The students of Room 50C could barely keep within their assigned squares on the rainbow-checkered rug Tuesday morning.
And with teeth clenched as if to keep answers from spilling out, they each held up one arm and waited impatiently to be called on.
“You use your brain for thinking in your head,” said one kindergartener at Newberry Elementary, located at 25705 SW 15th Ave. in Newberry.
“What you hear from your ears, your brain tells you what it is,” another explained.
Regina Martuscello, coordinator of Gainesville’s third annual Brain Awareness Week, said the presentation was just one of 52 that would be given on and off UF campus this week to more than 2,000 home-schooled and local students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The goal is to get young people excited about neuroscience, she said.
The presentations are tailored to different age groups and their level of comprehension in the hopes of reaching that goal.
By the end of the week, elementary school students will have seen a presentation built around art and candy-based brain tests, while middle and high school students will have taken part in sheep brain dissections, Martuscello said.
Most of the outreach materials needed were donated by the Dana Foundation, which spearheaded the national campaign in 1996 to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research.
However, Martuscello said the sheep brains contribute to an additional expense of about $4,000, which was funded by the McKnight Brain Institute and other sponsors.
Twenty-one-year-old UF mathematics senior Jordan Schmidt, an undergraduate researcher at the McKnight institute and a Brain Awareness volunteer, said he thinks the campaign is worth far more than the investment.
Schmidt said the campaign helps get students thinking about the future consequences of today’s actions.
“Choices you make as a child or young adult can affect brain development and affect you for the next 50 years or longer,” he said.“And if kids can be informed of how their brain works and what kinds of changes happen as they age … they can make the right choices.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 3/14/2014 under the headline "Brain Awareness Week hopes grade school students get cerebral"]
