Backyard Brains Neuroscience Experiments for Everyone

Experiments

Welcome to the Backyard Brains experiments page for scientists, teachers and amateurs alike. Below you will find all of our open source experiments, lesson plans and useful information. If you're looking for a science fair project, several of our experiments come with suggestions. If you are an educator, you may be interested in what Educational Standards our lesson plans adhere too. Additionally, we list which specific standards are being met at the bottom of each lesson plan. For teachers interested in our experiments, check out our Teacher's Guides section!

Advanced Neuro-Prosthetics: Take Someone's Free Will

Use the same technology in cutting edge neuro-prosthetics to impose your will upon your friends and enemies!

Control Machines with Your Brain

You've seen your muscles' electrical activity, now it is time to harness it! Use your Muscle SpikerShield to control electronic devices with your brain-generated muscle signals.

Record & Manipulate Live Neurons!

Listen to action potentials and view spikes in real time using your SpikerBox. An excellent starting point for anyone interested in neuroscience.

The Neuron SpikerBox Pro: Conduction Velocity

How fast do Action Potentials travel? Let's use physics, electrophysiology, and an Earthworm to find out!

Record Electricity from Your Muscles!

How do your muscles work? Listen to the electrical impulses, or EMGs (electromyograms), of muscles at rest and during contraction in order to find out!

The Muscle SpikerBox Pro: Agonist/Antagonist Pairs

How do your muscles work together to create movement? Learn how to use the Muscle SpikerBox Pro and about Agonist Antagonist muscle pairs.

Wirelessly Control a Cyborg Cockroach

Curious about microstimulation, learning, and neural interfaces? With the Roboroach, you will prepare your own cyborg cockroach to explore this cutting edge neurotechnology.

Controlling "THE CLAW" with Your Muscles

Fancy yourself a cyborg? Do you want to control a robotic claw with your muscles? Check out how to do it with your Muscle SpikerShield and Arduino.

Create and Control a DIY Cyborg Hand!

Take what you've learned from The Claw kit and develop your very own neuroprosthetic which you can control with the Muscle SpikerShield!

Control Games with your Brain

Use the Muscle Pro and Game Controller to learn about assistive technologies and play videog games with your brain! Get started with the most famous plumber of all...

The Plant SpikerBox: Venus Fly Trap Electrophysiology

Using the Plant SpikerBox, explore the electrical activity responsible for the rapid movement of the Venus Flytrap.

Sensitive Mimosa Electrophysiology

With the Plant SpikerBox, learn about Sensitive Mimosas, hydraulic movement, and more details on the fascinating phenomenon of plant spikes.

Advanced Plant Electrophysiology: Interspecies Plant-Plant-Communicator

The Venus Flytrap commands the Sensitive Mimosa to drop its branches; the Sensitive Mimosa obeys...

Heart Action Potentials

Hearts have spikes too! Using the Heart & Brain SpikerBox, perform a heart rate experiment to see your own heart beat!

Mosquito Love Songs

You will never see mosquitos the same way again after you learn about their sweet (if not annoying) love songs, and how they form bonds by performing duets.

Octopus Fight Club

Learn to quantify complex behaviours into simple rules using a video camera and computer analysis. In this example: Octopus fighting patterns

Eye Potentials

Yes, Eyes generate electrical signals! Using the Heart & Brain SpikerBox, you can see the movement of your eyes and also build interfaces related to blinks and eye movements... Experiment to find the optimal EOG electrode placement

DIY EEG Recordings from the Human Brain!

With our Heart & Brain SpikerShield, you can measure the electrical rhythms of your own brain and see the difference when your eyes are open vs closed.

Record A Grasshopper's Visual Reaction Time

Are you fast enough to catch a grasshopper? Record from the visual neurons which grasshoppers use to quickly dodge incoming threats!

Brain Waves During Sleep

With EEG, you measure and identify the phases of your sleep cycle. Enter the mystery of slumber.

Quantify Your EEG

Do you want to mathematically analyze your EEG alpha wave activity? Now you can!

Enhance certain memories while sleeping

Can you learn while you sleep? Using the Heart and Brain SpikerBox and a soft pillow, you can test the Targeted Memory Reactivation theory.

The Leeuwenhoek Microscope and Optics Theory

Learn how to manipulate glass and build a replica of Leeuwenhoek's microscope that brought about the microbiology revolution.

How Fast Your Brain Reacts To Stimuli

How fast is your reaction time? Sit someone down and record them catching falling objects to find out.

Clock the Inner Workings of the Brain

Using the Reaction Timer, and the electrical activity of your muscles, you can study how quickly your brain processes events!

The Galvani/Volta debate

Time travel to 1792 Northern Italy and replicate the famous experiments of Galvani and Volta that began neuroscience and electronics.

The Organization of Life, Multicellularity, and Nervous Systems

In this "Big Question" theory writeup, we go over what makes up life, the types of life with nervous systems, and their comparative biology differences.

