NeurotechEU at Brain Awareness Week

NeurotechEU at Brain Awareness week

Brain Awareness Week is a worldwide initiative to promote public interest and endorsement of brain science. Annually held in March, the event organisers arrange creative events in their localities to showcase the marvels of the brain and how advancements in brain science are transforming our daily existence.

NeurotechEU partner universities are joining Brain Awareness Week between March 13 and 19, 2023. Some of the initiatives related to NeurotechEU are highlighted below:

Brain Awareness Week at Radboud University (Netherlands)

For the international Brain Awareness Week, brain researchers from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University are organising a market stall about the brain in Nijmegen.

NeurotechEU will demonstrate the RGSapp on the market, an app developed for stroke rehabilitation. The app is developed by Eodyne Systems, in collaboration with SPECS, PHRASE and AISN.

Other activities on the market include discovering the secrets of the brain, such as: How you can sing a song in your mind, how you can cycle with your eyes closed, and remember the smell of your favourite food. Activities include a quiz, viewing brains through a microscope, and playing brain-pong.

Brain Awareness Week at the University Miguel Hernandez (Spain)

The Institute of Neurosciences in Spain, a joint centre of the University Miguel Hernandez and the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), is hosting its annual Brain Awareness Week. This year, 2000 children and youth from 58 different primary and high schools will attend on scheduled visits, plus the general public.

Activities include an interactive showroom where visitors can experiment with sensory illusions, molecular biology, electrophysiology, animal model research (fruit flies, zebrafish, eggs, and mice), histology, and human anatomy.

Also, researchers offer short talks adapted to a young audience about different topics, such as: How your memory is formed, Neuroscience and ultrasounds, The Glia, defenders of the CNS, Why we need to sleep, Hamsters addicted to TikTok, Learn to take care of your brain, How drugs affect the brain, Shut up I’m blind, Secrets of the brain, Gender identity and critical thinking, Brain plasticity: the war of the senses, amongst others.

Visitors can enjoy a microscopy art exhibit and learn about Women in Neuroscience, NeurotechEU and rare diseases in different stands near the interactive exhibition.

On Wednesday the 14th, a group of local and visiting researchers offered a talk about the legacy of Cajal in the XXI century at a central location in Alicante.

Brain Awareness Week at the University of Debrecen (Hungary)

This year, the University of Debrecen joined the national Brain Awareness Week program series again.

Péter Szűcs, director of the Institute of Anatomy, Histology, and Development of the DE General Faculty of Medicine (DE ÁOK), about Brain Awareness Week: on Monday and Tuesday in four Debrecen secondary schools, DE ÁOK scientists gave lectures related to brain research to interested high school students as part of biology classes. Among other things, various topics were addressed, such as whether men tolerate pain worse than women, what the brain researchers’ 3D glasses – the electron microscope capable of, and why and how our brains age.

In the second half of Brain Research Week, on Thursday 16th and Friday 17th, in the beautiful Villa Sesztina, researchers participating in the international university consortium NeurotechEU will hold free lectures, primarily for university students. “We tried to select these topics in such a way as to present the interdisciplinary nature of NeurotechEU”, – Péter Szűcs explained.

In the room with 40-50 seats, Péter Szűcs will outline the essence and goals of the NeurotechEU collaboration and the role of the University of Debrecen. The presentation by a neurologist from the University of Cluj and a member of the Technical Faculty of the University of Debrecen promises to be particularly interesting. The latter will be about the development of devices controlled by robots.

One of the students of DE ÁOK will talk about rehabilitation procedures combined with neurotechnology that can be used for stroke or other neurodegenerative diseases. Participants will also be presented with plastinated brain preparations preserved for educational purposes.