by Marcia Santos, Marina Gkantia, Yijie Yin, and Eva Munnelly
Cambridge Festival is one of the biggest annual events of its kind in the country and is a highlight in everyone’s calendar. It is a collaborative effort involving many institutions and this year took place between the 16th of March to the 2nd of April. The festival promoted 360 primarily free events covering various topics from science to arts. Our lab together with Cambridge Neuroscience and CamBrain participated in the festival to promote a family-friendly weekend in the fascinating world of neuroscience through interactive activities.
Explaining Drosophila Connectomics to children and keeping them engaged in such a topic can be challenging. We covered many aspects of the fruit fly development from teaching their life cycle, the organisation of their nervous system to their behavioural repertoire. Throughout the event, we had to find different ways to explain our topics in order to maintain the attention of our audience. For our young scientists, we assisted the teaching of the morphology of neurons by using arts and crafts; together we created model neurons using pipe cleaners and wool whilst explaining the different parts of a neuron. We delved deeper into connectomics with our older audience by showing them how we reconstruct and trace neurons in FlyWire from the electron microscopy data.
“In the brain, there are little things called neurons. They listen to what many neurons have to say and tell other neurons about what they hear. The neurons look like trees and are all stacked together. As scientists, we want to know where all the neurons are and which neurons every individual neuron talks to.”
— Yijie Yin
It is well known that scientific communication is vital to bridging the gap between science and society, encouraging evidence-based decision-making, and making science more inclusive. Still, the festival also showed another reason: inspiring the next generation of scientists and ourselves.
“Every child brought new and different questions, and one in particular stands out. One boy was interested in flies but became even more curious to learn about tracing neurons and connectomics once we had shown him FlyWire. We first taught him the parts of a neuron and what a synapse was, and then how to identify these structures in electron microscopy data. We then looked at these structures in 3D and showed him how we proofread neurons, and he spent some time working in FlyWire sandbox merging and splitting up neurons. He was very happy to learn that he could access FlyWire sandbox from home and that he could continue to proofread neurons and practice tracing. It was a great experience for both sides, as it was clear he had just come across a new interest, and it was very rewarding being able to introduce a potential future scientist to drosophila neuroscience.”
— Eva Munnelly
Overall, the Science Festival for kids was a success, and we are already looking forward to next year’s event. It was a great way to introduce children to the world of Drosophila Connectomics, spark their curiosity, and get inspired by their questions and excitement.
