Post by Mikah Brandes, graduate of Portland State University, BUILD EXITO scholar, former Research Assistant and Center Administrator at Oregon Health & Science University, accomplished musician and Lab Assistant at True Terpenes. Mikah has written about his neuroscience lab experiences here: What’s it like to research aging & neurodegeneration?
Seeing light at the end of the tunnel is important for all of us living in this stressful, mid-pandemic world. Returning to in-person classes and reducing remote work has many of us gleaming and excited to get back to the way things once were. I know for me personally, one of the most exciting parts of this transition is getting to volunteer again with Northwest Noggin.
LEARN MORE: What is Northwest Noggin?
LEARN MORE: Northwest Noggin – Get Involved!
LEARN MORE: Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health
NogginFest 2022 was such an exciting event to plan, since it was live and in-person and we could all gather and share our stories with each other from the past two years. In an attempt to bring more people together, spread new and exciting research from area labs, explore local music and art, I helped Noggin curate a special NogginFest for 2022 – and for the 10th anniversary of NW Noggin. We were so thankful to be joined by local bands and DJs as well as graduate and post-doctoral researchers from OHSU.
NogginFest is always FREE
NogginFest is the largest paywall-free, volunteer, accessible, student-run, all ages public celebration of music, art, brains and neuroscience research in the Pacific Northwest! The Portland State University Neuroscience Club helps organize this popular event, founded by former PSU student and Northwest Noggin outreach enthusiast Jesse Hamlin. EVERYONE at Noggin is a volunteer. We do this to build community — and to share, learn and serve.
“For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey ‘truth for now’ — to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new ‘truth,’ because that is the way science advances.”
— Daniel Levitin
LEARN MORE: What is NOGGINFEST?
LEARN MORE: NOGGINFEST 2022!!
Thank you Dana, Honey Latte and Fort George!
The Dana Foundation provided us with a Brain Awareness grant, making this all possible!
LEARN MORE: Dana Foundation Support for NOGGINFEST 2022!
Honey Latte Cafe in inner Southeast Portland was the perfect venue – a spacious interior with generous openings to allow COVID-dispersing airflow throughout the 2pm to midnight experience! And the hoppy wizards from Astoria’s legendary Fort George Brewery donated some sick brews to (moderately, for those who partook) depolarize a few GABAergic neurons throughout the show!
AMP: Artist Mentorship Program
We were deeply honored to welcome Will Kendall, the former Art Director at p:ear who founded the nonprofit Artist Mentorship Program (AMP). AMP provides a creative space for homeless youth to build healthy relationship-centered communities through music and art.
AMP participants played music and also demonstrated cymatics – visualizing sound waves – by inviting people to play or sing, vibrating water which created beautiful brain-like images on a screen!
LEARN MORE: CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music – Nigel Stanford
Brains!
So many great questions!
Art!
Huge thanks to amazing artists who contributed their neuroscience inspired art, including prints from artist, curator and Northwest Noggin board member Kanani Miyamoto, New/Mixed Media art from Kit S. Carlton, the memory based paintings of artist Kindra Crick, Numberism art from Portland artist Sienna, prints from Hawaiian artist Christopher Lum, and paintings from Noggin’s own Jeff Leake.
Music: Pleasure Pak
The band Pleasure Pak, described as “a collection of three atomic survivors in search of Goblin gold in the post-societal wasteland, sharing stories of the new world – as well as the one they left behind” started off the evening program with some killer new music!
Research: Sophia Weber
“It’s tempting to think that when we look at the world, we see what’s in front of us, but in reality we can see only what our eyes allow us to see.”
— Juli Berwald, author of Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone
Sophia Weber from OHSU made us glow with ‘Jellyfish and Neuroscience,’ her talk detailing the Nobel Prize winning discovery and refinement of Green Fluorescent Protein. This protein, which naturally glows green, was originally isolated from crystal jellyfish at Friday Harbor Labs and now is used to visualize neurons, report the presence of certain proteins in cells, and tell us about their activity.
From Sophia Weber, Behavioral Neuroscience @ OHSU
“Green Fluorescent Protein comes from from the Pacific Northwest native Aequorea Victoria, or crystal jelly. Previously noted for produces blue flashes of light this jellyfish attracted the attention of Dr. Osamu Shimomura and Dr. Frank Johnson at Friday Harbor Laboratories in Washington.“
“We learned how these jellyfish were squeezed through gauze to form a ‘squeezate’ from which Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) was isolated. By itself GFP is just pretty but other scientists worked to find the DNA code that represent the biological instructions for making GFP and packaged it into a virus. Now we can inject other non-jellyfish animals with this virus to make them glow green! In neuroscience we can go a step even further and make only specific cells glow, like only neurons involved in sense of smell.”
