Over the past year, we have worked on writing up our earthworm conduction velocity experiments for formal scientific publication. After one round of peer-review, we are pleased to announce the paper is now out! It is in the journal Advances in Physiology Education, published by one of our favorite organizations, the American Physiology Society. Read […]

These past few months we’ve been hard at work adding more experiments to our online library. We just released two new ones! New Experiment I: Why do your muscles get tired?, illustrated by Cristina Mezuk, our resident favorite artist in Ann Arbor New Experiment II: What is the effect of temperature on conduction velocity?, illustrated by a Chilean Comic Book […]

We recently spent 2 days at SONA, the Society of Neuroscience Africa conference that occurs every two years. This year, it was in Rabat, Morroco, and we had a talk on low cost ways to do high tech neuroscience. We brought a ton on inventory with us, and we are happy to report we have scientists in […]

We are on the road! Kyle and Tim just arrived in San Antonio for the “National Science Teachers Association” conference this week from Thursday April 11th – Sunday April 14th. If you are a high school teacher at the conference, come by our booth 2041 and record the neural activity of neurons and your own […]

Hola SpikerHeads! Come by our vendor booth if you are at the Society for Neuroscience meeting! We will be showing off some new products, notably, our EMG SpikerBox for humans! Have you ever recorded your own muscle action potentials? Now you can, live and direct at SfN. Say hello, relax, and do some experiments with […]

Science Teacher Joshua Hanna, of Malcolm Price Laboratory School, a high school affiliated with the University of Northern Iowa, recently sent us this video his students made (with zero input from us) after learning some neuroscience with our gear this Spring. We became rather emotional watching it; the video was finished the last day of […]

You asked, we listened. See our newest experiment!  

Those of you in the Midwest, bring your families and friends to the Maker Faire at the Henry Ford Museum this weekend (July 31st and August 1st). Backyard Brains will be participating in this nerd paradise. Our exhibit number is 3534. Also, the “silent third” partner of Backyard Brains was recently highlighted by the University […]

The SpikerBox allows you to amplify and listen to spikes in a cheap, portable, and easy way. Using the built-in headphone jack you can also record the spikes from your SpikerBox on a computer, but we all know modern laptops are way too bulky and are beginning to go out of style. What if you […]

In early March, Backyard Brains made history by doing the first neural recordings on a commercial airline flight. As professional scientists however, we know that experiments should be repeated before conclusions are made. On a flight from Chicago to Kansas City in late April, we again performed the experiment. Before that though, during our layover […]

You’ve heard us say we were working on it. An idea, a dream, a fully portable electrophysiology rig with built-in amplifier, dissection scope, and manipulator for sophisticated experiments on the central nervous system. Impossible. But wait…maybe not? Ladies and Gentleman….the Ganglionizer.

We have good versions of our Ganglionizer (micromanipulator) and SpikerBox (amplifier), but the missing component for in vivo ganglia experiments is an inexpensive microscope. ByB saved its lunch money and recently purchased a 30X dissection scope for $60 from Benz Microscopy. Having no background in optics, ByB is rolling up its sleeves and reverse engineering […]