From left: Steven Philemond, Clinical Research Coordinator, Neurosurgery, examines a brain image with Amir Du Bose and Andre Levins, students from the Eagle Academy for Young Men.
More than 100 volunteers from the Mount Sinai Health System and 500 local students and members of East Harlem and surrounding communities participated in the Fourth Annual Brain Awareness Fair on Tuesday, March 15, in The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Guggenheim Pavilion Atrium.
Educational hands-on activities and demonstrations included building neuron models out of pipe cleaners, examining models of brains from different animals, observing monkey brain neurons under a microscope, and learning how the five senses function within the brain.
Held during international Brain Awareness Week, the fair was hosted by Mentoring in Neuroscience Discovery at Sinai (MiNDS) and the Center for Excellence in Youth Education (CEYE), with support from The Friedman Brain Institute at Mount Sinai, and The Dana Foundation—a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research.
Mount Sinai faculty provided information on addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and mental health at the fair’s “Meet the Experts” booth.
From left: Elís Claudio learns about animal brains from Merina T. Varghese, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Tahia Warda, Associate Researcher II, Neuroscience.
For the first time this year, an “Art of the Brain” exhibit was held at the Grady Alexis Gallery, 215 East 99th Street, and at Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s Phillips Ambulatory Care Center, 10 Union Square East, where visitors viewed photographs and medical illustrations celebrating the beauty of the brain as seen through the eyes of Mount Sinai scientists and researchers.
Middle school students from PS/IS 171 Patrick Henry Preparatory School took a guided tour of the exhibit at the Grady Alexis Gallery with MiNDS Co-directors, who explained the photographic images. After the tour, Jill K. Gregory, MFA, CMI, and Christopher M. Smith, MA, from Academic Medical Illustration, Academic Informatics and Technology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, demonstrated how brain illustrations are created and led the students in a drawing exercise.
At El Barrio Artspace PS109, a community arts facility that houses the Grady Alexis Gallery, CEYE teaching assistants introduced the students to the NeuroSky® MindWave starter kit, an instrument that displays how brainwaves and levels of attention change during different activities.