“Scientists can also attach this DNA GFP code to other DNA for a protein we are interested in, like tyrosine hydroxylase, a marker for dopamine producing cells. This would make only cells expressing this particular protein glow green allowing neuroscientists to easily identify them. They can even attach GFP to chemical binding proteins to report the concentration of things like calcium (increases with neural activity) or dopamine. Overall, this discovery has completely changed the field of neuroscience and been part of over 5,000 studies!”
“Scientific inquiry starts with observation. The more one can see, the more one can investigate.”
— Martin Chalfie
LEARN MORE: Illuminating the Brain
LEARN MORE: How the jellyfish revolutionised brain science
LEARN MORE: GFP: Lighting up life
Music: Broom Riders
The band Broom Riders mixed witchy folk rock and punk to create a sound that was wholly unique. We dove deep into a world of magick, music, and melody that raised the dead from their graves and taught us all how to dance!
Research: Dr. Yangmiao Zhang
After Broom Riders finished their set, we heard from Dr. Yangmiao Zhang. Do you have free will?
This provoked some lively discussion!
The audience at NogginFest this year separated into not two, but three different groups with their answers. Friends standing next to each in the crowd picked opposite positions to this question, just like many brilliant minds of their times. Some raised hands to both affirmative and skeptical stances – they made up the third group, positively confused and potentially swayable…
LEARN MORE: Do you have free will?
Research: Dr. Sydney Boutros
For our final research presentation, we were joined by Sydney Boutros, who at NogginFest was a PhD candidate in Dr. Jacob Raber’s lab at OHSU. She is now Dr. Boutros, PhD! Sydney has collaborated with Noggin before, discussing her research at Floyd’s Coffee along with artist Kit S. Carlton.
LEARN MORE: Memory, Poetry, Brains
From Sydney: “Memories make us us. At NogginFest this year, I had the wonderful opportunity to share what I’ve learned about how memories come to form in our brains.“
Sydney wowed us – in fact she likely broke our DNA – with her research on how our brain cells change connections so quickly and dynamically in response to experience. Dr. Boutros contributed a detailed explanation of the compelling work she presented at NogginFest – check it out at the link!
LEARN MORE: Breaking DNA at NogginFest 2022
Music: Wolf
After Sydney Boutros bracingly snapped our nucleotides and altered our memories we moved into a warm and melodic set performed by Wolf (Emilee Brnusak), a professional jazz singer in the Portland area studying criminology and criminal justice at Portland State University.
Following Wolf, we started off the trippy, late night, electronic bass music experience with none other than Portland’s finest, Sanka Prospure, whose blend of flavor is sure to anyone grooving on the dance floor. From remixes of classic hip hop tracks to forward thinking experimental bass and influences of UK GRIME, his sets are always one of a kind and never the same.
We saw this first hand at NogginFest 2022.
After we had our minds melted by Sanka frequencies, we heard from Portland’s own Sol Disciple. His inspiration comes from a variety of sources, which includes “the natural world, integral spirituality, ritual magick, and an eclectic blend of modern Hip Hop, raw lyricism, and unapologetic self-expression.” His mission is “to infuse culture with the New Paradigm of Awakened Consciousness and redefine what it means to be a conscious musician, to use one’s creative talents in the service of Love, for the benefit of All.” To close out the night, we were joined by none other than Central Oregon’s biggest upcoming dubstep DJ, $ound$ na$te who brought us a set filled with all originals.
I want to give a special thanks to all the performers and volunteers who participated in this year’s NogginFest. The first NogginFest I joined was in 2019 and was such a fun time, I was able to serve the generously donated Fort George brews to people so they could enter in the art raffle. I stayed all day and night for that event and had such a good time that I was ecstatic when I learned that 2022 was planned to be in person at a really cool venue (Thanks Honey Latte!) Coordinating and curating a unique event like NogginFest is an incredible experience, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to help Bill and Jeff make this event happen. To many, many more art, music, and neuroscience filled NogginFests!!!
Special thanks to the Portland Alcohol Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University, the Dana Foundation, the Portland State University Neuroscience Club, Honey Latte Café and the Fort George Brewery for helping us curate NogginFest 2022!