The Brainy Bunch
This iconic neuroscience professor retired from Vanderbilt after the fall 2022 semester.
Who is Dr. Leslie Smith?
Originally called Number Place, this number-placement puzzle asks players to fill in a 9x9 grid with digits so that each column, row, and sub-grid contains all of the digits from 1 to 9 with no repeats.
What is Sudoku?
This lobe is responsible for visual perception, including color, form, and motion.
What is the occipital lobe?
Paul’s height is six feet, he’s an assistant at a butcher’s shop, and wears size 9 shoes. He weighs this.
What is meat?
This disease is a progressive, degenerative disease caused by the buildup of tau and amyloid beta plaques.
What is Alzheimer's disease?
This "Father of Neuroscience," known for his tree-like depictions of brain cells, was the first person of Spanish origin to win a scientific Nobel Prize.
Who is Santiago Ramon y Cajal?
Originally called the Magic Cube, this 3D combination puzzle was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian sculptor and architecture with the first name Erno.
What is the Rubik's Cube?
An action potential is caused by the opening of this type of ion channels.
What are sodium (Na+) channels?
I am the beginning of sorrow and the end of sickness. You cannot express happiness without me yet I am in the midst of crosses. I am always in risk yet never in danger. You may find me in the sun, but I am never out of darkness.
What is the letter S?
What is Parkinson's disease?
This newly appointed Vanderbilt neuroscience professor from Brazil discovered that the human brain has an average of 86 billion neurons.
Who is Suzana Herculano-Houzel?
Will Shortz is a famous editor of this, created by companies like The New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post.
What is a crossword (NYT Crossword also acceptable)?
It has been hypothesized that depression is caused in part by low amounts of this neurotransmitter, whose presence in the synapse is prolonged by SSRIs and MAO inhibitors.
What is serotonin?
A man pushes his car to a hotel and tells the owner he’s bankrupt while doing what action?
What is playing Monopoly?
Famous people with this condition, characterized by seizures, include Leonardo da Vinci, Alfred Nobel, Peter Tchaikovsky, Harriet Tubman, Charles Dickens, and Cameron Boyce.
What is epilepsy?
This Italian biologist and pathologist discovered a staining technique named after him; other of his namesakes include an organelle and a tendon organ.
Who is Camillo Golgi?
Deep Blue became the first computer to beat the reigning World Champion in a match of this game when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997.
What is chess?
Forrest left home running. He ran a ways and then turned left, ran the same distance and turned left again, ran the same distance and turned left again. When he got home, there were these two masked men.
Who are the catcher and umpire (it's baseball!)?
This syndrome causes people to have "tics," or sudden twitches, movements, or sounds that people do repeatedly.
What is Tourette Syndrome?
This British-Canadian neuropsychologist has contributed extensively to research in the field of clinical neuropsychology, holds more than 25 honorary degrees, is a professor at McGill University, and is 104 years old!!
Who is Brenda Milner?
A show titled Brain Games was aired on what educational TV channel, also a famous photography magazine?
What is National Geographic?
Name this term for a language disorder that involves a person's loss of ability to understand or express speech and is caused by brain damage.
What is aphasia?
This is 3/7 chicken, 2/3 cat, and 2/4 goat.
What is Chicago?
This three-word term is a stroke that lasts only a few minutes, occurring when the blood supply to part of the brain is briefly interrupted.
What is a transient ischemic attack?