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Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter.
In this issue:
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Neuroscience for Kids had several new additions in March including:
A. March Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news2203.html
B. Neuroscience in the News
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/inthenews.html
C. 2010 UW Brain Awareness Week Open House
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/baw18oh.html
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The Neuroscience for Kids "Site of the Month" for April is "mosquitobrains.org" at:
https://www.mosquitobrains.org/
As you might guess from its title, this month's site is about the brain of a mosquito. Based at HHMI-The Rockefeller University, mosquitobrains.org allows people to wander through the brain of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. It takes a short period of time to download all of the images, but after you do, you can move from the front to back of the brain using a scroll bar. You can also highlight specific brain areas by clicking on labeled boxes. The site includes movies that rotate the brain so you can see it in three dimensions.
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Brain Awareness Week was celebrated all over the world last month. For me, Brain Awareness Week is really Brain Awareness "Month" because I have activities throughout March. I started the month with the University of Washington Brain Awareness Week Open House on March 6. For this event, 800 students from local elementary, middle and high schools came to the Seattle campus of the University of Washington to learn about the brain. The students started with a multimedia "Brain Assembly" where they learned about neurotransmission, compared the brains of different animals and played with some visual illusions. After the assembly, students visited exhibits set up by University of Washington departments and other organizations. There were exhibits about the senses, a neuron building area, a face painting station and even a mock MRI machine. Students in one class wore brainy T-shirts that they decorated before they arrived for the Open House.
A few days after the Open House, I visited a school to talk with 44 kindergarten students about the brain. It is never too early to learn about the brain and these young students were ready. We talked about the many functions of the brain, sang songs about the brain ("Twinkle, Twinkle, Brain of Mine"), and discussed how important it is to protect their brains by eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep and wearing seatbelts and helmets.
One middle school wanted to bring 200 students to the University of Washington Brain Awareness Week Open House. Because the Open House can hold only 800 students, I told the teachers at the school that I would come to them. So, on March 15, I met the 200 middle school students in their school auditorium where we talked about the brain.
The month ended when several schools (sixth graders from Seattle, high school students from southern Washington, college students from the University of Washington-Bothell) visited me at the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering. I start these presentations with a discussion of how engineering and neuroscience can be used to investigate neurological diseases. After this discussion, the students are divided into three groups where they work with games and activities that illustrate many of the principles of neural engineering.
I estimate that I worked with approximately 1,200 students during Brain Awareness "Month." I certainly enjoyed the Open House, school visits and field trips. I hope the students did too.
Read more about the Open House in this article from the UW Memory & Brain Wellness Center titled "An Extravaganza of Brains Greets Kids at UW Brain Awareness Week Event":
http://depts.washington.edu/mbwc/news/article/brain-awareness-week-at-uw
__________________________________________________________Although my crowdfunding effort to fully support a new TV episode of BrainWorks fell short of its goal, I have not given up. I am determined to find new funding sources for the show. However, if anyone would like to contribute to the project, you can still donate at:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/help.html
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A. My new book, "Brain Lab for Kids," was published last month by Quarto Press. For details, see:
https://www.quartoknows.com/books/9781631593963/Brain-Lab-for-Kids.html
B. O'Donnell, S., Neuroeconomics, NATURAL HISTORY magazine, March 2018.
C. "Intelligence is the cover story in the Spring 2018 issue of POPULAR SCIENCE magazine.
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A. Physicist Stephen Hawking died last month (March 14, 2018); he was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease).
B. April is National Autism Awareness Month and Sports Eye Safety Month.
C. The top graduate programs in neuroscience/neurobiology as ranked by US News and World Report (2018) are Harvard University, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California-San Francisco, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California-San Diego.
D. Anna Mary Robertson Moses [Grandma Moses] (1860-1961) wrote: "A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day."
E. Some snails have chemosensors called "osphradia" in the mantle cavity; these receptors are used to detect chemicals in water.
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Help Neuroscience for Kids
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Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and the "Neuroscience for Kids" web site are always welcome. If there are any special topics that you would like to see on the web site, just let me know.
Eric
Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.
(e-mail: chudler@u.washington.edu)
(URL:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html)