Hey everybody, only two weeks have passed but I have so much to update you on. Earlier this month I was at CRISPRcon in the lovely city of Boston (pictured above), learning about the hope and fears presented by emerging CRISPR technologies, and this week our Neurorobot has sprouted legs! Or well… Wheels. This new version of […]

Hey guys, it’s Yifan again. There has been a lot of progress since my first blog post. As promised last time, I was able to finish a functional prototype with all the legacies left for me. I put the device in the woods to get recording for the first time. The results, to my pleasant […]

Fresh, organic, locally sourced meditation researchLast Friday, Backyard Brains once again opened our doors (even wider–they’re always open during business hours!) to our fellow and aspiring citizen scientists as a part of this year’s Ann Arbor Tech Trek!  Dozens of local tech companies had their doors open to the public that evening and we, like […]

My project, if you remember (see previous post), is to train plants to associate fans with light and hopefully get them to grow in the direction of a fan after they’ve been trained. Radiolab has also done an awesome podcast on this.   How hard can it be to set 48 of these up? I’ll split it into […]

Hello, everyone! Jess here. Lots of exciting things have happened in the last two weeks. First, I have begun to raise a group of silkworms into moths (#mothmom). This involves feeding them Mulberry leaves from my backyard each day, keeping everything extremely clean and crossing my fingers in hopes that I know what I’m doing. […]

Hello all! My name is Anastasiya and I’m a computer engineering and neuroscience double major at the University of Cincinnati. I’m curious about the world around me and my favorite thing to do is learn. My hobbies include making strange noises, fangirling over the fuel efficiency of my car, and volunteering while spreading knowledge to […]

Without superpowers or a power drill there are only a couple ways we can observe brain activity and most of them require large expensive equipment:                                                                     Luckily, with the help of Backyard Brains, you can make the equipment yourself! This summer, I’m going to be using such DIY equipment to do some electroencephalography (or EEG) experiments to study […]

Hi everyone! I’m Molly, a senior Biology major at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Since my school’s mascot is a Yellow Jacket, I guess it’s very on-brand for me to be working with a similar insect, honey bees! But ironically, I’ve always thought I was allergic to bees. I had a reaction to a sting […]

Remember Professor Charles Francis Xavier? The founder and leader of X-men has phenomenal telepathic abilities. But, alas, he only exists in fiction! Or so we thought. What if we had the technology to make a part of Professor X’s abilities reality? We could channel the superpower of looking into people’s minds to know what movement […]

“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.” -Sam Harris   The previous quote originated in a book called Free Will by Sam Harris. I take it to loosely mean that we do not exert conscious control over our thoughts and actions (free will), though we do not live out […]

Hi folks! My name is Dan and I am a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying neuroscience and minoring in computer science. Back at school, I work in a songbird lab where I listen to neurons fire in zebra finches, and I’m on the ballroom dance team. Outside of working, sleeping, and eating, […]

Hi, I’m Ben. I just graduated high school and am planning on going to Michigan State University in the fall. I ran cross country and track and swam for my high school, but have decided to stop to focus on my studies. I am also an Eagle Scout and love to backpack or canoe when […]