This week, we each got to touch a real human brain.  The Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin Madison has an outreach kit that they allowed me to check out for demonstration for the students.  Included was:



  • one whole human brain, fixed, with the membranes on it.  No information was available on the person who donated it, for confidentiality reasons.  So all we know was that the person passed away and had chosen before their death to donate their brain to science.  It was pretty large, so we thought perhaps it belonged to a male.
  • one half human brain, fixed.  Because it was cut down the middle, we could see the inside parts of the brain easily.  I'll detail those below.  It was smaller than the whole brain, so perhaps it belonged to a woman.  
  • gloves and a tray for looking at the brains.
  • two brain exhibits, showing the brains with eyes of several animals.  One had perch, frog, snake, and cat, while the other had 
  • a bag of foam brains, like the one shown here:  --->  They are squishy, like stress balls, and we could each have one to take home.  We used them later on, in one of our games.
  • two mirror writing set-ups, which are boxes that show how we use our brains to learn new skills.  You put the box together and then put a paper in the bottom, which you can see through the mirror but not directly.  You have to draw between the lines of the shape by looking through the mirror.

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