Dana Foundation Blog

Brain Awareness Week Photo Gallery

Our Brain Awareness Week 2012 photo gallery is growing! Check out some great pictures from our BAW partners around the world.

 
Poster presentation contest in BAW 2012 at Banaras Hindu University in India. (Photo courtesy of Banaras Hindu University, India)

-Ann L. Whitman

Brain Awareness Week 2012 Photos

Our Brain Awareness Week partners have begun submitting reports about their 2012 programs, and many included photos from their events. I couldn’t resists posting a few photos of some of the more artistic activities documented.

Ahmedabad International School students in Gujarat, India, competed in a painting competition organized by the department of neurology at Shalby Hospitals. (Photo courtesy of Shalby Hospitals)

Creating a Neuroscience Learning Community

This post, by Ali Sayed-Ahmad of Wayne State University, is part of an occasional series written by undergraduate neuroscience students. If you are an undergraduate interested in writing about neuroscience for the Dana blog, or a professor who might have interested students, please contact Andrew Kahn at akahn@dana.org for more information.

This school year was an exciting one for neuroscience at Wayne State University. Through our neuroscience learning community, we have promoted neuroscience by meeting our objectives of awareness, education, and outreach. A learning community (LC) gives students the close-knit, interactive experience of a small college within a major research university. Small groups of students work closely together to learn about a similar interest. Underclassmen are mentored by upperclassmen, along with a faculty advisor that facilitates discussions and activities. Being in an LC is also a great place to socialize and make friends with students who may be in your classes. Overall, it makes the college experience a lot less overwhelming for freshmen at a big university and provides upperclassmen the opportunity to hone their leadership skills.

BAW Across the Continents 2012: Europe

We've been celebrating Brain Awareness Week by highlighting events taking place across the globe: in Africa, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America. Today, we take a look at Europe. 

Europe

Brain Awareness Week has become a major campaign in Europe. There are 25 countries participating in Brain Awareness Week this year and more than 250 events. Among these 25 countries the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Romania are the most active.

The magnitude and coordination of the BAW campaign in Croatia is impressive. There are over 50 events planned throughout the country. The majority of these events are lectures on a wide range of brain-related topics including aging, emotional marketing, stress, and music. There will even be a lecture open to the general public discussing how controlling your bladder can lead to better decision-making.

There are also a number of Brain Awareness Week events taking place in the United Kingdom. Universities, neuroscience organizations and nursing homes will have lectures, exhibits, film viewings and school visits. At one university, neuroscientists, musicians, and dancers are collaborating to put together an interactive demonstration explaining how the brain allows us to learn to dance, sing, and play music.

In Germany, high school students will have a chance to learn about and use a mental type writer. In Barcelona, Spain, neuroscience fairs, workshops, and exhibits will take place throughout the city. In Italy, neuroscientists will hold a public conference on the brain and sexual behavior. Middle and high school students in Romania will be competing in a drawing contest and exhibition with the theme of the “Teen’s Sharp Mind.” In Helsinki, Finland, the Finnish Open 2012 Brain Sports Games will be presented by the Finnish Brain Sports Federation. Finns will be participating fun and easy ways to enhance and maintain mental fitness. The competition will be fierce.

This concludes our look at BAW events all around the globe!

--Simon Fischweicher

Brain Awareness Week 2012 Coming to a Close

We’re nearing the end of Brain Awareness Week and much has been going on around the world to educate people about brain function, diseases, and disorders. Nearly 800 partners across six continents signed up for BAW this year (we’re still working on Antarctica), holding a record 929 events.

To spotlight the great work and the diversity of our BAW partners, we posted a new partner interview each weekday to our homepage. These Q&As offer a lot of practical advice, useful to current partners and to those planning to participate next year. Some takeaways included tactics to keep elementary school students’ attention, how to tie a Turkish folk dancing performance to brain education, and the best ways to publicize an event.

In addition to the Q&As, we posted the fifth and final round to our Brain Bee Challenge quiz, featured links to BAW media coverage, and announced the Design a Brain Experiment Competition winner. Michaela Ennis, a senior at the Pingry School in New Jersey, is the winner of the experiment competition, and believe me, she deserves it. She proposed an examination of the effects of social defeat on anxious behavior, pinpointing the molecular mechanisms for that behavior. Senior Editor at Nature magazine Noah Gray (@noahWG) said it best in a tweet, “Brilliant, interesting & too ambitious!” Ennis will no doubt continue to produce great work as an undergrad at MIT next year.

In addition to our website, social media played a big part in spreading the word about BAW. The BAW Facebook page now has 1,636 fans, we launched a new BAW Pinterest page , and the Twitterverse was alive with BAW interactions (#brainweek). We want to give a special thanks to our social media promotional partners: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Parkinson Foundation, The Rockefeller University, and World Science Festival.

Moving from the web world to the real world, yesterday Dana staff attended an in-house BAW event on fitness. Resting in very comfortable chairs, we learned about exercise and the aging brain from Charles Mobbs, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and a past Staying Sharp panelist. He gave us a breakdown of the latest research on the subject and concluded by recommending taking 10,000 steps a day (about five miles) for optimum cognitive benefits. This doesn’t mean you have to make a point of walking five miles on the treadmill, but rather 10,000 steps throughout the whole day. That includes walking around the house, to the subway or your car to get to work, etc.

Following the lecture we were asked to rise from our comfy chairs and get physical. Divided into three groups, we did some cardio and some strength training. I’m going to be honest, it was a little harder than I expected and I cursed my decision to wear jeans that day. We all left the program feeling a little goofy and perhaps a little sore, and happy to have participated.

We took some photos, but alas, they’re still living on a camera out of office. If they’re not too embarrassing, maybe we’ll post a few next week. And speaking of photos, be sure to check out the BAW website in the coming weeks as partners post their photos and reports from this year!

-Ann L. Whitman