Brain Awareness Week 2022

At long last, this year CR researchers were finally able to celebrate Brain Awareness Week in the best way possible - doing science with kids! The activities took place over two days, one at a school in Amadora and the other at Lisbon’s Science Centre, called “Pavilhão do Conhecimento”. 

At the Pedro D’Orey da Cunha school, one could hear the kids’ voices even from the outside of the building, sounding “Uhh!” and “Ahh!” in unison. You would think they were watching a magic show, but no, it was actually a science presentation with videos of flickering neurons and mice playing hide and seek with investigators. 

Soon after the opening presentations, it was “hands-on” time, with the 80 fourth graders moving from science station to science station, learning about robots, recording the activity of their own muscles, and fishing for banana DNA.

Since some of the activities were designed  by the “Science of the Walls” team members, an initiative that taps into the power of urban art, the event also featured less traditional science-art stations, one in which the kids traced shiny brains of fruit flies on the school-walls and another where they spray-painted DNA strands, neurons and robots on coloured paper. 

At Pavilhão do Conhecimento, 50 second and fourth graders explored the senses. After finding out how an animal without ears can listen and discovering that our brain has a sensory map, it was time for some olfactory action!

How does the brain associate smells with places? Divided into groups, kids (and curious teachers!) sniffed five different odours and, without seeing what they were smelling, had to answer two questions: What is that smell? And where does this smell take you?

Some were really easy to identify, like alcohol. But curiously, this particular smell evoked in adults and children very different associations. For adults it was definitely the smell of a hospital, or the experience of getting a shot. Children, on the other hand, were sure it was the smell of their school, or that it was that smell that is just pretty much everywhere… Other smells were more difficult to identify, like cinnamon and vanilla, but easy to link to a place, “it smells like that bakery in my street!”. It was lunch time. And they were all hungry, maybe that also had something to do with the quick association! 

The activities were created and ran by these lovely people: 

Abel Sagodi
Ana Beatriz Machado
Catarina Ramos
Charlie Rosher
Cindy Poo 
Daniela Pereira
Hedi Young
Inês Laranjeira 
João Cruz
João Frazão
Laura Ward
Liad Hollender
Margarida Brotas
Margarida Pinto
Rory Beresford
Saheli Roy

By Liad Hollender, Science writer and editor of the CCU Communication, Outreach and Events team & Catarina Ramos, Co-coordinator of the CCU Communication, Outreach and Events team.