Introducing your kids to the Brain

When we become parents, somehow we become teachers too. With our support and guidance, kids absorb information all day long and learn through concrete experiences in which they can touch, taste, see, smell and hear.

Abstract thoughts and concepts are difficult for them to grasp tough. Since observation is the basis of science, teaching our children how the brain works, what it does and how to take care of it might not be an easy task. We want to make things playful enough to keep them engaged and simple enough for them to understand, without dumbing concepts down.

The Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science invited me to visit their newest special exhibition Brain: The Inside Story. For kids and grown-ups, this is the perfect place to explore the way the human brain has evolved, how it works and the technological advances that may change it in the future.

Through imaginative art, vivid brain-scan imaging and dynamic interactive exhibits, Brain gives you a whole new perspective on our very own gray matter. Divided into seven sections, the exhibition invites you to walk through an installation that simulates the energetic activity of firing neurons, follow the brain of a Julliard student during an audition, put together visual puzzles, use your visual cortex to read Braille and examine the brain’s amazing ability to rewire itself in response to experience, disability, or trauma.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Interactive brain teasers, puzzles and a build-a-brain exhibit.
• A dramatic 6-foot-tall homunculus (an artificial humanoid) with abnormal proportions highlighting how much of the brain is devoted to the sense of touch in different parts of the body.
•  A three-pound preserved brain.
• The “brain lounge,” an area where you can watch brain scans of a professional basketball shooting guard as he reacts to the whoosh of the net and the roar of the crowd.