Erasmus MC – Department of Neuroscience and Psychiatry

We, the departments of neuroscience and psychiatry, hosted an open day in our faculty building. Over 200 visitors participated in our event, which was divided in a morning and an afternoon session. All visitors needed to register on our website. Here they also had to choose their own program, since the workshops and lab-tours could only handle so many people. All participants were welcomed with coffee and tea and a 30 minutes introductory lecture from one of the professors about the brain, a ‘brain 101’. After this, the visitors participated in over 20 workshops, lab-tours and lectures, and enjoyed the neuroscience art-gallery. The visitors found their way in our departments with the help of the volunteers, all students and employers of our departments. The 20 minutes interactive workshops and lab-tours took place 3 times per morning and afternoon session. Here visitors learned about real human and animal brains, they grew stem-cells, experienced auditory illusions, got their balance tested, underwent hand-eye coordination experiments, tested the limits of their visual system, extracted DNA from bananas, learned about brain simulations and experienced what it means to work in a state-of-the-art laboratory. Next to the workshops, the visitors could also enjoy the following lectures: How the visual system works, using optical illusions. A lecture about non-human senses were the visitors learned about e.g. echo location and whiskers. A third lecture was a dynamic discussion. Here the visitors could ask anything brain-related to the professor, who, with the help of online illustrations and examples, answered all questions. Also, there were two ethically challenging lectures: A lecture about the use of stem-cells in sci

Group bonding. Awareness of the knowlegde we have. The joy of explaining research to the general public.

Small initiatives already have a big impact