Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente

Students from Pre-k and Middle School attended one talk and went to 3 workshop activities during BAW 2017. They learned about the evolution of the mammalian brain and parts of cortex involved with speech, writing, thinking, dreaming, tasting, touching, olfactory and visual system. Students were exposed to popcorn smells, bell sounds, colorful slides and movements. They builded & colored their own nervious system using a bath cap attached to a looped thread. They touched pre-fixed rat and mice brains using lab gloves & decorated brain jellies in order to learn how important is vascularization of the brain; at the end they ate jellies. Students from High School and College, attended conferences, poster presentation and the workshop “Handling of mice and rat pre-fixed brains”. They learned to mount, fix & stain brain slices in a slide, and to identify fibers from neuronal cell bodies in a microscope. This was the first time we went out to teach about the brain and the nervious system to almost every scholar grades. It was worthy to spent several weeks preparing the materials and speeches for the students. It was a very rewarding and satisfactory experience, although marathonic!. I am really grateful how much we learned from this Brain Awareness Week. We acknowledge every single Institution that opened their clasrooms & auditoriums for us. An special thankful to Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatria for the time we dedicated to BAW & Instituto de Biotecnología UNAM for allowing us to use their Installations to record a disseminating video clip of science.

We belong to the National Institutes of Health however population in general was not aware of it. It was an excellent way to let people know about the basic research we do in there and also about the psychiatric disorders that are treated in our hospital on the clinic side. We reached communities from all the neighboring states around Mexico City, in average 3 hours trip from our work´s place. Many students were interested in brain science.

There are so many Institutions that are not aware of this celebration!, it was awesome that after we did all our presentations, we were invited to participate in many other Kindergartens, elementary schools, High schools and College for the incoming years!. If you feel inspired to let your lab for a week, knock any Institutional door, there will be always someone welcoming you to participate on this wonderful event.

I suggest a way for partners to upload our pictures on Facebook by event, not separately. It keeps people following events one by one.