Cool brains

“It’s squishy, squirmy,” he declares as his finger makes the brain jiggle. Made of peach-flavored Jello, condensed milk and food colouring, the brain looks like cheese macaroni that’s been left at the back of the stove for a few days. The boy then knocks on his own brain: one, two, three.  “It’s a good thing we’ve got our skulls.”

“Yes,” agrees Amanda Green, a Dalhousie PhD student. She gives the wobbly brain a poke, too. “It’s soft and pliant, isn’t it? We need our hard skulls to protect our brains.”

Throughout March Break, about 30 members of the Students in Neuroscience Society have taking shifts at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History. Tying into the museum’s theme of Arctic Adventure, the graduate students are talking to kids about “cool brains” – the brains of hibernating animals – to discuss how creatures such as squirrels, bears, frogs and bats survive when their body temperature drops and for long periods without food. The students come from a range of disciplines, from physiology to pharmacology and biophysics.

How hibernating creatures induce and survive in a near-death state – known as torpor – has long fascinated scientists. In particular, researchers looking at ways of treating strokes in humans are interested in how the brains of these animals endure the rigors of hibernation without, as master’s student Michelle Black puts it, “turning into mush.”

Other brainy activities: Lecture: ‘Brain Repair, Neurogenesis and Parkinson's Disease:  A Roadmap for the Future of Treatment’ Dr. Harold Robertson, Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University Friday, March 14, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., Room 4263, Life Sciences Centre. Hosted by Society for Neuroscience   Social including the screening of films from the ‘Brains on Film’ contest (coordinated by the Undergraduate Neuroscience Society at Dalhousie) Friday, March 14, 2008; 4:30 to 6 p.m., first floor lounge, Department of Psychology, Life Sciences Centre Hosted by Neuroscience Institute, Dalhousie University

“When you have a stroke, reduced oxygen and blood flow leads to brain damage,” adds Rahia Mashoodh, a master’s student in psychology and neuroscience. “If you could somehow mimic the hibernating brain, you could protect the brain from further damage.”

Strokes produce waves of brain cell destruction. The halting of the blood flow stems the brain's supply of oxygen and glucose, immediately slaying a core group of cells. Even after blood flow resumes, additional groups of nearby cells continue to succumb to the stressful event.

Kids get into grey matter: fascinated by what brains look like and how they work. At the museum, they can take apart a plastic model of a brain to see what’s inside. And they get to do a brainy craft: making neurons of round stickers (the cell body) and pipe cleaners, which pose as dendrites and axons. The grey matter of the human brain is comprised of billions of these neurons, the cells that send and receive electro-chemical signals to and from the brain and nervous system.

“It’s good to able to explain things in language children can understand. It makes us remember what got us so excited about neuroscience in the first place,” says Ms. Mashoodh, 23, who was taken aback when a six-year-old boy asked her, “The cells in the brain… what do they have to do with deoxy-ribonucleic acid?”

“That’s DNA to you and me,” she adds in an aside.

Ms. Black says it was a second-year class, Introduction to Neuroscience (NESC 2470) that had her intrigued by this field of study.

“When I realized our thoughts had a physical space in the brain, I was hooked. I think that’s the coolest thing ever,” says Ms. Black, 34, a sleep researcher. “From day-one, I thought it was super interesting.”