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An optogenetics device with smartphone video capture to introduce neurotechnology and systems neuroscience to high school students.

ABSTRACT: Although neurotechnology careers are on the rise, and neuroscience curriculums have significantly grown at the undergraduate and graduate levels, increasing neuroscience and neurotechnology exposure in high school curricula has been an ongoing challenge. This is due, in part, to difficulties in converting cutting-edge neuroscience research into hands-on activities that are accessible for high school students and affordable for high school educators. Here, we describe and characterize a low-cost, easy-to-construct device to enable students to record rapid Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) behaviors during optogenetics experiments. The device is generated from inexpensive Arduino kits and utilizes a smartphone for video capture, making it easy to adopt in a standard biology laboratory. We validate this device is capable of replicating optogenetics experiments performed with more sophisticated setups at leading universities and institutes. We incorporate the device into a high school neuroengineering summer workshop. We find student participation in the workshop significantly enhances their understanding of key neuroscience and neurotechnology concepts, demonstrating how this device can be utilized in high school settings and undergraduate research laboratories seeking low-cost alternatives.

SUBMITTER: Luo L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9075642 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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An optogenetics device with smartphone video capture to introduce neurotechnology and systems neuroscience to high school students.

Luo Liudi L Hina Bryce W BW McFarland Brennan W BW Saunders Jillian C JC Smolin Natalie N von Reyn Catherine R CR

PloS one 20220506 5

Although neurotechnology careers are on the rise, and neuroscience curriculums have significantly grown at the undergraduate and graduate levels, increasing neuroscience and neurotechnology exposure in high school curricula has been an ongoing challenge. This is due, in part, to difficulties in converting cutting-edge neuroscience research into hands-on activities that are accessible for high school students and affordable for high school educators. Here, we describe and characterize a low-cost, ...[more]

PMID: 35522662

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Project description:Understanding the brain is a fascinating challenge, captivating the scientific community and the public alike. The lack of effective treatment for most brain disorders makes the training of the next generation of neuroscientists, engineers and physicians a key concern. Over the past decade there has been a growing effort to introduce neuroscience in primary and secondary schools, however, hands-on laboratories have been limited to anatomical or electrophysiological activities. Modern neuroscience research labs are increasingly using computational tools to model circuits of the brain to understand information processing. Here we introduce the use of neurorobots - robots controlled by computer models of biological brains - as an introduction to computational neuroscience in the classroom. Neurorobotics has enormous potential as an education technology because it combines multiple activities with clear educational benefits including neuroscience, active learning, and robotics. We describe a 1-week introductory neurorobot workshop that teaches high school students how to use neurorobots to investigate key concepts in neuroscience, including spiking neural networks, synaptic plasticity, and adaptive action selection. Our do-it-yourself (DIY) neurorobot uses wheels, a camera, a speaker, and a distance sensor to interact with its environment, and can be built from generic parts costing about $170 in under 4 h. Our Neurorobot App visualizes the neurorobot's visual input and brain activity in real-time, and enables students to design new brains and deliver dopamine-like reward signals to reinforce chosen behaviors. We ran the neurorobot workshop at two high schools (n = 295 students total) and found significant improvement in students' understanding of key neuroscience concepts and in students' confidence in neuroscience, as assessed by a pre/post workshop survey. Here we provide DIY hardware assembly instructions, discuss our open-source Neurorobot App and demonstrate how to teach the Neurorobot Workshop. By doing this we hope to accelerate research in educational neurorobotics and promote the use of neurorobots to teach computational neuroscience in high school.

Dataset Information

An optogenetics device with smartphone video capture to introduce neurotechnology and systems neuroscience to high school students.

Publications

An optogenetics device with smartphone video capture to introduce neurotechnology and systems neuroscience to high school students.

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