About Backyard Brains

The brain is our soul... our consciousness... it contains all of our hopes, dreams, and desires. It is our most important organ, yet how it works is still a mystery for most people--even though they use it every day! Sure, your brain helps you decide what pants to wear or which muscle to move when walking down a street, but how does it do that? Neuroscientists actually know quite a bit about how the brain functions, but the tools to understand the brain have been relegated to only large university laboratories, inaccessible to the layperson. Backyard Brains is the effort to democratize neuroscience.

As neuroscience Ph.D. students at the University of Michigan, co-founders Tim and Greg experimented with discussing neuroscience with middle school children. They quickly realized that there was no way to demonstrate compelling experiments like the ones from their research lab to the kids they were working with. The equipment was too big and too expensive. So they endeavored to fix that. Founding Backyard Brains (BYB) in 2009, Tim and Greg used off-the-shelf electronics and readily-available products to create kits that would let kids learn about neuroscience at an earlier age. The first Spikerbox was born, a hand-held device able to provide insight into the inner workings of the nervous system and record living "spikes" ... the messages of neurons in the brain.

Our products all have a focus on neuroscience, but have expanded into multiple STEM research fields. Our Neuron SpikerBox kits record directly from neurons in invertebrates. Our Human Physiology kits enable you to record from the brain's electrical activity from motor units an muscular contractions (EMG), from the heart (EKG), and even from the whole brain (EEG). Our neuroengineering devices let you use your nervous system to control computers and robotics. We even have kits that reveal the secrets of plant signalling and behavior, proving that the action potential isn't unique to nervous systems! All of our products are accompanied with Lesson Plans and Experiments to make learning (and teaching) neuroscience a breeze.

Since then, our commmunity has grown enormously. We now have a jaw-dropping 9 TED Talks, including a new series called "DIY Neuroscience which follows our student research team using our gear to expose the wonders of the brain. We have been awarded 4 grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to develop our tools and to research their effectiveness. And our work has not gone unnoticed: we were awarded the "Champion of Change for Citizen Science" award by President Barack Obama at the White House, we won the Next Generation Award from the Society of Neuroscience, the Director's award from the NIMH, we received nominations at the Imagine Science Film and the Viten Film Festival, and most importantly, we've been recognized with the prestigious "Unit Of The Year" by the 7th grade class at Seitz Middle School! We have worked hard for over a decade to bring neuroscience to you directly, and we're not slowing down any time soon!

Thank you for your interest in Backyard Brains. We hope our products will help you bring neuroscience to life! What will you discover?