This University of Michigan student team developed a way to control a drone with a new kind of controller… We work with students of all ages — from outreach to early elementary, to hands-on demonstrations, labs, and even research with students from fifth grade to… well, grad school and beyond! We wanted to share this novel and […]

Feat. DIY Neurosci Research Projects proposed, projected, poster-ed, and presented by Middle School students! Anastasiya was one of BYB’s 2018 Summer Fellows (of jellyfish fame), and now she has written back to us about the neuroscience outreach she has been doing in the Cincinnati area! One of the reasons we changed our summer program’s name from […]

In honor of Brain Awareness Week this month, we want to spotlight an organization fighting the good fight and working to bring the NeuroRevolution to as many schools as possible! NW Noggin (Northwest Neuroscience Outreach Group: Growing in Networks) is a neuroscience outreach group based in Portland, Oregon that has been introducing students to electrophysiology across […]

My name is Azrin Khan and I am currently a junior (11th grade) in Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet Senior High School in California. My purpose is to build a device which will alert humans when they are going to have muscle cramps, and it will keep a record of the intensity of the cramp and […]

It can’t be avoided: the standards must be met! While we encourage educators everywhere to break free from the shackles of bureaucratic granularity in education… we also admit that education standards perform a necessary function. There are educational and developmental milestones that all students should achieve, and it is the goal of the standards to […]

Backyard Brains is now in its second year of interns from the University of Santiago de Chile (affectionately called Usach). Last year we had a project recording the ganglia of snails – and this we will continue our voyage in the world of invertebrates with an old favorite and a new favorite. Cockroaches and Clams. The […]

Every year in late March, scientists across the world band together to participate in Brain Awareness week, an extended event created by The Society for Neuroscience and Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives to expose kids to neuroscience research. It is a week-long celebration of the brain, really, with participants ranging from universities to government agencies […]

The Third Thumb An 8th Grader’s Exploration in DIY Neuroprosthetics Several months ago, a crowdfunded classroom got their hands on several of our neuroprosthetic kits – like The Claw and the Muscle SpikerShield Bundle. This allowed students in Nokomis Regional schools to begin experimenting with hands-on neuroscience experiments! One of the students, 8th grader Kaiden K., was interested in developing a prosthetic, but […]

Help us win a Grant to Empower a New Generation of Sports Scientists! Through our adventures at Backyard Brains over the years, we have come to love electromyography, muscle coordination, and the body in movement. We have already begun some classes where we teach muscle physiology through sport! We recently applied for a grant to devote more […]

Bill Nye Under Mind Control? Don’t worry – it was just temporary! Earlier this year we received an order for a Human-Human-Interface that had our team glowing with excitement. It was addressed to none other than Bill Nye and one of his producers on Bill Nye Saves the World. In this recent Netflix show, Bill Nye and his science […]

Hey everyone! I’m Pablo, a junior from Nido de Aguilas High School in Santiago, Chile. In my free time, I like to doodle and run. My project is a multi-channel version of the experiment that my colleague and friend Cristian developed: it consists of using the SpikerShield Pro’s ability to get data from multiple channels […]

“A new generation of students has access to 3D printers and other DIY technology…” I was speaking recently to one of our colleagues at Temple University about a project several of his students were working on, and he said something that really struck me, “these students are the first generation to have grown up with 3D printers […]