Brackett Elementary School 2003
International  Brain Awareness Week Visit

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center hosted fifth graders from the Brackett Elementary School in Arlington, MA in observance of the 7th annual International Brain Awareness Week. Ms. LeiLanie D'Agostino's and Ms. Colleen Gorman’s classes enthusiastically participated at the eight different locations throughout the center where demonstrations and hands-on activities about the brain and behavior took place.

We would like to thank Jeffrey Baker, Jen Broderick, Donna Caira, Carol Curtin, Carol Imposimato (photographer), Dr. Marjorie Lees, Sarah Luthern, veteran guide John Rochford, and Maureen Zuromsky for volunteering as "tour" guides. We greatly appreciated their time, effort and energy.

The children all participated in a Brain Awareness Week Essay contest. Teachers and scientists collaborated in the difficult judging, but in the end, awarded 3 honorable mentions and first through third places for each class, complete with certificates and prizes.

2003 Shriver Center Brain Awareness Week Essay Winners from the 5th Grade at the Brackett School, Arlington, MA

From Ms. D’Agostino’s class: Honorable Mention – Alivia Carter, Amanda Strominger, and Jessie Cone; 3rd Place -  Simon Ginet; 2nd Place – Olivia Kostigen; 1st Place – Jackson Kusiak

From Ms. Gorman’s class:  Honorable Mention –  Jordan Gilson, Amelia Piazza, and Natalie Gallen; 3rd Place – Alison Glaser; 2nd Place – Lauren Duddy;  1st Place – Nick Chavny.

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 2003 at the Shriver Center.

Optical Illusions

“By the end we knew a whole lot about the eye and all its functions and weaknesses”    …”we moved along to some eye tricks and learned about cones and rods.”  ” Also my friends and I did experiments [with the help of Dr. Teresa Mitchell] that confused your brain.  We learned how to find your blind spot as well.”   “ Your cones help you see color and your rods help you see light.  If you stare at something for a long time, your cones and rods will reverse the color when you stop and look away. Another thing I learned is that everyone has a blind spot that is in the back of your eye.”   “However, you have a blind spot in both eyes, but they don’t overlap so you can see everything!  Thank goodness I have 2 eyes!”

Taste and Smell

“ Your taste has a lot to do with your smell. (My jelly bean was orange..Yum!”     ”We noticed how our nose does a great deal of the work to help you taste things.  This one was really good. As part of the experiment [explained by Denitza Raitcheva], we had to close our eyes and hold our noses. When we held our noses, we could hardly taste the jelly beans at all. After the first two jelly beans though, we were allowed to pig out. What a tasty science lesson!” “..also learned how my sense of smell contributes to what things taste like. First we closed our eyes and held our noses. The reason that we had to close our eyes is that often if we see a color we associate with a flavor….Also smells trigger memories.”

Memory

“We went to a room with memory activities [presented by Dr. Michael Carlin, Rachel Leabman, and Kate Williams].  We looked at pictures that tricked your eyes.”    “ We then looked at a computer with a picture on its screen. We had to find the blinking object to move on to the next picture. The first few were easy, just run away bedposts and window shutters, but then it got a lot harder…This shows that memory isn’t always accurate. I could have sworn that I saw an octopus.”     “ We also saw pictures that was something but could actually be something else or what you thought it was.”     “ Next, we had to give our brains a little while to have it memorized (or forget it!), so we talked about why the way you say a sentence or why the different word you use can change your memory of something.”

Functional MRI

…how they [Ben Wallace] teach children to be still in the MRI using the FMRI.”    “For an MRI to work they need people to be still for 30 minutes. So for children what they do is they have your favorite movie playing and there is a string above your head and if you move your head the movie shuts off for twenty seconds.”     “ What an interesting way to get kids to keep still!” I tried it, without getting a scan of course, and it was so cool.”    “An X-Ray is used to see bones inside a person’s body. But if a person has a problem with their brain, doctors need to see inside their head”    “Being in there seemed fun, and I hope it’ll be enough practice if I have to get a real MRI.”

Chick Development

“We put the bowl under a microscope.  The eye was very big and you could see the body.”     “It was cool to se a chick that was just beginning to form!”    “ The embryos slowly grow over time until they are ready to hatch.”    ”If you’ve ever been wondering why there is a yolk in an egg, it’s because the chick feeds off the yolk’s nutrients before it hatches. Then the scientist [Dr. Peter McCaffery] put the embryo under a microscope for us to see its forming brain and body.”      “We got to see the heart, veins, and arteries, working to bring nutrients to the to-be-body.  We also got to see the to-be-eyes! That was cool to see under a microscope!”

Gender Differences

“…in this station we learned [from Dr. Aline Davis] how the activity going on inside boys’ and girls’ brains is different when they are working on something, even when they are working on exactly the same thing! This station had three tests. They were the color test, the memory test and the target practice test. “    “Lastly, one thing that I learned about the brain is that boy’s and girl’s brains are very different.”    “ The fourth computer showed a man and a female’s brain when they were doing the same task which was reading off a list of words.  It showed that the male was only working one side of its brain and the female was working both sides.”   “The last thing I learned about was actually a question:  Is there a difference between the way boys and girls think?”

DNA and Mutant Mice

“Here we learned about DNA, genes and mutation. “What we learned was pretty amazing. For one thing, did you know that there is 6 feet of DNA in a single cell/!?! I didn’t either.”    The person [Dr. Tim Henion]  in the lab showed us how DNA was a blueprint of your body. The man showed us some mice and how DNA had caused their mutations. One mouse had a funny walk, another had different colors of fur, and another had a weird tail.”      “Well, to start off, DNA is twirly, but without a microscope it just looks like a string….Genes say what color your hair and eyes are, or maybe that you have skinny feet.  Sometimes you have to look beyond your parents to see where genes come from.””

Visual Learning

“..at first we had to throw the three objects…. After we threw them a few times we put on the glasses and when I put them on I realized they weren’t any normal pair of glasses…they shifted your vision”     “…but then we had to take the goggles off and try it the original way. Many of us didn’t get even one beanbag back into the bucket…As dizzy as we were after we had done it a few times, it was a lot of fun!”    “ Then we took off our goggles and our shots kept rearing to the left because we were used to having the goggles on.  And after about one or two rounds we got used to how we first threw the bags. These experiments [and Dr. Jim Crandall] showed us how quickly our brains learn things and it was a fun way of experiencing it.”