If you ask a group of elementary school students the age-old question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?," you’d have a tough time finding any youngsters hoping for a career in neuroscience. With one out of every five people around the world suffering from some type of neurological condition, it’s not hard to see how a lack of interest in neuroscience can be problematic. One way to get more young people interested in such a complex field of study is making it fun. But how?

Greg Gage, University of Michigan alumnus and co-founder of Backyard Brains, went on stage during March’s TED Talk in Vancouver to show how brain science can become accessible to everyone. Gage invited two volunteers to come on stage to perform a scene straight out of a sci-fi movie. Using a computer and electrodes, Gage gave one of the volunteers the power to move the other volunteer’s arm simply by using their brain.

"The brain is an amazing and complex organ, and while many people are fascinated by the brain, they can't really tell you that much about the properties about how the brain works because we don't teach neuroscience in schools,” Gage told the crowd during his demonstration.

By recording the brain’s electrical and chemical messages that facilitate voluntary movement, Gage showed how these signals can be processed and sent to electrodes which cause the volunteer to move her arm without meaning to. Gage and his colleagues at Backyard Brains are currently working on inexpensive DIY kits that will hopefully reach high school and elementary school students who may want to pursue a career in neuroscience.

"It seems that what we should be doing is reaching back earlier in the education process and sort of teaching students about neuroscience, so that in the future they may be thinking about possibly becoming a brain scientist," Gage added.