Of the many problems that exist in this world, many would agree that at a personal level… the most drastic problem is the lack of connection between people. The probability of a marriage ending in divorce is 40-50%, with many divorcees claiming that “the feeling simply went away,” disappearing into the ether of space.  The […]

Backyard Brains just returned from a packed trip to the Bay Area, where, among other things, the highlights included meeting the folks at MAKE Magazine. The night before our morning meeting, we were up late in the hotel making sure everything worked. Thankfully, everything was fully operational battle station, and we spent a good two and […]

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 […]

—Written by Sachin Pillai— This summer at Backyard Brains, I’m developing a Poker Bot trained via machine learning that can detect when players bluff and predict how risky a player’s hand is based on internal physiological reactions during the game. A full month into the fellowship, I’ve already had substantial progress with my project! The first […]

Now that I’ve got the ear clip unipolar EEG set up, I’m finally ready to record. I have my subject wear two headbands: one around the head like a normal sweatband and one under the chin and over C3 like in my previous experiments. I had to do a quick test to get the polarity […]

We are pleased to announce that ProfessorMichael Ferragamo of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota is our 100th customer! He is the proud owner of SpikerBox #266 (some customers have bought more than one!). Michael plans to use his SpikerBox for local high school outreach. So where on this great planet have all these 266 […]

Changing Course In my last post, I talked about how I was essentially replicating the Paloma article (previously linked) in a DIY manner. This is no longer the case. The primary goal at this point is to record from the TSDN tracts, located on the ventral portion of the dragonfly’s “neck” area (seen as two white lines […]

We currently have used American Cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) in our experiments, but we have to order them from Carolina Biological Supply in North Carolina, and they are a bit expensive due to live animal shipping charges. No angst towards that fantastic company, but we have been looking for a local supplier that can give […]

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 […]

Below is the preliminary design for my electrophysiology setup. The Backyard Brains SpikerBox has a piece of cardboard on top, so after being anesthetized in ice, the little grasshopper will chill out there for the experiment, which would last about an hour. The grasshopper’s belly (ventral side) would face up, so I can place the […]

Libet had the subjects view an oscilloscope with a dot rotating periodically in a circle, and subjects were asked to retroactively report where the dot was when they first became aware that they were about to perform the voluntary task. He could then calculate the average latency between when the subject reported awareness and when […]

Summer is finally shining rays of sunlight on our lovely hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and with it Backyard Brains is welcoming its newest bright minds from Michigan State University’s Undergraduate Neuroscience department. Marta, Olivier, Alex, Cort, and Dylan met in the BYB office at the early hour of 10am (well, early for a college […]