Backyard Brains appears in Wired Magazine

For the past nine years, Tim has had a subscription to Wired Magazine, and he always read the articles on the internet revolution, learning about the drama, personalities, and technology involved with the rapidly changing world of computers. Longingly, he has despaired, wishing neuroscience and biology R&D could be similarly fast with low barriers to entry. We at Backyard Brains are trying to change that, and so it was a special treat this month to be included in the print version of Wired. If you strain your eyes on page 153, you’ll see a postage stamp sized picture of the SpikerBox in the 100 geek gifts for the holidays. Perhaps the soldering iron will replace the wiimote for some folks this year [Disclosure: we love the wii too and take no political/intellectual stance regarding video games].

We also recently returned from the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego (full post coming soon as we round up the pictures), and we give thanks for the Society for sponsoring our trip through the Next Generation Award,and to the Journal Neuron, which also sponsored us through the Anuradha Rao Memorial Travel Award. We’re working hard; thanks true believers!

Posted: 2010-Nov-27 — Filed under: Marketing

Backyard Brains Receives Gracious Pro Bono Modeling Work

Fellow engineers and scientists, you who see the term “modeling” and believe we are speaking of CAD drawings or Spice Simulations, we can assure you we are much less sophisticated and much more shallow. We are talking about hot people, and hot people holding our hot products. Last Friday as we were walking to our production floor (Greg’s apartment) to build some electrodes and SpikerBoxes, we noticed some photographers and models in front of our window! The oscilloscopes and sign had grabbed their attention.

The two local photographers, Justin Trupiano and Michael Shuster, and their models, were doing some contract work for a popular outdoor sportsware shop on State Street. We at Backyard Brains believe in taking advantage of unexpected opportunities, so we kindly asked the models and photographers if they would be willing to shoot a few pro bono shots with our gadgets and insects, in the spirit of helping a small Ann Arbor start-up (us). Quite cheerfully, they agreed! Thanks Justin and Mike! Below are the high quality beautiful photos. Feel the effect of the marketing. If you buy a SpikerBox, you can be like, and hang out with, people like this, the Salt of the Earth, Southeastern Michigan.

Posted: 2010-Oct-27 — Filed under: Marketing — Tags: , ,

Recording from Cricket Cercal Ganglia

Does the SpikerBox work on anything other than a cockroach leg? Yes, you can record from any invertebrate central nervous system but you often need a manipulator to accurately position your electrode. One of our users, Professor Walton Jones at the KAIST University in South Korea, recently experimented on the cricket cercel system. To those of you stuck in the mammal world (we were there too, we understand), the cerci are sensory organs on the rear of crickets and other insects (including cockroaches).

The cercal system is sensitive to vibration (wind, sound) and is a classical favorite of invertebrate physiologists; the anatomy of the sensory neurons’ projections to the terminal abdominal ganglion are well understood.

But can we record from the neural fibers of the cercal system with only the SpikerBox? If you place one electrode needle at the base of the cercus, and one electrode needle in the body as ground, like this:

and touch or blow on the cerci, you get a response like this (below is mp3,wav file can be downloaded here]:

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Thanks for sharing the data Walton!

Posted: 2010-Oct-15 — Filed under: Education,Marketing,Outreach

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