Controlling a Stepper Motor with Your Muscles

Do you want to control Motor Rotation with your muscles? Grab your Muscle SpikerShield, because we have that too!

Muscle Action Potentials

It's not only axons that carry APs. Muscles have motor unit action potentials that we can record from too.

The P300 Surprise Signal

Your brain notices the unexpected, it's called the P300 electrical deflection, and here you can measure it.

Autonomic Nervous System

Learn about your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Activate your "Flight or Flight" response with an ice water cold stimulus. Study the diving reflex!

Making Music with a Muscle

Flex a muscle and compose music with our Muscle SpikerShield, the synthesizer of the future.

The Multiple Muscle Music Generator

Our intermediate music interface using our 6 channel Muscle SpikerShield Pro. Your body movement makes the music!

The MIDI Muscle Machine

Our most advanced music interface. You control a real synthesizer with your multiple muscle contractions and generate your own beats and rhythms.

The Auditory Brainstem Response

Listen to the clicks and record your auditory nerve response, witnessing your auditory anatomy in all its glorious action.

Hunting for Single Motor Units

Enter your Zen of self-control as you try to record a single motor unit in your body.

Muscle Recruitment during Chewing

Learn about recruitment of motor neurons as you chew on snacky snacks of different hardness.

Patellar Reflex and Reaction

Learn about the difference between spinal and cerebral circuits as you examine the famous patellar reflex of your friends.

Signal Classification

Learn about advanced signal analysis to control individual fingers of an external robotic hand with your own hand.

Record the Muscle Activity of Clams

Learn about the anatomy and neuroscience of a new model for us: the clam. How does it keeps its shell shut? Investigate for yourself!

Neuropharmacology: Effect of Nicotine and MSG on Neurons

In our Anuradha Rao Memorial Experiment, we move to the cricket cercal preparation to investigate neuropharmacology

EMGs during Muscle Fatigue

If you are wondering why your muscles become weaker during intense exercise, this muscle fatigue lab is for you.

Sensory and Neural Adaptation

By manipulating the barbs on the cockroach leg, you can measure neural adaptation times and gain insight into learning.

Make your own Homunculus

Visualize how your somatosensory (touch) cortex sensitivity varies over certain areas of your body. You will look weird. Promise.

Debunking the P-value with Statistics

Are people faster with their dominant or non dominant hand? What about left handed versus right handed people? Collect your favorite sample data set and you will be on your way to rejecting that null hypothesis!

Controlling an LCD Screen with Your Muscles

Do you want to control an LCD screen with your muscles? With the Muscle SpikerShield, we can do that!

The Dancing Cockroach Leg: Microstimulation of Neurons and Muscles

It's the 1780's all over again. Investigate excitability of nervous and muscle tissue using the Neuron SpikerBox

Turn your Cell Phone into a Powerful Microscope!

Your phone's camera isn't just for selfies anymore, with the Roachscope you can use it to view the microscopic world. Tell cells to say cheese as you look at them up close and personal with the high power (100x) attachment.

In Search of the Spike

We have been trying for 235 years to see the neural impulse. Read the gripping, action(potential) filled story here.

Effect of Nerve Stretch on Conduction Velocity

Using the 2-Channel SpikerBox and harmlessly stretching a worm, you can learn the effect of diameter on various cable properties of neurons.

Modeling Rates of Fatigue

In this muscle fatigue lab, you will learn about how to quantify and model how quickly your muscles lose strength!

Cellular Microscopy: Blood Cells

With our RoachScope, you can look at the blood cells that work tirelessly to keep us alive!

Bistable Perception

Which direction is the cube facing? Your perception can change, and you can now measure it.

Comparing Speeds of Two Nerve Fiber Sizes

Grab your 2-Channel Neuron SpikerBox to learn about cable theory and the different speeds of two nerve systems in the worm.

Effect of Temperature on Neurons

investigate the effect of temperature on the firing rate of neurons

Referencing your Spikes

There's no such thing as a perfect ground, but some grounds are better than others, depending on what you are studying.

NeuroProsthetics

What if we fed the neural activity of one cockroach leg into another? Neural Engineering 101 in session.

Oxygen and Spiking

Why do we need so much of that simple molecule oxygen anyway? Here you find out.

The Faraday Cage

A simple piece of metal screening can drastically reduce electrical noise. But how does it work?

Transistor Theory

How does the SpikerBox actually amplify spikes? Here we dive into the properties of a wonderful invention: the transistor.

Transistor Circuit Design

Even more information on Engineering's Holy Grail - Build a simple bio-amp with two transistors.

Effect of Temperature on Conduction Velocity

Measure how temperature affects neural speed in a worm.

How Your Eye Detects Color and Motion

What are the limits of color and motion detection by your eye? You can measure it with a friend.

How Your Skin Senses

How well does your skin and brain interpret touch information? Breakout the measuring tools and blindfold someone to find out.