Neuroscience Club Maps the Human Brain
“The best thing about Neuroscience Club is that we do mostly hands-on stuff. We go to Dartmouth, and invite speakers from Dartmouth to visit the campus. The club opens its doors to anyone who wants to participate and learn something new” says Yan ’18, President of Kimball Union’s Neuroscience Club. The club has been around for roughly 5 years, under the guidance of faculty member, Elysia Burroughs.
This year, The Neuroscience Club had the opportunity to participate in a ‘citizen science’ project called EyeWire. Burroughs, Science Teacher and Neuroscience Club Advisor, elaborates, “Citizen science projects take thousands of people and train them how to collect data specific to each project. Once trained, each person is able to collect data and add to the collection of data.” EyeWire, developed by Sebastian Seung from Princeton University, is an online game that “allows you to graph and map the neurons of the brain. Because we have so many of them, it’s really complex to find an individual one.” Seung created the game by allowing a user to find the neurons, which allows one to see the really small or extensive complexities.
Burroughs continues, “The human brain has over 80 billion neurons . . . Our students have been tracing individual neurons in EyeWire. The project takes patience, attention to detail and critical thinking to determine if an area of each micrograph really is a part of the neuron. With practice, our students have been successful in being able to accurately ID most of the neurons they have worked with.”
Reflecting on The Neuroscience Club’s contribution to EyeWire, Yan concludes, “It was very useful to people who were at the club for the first time, especially those who haven’t taken a lot of anatomy-based science classes. It really helped them to understand how complex our brain is. It’s not a piece of meat – there’s so much more to it. You could spend the whole activity on one tiny little neuron that you can’t even see with the naked eye.”
Thank you Yan and Ms. Burroughs, for sharing this wonderful experience, and stay tuned for more news from the Hilltop.
This year, The Neuroscience Club had the opportunity to participate in a ‘citizen science’ project called EyeWire. Burroughs, Science Teacher and Neuroscience Club Advisor, elaborates, “Citizen science projects take thousands of people and train them how to collect data specific to each project. Once trained, each person is able to collect data and add to the collection of data.” EyeWire, developed by Sebastian Seung from Princeton University, is an online game that “allows you to graph and map the neurons of the brain. Because we have so many of them, it’s really complex to find an individual one.” Seung created the game by allowing a user to find the neurons, which allows one to see the really small or extensive complexities.
Burroughs continues, “The human brain has over 80 billion neurons . . . Our students have been tracing individual neurons in EyeWire. The project takes patience, attention to detail and critical thinking to determine if an area of each micrograph really is a part of the neuron. With practice, our students have been successful in being able to accurately ID most of the neurons they have worked with.”
Reflecting on The Neuroscience Club’s contribution to EyeWire, Yan concludes, “It was very useful to people who were at the club for the first time, especially those who haven’t taken a lot of anatomy-based science classes. It really helped them to understand how complex our brain is. It’s not a piece of meat – there’s so much more to it. You could spend the whole activity on one tiny little neuron that you can’t even see with the naked eye.”
Thank you Yan and Ms. Burroughs, for sharing this wonderful experience, and stay tuned for more news from the Hilltop.
