1. Exploring your brain! Splash! April 12, 2014
Find cool picture of brain for background
Splash!
April 12, 2014

2. What are we doing today? Who are we? Brainstorming
Introducing your brain
Cool things we like about the brain
Sensation
Memory
Attention
Real human and animal brains!

3. Introducing Your Brain

4. What does your brain do? ?

5. What can go wrong?

6. What’s a Brain Made Of? 100 billion neurons! Even MORE glia 10^11
Picture of brain made of cheese?
Get current estimate of number of neurons, number of glia?
Even MORE glia

7. The Neuron input processing communication output
Good picture of a neuron - label axons, dendrite, cell body
communication

8. How Does the Brain Work? 1 quadrillion synapses!! 1020 connections?
Messages get sent from neuron to neuron primarily in 2 ways
Electrical signal from one end of the cell to the other end - digital
Chemical signal from one cell to another cell - analog

9. Electrical Signals: Digital
Action potential
The brain as a circuit
The Action Potential - how a message gets passed inside a cell from the dendrites to the axon; all or nothing - there either IS a message or there IS NOT

10. Chemical Signals: Analog
Synapse - where the axon of one cell passes its message on to the dendrites of another cell using neurotransmitters
Action potential (electrical signal)
Neurotransmitters (chemical signal)
Animation of neurotransmitters getting passed across a synapse
Neurotransmitters
How drugs can affect the brain
Synapse

11. From Sensation to Action
Picture of baseball player - or relay runners handing off the baton
Timing of where it goes
Demo ruler dropping reaction time measurement
Relay race handing the message off to the next cell
Event in the world --> receptors in the eye register change in the world --> gets an electrical signal that causes it to release chemical signal to the next cell in the path --> gets to brain - consciousness? --> within brain - from memory you figure out what you are supposed to do with this sensory information --> send that message to the “desire to act” part --> sends message to right muscles --> act
Your nervous system is like a relay race - passing on messages from one neuron to another, going from sensation to action

12. Your Brain is Specialized
Parietal lobe
Attention
Touch
Frontal lobe
Reasoning and planning
Emotions
Personality
Occipital lobe
Vision
Cartoon of different lobes - arrow pointing out the different lobes and what they do
Different parts of the brain are specialized to do different things
In the next stations we’ll talk in more detail about what regions of the brain are responsible for those particular behaviors but here’s an overview
Memory
Hearing
Cerebellum
Temporal lobe
Motor coordination
Balance

13. On to more cool brain stuff!
Interactive Demos
1. Sensation
2. Memory
3. Attention

14. And now the best part! Brain stations Whole human brains
Human brain slices
Animal brains

15. What is one cool new thing about the brain that you learned today?
Thanks!