Doctors share brain and brain mysteries with students

It feels like tofu.

If you’re wondering what feels like tofu, it’s the human brain that fifth graders got to touch at Charlotte Central School last week.

Brain Day is a fun and interactive day that has happened every spring in fifth grade for eight years. Dr. Scott Lollis, who is a neurosurgeon at University of Vermont Medical Center, brings in a real human brain for students to hold.

He also has training equipment for real medical students including accurate plastic skull models, hand drills, stints (which are tubes that get inserted into the skull), plates and screws used to repair damages to the skull.

Dr. Lollis started doing Brain Day when his son, Will, was in Dave Baird’s fifth grade class. For many years he did Brain Day with fellow neurosurgeon Dr. Susan Durham, whose daughter was in that same class. Durham has moved away, but Lollis continued this unique experience.

Lollis said the best part of Brain Day for him is “when students ask questions. I am amazed at how insightful many of these questions are. I am often stumped and forced to consider ideas or questions that have never occurred to me before.”

“The most interesting part of being a doctor is the mystery of what is not yet known. Despite thousands of years of human scientific inquiry and our amazing modern technological tools, our understanding of the brain and consciousness is still in its infancy,” Lollis said. “There is so much left to learn!”

This year, Dr. Noah Kolb joined Dr. Lollis on Brain Day. Kolb is a neuromuscular neurologist at the University of Vermont medical center and taught the students about balance and reflexes. His daughter is a member of the class and the reporter for this story.

Kolb said, “It was a definite highlight of my year. It’s fun to teach smart, interested learners no matter their age, and I really hope I will get the opportunity to do it again.”

Kolb helps teach medical students at the University of Vermont and runs studies about cancer.

“I really love my job. I get to do different things that are equally important every day,” he said.

During Brain Day, there were three rooms with different activities. In one room, Kolb taught students about balance and reflexes, with fun activities like having kids react to things under a container and spinning kids in a chair to explain dizziness.

In another room Lollis had real hand drills. If the students wanted to, then they could hold a real human brain.

In the third room there were brain puzzles and mazes. Students look forward to this day every year.

“Today was fun and interesting, I learned a lot,” said Charlotte Central School student, Keer Chol.

“Today was awesome and I really enjoyed doing reflexes with Dr. Kolb,” Rowan Jones said. “Holding the brain was really gross though.”

After talking to a lot of fifth graders it was clear that Brain Day was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but many fifth graders will probably never eat tofu again.