One of the core tenets of Backyard Brains is our slogan, neuroscience for everyone! We constantly work to drive the world around us into the neurorevolution, and when we hear about projects like Peter Buczkowski’s master’s thesis, we know we’re doing something right. Peter Buczkowski graduated in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts and in […]

We’ll be your secret sauce, it’s worked before! In an effort to make neuroscience education accessible to everyone, we are always keeping our eyes peeled for grant funding opportunities! We are constantly on the lookout for programs we can recommend to teachers and admins who are excited about Neuroscience and STEM, but might not have the […]

Hello friends, this is Yifan again. As the end of the summer draws near, my summer research is also coming to a conclusion. The work I did over the summer was very different from what I expected. Since this is a wrap up post for an ongoing project, let us first go through what exactly […]

Though it feels like just last week I landed here in Michigan, it seems that it’s almost the time for me to go back home. Though my work with the project here is wrapping up, there’s still so much to be done, but I’m confident that I’m leaving behind a good framework. These past few weeks […]

Hello again everyone! It’s Yifan here with the songbird project. Like my other colleagues I also attended the 4th of July parade in Ann Arbor, which was very fun. I made a very rugged cardinal helmet which looks like a rooster hat, but I guess rooster also counts as a kind of bird, so that […]

Hey everybody, it’s your favourite Neurorobot project once again, back with more exciting updates! I went to my first knitting lesson this week at a lovely local cafe called Literati, and attended the Ann Arbor Fourth of July parade dressed as a giant eyeball with keyboards on my arms (I meant to dress as “computer […]

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 […]

Why buy, when you can build? Madhu Govindarajan of MathWorks recently used one of our old products to make his very own heart rate detector. The Heart & Brain SpikerShield (recently replaced by our Heart and Brain SpikerBox) was designed to help the user view and record the action potentials of their heart easily, and […]

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 […]

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 […]

But Why Plants? With the Introduction of the The Plant SpikerBox, you can, for the first time ever, explore plant behavior and electrophysiology at home or in the classroom. But wait…. Plants? Why are neuroscientists interested in… plants…? When we work with young students, we often begin by asking them “What has a brain?” You get your typical responses, […]

Over 11 sunny Ann Arbor weeks, our research fellows worked hard to answer their research questions. They developed novel methodologies, programmed complex computer vision and data processing systems, and compiled their experimental data for poster, and perhaps even journal, publication. But, alas and alack… all good things must come to an end. Fortunately, in research, […]