UPDATE: See what we did!

Latino Network Learning & Lobes

The Latino Network is a Latino-led education organization, grounded in culturally-specific practices and services, that lifts up youth and families to reach their full potential…

LEARN MORE: LATINO NETWORK

NW Noggin is thrilled to partner with this effective nonprofit community organization which shares our interests in improving community livability, fostering civic participation, and preparing young people for educational and life success…

We’re excited about meeting staff to talk brains, and highlight research on changes in adolescent development, the benefits of bilingualism, and other relevant topics.  Later this fall we’ll bring graduate and undergraduate Noggin volunteers, including fluent Spanish speakers from the NIH BUILD EXITO program, into Latino Network partner schools…

And we’re eager to pursue international links with students and faculty at Chile’s Centro Interdisciplinario Neurociencia de Valparaiso (CINV), and their own outreach program “Ciencia al Tiro” in a South American community known for its significant contributions to both foundational neuroscience research and the arts.

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La Alegría de la Ciencia

In many ways, neurociencia es española. The “founder” of modern neuroscience was an artist and anatomist from Spain (Ramon y Cajal of course), and fundamental advances in our understanding of electrophysiology were and continue to be made in Spanish-speaking Europe and Latin America.

LEARN MORE: Instituto Cajal

In the 1960’s, in Montemar, north of Valpo, the University of Chile in Santiago ran a marine-biology laboratory where neuroscientists studied how small proteins embedded in brain cell membranes allowed for charged particles called ions (including sodium (Na+) and potassium (K+)) to cross under certain circumstances, allowing for electric currents to flow down the wire-like axons of our neurons…

LEARN MORE: Montemar Institute of Marine Biology

Chile took off as a center of neuroscience research largely because of the Humboldt squid! The axons of this invertebrate are enormous, visible to the naked eye, and amenable to electrode placement on either side of the membrane to record changes in charge as neurons go from a resting state to the “action potential!”

LEARN MORE: Neuroscience: The great squid hunt

And for our training at the Latino Network we’ll be joined (via Skype!) by David Naranjo, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at CINV who studies the structural and functional aspects of small membrane-embedded proteins known as voltage-gated potassium channels, which contribute to a neuron’s ability to conduct electric currents. We are looking forward to integrating grad students and post-docs from CINV for future school visits (again via Skype) in collaboration with the Latino Network…

TRAINING SLIDES: NW Noggin @ Latino Network (pdf)