Brackett Elementary School BAW Visit

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center hosted fifth graders from the Brackett Elementary School in Arlington, MA in observance of the 6th annual International Brain Awareness Week. Ms. LeiLanie D'Agostino's class enjoyed the nine different locations throughout the center where demonstrations and activities about the brain and behavior took place.

We would like to thank Serena Chang, Barbara Evans, Sarah Leupen, John Rochford, Marianne Seney, Heather Walker and Ann Walsh for volunteering as "tour" guides.

Below are pictures from each of the stations and accompanying descriptions, in the words of the school children, as to what they learned during Brain Awareness Week 2002 at the Shriver Center.

Gender Differences

At this station, students visit Dr. Aline Davis to learn about gender differences.  We did three tests, some of which girls would be better at, and visa versa.  In one of the tests you tried to hit a target that was moving back and forth on a computer screen.  In another test we tried to remember as many words as we could.  The last test was a Stroop test, here we would say the color of a word, and a word that was colored, it might say, “what is the color of this word”? Purple.  Lucky for us, Dr. Davis came in to give us the results of the tests. This was really fun and we learned a lot, too!

Baby Vision

At this station we learned about how doctors tests infant vision.  The doctor uses a special tool that looks like a bunch of wire.  These wires are attached to a baby or someone’s head and then the baby or person is hooked up to a computer which shows brain activity.  This test measures what is going on inside our brains as one is concentrating on lines located on a computer monitor. After having this explained to us, one person in each group was given the opportunity by Dr. Ann Skoczenski to demonstrate this to our classmates. We never even realized that you could study ones brain by monitoring what they were looking at.  This station was very informative and fascinating for us.

DNA and Mutant Mice

At this station we learned about DNA from Dr. Tim Henion and Denitza Raitcheva.  We extracted DNA from onions by using dishwashing detergent and alcohol.  When we pulled the DNA out of the tube, it came out as a very gooey, straight line.  Then we saw DNA as a jelly like substance.  Next we saw genetically mutated mice.  Some mice were “typical” normal and some were “non-typical”.  They were a lot of fun to watch. This station was very interesting as we have all heard of DNA, but had never seen real DNA before!

Taste and Smell

At this station we learned from Dr. Elizabeth Bless how our sense of smell and taste work.  First we filled out worksheets that asked us how we felt about objects and that was the easy part!  Next we had to identify objects by there smell.  Some of them were really hard, like the one which was pencil shavings- it was very hard to detect this smell.  Last, we had to identify a jelly bean by its taste.  When we tried to guess the taste of the bean it was very hard because we had our nose plugged.  However, when we were allowed to unplug our nose we could easily identify the flavor of the jelly bean.  We really enjoyed this station because we liked learning about our senses and we got a free bean!!

Brain Tests

At this station Dr. Adele Diamond first showed us a movie about three and four years old that took a test.  In this first part of the test, cards were sorted by shape; the shapes were stars and trucks.  In the second part of the test, cards were sorted by color, the colors were red and blue.  The three and four year olds had trouble on the second part of the test because they got confused and kept sorting by shape.  After watching these experiments we got a turn at taking this test.  We realized that your brain has trouble switching from one thing to another quickly. This was a very interesting activity and we learned a lot from it.

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