By AMY ADAMS

Throughout February neuroscience graduate students gave Palo Alto seventh-graders a science class to remember. Armed with bags and buckets of brains, the grad students toured local middle schools in their yearly effort to teach kids about the brain.

At Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School on Thursday, students in Greg Rice’s seventh-grade class were well prepared for brain day. In a room decorated with pictures of the brain and brain structures, the kids peppered grad students Moriah Thomason, Marlene Cohen, Geoffrey Meissner and Katy Armstrong with questions about how the brain works and what happens when the brain doesn’t work normally.

Some of the questions had been building for weeks. “Whenever they asked questions I didn’t know the answer to, I told them to hang on for brain day,” Rice said. Although the graduate students didn’t have all the answers – even Stanford researchers can’t explain why we dream or exactly how we remember – they did help the kids understand all the roles the brain plays in day-to-day life.

After an initial question-and-answer session, the class divided into groups and rotated through the three learning stations. By the end of the class, the kids had joined 12 years worth of brain day alumni, all starting when William Newsome, PhD, professor of neurobiology, had kids in the Palo Alto schools. The program, which is funded by community members, has since expanded to include all local middle schools.

Moriah Thomason shows students structures inside the brain. The gaps hold fluid that keeps the brain moist. Other brain slices show the regions that hold memories or connect the two halves of the brain. Photo: Amy Adams

Katy Armstrong explains why tiny mouse brains look different than brains from sheep, rats or dogs. It’s more than just size – the brains are a different shape depending on the needs of the animal. Fish brains are made for motion, whereas dog brains have large regions for processing smell. Photo: Amy Adams

Geoffrey Meissner holds a spinal cord before passing it around the table. The whole brains show the convoluted surface and distinct regions for processing sound and vision or for thinking. Touching these preserved brains is different from touching the real thing – fresh brains are about as firm as gelatin, according to Thomason. Photo: Amy Adams