Synaptic Community Connections

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

*Image by Michael Endicott, Art Teacher at North Middle School, Grants Pass, Oregon*

We LOVE hitting the road with our 3D printed brain models, BioGift-ed brains, pipe cleaners, extensive collection of animal brains and beetle-scoured skulls – and some of the most knowledgeable, enthusiastic graduate and undergraduate students inspired by learning from and listening to others, and by sharing their own stories from the classroom and the lab…

“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

While we started by volunteering in a public middle school in Portland, Oregon, we’ve leapt at requests for visits from schools and communities across the Pacific Northwest – and beyond!

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

Teachers and other community members have housed us, fed us, laughed and learned with us, and we’ve driven through blizzards, over mountain ranges, past lava flows and forests to a host of extraordinary outreach experiences…

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination with reality, and instead of thinking of how things may be, see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

The best outreach is audience-driven, in the community itself.

Going places challenges our own biases, and opens up possibilities for new directions, career opportunities, and greater understanding of the world in which we live. It exposes more people to their own investment in research and education, and makes that public investment palpable, present and real.

“The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.” – Anna Quindlen

Please enjoy our travel stories, including pandemic-driven virtual tales – along with all the questions we’ve considered, the cutting edge neuroscience research we’ve explored and the art we’ve created – at the links below!