Celebrating Brain Awareness Week

Is having a beer and sandwich at the local pub the best way to improve your brain awareness? At least in the city of Rehovot one evening last week, those eating and drinking in a few select establishments got to hear Weizmann Institute neurobiology graduate students give informal talks and demonstrations. The event was a part of Brain Awareness week, an annual, international affair. The aim is not really to make people more aware of their brains (or their brains more aware), but to promote brain research.

Some participated in an experiment in which they found that a smell can help imprint a new experience in memory. Others learned what happens in their brains when they watch a movie. Still others heard how we assess memories to decide if they're true or not.

If you missed Brain Awareness week, you can still read all about our brain research on our website

â Speaking of international events, Israeli high school students got to play the part of CERN physicists, this month. They joined students in 23 countries to participate the International Hands on Particle Physics Masterclasses, in which they analyzed data from the Large Hadron Collider experiments. With some help from Institute physicists who are part of the real LHC team, they looked for signs of various exotic subatomic particles and discussed the data in videoconferences with their young colleagues.