Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is a global campaign aimed at increasing public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. Every March BAW unites the efforts of universities, hospitals, patient groups, government agencies, schools, service organizations, and professional associations worldwide in a week-long celebration of the brain.
We all carry around a three pound mass of material in our heads that controls every single thing we do. The brain is a unique and powerful organ that gives us the capacity to perceive and understand the world outside.
Dr Emil Toescu, senior lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Birmingham’s College of Medical and Dental Sciences, and organiser of these events says, ‘From enabling us to think, learn, create and feel emotions to controlling and integrating every blink, breath and heartbeat, this fantastic control centre is your brain. It is a structure so amazing that it has been called the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.’
Some of the issues that will be discussed include the brains ability to generate enough energy to power a lightbulb, neurons that create and send more messages than all the phones in the world, neurons that send information to your brain at more than 150 miles per hour, how learning can change the structure of your brain and how exercise can keep the brain working smarter and harder.
The scientists will be discussing the brain on Tuesday 16th March from 6.30pm to 9pm in the ‘The Varsity’ (7pm) and ‘The Junction’ (8pm) in Harborne, and ‘The Soak’ (7pm) and ‘The Gun Barrels’ (8pm) in Selly Oak.
Other events taking place during Brain Awareness Week include a public lecture entitled ‘Your beautiful brain, its functions in health and disease’ on Thursday 18th March from 6 – 8pm at the University of Birmingham’s Staff House, delivered by prominent neuroscientists and a clinical neurologist and a lecture and discussion called ‘Seeing the Arts’ on Sunday 21st March from 3 – 5pm at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, where a neuroscientist will discuss the mechanisms of visual perception and how images are formed and manipulated in the brain and an art historian will present a view on neuroesthetics.
All events are free and open to the public and further details are available from Dr Emil Toescu, tel 0121 414 6927 and e.c.toescu@bham.ac.uk
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Notes to Editors
Neuroscience research at Birmingham brings together world class experts to cover aspects of neuroscience form the cellular to the molecular, to the whole brain through to the extensive network of neuronal connections across the body and how these biological underpinnings interact with psychological and social factors to cause neurological and psychiatric disease.
For further media information
Kate Chapple, Press Officer, University of Birmingham, tel 0121 414 2772 or 07789 921164
