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 […]

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 […]

— 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 […]

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.

Are you a member of an organization or institution committed to celebrating the wonders of the brain and bringing them from academic heights down to your local community? If yes, now is the time to apply for Brain Awareness Week (BAW) Outreach Grants for US and Canada! Grantees will be awarded up to $1,500 that they […]

Two students from Stone Magnet Middle School in Florida, with the guidance of their teacher, Richard Regan, decided to make their science projects in neuroscience. We feel we’ve accomplished our core mission by just being able to write this statement:  that today it is an option for students in middle school to make neuroscience experiments […]

— Written by Summer Eunhyung Ann — When we think about science and technology, we often think about something intricate and sophisticated to comprehend, such as genetic engineering or aerospace astrophysical technology. However, science and technology are a pivotal part of our mundane life.  From us turning off the lights and going to bed at night to […]

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 […]

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, […]

After trials and errors, the electrophysiology setup is ready to collect usable data. I have updated the current version of the protocol and setup on the instructions tab. For housekeeping, I give each grasshopper that participates in the experiments a name in the format of [day][month][letter indicating order]. For example, a grasshopper whose DCMDs are […]

— 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 […]

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 […]