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Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter.
In this issue:
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Neuroscience for Kids had several new additions in August including:
A. August Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news2908.html
B. New Neuroscience in the News
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/inthenews.html
C. Visit or follow my Instagram site with neuroscience facts and trivia:
https://www.instagram.com/ericchudler/
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The Neuroscience for Kids "Site of the Month" for September is "Science for Humanity" at:
https://amiralibanani.substack.com/
Science for Humanity was created by University of Washington undergraduate neuroscience student Amirali Banani. Amirali is also the leader of the Youth STEM initiative (https://youthsteminitiative.com/).
I suggest that you start Amirali's Science for Humanity site with the Neuro Post-it page where you will find short essays about a variety of neuroscientific topics. The two most recent entries discuss Exercise and the Brain and Tips on Enhancing Creativity. Then head over to Synaptic Chronicles for more stories about neuroscience including an interview I did with Amirali and his colleague Nguyen Tran. The Science for Humanity site also has several interviews with students who discuss their interest in science, technology, engineering and math.
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Last month I was surprised when l stayed at a hotel that did not provide a key to my hotel room door. You might wonder how I got into my room without a key. The answer is that the hotel front desk provided me with an eight digit code that had to be entered on the room door keypad. I have stayed in many hotels and have been given regular keys and card keys to open hotel room doors, but never only a code. When I was told there was only a code for the door, I thought I would have to carry around the paper with the code each time I left the room. What if the code faded or I lost or forgot to take the paper? Therefore, the first thing I did was take a photo of the code with my phone. But I do not carry my phone at all times, so I would not have my phone as a backup.
So, I decided to memorize the code using the old mnemonic method called chunking. Chunking involves reducing the number items into a smaller "chunks" so the total amount of information is easier to remember. I changed the eight digit code into only three chunks: two 2-digit numbers and one 4-digit number. The last four numbers of the code were 1 9 7 5: these were especially easy to remember because I memorized these numbers as the year of 1975. I never forgot the room code for the five days I stayed at the hotel. For more memory tricks, tips and games, see:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chmemory.html
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A. "How Your Brain's Nightly Cleanse Keeps It Healthy" and "How Scientists Finally Learned That Nerves Regrow" (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, September, 2025).
B. "Roaches to the Rescue" and "A Natural Approach to Pain Relief" (DISCOVER, September-October, 2025).
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A. The size of the hippocampus in birds that store their food changes with the season (Source: Sherry, D.F. and Hoshooley, J.S., Seasonal hippocampal plasticity in food-storing birds, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci., 365:933-943, 2010).
B. Geosmin is a natural chemical with an earthy odor. Humans are very sensitive to geosmin and can detect this chemical at concentrations of about one teaspoon in 200 Olympic-sized swimming pools (Source: Ball, L., et al., Geosmin, a food- and water-deteriorating sesquiterpenoid and ambivalent semiochemical, activates evolutionary conserved receptor OR11A1, J. Agric. Food Chem., 72:15865-15874, 2024).
C. The poisonous white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) is also called the doll's eyes plant because its berries look like eyeballs.
D. Trattoria Pizzeria Neuro is a restaurant in the city of Polignano a Mare, Italy.
E. "Can the brain understand the brain? Can it understand the mind? Is it a giant computer, or some other kind of giant machine, or something more?" (Source: David Hubel, in Scientific American, September 1979, p. 45).
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Chudler at: chudler@u.washington.edu
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Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and the "Neuroscience for Kids" web site are always welcome. If there are any special topics that you would like to see on the web site, just let me know.
Eric
Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.