A local high school student took second place at the USA National Brain Bee Championship last month.

Sophomore Aarthi Vijayakumar, of Blaine, represented the Minnesota chapter at the national neuroscience championship at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. She won the state level competition earlier this school year, conducted by theDepartment of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota.

Winners from 51 competitions in 30 states came to test their knowledge of the human brain at the annual national competition. Topics included intelligence, emotions, memory, sleep, vision, hearing, sensations, Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, schizophrenia, addictions and brain research. The competition involved a neuroanatomy laboratory practical exam with real human brains, patient diagnosis with patient actors, neurohistology, and brain MRI imaging identification.

The winner was from Arkansas and advanced to the World Brain Bee Championship. Aarthi placed second by a very narrow margin, said her mom Devi.

I hope this will inspire a lot more young kids in the Twin Cities community to pursue STEM education, as well as understand that these things are not too far beyond reach with hard work, she noted.

Currently, there are about 200 Brain Bee chapters in about 40 countries in six continents. Dr. Norbert Myslinski founded the International Brain Bee eighteen years ago.

Its purpose is to motivate young students to learn about the human brain and inspire them to seek careers in the basic and clinical neurosciences to help treat and find cures for brain disorders, he stated. We build better brains to fight brain disorders.

The competition is sponsored by the Department of Neural and Pain Sciences of the University of Maryland Dental School.

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Student takes second at national neuroscience championship - Forest Lake Lowdown