan here! My two month tour with Backyard Brains has reached its end, and I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to work on this project. I had three activites during the “practica” here at Backyard Brains: Recording from the Ganglia of Snails Helping on the Anemone Project Assisting in Outreach. The snail recording was my […]

Hi all! I’m Jess. I’m a senior neuroscience major from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT. It’s a small, private liberal arts school you’ve probably never heard of, but I promise you it’s the best small, private liberal arts school you’ve probably never heard of (with an awesome neuroscience program). Prior to my academic […]

Backyard Brains always loves hearing about our equipment making its way out into the world and into a classroom, so we were thrilled to hear from Dr. Nancy Cowdin, a Neuroscientist and Science teacher at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. Dr. Cowdin recently taught an elective course in Neuroscience where seniors at the all-girls high school […]

From left: Ben, Anusha, Yifan, Jessica, Aaron, Jess, Greg Gage (not a Fellow), Maria, Dan, Anastasiya, Molly, Ilya Meet the Fellows, See the Projects The fellows are off to a great start! This week has been focused on them getting their feet wet with our kits and learning about what we do here at Backyard Brains. Be […]

This post comes to you from our friends at Biomakespace! They are biohackers and electrophysiology enthusiasts who work and hack with our kits along with inventions of their own! They recently presented and demoed their cool tech at the annual Cambridge Sci  ence Festival in Massachusetts. We asked them a couple questions about the event […]

Hi! Juan Ferrada here from the University of Santiago again to give you an update on my project with Backyard Brains. Main Project – Single unit recording from Snail Neurons First mission – Isolate the Neurons As we spoke of a month ago, we are trying to record the individual neurons of the giant pacemaker cells of […]

About me Hi! I am Juan Ferrada, a biochemistry student at the lovely Universidad de Santiago in Chile. That’s me below with my girlfriend Rocia on campus. She is an important part of my project. At the university I work with Dr. Patricio’s Rojas, a longtime colleague of Backyard Brains. Thanks to Patricio, Backyard Brains’ equipment […]

Acoustic Wildlife Recording promotes Citizen Science! Here at Backyard Brains, we are all about citizen science, or the idea that the scientific community benefits from the collaboration with members of the general public for collecting and analyzing information about the natural world. Very DIY, very much the “for everyone” in our slogan. In 2017, Backyard Brains […]

This past summer, one of our interns worked on (and continues to work on!) a neuroscience project which many sleep-deprived students have literally dreamt of: Learning in your sleep! Joud’s project caught the eye of a few student documentarians from Princeton and they flew out to Ann Arbor to interview her. Joud’s and the documentarian’s focus […]

Last year, Sophia, 8, a young entomologist, was being bullied at school because of her excitement for and interest in bugs and science. Now, just one year later, she has been published as a junior author in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America! With a craving which couldn’t be curbed to capture, observe, befriend, […]