Brain Awareness Week, a weeklong series of events intended to advance the public and personal benefits of brain research, officially kicks off March 12, and several University of Washington departments are already involved in the upcoming occasion.

Brain Awareness Week is an international endeavor organized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives to promote public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research.

According to the Dana Alliance’s Web site, it is “joined in the campaign by partners in the United States and around the world, including medical and research organizations; patient advocacy groups; the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies; service groups; hospitals and universities; K-12 schools; and professional organizations.”

“There are hundreds of institutions around the world that participate during the month of March that involves students raising awareness of the brain,” said Eric H. Chudler, neuroscientist and director of education and outreach at UW Engineered Biomaterials. “There are activities occurring in Europe, Asia and around the world. It’s a grassroots thing, in that each department can do whatever they want to promote brain awareness.”

The UW has invited 400 local students from grades four through 12 to the Brain Awareness Week open house today.

The event has proven to be popular among local school districts, with as many as 1,200 students wanting to attend the open house.

This will mark the first year that the open house will be located in a new venue, with graduate students taking a more hands-on role.

The open house begins at 10 a.m. in the UW’s South Campus Center.

The event will begin with an interactive, multimedia brain assembly led by Chudler, where students will have the opportunity to discover the mysteries of the nervous system.

Students will then be able to visit exhibits set up by graduate students from various UW departments and organizations, including the departments of clinical neurophysiology, anesthesiology and biological structure.

Graduate students will have exhibits set up that will explore the brain’s effect on humans and animals, including different neurotoxins, goggles that distort vision, insect senses, how the nervous system detects temperature and visual illusion.

“The Pacific Science Center is loaning some of their museum exhibits as well,” Chudler said. “The exhibits have to do with the senses and drug effects on the body.”

Last year’s open house held interactive activities, including an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine where students could be connected to record their brain waves and a transcranial Doppler machine to measure brain blood flow.

The UW’s department of biological structure had a comparative neuroanatomy demonstration, and the Neurobiology and Behavior Program displayed an exhibit to test the senses and to learn about natural neurotoxins.

The UW’s department of otolaryngology, the department of medicine, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and the Seattle Hydrocephalus Support Group have also provided exhibits in previous years.

“I have been doing the open house for 10 years now,” Chudler said. “I hope kids will have a better appreciation of the brain and know how valuable it really is. They can take safety measures towards protecting themselves using helmets and seat belts.”

Chudler said he decided that fourth grade was an age where children could start to appreciate that the brain can be something interesting to study. It was a good opportunity for that age group to decide if science was something they wanted to go into, he said.

“I hope they will get interested in science and neuroscience,” Chudler said. “I think they can find out science is really fun by learning about how the brain works. I hope the kids will understand that the brain holds all of our potential for the future.”

Reach reporter Vicky Yan at news@thedaily.washington.edu.