Biosystems and Integrative Sciences Institute, Faculdade de Ciencias da Universidade de Lisboa

Elementary school students experienced their first knowledge about the brain. The activities started with a short interactive lecture about the functions that the brain controls, like thinking and reasoning, but also motor control/coordination, speech and language, and control of fundamental body functions like breathing, heartbeat and digestion. A few practical activities followed, mathematical games, motor coordination and brain laterality evaluation, and brain model building, to understand the role and specialization of different cortical areas in the different functions. For middle school students the day started with two of four short lectures on distinct approaches to the study of brain function: the role of the cerebral cortex in integration of visual information and language interpretation and production, the pathological mechanisms associated with epilepsy, the technical approaches used in psychophysiology studies or the use of virtual and augmented reality approaches in psychotherapy. These are research topics currently being pursued by BioISI and FCUL researchers in the Biochemistry, Biology and Informatics fields. Students were then at the lab doing microscopic observations of brain tissue preparations of healthy and epileptic rodents and were also allowed to explore the anatomy of the sheep brain. High-school students had a similar schedule but focused on more complex themes like the role of protein aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases and artificial intelligence. They visited the epilepsy and aging lab observing a real experiment and learned in practice how to build a computer program able to perform calculus. 9 researchers, 4 students and the BioISI outreach team contributed to this initiative.

The event gave great visibility to the research about the brain being performed at the Faculty of Sciences and BioISI. Being scattered by different departments, it was a great way to give the different fields of study a sense of common goal. For the visitors, they all left asking fore more and inviting us to do more sessions at their schools, starting by the elementary school students themselves asking us to join their cultural week program.

I have participated in the past in BAW activities going to give lectures at schools. This kind of event, bringing the schools to us are much more rewarding and usefull for the students, that also get to know the university environment.