St. Louis community learns about healthy and unhealthy brains
St. Louis Neuroscience Outreach had the second Amazing Brain Carnival (ABC) of the year at the SciFest: Health and Safety Expo on Saturday, November 19, 2022. Visitors saw the actual human brain, front and center of the ABC exhibits and were excited to touch it.
They learned about activities and choices that support brain health through games made by ABC volunteers. The Neurodegeneration Game showed them how everyone gets plaques, but some get more and others clear less, and that’s how neurodegeneration progresses. The brain plasticity game was a colorful way to learn about the importance of sleep for learning. At the Jellybean Taste Test, children were surprised to realize that the nose is also important for tasting. Children were charmed by the hand-sewn neuron toys that showed them how neurons connect and talk to each other at synapses. The classic ABC demos on Stroop Effect, Proprioception and Prism Goggles showed the visitors how healthy brains can encounter illusions.
Kayla Hannon (left), a graduate student in the Bijsterbosch Lab in the Department of Radiology, and Cat Camacho (right), a graduate student in the Barch Lab in the Department of Psychiatry, await visitors with an actual human brain (behind their hands). 
A young visitor tries tossing a ball into a bin with prism goggles on. 
Suranjana Pal, PhD, a postdoc in the Richards Lab in the Department of Neuroscience, displays the spiker boxes that measure compound action potentials in muscles. 
Dr. William Buscher, Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics, talk with his daughter (in pink, left) and other children about neurodegeneration using a game built by Dr. Tom Mahan (postdoc in the Developmental Biology Department). Dr. Buscher sports a healthy neuron on his cheek and a degenerated neuron on his arm made with face paint. 
Mel Mallard, a graduate student in Psychological and Brain Sciences, explains to visitors at this booth the Stroop effect, in which their brain experiences a conflict while reading the name of a color written in a different color.