Concordia students participate in Brain Awareness Week activities

The brain is more active when staring at a blank wall than when watching television, according to one of the dozens of brain facts posted on doors and bulletin boards around the campus of Concordia University, Nebraska for Brain Awareness Week, March 13-19. 

Dr. Janet Whitson, associate professor of Biology, and her students also took their brain awareness message into the community, hosting a program for students in kindergarten through fourth grade at Seward Memorial Library and a program for students at St. John Lutheran School. Activities with elementary students included simulations of brain activity, a synapse game and a reflex test, taking apart and reassembling a model brain and singing a brainstem song.  

“We celebrate Brain Awareness week to help make people aware of what a marvelous gift from God the brain is,” said Whitson, “and also to talk about some of the great strides being made in research and in understanding the  brain and brain disorders.”

This was the second year Whitson and her students have teamed up with The Dana Foundation, a private organization that supports brain research, to celebrate the global Brain Awareness Week. More than 52 countries and 36 U.S. states participated in over 750 activities during the event.