Experience Labs
We are excited to announce four thrilling experience labs for Synapsium 2024!
Neuroanatomy
In this experience lab you’ll have the opportunity to explore our own neuroanatomy as well as those from other species. Come and see what makes some brains different and what remains largely the same. How good are your 3D spatial orientation skills? Can you successfully use a neuroanatomical atlas to find where you are in the rat brain? Or can you recognize where you are in the human brain from MRI scans? A final part of this experience lab will help you to get intimately connected with the picture of the brain you create in your head. How well does the picture in your head match the real life thing?
Transcranial Ultrasonic Stimulation
Host: Soha Farboud, PhD Candidate
Transcranial Ultrasonic Stimulation is an evolving non-invasive brain stimulation method in humans. For the first time, we’re able to reach deep brain structures non-invasively with high precision. This method uniquely makes use of inaudible ultrasonic sound waves. Sound waves can travel through different media (skin, bone, and brain). The key is that by focusing these sound waves, we can mechanically stimulate brain tissue. To get a better idea of how this works, you can join the experience lab to visually see these sound waves bundle in a water bath and even have your (peripheral) neurons stimulated with ultrasonic waves!
VisualizeR: Experience the zebrafish brain in Virtual Reality
Host: Utku Ortal, MSc Student
Immerse yourself in virtual fish brains! VisualizeR is a software that visualizes functional 3D zebrafish brain data in an interactive way in a virtual environment utilizing VR headset devices.
How do we describe the world without sight?
Host: Ezgi Mamus, Postdoc
Imagine you can’t see anything at all. Do you hear better, or do you listen differently? How does that affect how you describe events and routes? And what is the difference if you can see or not?
The experience lab is led by Ezgi Mamus, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute affiliated with the Donders Institute of Radboud University. Her research focuses on the influence of perceptual experience such as seeing or not seeing on how we describe events in language.