Illuminating the Brain

The 100 billion brain cells that we all have make up distinct regions of the brain. Each region is associated with a different type of task. One of the first things scientists learned about the brain was what happened when one area was damaged. My interest in this project came from trying to understand personality disorder and where in the brain changes were taking place. In order to teach children about the regions of a model brain in an exciting way I wired each brain region with fiber optic cable stemming from a colored LED. I applied switches so that each region could be lit independently. This illuminated brain will hopefully be a useful teaching tool for BioBus in the future.