Brain Day is a tradition of the Stanford Neurosciences Program, started about a decade ago by a professor who was asked to fill one of those ever-present parent volunteer positions in his son’s middle school. It has since expanded to an exciting event that covers ever single middle school in Palo Alto

Today, I went to a 7th grade science class in Jordan Middle School, Palo Alto with a couple other students to teach the kids there about the brain. The 7th graders have been having classes on the brain for the last several weeks, and they’ve been looking forward to Brain Day for months! This be their first experience of handling an actual human brain.

I was in charge of the animal brain station, where we had sheep brains, dog brains, monkey brains, etc that the kids would look through and marvel at. There seemed to be a recurring misconception that brain size correlates with intelligence - but that’s obviously not true. Whales have larger brains than humans but humans are still smarter. Of course, saving the best for last, I would pull out the baboon fetus head with 1 minute remaining. It was the bodyless head of a baboon fetus that had its scalp and part of its skull removed to expose the brain - the various types of squeamish looks I got never ceased to entertain me.

It was a terrifically fun event that I hope will motivate some of the students to perhaps go into neuroscience!