On Tuesday, April 28, the Buenos Aires Institute for Biomedical Research (IBioBA) participated in this cultural event, which takes place every year in the city of Buenos Aires with the aim of bringing science closer to the community.
The Instituto de Investigación en Biomedicina de Buenos Aires (IBioBA, CONICET-Max Planck) participated in the 50th edition of the International Book Fair, held annually at the La Rural exhibition center in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Invited by CONICET’s VocAr Program, the Institute was part of the programming at the “Zona Explora” booth.
IBioBA’s initiative aimed to allow participants to explore some of the questions guiding the Institute’s research through scientific and interactive experiences: it featured two stations where questions such as the following were addressed: Why do we sleep? How does information travel from the outside world to the brain? How do our neurons connect? How is all this studied? And what is the point of knowing this?
The booths explored topics related to neuroscience. At the booth titled “The fascinating journey of signals between neurons,” visitors could participate in a variety of perception experiments to understand how sensory information travels between neurons and, through their own experience, grasp how the brain processes the information we receive from the outside world through our senses.
At the table “Everything you need to know about genetics and sleep: do flies resemble us?”, it was demonstrated how the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, helps answer the question of why we sleep. Magnifying glasses were provided to observe mutant flies and understand their different behaviors, and a survey was conducted to learn about each visitor’s biological clock.
More than 320 people visited the exhibition throughout the day, many of them elementary and middle school students. It was a great space for meeting and engaging in dialogue with people of different ages, all of whom were very interested in learning about the institute’s work.