Academic League of Neuroscience

On Saturday, March 19th, 9 AM to 1 PM, in downtown Divinópolis (MG, Brazil), under Cristiane Queixa Tilelli, Ph.D. and Maira de Castro Lima, Ph.D. supervision, undergraduate students from the Federal University of Sao Joao del Rei, Campus Divinópolis, from the local Academic League of Neuroscience (LANE), organized the interactive exibit named “LANE in Downtown: Emotion and Memory”. The students invited people on the street to enter our tent, where several activities were provided: Observing brain anatomy, using anatomic models from the Anatomy Laboratory; Discussing about central nervous system health maintenance, emphasizing aerobic exercises, cognitive training, feeding behavior and use of helmet for head protection; Constructing definitions for basic terms like: learning, memory, emotion, feelings, etc; Listening to musics with different rithms, using the opportunity to discuss the limbic system em emotions; Playing a memory game to discuss learning and memory systems. Children were also invited to paint and play a memory game adapted for their age and handouts with curiosities about the nervous system were given to those who did not want to participate in the activities. We also collected suggestions for the next B.A.W. themes and recorded the event with annotations, photos and small movies. Our objectives were to prepare undergraduate students to talk about memory and emotions in simple language and put them in contact with the city population, as well as reach the general public for increasing awareness on brain function. We evaluated the event as highly successful and pleasant, and intend to participate again next year, increasing the number of people both organizing and attending the event.

Been a BAW official event geve credibility to the organization committee. Besides, our students felt proud to be part of a world-recognized event. As said before, BAW would have been even more important if the materials could have been easily adapted to our language – we offer to make this translation for a next year, if Dana is interested. Of course, having the oportunity to receive material from BAW being in another Country would be fantastic, although I do not thing this would be possible.

1) The activities we prepared were a little too long. People that came to the tent stayed for at least 5 minutes, if not more. This made the rotation slow. We were fortunate to have small number of people wanting to stop by, compared to the number of people passing by us. If more wanted to participate, we would have been in a problematic situation. So, take in consideration the time spent with each person in your event. 2) Being in downtown made a small number of people want to stop by. Most of them are there in a hurry, for some other activity. If you want more people to demonstrate interest for your event, go someware were public is for leisure time.

I do not access facebook that much. Did not check for BAW extra information in there.