Edinburgh Neuroscience at Midlothian Science Festival 2017

Edinburgh Neuroscience researchers and students had a busy couple of weeks this month delivering a series of events and schools workshops for the Midlothian Science Festival 2017.  

Three of our getBRAINY schools workshops (getCONNECTED and getPROTECTED and getREMEMBERING) visited 8 schools to deliver 15 workshops to pupils almost 400 pupils from P6, P7 and S4 classes. Pupils learnt about different brain regions, how the brain uses chemicals to transmit information, what happens to the brain during adolescence, how we form memories and why the brain doesn't repair itself as easily as other parts of the body (and why you should wear your cycling helmet!).

We also ran two adult events:

• 'Making Sense of Stress' explored the effects of stress during early life development and how this can have life-long impact
• 'NeuroYoga' explored, with a panel of neuroscience reserachers, how yoga affects the brain. This session ended with a taster yoga session.

Our Wellcome Trust Translational Neuroscience PhD students spent a day at the Science Alive Gala Day at the Lasswade High School Centre talking about brain functions, making brain hats with the younger children, and demonstrating with real brain dissections. At the Dalkeith Science Gala Day we explored different animal brains. In total our drop-in stands reached about 800 people.