‘Brain Day’ gives area middle-schoolers brainy insights
Annual educational rite brings neurology into area schools

By AMY ADAMS

February in many schools means Black History Month, Heart Month or cupids visiting with heart-shaped cookies and cards. For Palo Alto middle school students, it’s the month when the brains pay a visit.

Every seventh-grader who has passed through Palo Alto schools in the last 12 years has seen a zoo’s worth of brains with their delicate features and intricate folds, thanks to Brain Day events organized by William Newsome, PhD, professor of neurobiology at the School of Medicine, and his fellow neuroscience researchers.

Newsome first toted brains to Palo Alto schools when his kids were students. The program was such a hit that he and neuroscience graduate students from the medical school now visit all middle schools in the district with their collection of brains, brain tissue and preserved slices.

Moriah Thomason, a graduate student who coordinates Brain Day activities, said that before the brains appear, the middle school students review the many roles the brain plays in such areas as emotion, memory, thinking and, of course, brainstorming.

Once they’ve thought about what the brain does, students review what happens when the brain fails. “This part becomes personal sometimes,” Thomason said. Many students know people or have family members with brain disturbances such as degenerative diseases or mood imbalances.

Then the brains themselves appear, followed by the inevitable first question: Did the brain come from a male or a female? “We have to reassure students that all human brains were donated and that we can’t tell sex based on a brain,” said Thomason. The students then don gloves to learn how differences in animals’ lifestyles and behaviors are reflected in the brains.

For example, Thomason said human brains have large cerebrums for thinking, learning and retaining information, such as that learned in seventh grade. Likewise, rabbit brains have a well-developed cerebellum compared with other animals for controlling the complex movements necessary for escaping predators.

By viewing brain slices, the students also can see the regions that fail in such conditions as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Brain Day schedule

Neurology presentations for a younger crowd travel to Palo Alto’s three middle schools throughout February. The roadshow makes the following stops:

Terman Middle School
Feb. 4-6

Jordan Middle School
Feb. 10

Jane Lathrop Middle School
Feb. 26-27