Brain Awareness Week Activities (1997)

Sixth Graders of The Fitzgerald Elementary School in Waltham got a taste of life as a scientist when they visited the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center for the 1997 National Brain Awareness Week. The students took part in many "hands-on" activities presented by the researchers at the Center.

Students experience stereoscopic vision when they stop in to meet Dr. Sandy Neargarder in the Visual Perception Laboratory.

	The students gaze intently on a rat mother and her litter in Dr. William Dube's animal testing laboratory as he describes the task of auditory discrimination. Dr. Dube designed the task to test differences in cognitive performance in a rodent model of fetal alcohol syndrome.

All eyes are fixed on the portable microscope that Dr. Peter McCafferyis using to demonstrate the structure of the developing chicken visual system during "open house" visits to the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory.

	Students and their teacher, Ms. Dianne FitzMaurice, crowd around the Philips 300 transmission electron microscope while Dr. Jim Crandallloads an ultrathin specimen for examination.