• 2020 Summer Fellowship for 5-12 Grade Teachers
    Education
    New from Backyard Brains: An in-depth summer training experience to help bring NGSS-aligned neuroscience lessons into your classroom. Do you want to learn how the brains of animals like crawdads or praying mantises work? Do you want to develop your own innovative experiments to take back to your students? Would you like to learn to […]
  • How the SpikerBox Revolutionized K12 STEM Education... and just what is a SpikerBox?
    Biz
    How the SpikerBox Revolutionized K12 STEM Education… and just what is a SpikerBox? Backyard Brains exists today because of a once-lofty goal: To turn a $40,000+ rack of graduate-level electronics into a $100 kit that students could use in the classroom to perform real, hands-on neuroscience experiments. A decade later, we have developed four lines of products […]
  • Reserve your Spot: Teacher Training Workshop (January 31st)
    Education
    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 […]
  • NGSS Aligned Neuroscience
    Education
    It can’t be avoided: the standards must be met! While we encourage educators everywhere to break free from the shackles of bureaucratic granularity in education… we also admit that education standards perform a necessary function. There are educational and developmental milestones that all students should achieve, and it is the goal of the standards to […]
  • Cockroaches... In the Dungeon! Thought You Ought to Know....
    Education
    PEPPERMINT IS THE NEW VANILLA: CHANGING OLFACTORY MEMORIES THROUGH OPERANT CONDITIONING IN COCKROACHES (my working paper title, you dig it?) Hey all, it’s Alex again! I have completed quite a bit since my previous post. If you already forgot about who I am (you monster!), I’m the intern performing the operant conditioning research on cockroaches! I’m […]
  • BYB Summer Camp Internships: Marta's Investigation Into Circadian Rhythms
    Education
    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 […]
  • A Cockroach's Life Cycle
    Education
    In case you’re unfamiliar with Backyard Brains, we like Cockroaches. You might even say we love them. Cockroach’s are hardy insects with a knack for neuroscience and performance. The cockroaches we work with are known as Blaberus Discoidalis or False Death’s Head cockroaches (among many common names). They are often bred for reptile food but we […]
  • Backyard Brains Welcomes Interns from MSU
    Education
    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 […]