Donders Open Door Day 2016.

Hey guys!

So a couple of weeks back, I visited the Donders Institute on their open door day. The Donders Institute is an institute that focuses on the cognitive neurosciences and investigates a 
lot around the cognitive neurosciences and new neurological developments. On the open door day they invited Victor Mids a medical specialist and illusionist, which I found a rather peculiar combination, to host the day.There was so much to see and do and we didn't really get to do everything we wanted to due to lack of time and it just was a bit too crowded sometimes. But overall, it was an amazingly interesting day. The science nerd inside of me was very pleased at the end.

Before that day I had never even heard of the Donders Institute. Two friends asked if I wanted to come and as soon as I heard the word neuroscience I was hooked. Just a fun fact about me: my favourite bit of the human body is the brain due to its complexity and the endless amount of options and functions it has. We have so much left to discover about it and we can do so many things with neuro-rehabilitation which we've only just scratched the surface. So yeah, I really like the brain. 

During the open door day there were a lot of demos, but also some live MRI-scan experiments and some really interesting lectures. The demos varied from getting an up-close look of the brain (which was one of my personal favourites), to the connections between food and the brain, to the NOA-robot (a robot that helps kids with autism develop social skills), and just a close-up look at the MRI-scan machine. They even had a special children's corner, and free poffertjes which was a big plus!

The lectures, were in my opinion, the best bits of the day. The first lecture we attended was about reading minds and if it's possible to read minds off an MRI-scan. This experiment failed a bit due to lack of time and the early stages of reading minds via an MRI we are still in. So in this experiment the illusionist, Victor Mids, turned out to be better at reading minds. But in the future, I honestly we believe could read minds via an MRI in the future, just you wait! 

Then there was the lecture on neuro-myths which was very educational and hilarious. This lecture was easier to follow for non-anatomically educated people as it didn't contain too many anatomical terms which were thrown around in the other lectures. 
There was also a lecture on gaming with your brain but we decided not to go there. Last but not least there were the lectures on optical illusions, which showed some really cool virtual and augmented reality 
developments in the treatments of Parkinson's disease, and another MRI experiment to watch the effects of fear on the brain which did work out and was sooooo interesting. 


The demo's were really interesting as well, although it was so busy at certain demo's that we didn't have a chance to ask questions or even enter the room which was a bit of a bummer. Although that didn't keep me from having an amazing day. Like I actually held a brain, nothing can beat that right?! So if you're from Holland or happen to be in or around Nijmegen next year at the next Donders Institute open door day, I truly recommend you go there! It's free and really worth going! I'll leave a link to the website of the Donders Institute here! Oh wait, the Donders Institute also has a blog called Donders Wonders blog, you should check it out! Here's also a link to Victor Mids' TV-show MindF*ck, it's pretty cool! 

Lots of love! (also brain related)
ThatDutchGirl96