Lyn Young, Ashley Mendoza, Emily Xu, Sahiti Peddisetti and Michelle Li competed in the Brain Bee Competition in Dunedin recently. This is their account of the experience.

We first began in late February when we received the first neuroscience booklet to study. After a few months of intensive study, we sat the Brain Bee Stage 1 and a handful of us found out not long after that we passed along with 80 other NZ South Island students, and in no time we had received the booklet for Stage 2 and were in the van to Otago University with Mrs Varcoe, preparing to compete in the State Finals.

After the five hour drive down to Dunedin, we arrived and went to visit the Cadbury factory and took the Cadbury World tour which everyone immensely enjoyed - particularly the chocolate eating! 

We got an hour of free time so explored Dunedin for a bit before heading into the Human Anatomy Museum - a section of Otago University with extensive collections of cross-sections and models of the human brain and tissues, as well as a room with a vast collection of real human body parts ranging from preserved limbs to preserved tissue to donor’s hearts, all of which we got the priviledge to pick up and look more closely at. This was particularly enthralling to many of us as it gave us the opportunity to see the things we’d seen in diagrams in real life and get an even better understanding of the context of some things in the competition.

We also had the opportunity to do something new this year in visiting the Neurodome, a 3D immersive experience in the Otago Museum which took us deep into real brain imagery in a short 15 minute experience.

The next morning we woke early and headed out in the cold Dunedin winter over to Otago University, nervous but prepared to compete. We began the competition with the individual round in which Lyn Young, Ashley Mendoza, Emily Xu, Sahiti Peddisetti and Michelle Li competed on behalf of Riccarton High. The individual round consisted of multiple sets of 15 question papers with questions being read out and displayed on the projector screen. A few of us succeeded really well in this, with marks ranging up to 85% for this stage. This stage was significantly harder than the first as there were no multi-choice questions and only a limited time frame to answer each question with.

Afterwards, we had a particularly interesting mini-lecture hosted by Dr Mike Colombo, from the Psychology Department at Otago Uni before heading off to the University HUBS labs to take part in the NEURO 101 laboratory session - something first-year medical students also do! 

In the HUBS labs, we got to do many incredible things, including using the (expensive!) microscopes to look deeper into the levels of various human cells including the stem cell and spinal cord cell. 

We also had the chance to take part in a nerve stimulation activity where we got to press electrodes into our arms in particular places and watch the effects of the stimulation of particular nerves, making our hands and arms jump with the impulses we were controlling! 

We also had the exciting opportunity to touch, hold and investigate real, human donor brains! In sections as well as a whole, we got to gently look around the brains (although for ethical and moral reasons could not take photos). It was a really special moment for many of us, as the human brain is what essentially holds an entire person’s life, memories and controls their existence.

After the HUBS labs we headed back to the University to compete in the team competition. Lyn Young, Ashley Mendoza, Sahiti Peddisetti and Michelle Li all represented Riccarton in the team competition. This round was also uniquely challenging as well as highly nerve wracking to compete in as the key part of the team competition meant each individual member had to have the paper passed around to them to answer two questions in silence, with no input from other members. This was designed so that every member of the team would need to be strong to win the team competition, but it was infuriatingly difficult to watch what the other person wrote down if they didn’t know the answer yet someone else did!

There was a hilarious teacher competition to fill in the time while the answers were being marked, but unfortunately, after that, the two-day experience had come to its end, as we packed our bags and prepared to head back to Christchurch. Returning the five-hour drive was a great time, talking over the thrills of the past two days with newfound friends and talking about other ways we want to continue our study in the future.

In summary, Brain Bee was one of the most amazing opportunities that we would all recommend to anyone who thinks they may even just have a tiny interest in. Who knows who the next South Island or even Worldwide winner could be?