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For Everyone -
2 h.
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Srpski
From Signal to Decision: How Fast Does Your Brain React?
How fast can your brain react? Is your dominant hand truly faster? What happens when you’re distracted—does your reaction time slow down?
In this interactive workshop, you’ll step into the role of a neuroscientist and test the speed and precision of your own nervous system. Using Backyard Brains Reaction Timer and Human SpikerBox, you’ll conduct real experiments on yourself and others—measuring reaction times in milliseconds and recording the electrical activity of your muscles in real time.
Every experiment is fully interactive: you are both the scientist and the test subject.
About This Workshop
What You’ll Explore
- Reaction Time Testing: Do you react faster to sound or light? What happens when you need to ignore some signals and respond only to others? Using the Backyard Brains Reaction Timer, you’ll measure your responses and compare them with other participants.
- Muscle Electrical Signals (EMG): Using the Human SpikerBox, you’ll place electrodes on your skin and observe the electrical activity of your own muscles in real time—see and hear the signals your body generates with every movement.
- You vs. The Machine: Can you outperform a programmed system? In a series of short, high-intensity experiments, you’ll test whether the human nervous system can match—or beat—a machine response.
What You’ll Learn
- How reflex arcs and sensory processing operate in real time
- How the brain receives visual and auditory signals and converts them into muscle commands
- How fatigue, distraction, and attention affect your reaction speed
- How to measure, compare, and interpret your own electrophysiological data
Science Through Practice
Forget passive listening—here, you are part of the experiment. The workspace becomes a reflex-testing arena where you’ll compete, measure, and analyze. You’ll attempt to “trick” your own nervous system, discover where it slows down, and find out what the milliseconds really mean.
Why Join?
This workshop blends neuroscience, biology, and engineering into an accessible, fun, and highly interactive experience. You’ll see your reactions as data and understand how a decision becomes a movement—with direct relevance to everyday life.
No prior knowledge required. The workshop is suitable for everyone curious about how the brain and body work together.
About the Instructor
The workshop is led by Aleksa Vasić, M.Sc. in Biology. As a science communicator, Aleksa combines biology, neuroscience, and technology to bring modern scientific discoveries closer to the public. Through hands-on demonstrations, he shows how the electrical signals that control our bodies can be observed, measured, and interpreted using simple devices. Aleksa has years of experience working with Backyard Brains equipment and has led numerous workshops on electrophysiology and bioengineering.