On Saturday 23rd September we took part in this cultural initiative that takes place in the city of Buenos Aires with the aim of bringing science closer to the community in a fun and entertaining way.
Around 6,000 people visited the three stands set up by the institute inside the Centro Cultural de la Ciencia (C3), within the framework of La Noche de los Museos. IBioBA’s proposals revolved around genes and the senses: why do we sleep, how do we look, how does information travel from the outside world to the brain? These were some of the questions that guided the exhibition to understand how genes shape the way we see the world.
At the panel “Everything you need to know about genetics and sleep: do flies look like their parents? visitors were able to see the different phenotypes of the Drosophila melanogaster fly through microscopes and learn why the Neurobiology of Sleep group uses it to study such a complex biological process as sleep. They also talked about how genetic information is transmitted and had the opportunity to take a test to find out their chronotype.
Another of the proposals was dedicated to neuroscience: at the stand “The fascinating journey of stimuli between neurons”, they could observe how electrical impulses are transmitted between neurons, and through their own experience, understand how the brain processes the information we receive from the outside through the senses.
Finally, at the stand “I see, I see, what do you see? A world of colours: let’s see how you see!”, they carried out different experiments to understand how animals see colours and the process by which the brain forms an image of what it sees.
Between 19:00 and 2:00 in the morning we welcomed people of different ages, from families with small children to adults, who participated with curiosity and enthusiasm in the proposals. We shared space with the Centre for Computational Simulation (CSC) and the Bionanoscience Research Centre (CIBION), institutes with which we share the building.