“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.” -Sam Harris   The previous quote originated in a book called Free Will by Sam Harris. I take it to loosely mean that we do not exert conscious control over our thoughts and actions (free will), though we do not live out […]

[Updated February 2024] There’s one thing that beats inspiring kids to take up neuroscience: Watching them not only catch the spark but pass it along! High schooler Supriya Nair is our case in point. Through scientific outreach using our SpikerBox, she has already ignited the interest of hundreds of her peers who got to see and […]

This is a call to arms for science educators everywhere… Following the success of our three-day teacher training workshop at the end of 2019, and our Summer 2019 Workshop on Reactions and Reflexes, we want to kick off 2020 with the next FREE workshop open to the public! This workshop is coming up quick… so reserve your […]

My name is Azrin Khan and I am currently a junior (11th grade) in Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet Senior High School in California. My purpose is to build a device which will alert humans when they are going to have muscle cramps, and it will keep a record of the intensity of the cramp and […]

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 […]

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! […]

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 […]

Hello, my name is Olivier and I am a junior in neuroscience at Michigan State University, but for the rest of the summer Ann Arbor is my home as I work on a research project as a Backyard Brains intern! My goal is to improve upon the roboroach by adding further directional control. Left and […]

We may have been the ones who set cockroaches loose in the classroom. Which makes us thrilled to see ever more creepy-crawlies being enlisted to help democratize neuroscience! A new Arizona State University-led study, released just last month, shows how simple behavioral roach experiments can pair with free, open-source machine learning to make high-level science […]

— 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 […]

–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 […]

Call for Undergraduates in biology or engineering fields Do you have an interest in neuroscience? Electrical, Mechanical or Computer engineering? Want to develop your own experiments and publish your results?  Learn to communicate with the public?  Maybe even all of the above?  Then you’re in luck! The Backyard Brains Summer Internship is an intensive 10 week program for undergraduates to participate in hands-on […]