NOLA BOOKS & BRAINS WELCOMES YOU

Enabling Educational Access to Neuroscience and Psychology

Our Mission

Though the importance of neuroscience education and community engagement activities is as relevant as ever, the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic revealed a critical need to develop remote STEM outreach approaches.

To address this need, in 2020, we launched an innovative neuroscience engagement initiative, the Books & Brains-New Orleans program. The program’s goal was to promote remote/virtual neuroscience engagement while supporting pandemic lockdown and social distancing procedures.

We accomplished this in two ways, 1) by providing opportunities for synchronous and asynchronous neuroscience content interaction online, and 2) by leveraging established brick-and-mortar content delivery infrastructure, the New Orleans Public Library system, to passively and remotely deliver neuroscience content in a way that did not require internet access.

WHO WE ARE

Books & Brains was started by Tulane Medical Center’s Dr. Engler-Chiurazzi and works with Tulane University’s Undergraduate Neuroscience Association. Undergraduate volunteers from Tulane University are arranged into three 'krewes' to carryout various arms of the initiative.

First, to provide neuroscience content asynchronously, our video krewe creates a series of ‘neuroscience-from-home’ videos articulating key neuroscience topics. Second, to promote program awareness to the community and provide opportunities for synchronous direct engagement with a ‘program mentor’, a social media krewe launched this website, generates content, and manages regular postings on various social media platforms. Third, a data collection krewe quantifies program participation by acquiring library book rental records, monitoring social media impressions, evaluating user responses from a satisfaction survey, and verifying the presence or absence of program books at various Free Lending Library sites.

In each book, there will be a QR code linked to our social media, @nolabooksnbrains, so that you can engage with educational neuroscience activities & talk more about the book that you’ve just read!