Backyard Brains was excited to participate in this years “Mini-Maker Faire,” hosted by the Ann Arbor District Library in downtown Ann Arbor. We enjoy attending these events, as they are a great opportunity to see what other members of the community are creating! The crowd was a mix of children, students, teachers, makers, enthusiasts, […]

Bring this Experience to your Classroom! This fall, we worked with two Michigan Public Libraries to bring a “DIY Neuroprosthetics Workshop” to local communities. The workshops were designed to introduce students and interested adults to the fundamentals of neuroscience: The experience began with participants recording their first Action Potential with the Neuron SpikerBox, then seeing […]

— 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 […]

If you came by our booth at the Society for Neuroscience meeting last November in San Diego, perhaps you saw (and participated in) our newest experiment – the “human-human-interface.” When one person contracts their muscles, we use our EMG SpikerShield amplifier paired with an Arduino to cause a partner’s muscles to contract as well. […]

This post comes from our friend Dr. Thomas Tagoe, who was gracious enough to allow us to host his writing on our blog! Dr. Tagoe assisted with a recent neuroscience “Teacher Training Workshop” where dozens of teachers learned strategies for teaching neuroscience to their students. Included in the workshop was the Backyard Brains Neuron SpikerBox! […]

Related Post: High School Students Publish a Paper on Plant Physiology in a Notable Journal It’s tested and proven: Paramedics, firefighters, police officers and other first responders are almost twice as likely to develop PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) at some point in their lives than the rest of us. Still, many of them are either unaware […]

(Interns at their daily morning lab meeting) We’re excited to announce that we have 6 new interns in biology and engineering fields here for the summer! The Backyard Brains summer internship is an intensive 10 week program for students to participate in hands-on neuroscience research and experiment design with award-winning neuroscientists. Interns will be using Backyard Brains products […]

“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 […]

—Written by Samuel Kuhn— These two photos just about summarize the past 5 weeks of searching for the Readiness Potential. I’ve hit a stone wall trying to replicate it so that it could bring me one step closer to understanding the free will phenomenon! I have been collecting EEG data just about every day trying to […]

We are pleased to announce that our manuscript formally describing the SpikerBox development, four experiments, and some classroom deployments, was released yesterday in PLoS ONE. Notably, this journal does not charge to view articles, so people anywhere around the world can download, read, use, and critique the work free of charge. How is this possible? […]

There's something special about our new Chilean interns: They are high schoolers who teach neuroscience to elementary school kids! This is their blog post.

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 […]