Ar is the brainchild of a group of neuroscience students and researchers from the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. We want to open the doors of the mysterious world of science and the brain to the public and give you a taste of what we do. We’ll show you why science is important for you and the community at large: and how surprisingly fun it can be along the way! We will present a monthly programme of events, ranging from talks, dance performances, debates and interactive projects, all connected (directly or peripherally) with science and scientific ideas. Alongside this is our website and online magazine, with information about upcoming and past events, forums for discussion and debate, articles about interesting scientific development and links to all the cool things going on in the world of science right now.
The Champalimaud Neuroscience community is an extremely diverse group, with backgrounds including computer science, finance, medicine and even clown school. We have converged on Lisbon from over 20 different countries around the world to try to comprehend how the brain and nervous system performs all of the amazing things it does every day. For instance: imagine that your shoelace is untied. Do you know how your brain can firstly use information from your eyes to recognise the problem; then remember how you solved this the last time it happened; next come to a fast decision about on best course of action; and finally co-ordinate your fingers to re-tie the knots? Neither do we – but we want to! Our research focuses on understanding the normal functioning of the brain, both human and animal. The brain performs huge numbers of tasks better than the most powerful computers we’ve ever been able to build, and it does this without anyone sitting at the controls or writing the programmes for it – a beautiful, self-teaching, evolving system. We want to advance step by step the knowledge we humans have of this most complex of nature’s problems, and hopefully we can share some of the wonder we get from this with you! A ciência está no Ar – respire connosco.