The Brain Circuits and Behavior Lab participates in the Outreach activity "Bojos per la Salut" (May 2019)

Some members of the Brain Circuit and Behavior Lab (Balma, Yerko, Albert and Jaime) participated in the program Bojos per la Salut which La Pedrera Foundation organized every year and in which IDIBAPS is a constant collaborator. In this program around 25 student from high-school (16-17 years hold) attend during saturdays to talks and visits to different laboratories in our institute. In our visit we first gave them an introduction about “what is Computational and Sytems Neuroscience”. Then we divided the group in small groups and showed the animal behavioral set-up in which rats and mice perform decision making and working memory tasks. Then we introduced them the concept of Working Memory and prepare a psychophysical test for them to carry out. They had to report the location of colored visual stimuli after holding those stimuli in working memory for a variable period of time (from 1 to 5 seconds). Then they had to plot their accuracy recalling the items as a function of the delay duration and check by themselves how the content of working memory is transient and deteriorates quickly with time. We finally explained the research in brain-machine interfaces and let the students play with the Human-to-Human Interaction kits from BackYard Brains. They literaly loved to control their mates’ arm!

Here is a demo video from Backyard Brains so that you can see how fun these devices can be: