NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS NEWSLETTER
Volume 1, Issue 1 (December, 1997)

Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter. You are receiving the first issue!

Many students, teachers, parents, university instructors and neuroscientists around the world are receiving this newsletter. It has been great to hear from so many people who share my interest in the nervous system. I hope that everyone will find this newsletter to be educational, interesting and a useful tool as you navigate your way around the Neuroscience for Kids web pages.

Here is what you will find in this issue:

1. Background about the Neuroscience for Kids Home Page
2. What's new on the Neuroscience for Kids Home Page
3. The Neuroscience for Kids Page of The Month
4. What's coming up in future issues
5. How to stop your subscription.

1. BACKGROUND OF "NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS"

I started work on the Neuroscience for Kids WWW pages back in April of 1996. It was my desire to develop materials to help students and teachers learn more about the brain. I discovered that most textbooks used in schools do not provide very much information on the nervous system. However, since I was a research neuroscientist with experiments to run, data to analyze and papers to write, I could not develop my pages during normal business hours. Instead, I worked on the pages early in the morning or late at night. This took time away from my family, but the response to the pages was so enthusiastic, that I felt it was important to continue work on the pages. In the summer of 1996, a fellow neuroscientist suggested that I look for funding for the pages so that I could devote more time to making the web site the best it could be. Therefore, I submitted a grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health. I am happy to report to you that in July, 1997 I was awarded a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) to collaborate with middle school science teachers to expand Neuroscience for Kids.

So, just who am I? My name is Eric H. Chudler. I received my bachelor's of science degree (Psychobiology) from UCLA in 1980 and my master's degree (1983) and Ph.D. degree (1985) from the University of Washington. Following my Ph.D., I went to the National Institutes of Health for 3 years for Post-doctoral training, then to the Department of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital as an Instructor (2.5 yrs) and then back to the University of Washington (UW). I returned to Seattle in 1991 and have been in the Department of Anesthesiology at the UW since then.

While I devote a fair amount of time to Neuroscience for Kids, I still have a very active research program. The general focus of my research is on how the nervous system responds to pain. I hope that my studies will result in a better understanding of pain and in the development of new treatments for people with pain problems.

2. WHAT'S NEW ON THE NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS PAGES

This is the section of the newsletter where I will tell you about what I have added to the Neuroscience for Kids web pages in the past month. I think this will help the readers of this newsletter to go back to my pages and to quickly find something new.

Neuroscience for Kids had many additions in November. Some of the more important additions to the site were:

  1. Comparisons between the brain and a computer
  2. Differences between male brains and female brains
  3. Addition of a "notebook" to help you keep notes
  4. Subscriptions to this newsletter started
  5. A special page with sounds from my laboratory
  6. A photo gallery of some of my visits to schools
  7. The "Neuroscientist Network"
I frequently add new figures and graphics to the pages and edit and modify the text to make the web site easier to read and understand. In fact, 71 new figures were added and 79 pages were modified in November.

3. NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS "PAGE OF THE MONTH"

In each newsletter, I will review a web page that I think is especially appropriate and interesting to the users of "Neuroscience for Kids". This month I have selected a site from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. called "Seaside Neuroscience". The URL for Seaside Neuroscience is:

http://www.sidwell.edu/us/science/21bio/seaside/

Seaside Neuroscience was put together by students and teachers to describe their experiences as they took a field trip up the California coast exploring tidepools and laboratories. The web page focuses on marine invertebrate neurobiology and contains experiments and activities to learn more about the nervous system of marine invertebrates. This past October I had the pleasure of meeting several of the students involved with this web site. They have done an excellent job on this page with a fascinating subject!!

4. FUTURE ISSUES OF THE NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS NEWSLETTER

a. What's new to the pages. I will let you know what new features have been added in December.

b. A new Neuroscience for Kids "Page of the Month"

c. A discussion of Brain Awareness Week to be held March 16-22, 1998.

d. New developments in brain research

e. Tips for web page development ("tricks" I use)

f. A summary of the 1997 Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting (held this past October)

5. HOW TO STOP RECEIVING THIS NEWSLETTER

To remove yourself from this mailing list and stop your subscription to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter, send email 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 topics that you would like to see on the web site, then just let me know.

I hope you all have a happy holiday season.

Eric

Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.
(e-mail: chudler@u.washington.edu)
(URL: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html

"Neuroscience for Kids" is supported by a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Center of Research Resources.