Backyard Brains has just added another feature to our ever longer list of media appearances! This time, our co-founder and CEO, Dr. Greg Gage, talked for The Gastronauts, Duke University’s monthly seminar and podcast series. This seminar is being organized by researchers passionate about gut-brain matters. But when one invites the driving force behind Backyard […]

So you can use a device to remote control a cockroach. Or another device to control a friend’s body by hooking up their arm with your brain’s electrical activity. But can you use this same device to control their body during a box match, all from a relative safety outside the ring? This and many other […]

With our impending (PAID!) Summer Research Experience for Teachers (RET), based on our previous successful Summer Research Fellowships, we wanted to highlight the successes of our pilot teacher for this upcoming program. Meet Jessica S., Neuroscientist, Plant Scientist, and Pea-Pod Costume Designer Extraordinaire! Jess participated in the Summer of 201’s undergraduate research fellowship as our first teacher […]

Neuroscience Experiment Intern Wanted (Downtown Ann Arbor) Compensation: $15/hr based on 40-hour work weekEmployment type: full-time internship Backyard Brains is seeking a neuroscience intern to continue ongoing experiments! You:-A STEM undergrad, currently taking a break from the classroom. (Recent grad or gap year preferable)-Passionate about scientific discovery and designing innovative, impactful experiments-Experienced in or excited by a future […]

  We’re excited to announce the Backyard Brains will be featured in an episode of “Mind Field,” a YouTube Red original series created by the famous math and science YouTuber, Vsauce! If you aren’t familiar with Vsauce, definitely give his youtube channel a look! He has become a staple of online science education, as his YouTube videos […]

The Consumer Electronics Show floods Las Vegas annually with nearly 200,000 visitors and exhibitors, and for the first time, Backyard Brains joined the likes of Intel, Google, IBM, and other giants by attending as exhibitors and hosting our own booth! The trip was fun, but certainly wasn’t without its challenges. Upon arriving in Vegas, our team […]

This past Friday, Backyard Brains held an Open House 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 our friends around town, had people streaming in from open to close! The day began with “Tech Talks” at […]

Since we opened our doors in 2010 with the $100 dollar spike, we’ve been working hard to create continue developing affordable, open source neuroscience experiments and educational materials. Seven years later, we’re excited to announce that we have exceeded $3,000,000 in sales! That is more money than the total of all of our grants prior […]

The next steps of the project are… 1) set up a coordinate system in Matlab so by inputing the change in degrees of the servos, I can know the change in position on the screen. 2) Using Matlab, create figures that relate the neural activity to the position and direction of the laser beam. 3) Test with dragonfly […]

**Edit: This design is no longer available as of 2020** We at Backyard Brains love cockroaches. Every time we see someone with butterfly earrings or a butterfly tattoo, we think, “That would look so much better if it were a cockroach. Pobrecita Cucaracha. Nobody celebrates you.” No more, you can now show your love of insects […]

Meet the EMG Reaction Timer! The EMG Reaction Timer will settle once and for all who has the fastest draw in the west… or you can use it to perform neuroscience experiments, in the home or classroom, exploring how we respond to different kinds of stimuli! The Reaction Timer works with our EMG SpikerBox and Spike […]

If you’ve followed us over the past couple years, you’ll know we have been slowly working on a MicroManipulator to allow you to do more precise neural recordings instead of just “blindly” inserting electrodes in a cockroach leg, cricket, or earthworm. We’ve had prototypes of manipulators for about as long as we’ve been in existence, […]