An adventure through the brain - a Stratneuro initiative to raise public awareness on brain research at Karolinska Institutet

Demo stations

Our public demonstration stations were a success! We are very grateful to Matti Nikkola, at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, for lending us some of the lab and learning material and poster boards that are used in other public outreach activities such as Berättarministeriet and others which he organises.

At the backyard brains demonstrations, participants were able to try neuro-prosthetics, force their friend's arm to move under their control, or appreciate the pattern and sounds of their muscle potential by using the muscle-spiker box. Some of the more competitive visitors could be found at "THE CLAW" station to compete in controlling tasks using a robotic claw. The backyard brains were made possible by a hard working team of volunteers who worked hard to prepare and make this a fun learning experience for visitors: Marta Graziano, Marina Slashcheva, Clarissa Anna Pisano, Birte Schmid, Vilma Alanko, Liesbeth Voorbraeck, Radhashree Sharma, Josep Carbonell Roig, Ayu Tamaki and StratNeuro board member Emanuela Santini.

At the "An eye on balance" demonstration, Esra Öncel, Josephine Nilsson and Wouter Jongeneel explained how oculomotor function and binocular vision affect human perception, and participants could test their balance in virtual reality assisted challenges.

At the “look inside the brain” stations, Johanna Mayer, Makoto Shimozawa and Delia Denisa Dunca showed participants sections of the mouse and human brain under a microscope and Pierre Fontanel and Laurence Picton allowed visitors to virtually explore the nervous system of a zebrafish.

Not only our participants' balance but their mental state was put to a test by performing various memory tests, at the “Mental state and memory test” station with Hong Xu and Yuxi Zhou.

At the “Genetics and headache” station, Felicia Jennysdotter Olofsgård and Christina Christodoulopou encouraged both young and old visitors to try their skills in performing routine experiments used in genetic clusters headache research and were informed about most recent discoveries in the field.

Anna Canal Garcia, Blanca Zufiria Gerbolés, Mite Mijalkov, Jiawei Sun and StratNeuro adjunct board member Joana Pereira gave an introduction to structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and how it is used to study connectivity of the brain with their demonstration “BRAPH2: Interaction with different brain networks”.

Sebastian Blomé and Livia Rühr showed the meaning behind the “Pavlovian Pain” and how easy it is to trick the brain by triggering emotional responses.

Finally, Kalicharan Patra, researcher at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society and at Stockholm University, also came to present a book he has illustrated, entitled "How does the brain work?" and written by Klas Kulander, Professor of Neuroscience at Uppsala University, and the President of the Swedish Society for Neuroscience.

Swedish Society for Neuroscience

Åsa Konradsson Geuken, Associate Professor at Uppsala University and President Elect of the Swedish Society for Neuroscience (SSFN), paid us a visit and informed visitors and researchers about the Swedish Society for Neuroscience.