Neuroscience is making its way across the globe! Recently, The Harvard South Asia Institute selected 25 young students of technology to participate in a two-week long workshop, introducing them to the excitement and interdisciplinary nature of neuroscience and engineering in Bangalore, India. Course managers included our longtime Harvard colleagues and scientists Venkatesh Murthy and Laura Magnotti , and during two […]

Hello! My name is Matías Morales. I am studying biochemistry in the neuroscience laboratory at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (also called USACH). We study the NKCC1 channel role in the hippocampus in a model of autism in rats using electrophysiology methods. During hippocampal development, the concentrations of the channels responsible for regulating […]

— Written by Tim Marzullo — Jeopardy is an American institution, and we have fond memories of watching their episodes with our families during our youth. We still watch reruns to relax, and recently something caught our eye. While watching episode 8364, which originally played on March 21, 2021 (Season 37) with guest host Dr. […]

G’day mate, how are ya? Thank you for waiting for the updates on my research on Human EEG Decoding (aka Mind Reading). Since my last post, I have tried to decode human EEG data in real time and… guess what…I succeeded! Hooray! I first analyzed all the data I have collected so far to verify and evaluate the […]

— Written by Sachin Pillai — Hello to everyone out there! This is Sachin here again with updates on your very own portable poker bluff detector. I ended my last blog post mentioning how I developed the capability to collect electrodermal activity during full rounds of poker. This has allowed me to amass a large […]

Backyard Brains is live from inside the classroom of Colegio Alberto Blest Gana in Santiago to present you 5 group projects brought to life by creative and passionate students. and the methodology we used to choose the projects. This high school has been like a second lab for Backyard Brains, where the students beta test […]

While we have enjoyed learning about insect neuroscience during the past few years of our adventure, many teachers have asked us: “Do we have to use bugs?” or “Will this work on humans?” Recording from individual neurons or bundles of nerves requires invasive electrodes, so we are limited to insect preparations for neural activity. […]

Feat. DIY Neurosci Research Projects proposed, projected, poster-ed, and presented by Middle School students! Anastasiya was one of BYB’s 2018 Summer Fellows (of jellyfish fame), and now she has written back to us about the neuroscience outreach she has been doing in the Cincinnati area! One of the reasons we changed our summer program’s name from […]

Hello everyone! The previous two weeks have been an emotional and professional roller-coaster for me. It was tough saying goodbye to Etienne, who was such a lovely mentor for almost five weeks, but there was also the joy of welcoming Stanislav (our new mentor!), my parents from India visited me and then they left, I […]

Who would have thought a summer fellowship would grant you sleep sessions during work hours! Not just that, but it also comes with the ability to explore the deepest phases of sleep and access to unlimited Delta waves that come in all shapes and heights! Well, that can only happen at Backyard Brains, right […]

Hi my name is Marta Mazur! I am a junior majoring in neuroscience at Michigan State University and I’m part of the Backyard Brains Summer Camp (internship program). My goal by the end of the summer is to create an apparatus to measure the circadian rhythm of a cockroach, or rather the natural sleep/wake cycle […]

One of the first ways neuroscientists were able to measure the “speed” of neural computation was via reaction time. A typical human reaction time, in which you push a button after seeing a light, is ~150-200 ms. With our new EMG SpikerBox, students can now measure the electrical activity of their muscles during movements. […]