In an article we previously published in June 2022 about our scientific paper that dealt with play behavior in fish, I concluded at the end of the article: “I think it is possible for novices and high school students to publish papers (and it is the dream and goal of our team)… That is why we […]

— Written by Carla Contreras Mena — Hello! Carla Contreras Mena from Santiago, Chile, here again. Welcome to the conclusion of my work during my internship with Backyard Brains. Experiment Update In the last few months, I’ve had to study more about plants. Why? Because, In my daily life in the laboratory, I’m not very familiar with the […]

Schools, museums, libraries, community centers and other public venues in over 75 countries— last week, the entire planet was firing spikes in honor of the brain during Brain Awareness Week 2024! An annual event organized and partly funded by Dana Foundation and International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), it’s the biggest joint scientific outreach in the […]

We’ve been doing it for 10 years already: connecting two humans so that one uses their own brain signals to control the other one’s limb. But how about hooking up two limbs of a single human so that one limb can control the other? This is exactly what Gianni Garulli, a hardware and firmware developer from […]

— Written by Carla Contreras Mena — Hello, I’m Carla Contreras Mena, a student of Biochemistry at the University of Santiago of Chile (which we locally call Usach). I currently work in a Neuroscience Laboratory with professor Dr. Patricio Rojas, where we are investigating the neurophysiological difference of electrical activity in the mouse hippocampus between a […]

[Updated February 2024] There’s one thing that beats inspiring kids to take up neuroscience: Watching them not only catch the spark but pass it along! High schooler Supriya Nair is our case in point. Through scientific outreach using our SpikerBox, she has already ignited the interest of hundreds of her peers who got to see and […]

The concept has been around for over a decade: Robotic cockroaches toting Bluetooth-powered backpacks that can make them move where you need them to move. As creators of our own cyborg roach, we’ve also had a say in it. Which makes us all the happier to observe that the idea has caught on and is […]

Second week of March is always a special time of year for brain buffs. That is when educators from around the world join in for neuroscience outreach in schools and local communities! Money’s always scarce, but your organization doesn’t have to tap into its own funds. If you write up and submit a proposal within the […]

“How bad does it hurt?” It’s not for nothing that doctors usually struggle to ascertain our level of pain. It depends not only on how bad we report it to be, but also on the amount of pain we think we feel. But are there reasons behind it that would begin to decipher our (in)ability to […]

Over a dozen busy bees, 5 research projects, 4 hot weeks of July, countless data, iterations and coffee cups, one book of experiments to soak it all up and present to the wider audience — and the Backyard Brains 2023 US-Serbian Summer Research Fellowship rounds off. The result will hit the shelves this fall, with […]

— Written by Petar Damjanovic — If I were to show you a photo of a Rolex watch and a face of an unknown person, you’d probably be more interested in the prestigious, shiny object than the random stranger, right? However — and this may come as a surprise — your brain is much more modest […]

— Written by Milica Manojlovic — Aaaand the results are in! So, just a quick recap – we were hoping to get as much data on the way we process the Pinocchio illusion by measuring different behavioral outcomes as well as the EMG in three timepoints. As far as the behavioral measures are concerned, we questioned participants […]