Brain Awareness Week 2022 #UoBBAW
- Location
- Midlands Arts Centre
- Dates
- Saturday 19 March 2022 (10:00-17:00)
The University of Birmingham will be hosting a celebration of brain research this year, in honour of Brain Awareness Week 2022. We'll be showcasing our amazing academics' groundbreaking research through a variety of public engagement activities on Saturday 19 March at the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) and on Sunday 20 March at the ThinkTank Museum.
Saturday 19 March at the MAC
Medical neuroscience: Neurodegeneration, brain trauma, tumours and trials
Led by:
Unlock the secrets of medical neuroscience with neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, clinicians, clinical trialists, and allied health professionals from the University of Birmingham and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trusts.
Our experts will be available to answer your questions on brain injury and disease, and offer insights into neuroscience research, neurosurgery, brain-related medicines and trials. A range of hands on activities will help you discover how brain fluid protects your brain, why the brain is divided into grey and white matter, how neurones and other brain cells connect together to form circuits, and how different areas of your brain serve different functions. In addition, students from the Medical School will be on hand to help school children learn about the STEM-related degree courses available at the University of Birmingham.
‘Brainiversity Challenge’
Led by:
- Dr Ruth Pauli and Dr Yidian Gao, CHBH & School of Psychology Postdoctoral Researchers from the SCAN Lab
- Jessica Todorov, CHBH & School of Psychology PhD Student from the SCAN Lab
- Emily Kuhn, MSci Psychology and Psychological Research Student also part of the SCAN Lab
Brainiversity Challenge is a set of games and activities with a brain-theme, i.e., each activity will be linked to a particular part of the brain or a famous idea/method from psychology/neuroscience research. This will include:
- Animal Brain Matching Game (Match the animal to its brain)
- ‘Guess the Fruit’ from the MRI scan image (Guess which fruit or vegetable has had an MRI scan?)
- ‘True or False?’ Brain Facts Challenge
- Guesstimate Challenge
- Logic puzzles, riddles, games, and optical illusions
BRAINZ - A Smartphone Game for Emotion Control
Our research team are creating a new smartphone game for young people that trains emotion control strategies. You are invited to test out the prototype and find out about its ongoing development. In the game, you will need to work as a Trainee Scientist to outwit a shrunken Zombie so that you may fix a Professor's brain and help them to regain control of their emotions. Beware of the slime!
Looking into the brain of a fly
Led by:
Come and discover with us the amazing brain of the fruit-fly Drosophila and why and how it is pushing research boundaries. We are scientists from the University of Birmingham using the fruit-fly to understand how the brain is formed, how it changes throughout life, how it works, how it enables us to make our daily life decisions, as well as what happens in brain disease and how we can learn to promote regeneration and repair. There will be displays demonstrating how we use fruit-fly genetics to address those questions, investigate cell biology and neural circuits in the brain. We'll show how fruit-flies enable us to link genes, neural circuits, brain health, disease and behaviour. We will show you a large fly and fly brain that will open your eyes to genetics and how the brain is built. We will teach you how to make your own fly brain! Come to talk to scientists and ask any questions you may be curious about!
