Students become brainiacs for a day

SALT LAKE CITY — Through the latex glove on her hand, 17-year-old Grace Bronchella said the human brain "feels squishy."

"It's crazy," she said. "I just touched a human brain."

Not only did she touch a brain, along with a delicate spinal cord, but the high school junior also learned on Wednesday how it all works as part of Brain Awareness Day at the Horizonte Instruction and Training Center, Salt Lake City School District's alternative high school.

"Technically, everyone has a brain," said University of Utah neuroscience graduate student Becca Parker. "And if you have one, you should know the care and feeding of it."

After learning of her long family history of stroke and brain cancer, Parker decided that she needed to study ways to repair the brain and how to restore function to it. In the path of her discovery, she has learned that "there's so much to the brain, and we need to understand it in order to use it to its fullest capacity."

Volunteers from the U. and other local colleges joined hundreds of organizations worldwide this week to increase public awareness of the advances and benefits of brain research, and the awareness day is part of that. Parker said both existing and forthcoming research is quite exciting and could very well solve some of the developmental problems some people deal with from birth, but also late into life.

"Now, I know how much drugs can screw up your brain," Bronchella said. "I didn't know that it would have that effect before today."

In addition to the toxic effects of drugs and alcohol, students experienced how the brain determines the flavors of the foods we eat, how similar the human brain is to that of the common zebrafish in the earliest stages of development and how people see different things in the same image only because of how the brain interprets.

"I'm probably going to wear a helmet a lot more now," said Tyler Passey, 16. He said he always knew his brain was pretty important, but he said he's now going to try to do a better job protecting it.

"Anytime we can bring a hands-on experience to our school, it helps the kids to remember things more," said Jennifer Jacobson, lead teacher for the 11th- and 12th-grade program at Horizonte. Brain day, which she said is in its second year at Horizonte, "helps students realize that the brain really is the king of all the organs and controls everything we do."