Hi everyone, here is a question: I am one of the organizers of the Dutch version of the International BrainBee (https://thebrainbee.org/ and https://hersenolympiade.nl/en/). These are exciting Neuroscience competitions to get high school students acquainted with neuroscience. Now of course, as a computational neuroscientist, I think the competition should also include some computational neuroscience! I already contacted the international BrainBee about this, and they’re quite interested. So here’s my question: who knows of some texts or other introductory material that could be suitable for such a competition? Or who would like to help us (i.e. the Dutch BrainBee) develop some?
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Have you heard of the Neuronify mobile app? I have tried it and it is quite easy and intuitive, definitely high-school-student-friendly. Can be used on a computer too. Available for a lot of operating systems.
Be aware there might be geographical issues with access. I sadly wasn’t allowed to download it from the Swedish Apple store.
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Cool, no I wasn’t, I will take a look!
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Hi Fleur, I don’t have as much experience as you, but from what I noticed combining computational neuroscience with robotics works really well. I have given presentations to school children where we used Lego mindstorm robots as Braitenberg vehicles to explain simple neural pathways and the kids really liked it.
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Fleur, this is US-based, but there is a small company in Ann Arbor, MI, Backyard Brains, that specializes in just this. You may find something useful at their website,
and perhaps they would be interested in going intercontinental in general? They have trainers in San Diego, so it would be convenient to meet, if the BrainBee is in person in 2021.
I hope they are of some use to you.
Yeah, I know them, we try to buy our rewards there (but delivery times are long for Europe), they’re really cool!