UNM’s School of Medicine Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations collaborates with Albuquerque Academy to create “Your Dazzling Brain—Keep it Bright.”
As part of the Albuquerque Academy “Community Academy” lecture series and International Brain Awareness Week, the event was located at the Albuquerque Academy Simms Center for the Performing Arts.
UNM Brain and Behavioral Health Institute Community Liaison Pari Noskin said that the work she does at UNM is for the people of New Mexico.
“Their voices, their perspectives, their needs, their wants, their concerns. It’s essential that we are always listening and making sure those voices are heard within UNM and that we are serving the people for whom we exist,” she said.
Noskin feels that including a community voice makes ethical and good sense, she said, “It’s the right thing to do.”
The event’s purposes were to educate others about the brain and to showcase that UNM is plentiful in cutting-edge research and wonderful faculty, Noskin said.
During the event, multimedia art masks created by survivors of brain injuries were on display, as part of the “Unmasking Brain Injury Project.” Ranging from motorcycle accidents to abuse to assault, each mask told its creator’s story.
Event attendee Gerri Rodriguez said that the artwork allowed the artists to express themselves when they may not have had other means to do so.
“I’m really touched by [the display]. I think the survivors have been successful,” she said.
Rodriguez was interested in attending the event because she feels that the brain is one of the last things about the human body that remains unsolved.
Attendees were also given the opportunity to use gloves to hold normal, preserved, donated human brains.
It was attendee Matthew Garchar’s first time holding a brain, and he called it an “eye opener.”
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Garchar said that he was most interested in the brain’s orientation, functions, nerves and was happy to learn something new as well as to gain a greater understanding of how different parts of the brain correspond with different mental functions.
Later, audience members were seated in preparation for the talk. Attendees were given glow sticks and signs which read “I light the path for ___” to honor their loved ones who have experienced brain injuries or disorders.
Elizabeth Garchar, a fourth-year UNM medical student, said that she was taught by two of the professors who would be speaking that evening and enjoyed their previous lectures.
She said that she would be holding a sign to pay tribute to a high school friend, who discovered a parasite had died in the base of her brain and was calcifying. Garchar said that her friend showed strength throughout the entire process.
Dr. Barry Ramo from KOAT Action 7 News moderated a three-part talk. The talk was given by Bill Shuttleworth, PhD; Dr. Jessica Richardson and Dr. Davin Quinn.
Shuttleworth, UNM Regents Professor of Neurosciences and UNM Brain and Behavioral Health Institute director, described the talk as a three-act play.
“We’re all trying to talk about the same general concepts from three different perspectives ...This is not an academic lecture,” Shuttleworth said. “It’s an interactive experience.”
Each speaker referenced personal experiences and connected their topics to the other speakers’ ideas.
Shuttleworth spoke about the changing building blocks of the brain and debunked some common myths. UNM Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences Assistant Professor Jessica Richardson discussed brain injury, learning abilities and speech development. UNM Psychiatry Consultation Service Medical Director and UNM/VA Psychosomatic Medicine Fellowship Director Davin Quinn discussed brain plasticity, moods, emotions and cognitive therapy.
“When you put all of that together, we would like someone to walk out of the building with an appreciation that these things people often say are abstract or difficult-to-treat problems are actually very real brain functions that need to be understood and treated just like you’d treat any other medical disorder,” said Shuttleworth.
The talk ended with a Q&A session with the panelists and was recorded. It will be available on local government channels as well as the Brain and Behavioral Health Institute website.
Noskin said that, ultimately, the event is not only focused on problems.
“It also gives people an appreciation of how wondrous the brain is in its ability to respond and change, [while the talk] touches everyone, because we’ve all got brains...We have similarities, and we have differences, but we’ve all got brains,” she said.
Shuttleworth said that they want people to be excited about coming here, because it’s useful for them.
“I want people to know that there’s a lot more that they’re in control of than they might have realized,” he said. “I want them to be excited about going home and talking to their families...about taking better care of your brain. We want to do it in a way that’s accessible and in a way that’s easy to connect to.”
Shuttleworth encourages readers to visit the Brain Awareness Week website (dana.org/baw) to gather powerful, accurate information and plan on attending other events.
“Start thinking of the brain as the key determinant to your quality of life. If you don’t have a good, healthy brain, nothing else in your life has a chance,” he said.
Elizabeth Sanchez is a reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Beth_A_Sanchez.
