____________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter.
In this issue:
____________________________________________________________
Neuroscience for Kids had several new additions in July including:
A. July Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news2707.html
B. New Neuroscience in the News
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/inthenews.html
C. Visit or follow my Instagram site with neuroscience facts and trivia:
https://www.instagram.com/ericchudler/
__________________________________________________________
The Neuroscience for Kids "Site of the Month" for August is "Neurdle" at:
"Wordle" is a popular web-based word game developed by Josh Wardle in 2021. Now there is a neuroscience version of the game called "Neurdle." Game play in Neurdle is the same as Wordle and fairly simple. The Neurdle web site game instructions say, "Guess the word in 6 tries. After each guess, the color of the tiles will change to show how close your guess was to the word." If you do not guess the neuro-word correctly after six tries, the game will show you the correct answer and a definition of the word. You have to wait 10 minutes until you can try the game again with a new word.
Try Neurdle: it is quite challenging and a great way to improve your neuro-vocabulary.
__________________________________________________________
Last month, 19 high school students joined me for one week at the University of Washington (UW) for the Center for Neurotechnology Young Scholars Program-REACH (YSP-REACH). During the week, students learned about neuroscience, neurotechnology and neuroethics by attending lectures, working with hands-on activities and visiting labs. Another 90 students participated in the program virtually via Zoom for morning lectures only. Below is a description of the program with some links you can visit to find out more about the activities.
Before the first day of the program, all students were given access to a Pressbook with readings, videos, images, quizzes, and other activities. The Pressbook is available to everyone, so feel free to use it at: https://uw.pressbooks.pub/yspreach23/.
I gave the first lecture of the week describing the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system and showing some examples of the new technologies used to treat diseases and disorders of the brain. In the afternoon, students at the UW built brain hats from paper and neurons from beads and pipe cleaners (http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chmodel.html).
Our guest lecturer on the second day was Dr. Azadeh Yazdan-Shahmorad who spoke about neurotechnology for stroke rehabilitation. In the afternoon, we walked over to the UW Health Science Building where students performed a sheep brain dissection. On the way back to the Center for Neurotechnology, we stopped by the UW Medicinal Herb Garden where I pointed out some plants that have been used to make medicine to treat neurological illnesses.
Dr. Amy Orsborn gave a lecture about brain-computer interfaces on the third day of the program. After lunch, I invited a group of undergraduate student researchers to talk to the YSP-REACH students about college life and getting involved in laboratory research. We also had a great demonstration of "Neurofencing," a project developed by a local Seattle area high school student.
Neuroethics was the topic of the day 4 lecture. Dr. Sara Goering talked about the field of neuroethics with many examples likely to impact society in the future. In the afternoon, the students explored neuroethics further with The Neuro Futures Card Game. You can download the materials for this card game here: https://www.nisenet.org/catalog/neuro-futures.
The final lecture of YSP-REACH was "Stimulation of the Nervous System" by Dr. Chet Moritz. Dr. Moritz was kind enough to invite the students for an afternoon tour of the Amplifying Movement & Performance Lab where the students saw demonstrations of new therapies to help people who have injuries to their spinal cord. We returned to the Center for Neurotechnology by winding our way through the UW campus, including a stop at the Suzzallo Library where we visited the graduate reading room, also known as the Harry Potter room.
YSP-REACH students certainly had many questions for me and the other faculty members who spoke with them and I am sure that they learned more about brain research. Perhaps I will see some of these students on the UW campus in a year or two as they prepare for careers in neuroscience and neural engineering.
__________________________________________________________
Many people love the smell of books. Some books smell sweet, others smell like flowers or have a vanilla scent. These smells can evoke memories of the time and place where a book was read.
The smell of a book is caused by various chemicals in paper, glue and ink. Some chemicals that provide old books with their distinctive smell come from the breakdown of paper and include toluene (sweet), vanillin (vanilla), 2-ethyl hexanol (floral), ethyl benzene (sweet), benzaldehyde (almond) and furfural (almond). New books get their smell from chemicals used to make a book and include vinyl acetate ethylene, alkyl ketene dimer and hydrogen peroxide.
You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you may be able to judge a book's age by its smell.
Reference:
What Causes the Smell of New & Old: Books?
__________________________________________________________
A. "Subtle Revolution," about a new approach to treat multiple sclerosis (THE NEW YORKER, July 24, 2023).
B. "Hey, Suckers," about misconceptions associated with the octopus (THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY, July 14, 2023).
_________________________________________________________
A. The phrase "brain drain" was first used in the mid-1950s to describe how British physicians were leaving Great Britain for employment in North America (Source: Wright, D., et al., The 'Brain Drain' of physicians: historical antecedents to an ethical debate, c. 1960-79. Philos. Ethics Humanit. Med., 2008 Nov 10;3:24. doi: 10.1186/1747-5341-3-24).
B. Several neuroscientists who have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were born in August including Roger Sperry (August 20, 1913), Osamu Shimomura (August 27, 1928) and Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (August 28, 1919).
C. "The principles now being discovered at work in the brain may provide, in the future, machines even more powerful than those we can at present foresee." -- J.Z. Young, in Doubt and Certainty in Science. A Biologist's Reflections on the Brain, 1960.
D. You can spell "ten elite brains" with the letters in the name "Albert Einstein."
E. Actor Johnny Depp is unable to see depth (stereoblindness) (Source: Atkinson, M., Seeing 3-D cinema from the stereoblind perspective, New York Times, October 21, 2015).
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
To remove yourself from this mailing list and stop your subscription
to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter, send e-mail to Dr. Eric H.
Chudler at: chudler@u.washington.edu
_________________________________________________________
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.