Where is NW Noggin?
Our innovative graduate and undergraduate art and neuroscience volunteers are Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) Juice award-winning developing experts in science communication, synapsing for science, and teaching in schools, theaters, museums, urban and rural communities, homeless youth centers, breweries, correctional facilities, Congress and bike shop pubs! For more information see NOGGIN BLOGGIN.NW Noggin is a locally sourced, 501(c)(3) ALL-VOLUNTEER shoestring nonprofit organization. Your tax-deductible contribution supports the purchase of sheep brains, pipe cleaners, electrodes and clay for innovative, arts-integrated outreach, and helps send volunteers from local universities (including Portland State University, OHSU, and other area institutions) to public school classrooms, conferences and free community events.
DONATE HERE!
LEARN MORE: Community Neuroscience: How to Build an Outreach Organization
NW Noggin: Art + Brains
Wrestling with Expectations, and Brains
Nogginfest Art Auction
How to embroider your brain cell
Join us in Chile in *2027*!
In 2027 we'll return to Valparaíso, Chile, home of the Humboldt squid! 🦑⚡️🧠🎨😃 Just like in 2025, and 2023, we'll explore how neurons carry information, and how research in Chile (involving the squid’s giant fused axons) informed our understanding of the electrical signaling that links our experiences to the world. We’ll visit laboratories to examine the rich history and exciting present of research at the Universidad de Chile en Valparaíso, make art (including arpilleras, woven depictions of experience that help people express challenging memories and preserve them for accountability), and contribute to community engagement with Ciencia al Tiro, a local STEAM (STEM + Arts) outreach nonprofit.
LEARN MORE: LAS NEURONAS SON BACANES. LEARN MORE: Valparaiso - Arte y Cerebros en Chile LEARN MORE: ARTS AND BRAINS IN CHILE
EPSPs & Entropy!
Brains process information, and brain cells transmit data about the world – both external and internal – through the flow of electricity. There is often uncertainty in these processes, and multiple potential routes for details about sights, sounds, gut feelings and social interactions to flow through our extraordinarily complex networks of wired neurons. Entropy…
In an old Tri-Met bus on a landfill…
…is not a safe, secure place to sleep, or call home… This summer, NW Noggin is working with p:ear to organize a public fall event to address the issue of affordable housing and the brain. We aim to bring together students from Portland State University and OHSU who study sleep, anxiety, depression, emotional regulation, drugs,…
Ask Me Anything: Science Reddit Noggin AMA!
We had a blast answering direct, insightful, heartfelt and enjoyable questions about arts-integrated neuroscience outreach from over 3000 curious and passionate participants in our Reddit Science AMA this week. It is exciting to see strong interest in brain research, education and the arts – the conversation apparently drew more than 21,000 viewers worldwide! Check it out here: Science Outreach…
Lobes @ Legacy: Nourishing Noggins for Healthy Kids!
Noggin loves working with Kelly Love, the Director of Community Relations at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center in Vancouver, to offer brain education through play and art at their annual Healthy Kids Fair..! LEARN MORE FROM LAST YEAR: Igniting interest with Blaze and Brains! The Fair offers area residents a chance to buy…
Bill wins the 2017 John Eliot Outstanding Teaching Award
If you have ever met a more enthusiastic teacher than Bill I might have a hard time believing it! I have had the pleasure of teaching with Bill for the past five years, and I can honestly say that he is the best teacher I have witnessed in my academic…
Axons @ Ardenwald!
The roses (and dendrites!) were blooming this week in Milwaukie, Oregon, south of Portland but synapsed to the city by the orange line MAX… We arrived at Ardenwald Elementary in North Clackamas Public Schools, signed in and began taping a vibrant brain map to the carpeted floor of Sarah Power’s second grade classroom… We’d gathered another sizable crowd…
Shocking Connections in La Grande!
I’m a computer guy. So when I drive through cities, I’m always drawn to the technology that’s woven into everything — the stoplights and streetlights, theater marquees, digital clocks and billboards. I imagine the twists of cables inside each of them, winding down from the bulb to the controllers that switch the…
Sulci in St. Johns
North Portland’s Sitton Elementary has fast become one of our favorite Portland Public Schools, home to a diverse and curious community of students in the forested neighborhood of St. John’s… We’d enjoyed a rainy, energetic day with multilingual kindergarteners and their teachers earlier in May, and now returned to Sitton in…
Moon Hooch as Mind Minister
Post written by graduate Noggin volunteer Brittany Alperin “Music can minister to the minds diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorry, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with its sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the full bosom of all perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.” –William…
Changing Brain Waves of Depression
“I felt a funeral in my brain, And mourners, to and fro, Kept treading, treading, till it seemed That sense was breaking through.” – Emily Dickinson Depression proved a compelling topic for our latest NW Noggin presentation at Velo Cult, with a bar-estimated 200 community members gathering to connect, engage and learn…
What is outreach like?
“I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.” ―Maya Angelou
Our Northwest Noggin undergraduate and graduate outreach volunteers are enthusiastic and informed, and regularly let knowledge serve by going places, making art, exploring brain research, sharing stories and listening to community questions and interests in urban and rural K-12 public schools, coffee shops, museums, correctional facilities, houseless youth nonprofits, research conferences, Congress and more! LEARN MORE @ What is outreach like?.