About usMy name is Cicy Chen from St Andrew’s College.
Hi, I'm Cicy! I am a 15-year-old year 11 student from St Andrew’s College who was runner-up at the South Island Brain Bee. Perhaps the most valuable experience I gained from doing Brain Bee was the internship day at Otago University, which is easily one of my highlights of this year.
I especially enjoyed the neuroendocrinology lab, run by the Centre of Neuroendocrinology (CNE) where we watched Professor Greg Anderson extract a mouse brain from a mouse and got to try our own hand at doing so as well. We also practised mounting slices of mouse brain onto microscope slides before carrying them to the microscope to try and find GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) neurons. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to find any such neurons. They were labelled with antibodies that would make the antigen-antibody interaction appear neon green under the light microscope when the light under the specimen was a teal or blue colour. I did find a random spot of neon green and got excited for a second before being told it was probably just a speck of dust.
Other interesting aspects of the trip included visiting Eccles Facility and seeing how an electroencephalogram (EEG) worked as well as trying it out! The staff at Eccles gave us a detailed tour of the building and explained the various safety measures they have in place to protect the health of the animals there. We were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to see some of the researchers working there as well as some of the animals!
The EEG was a very unique experience as the machine can measure brain waves and it rewards the brain with a beep if there enough of certain brain frequencies being picked up (above a threshold which can be modified). Essentially, the goal in this scenario was to relax for those frequencies to occur. I was a bit concerned at first when I could not get any beeps to sound but it turned out that the gel had been on another electrode and the beeps came after that was corrected.
Another highlight was visiting the Anatomy Museum, particularly the pathology room, where Ms Sharon White was kind enough to take us through several different specimens. We found a Campbell Biology textbook there too!
If you are thinking of trying Brain Bee, I promise you that you will not regret doing it. Yes, there will definitely be moments when you're like 'make it make sense' and other moments when it might instantly click, but at the end of the day, you make so many new friends (I met some of my closest friends through Brain Bee!) and you learn so much stuff that you never would have otherwise.
In conclusion, I walked out of October 3rd with even more interest in science (how is that possible?), a lot of pictures of this seagull from Dunedin and a whole bunch of amazing memories which manifested as ten pages in my diary.
Thank you to all the parents, teachers, staff, scientists, and various organisations such as BrainSTEM Otago and the Neurological Foundation who managed to make this day happen (and Otago University for hosting)! I hope every student who will ever go on this trip enjoys it as much as we did.
P.S. Thank you to Tiantian Chen, my fraternal twin for the day and one of my closest friends (because of Brain Bee!) – super proud to share a last name with you!
Cicy Chen, St Andrew’s College, Christchurch
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