Your brain may be the most miraculous thing about you.
So why not feed your brain by learning more about it? It's easy, thanks to the Harvard Brain Tour, a virtual journey through brains' innate capacities and the discoveries they've prompted throughout the century.
Designed by the Harvard Brain Science Initiative and the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, the tour is part museum, part classroom. You can read the weird story of Phineas Gage, who lived through history's most famous brain injury when a javelin-like tamping iron sliced through his skull during an explosion at a railroad site. He lived, though he experienced some pretty dire psychological and physical effects, and now his skull is part of Harvard's Warren Anatomical Museum.
If scientific discoveries are more your style, the tour offers in-depth information on what is called the "brainbow," developed when neuroscientists figured out how to illuminate the wirelike dendrites and axons that connect neurons to one another inside the brain.
Or maybe you'd like to become more, well, brainy. No problem: In addition to videos from Harvard brain experts, there's a free fundamentals of neuroscience course that will teach you about everything from anatomy to the chemical signals that make the brain tick.
Heady stuff? Sure. But your brain’s so cool, it deserves the spotlight.
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