Hey! What’s up? My name is Trevor Smith, currently a senior at the fabulous Michigan State University, and I am lucky enough to be participating in an internship at Backyard Brains this summer. I am currently working on pheromone detection in moth antennae, specifically how sensitive male moths antennae are to the female pheromone […]

Is It Actually My Choice To Not Title This Post? Looking doubtful.   Since last I wrote about the “Free Will” project, I have increased the volume of data I have to work with and I have organized it into an intuitive MATLAB database for efficient manipulation via a set of functions for monte carlo analysis, spectrogram generation, […]

— 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 […]

This past summer, we worked with teachers and educators during a number of workshops to help empower them to bring DIY Neuroscience to their classrooms. One workshop, hosted by one of our colleagues at University of Chicago, brought Backyard Brains tools and training to 7th grade teachers in the Chicago area. Taken from the National Center […]

Many a high schooler has won a science fair or two using our neuroscience gear. But this science fair season, we decided to support the next generation of scientific innovators in a slightly different way: by donating prizes to the top projects at the Larchmont Charter High School Science Fair in Los Angeles! This event is […]

Be it fate, choice, or a downstream effect of our universe’s tendency to gradually decay into chaos, I ended up doing what I love this summer, and surrounded by some of the most interesting people I’ve met. One could not ask for more. But this begs the question, “Would I have made it into such […]

With our impending (PAID!) Summer Research Experience for Teachers (RET), based on our previous successful Summer Research Fellowships, we wanted to highlight the successes of our pilot teacher for this upcoming program. Meet Jessica S., Neuroscientist, Plant Scientist, and Pea-Pod Costume Designer Extraordinaire! Jess participated in the Summer of 201’s undergraduate research fellowship as our first […]

The Consumer Electronics Show floods Las Vegas annually with nearly 200,000 visitors and exhibitors, and for the first time, Backyard Brains joined the likes of Intel, Google, IBM, and other giants by attending as exhibitors and hosting our own booth! The trip was fun, but certainly wasn’t without its challenges. Upon arriving in Vegas, our team […]

One of the most attractive things about a BYB Summer Fellowship is the chance to spend a summer in colorful Ann Arbor. We changed the program name from an internship to a fellowship because of the lasting connections made throughout the summer, and these connections are made possible by the things we all do together! […]

— Written by Samuel Kuhn — So, the summer is coming to an end, and I have faced off against a behemoth of a challenge. The readiness potential has proved elusive at every turn. I have tried different hardware, software, different electrode locations and experimental locations, different participants with different hair lengths, and yes, I […]

Without superpowers or a power drill there are only a couple ways we can observe brain activity and most of them require large expensive equipment:                                                                     Luckily, with the help of Backyard Brains, you can make the equipment yourself! This summer, I’m going to be using such DIY equipment to do some electroencephalography (or EEG) experiments to study […]

–Written by Sarah Falkovic– Welcome to the update on my lie detector project! In my previous blog post, I discussed the modality of electrodermal activity, a.k.a our unconscious sweat response and its ties to stress. However, as a method of measuring lies it leaves much to be desired due to its ability to be swayed by […]