Who Form 8854 Elect 2023-2024

I'm a neuroscientist and co-founder of Backyard Brains. Our mission is to make graduate level neuroscience research equipment available for middle schools and high schools. When we enter the classroom, we start by asking a simple question: what has a brain? Most students will say animals like cats, dogs, mice, or insects have a brain, but almost nobody says that plants have a brain. However, we push them to think deeper about what makes living things have brains. Students often come back with the classification that things that move tend to have brains, which is correct. Our nervous system evolved to respond quickly to stimuli in the world and to move. However, we challenge the students by asking them to consider plants. Plants do move, especially fast-moving plants like the flytrap. In 1760, Arthur Dobbs discovered the flytrap, a plant that would spring shut when a bug fell in between its leaves. Charles Darwin later studied this plant and was amazed by its evolutionary wonder. It was both fast-moving and carnivorous. But what's even more fascinating is that this plant can count. To demonstrate this, we introduce the concept of electrophysiology and the recording of the body's electrical signals. We use electrodes on our wrists to show an example of an action potential, which is how the brain encodes information. We then move on to the mimosa pudica plant, which curls up its leaves when touched and falls down when tapped. We an experiment to record the electrical potential in this plant and observe the action potential happening inside it. Next, we move on to the Venus flytrap and explore what happens inside the leaf when a fly lands on it. We demonstrate that the leaf also exhibits an action potential, causing movement in response to touch. Through these experiments, we show...