Our annual lecture series for high school students started with its first lecture this week, on October 26, 2020.
Formerly known as the Neuroscience Enrichment Program, NeuroSci 101 started in 2011 as an annual series of 12 lectures organized and taught by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience at the University of Toronto. The course is free of charge and offered with the goal of promoting neuroscience interest among secondary school students and helping them prepare for the annual Toronto Brain Bee competition.
The course takes place Monday nights, 5-6:30pm, from October 26th, 2020 to March 22nd, 2021. Due to COVID-19 restrictions during this difficult time, NeuroSci101 has transitioned to virtual delivery, using Microsoft Teams.
Different neuroscience-based lectures were delivered by a range of graduate students, a post-doctoral researcher and a professor at the Department of Human Biology.
Lecture
Lecturer
28-Oct
Nervous System
Professor William Ju (Human Biology)
4-Nov
Neuroanatomy
Dr. Ain Kim (Tanz CRND, Postdoc researcher)
11-Nov
Neurons and Action Potential, Chemical Messengers
Zeenal H. Patel (IMS, MSc candidate)
18-Nov
Plasticity, Learning and Memory
Shinwon Kang (Physiology, PhD candidate)
25-Nov
Vision
Alicia Harracksingh (Physiology, PhD candidate)
2-Dec
Sleep
Irina Alymova (CSB, PhD candidate)
20-Jan
Touch and Pain; Movement
Alexandra Sas (IMS, MSc candidate)
4-Feb
Stress: The Immune System
Kevan Clifford (Psychiatry, PhD candidate)
10-Feb
When Things Go Wrong
Lauren Belfiore (LMP, PhD candidate)
24-Feb
Drugs and the Brain
Christina (IMS, PhD candidate)
3-Mar
Brain Imaging
Jerry Li (IMS, PhD candidate)
17-Mar
Neural Networks and Artificial Brains
Earvin Tio (IMS, PhD candidate)
This year, NeuroSci101 was coordinated by Dipa Chatterjee (PhD candidate, Pharmacology) and Dr. Ain Kim (Tanz CRND, Postdoc researcher), with oversight from Dr. Zhong-Ping Feng. By the end of the course, students gained enhanced familiarity with and knowledge of the brain and its intricacies – ranging from the workings of action potentials to artificial neural models.
Over 100 students from 61 schools in the GTA were registered. After the final lecture, 46 students who have attended at least 9 lectures (not counting review sessions) were emailed a certificate of participation in NeuroSci101.
