13th Annual Brain Education Day Sparks Fascination With The Brain For Local Middle & High Schoolers

On Mar. 19, 120 students from local public middle and high schools logged into the 13th Annual Brain Education Day for an immersive investigation of the brain. To supplement the virtual instruction, students were mailed kits with tools for special hands-on activities.

This annual program is co-sponsored by Yale Pathways to Science and the Office for Graduate Student Development and Diversity, and is open to Pathways students in grades 6-12. The event was made possible by generous donations and volunteers from departments across the medical school. Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (INP) graduate students Kathy Zhang, Heather Ortega, Kathy Ayala, Efrat Abramson, Violet Kimble and Ankita Gumaste served as co-coordinators of this year’s event. Due to COVID-19, this year’s Brain Education Day was held virtually.

“The highlight of Brain Education Day for me,” Gumaste said, “is seeing the students engage with the content, freely ask questions, and get excited about drawing connections between what they already know and what they are learning. We have a really wonderful group of students every year who ask the most insightful and out-of-the-box questions which push us as neuroscientists to view our subject matter from new angles.”

Students had the choice of attending three separate online sessions: “Optical Illusions and the Brain,” “Microscopes and the Brain” and “Disorders of the Brain.” In lieu of the event’s usual keynote speaker, four graduate students — Natalia Castelo Branco Matos, Alexa Soares, April Pruitt and Marina Carlson — were invited to deliver talks about their journey into science and their current research. According to Zhang, the team wanted to highlight the work of “amazing young female scientists” doing “fantastic” research related to each session.

Gumaste recalls Brain Education Day being a “highly interactive event” in which hands-on demonstrations allowed students to directly apply each neuroscience concept learned in the lecture portion. To ensure that this aspect of the event was not lost in the transition to a virtual environment, students were mailed kits with materials for special activities, from paper microscopes to inversion goggles.

The first session dove into sensory systems and visual illusions. Students learned how optical illusions are used in movies to facilitate visual effects, and how humans perceive color. Using craft supplies in the kit, they made their own optical illusions at home.

“We did a set of color illusions that are based on the brain's tendency to see colors as the same no matter the situation or time of day,” Ortega said. “An apple is red whether you eat it in the morning or after dark. Another set of illusions, such as the Ames window, takes advantage of how the brain judges the relative size of things you see.”

The next session on methods in neuroscience taught students how microscopes are used to study the brain. Students were sent a Foldscope, a paper microscope, to view their cheek cells and prepare slides with plant cells during volunteer-led breakout room sessions. According to Zhang, one student had their own high-powered microscope from school, allowing them to share images of the specimens being observed with the rest of the students.

The last session on brain disorders taught students how doctors diagnose and treat different disorders. To demonstrate how the brain can adapt after an injury, students received a pair of inversion goggles that turned “their world upside down.” This concept of brain plasticity illustrates how the visual and motor cortices communicate.

“When you pick up a pencil, your hand kind of automatically knows how to write letters to form words, and how far away your hand is if you stick it in front of you.” Abramson said. “But when you flip your whole world upside down, your brain can no longer make the correct predictions using the information it already knows. But, our brains can adapt very quickly!”

When the inversion goggles were first worn, students struggled to write their names the first few times due to the flipped perception. However, after a couple of tries, the students were able to write their names, thereby demonstrating the plasticity of the brain. For Kimble, this session was the highlight of her experience, being pleasantly surprised and excited by students’ thoughtful questions and clear engagement with the material.

Abramson recounted the students unmuting themselves and sending direct messages to express their enjoyment. According to Ortega, in response to the post-event survey, all students rated that they learned a lot and liked the event. For the graduate student co-organizers, this positive feedback proved the success of their mission to make neuroscience accessible and relatable.

Students and parents also had the option of attending an information session about applying to college hosted by Assistant Dean of Diversity from the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Danica Fisher and the

Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Scott Wallace-Juedes.

“We hope that students will be able to see that there are several paths to becoming a neuroscientist,” Gumaste said. “And that there are many important questions that we can answer through neuroscience research.”