Funding Rural | Episode #10 | Season 2: The Science of Curious Brains with Bill Griesar, PhD
When artists and scientists put their minds together, novel things can happen. Participants in these gatherings benefit from a heightened sense of curiosity — a trait that can spark innovation in communities. Recognizing the combined potential of the arts and sciences, neuroscience professor Bill Griesar, PhD and his colleague, artist Jeff Leake, formed an all-volunteer run nonprofit twelve years ago called Northwest Noggin’. Griesar offers ideas on how philanthropists can get more curious and support regional innovation by bringing more diverse people together for impactful conversations.
“I’m a huge believer in science communication.”— Bill Griesar, PhD
Listen today wherever you get your podcasts.
Apple | Spotify | Amazon & Audible | iHeart | YouTube
More about Bill Griesar
Bill Griesar, PhD is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Psychology and co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience minor at Portland State University, co-founder and Neuroscience Coordinator of Northwest Noggin and Affiliate Graduate Faculty in Behavioral & Systems Neuroscience at OHSU. He loves teaching, learning, and listening to stories—from all ages, everywhere, all the time. Bill earned his Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience at Brown University, and his doctorate in Behavioral Neuroscience at OHSU. He’s been recognized as an innovator by the Obama White House, and has taught neuroscience courses at PSU, OHSU, PCC, WSU Vancouver, Clark and Lower Columbia College since 2001. Bill co-founded (with his artist colleague Jeff Leake) the outreach nonprofit nwnoggin.org. Through NW Noggin (which is entirely volunteer), he’s met over 70,000 K-12 students, houseless youth, members of Congress, incarcerated young people, museum goers, pub patrons and other community members over shared interests in perception, cognition, behavior, brain research and art.
“People who have different backgrounds and experiences than you do have a lot to offer you. You are going to learn something new in that circumstance, and you’re not going to just hear the same thing.”— Bill Griesar, PhD
Discussion Questions
- Bill talks about introducing “noise” or “novelty” in our routines to spark creativity and problem solve. How can you incorporate this idea within your organization?
- When Bill mentions the scenario of the middle schooler identifying the gaps in a graduate student’s work, he is pointing to the benefits of looking at problems with fresh eyes. How can your organization bring in people with a fresh perspective to help you see things that your seasoned teammates might overlook?
Resources
“There’s such a benefit to broadening the investment in education, research, knowledge around the brain, etc., that’ll benefit us all.” —Bill Griesar, PhD
Transcript: Episode #10 | Season 2: The Science of Curious Brains with Bill Griesar, PhD
Erin Boral 0:00
Welcome back to Funding Rural, I’m Erin Borla with the Roundhouse Foundation. I’ve always loved the way art and science complement one another, like two different languages that are essentially trying to tackle universal questions. Philanthropy has long supported both art and science to varying degrees. At Roundhouse, we elevate both because we see how they’re connected and how important they are to vibrant rural and indigenous communities. Ultimately, it’s about curiosity and how we foster that in our communities to spark innovation. Bill Grieser is one of the most curious and inspiring people I’ve ever met. We call him the brain guy. He teaches neuroscience at Portland State University in the Department of Psychology. But he doesn’t just stick to academia. He works hard to bring the science to communities. 12 years ago, he started a nonprofit called Northwest Noggin with his colleague, artist Jeff Leake. Northwest Noggin is an all volunteer run program and basically takes brain science out into the world. The organization brings college and graduate students of neuroscience out to schools, correctional facilities and indigenous communities, and uses art to inspire young people to get curious about neuroscience and how their brain works. They’ve now reached more than 75,000 people through their programs. I was so happy to have Bill join me for a conversation about his work and how philanthropy can get a little more curious too.
Bill Grieser 1:30
People often ask sometimes like, why did you why did you pursue neuroscience? Why’d you get involved? So part of this, I think it’s kind of universal, that we question, like, who we are, why we are here, you know, why we react to the way we do, why we see things the way we do, and then why, when we meet others and we interact with other people, it’s it’s often different, like people have totally different impressions, completely different insights. And that can be exciting and also threatening sometimes. And part of it is, like, depending on a lot of aspects of how our physiology is kind of set up. And so I just thought it was, like, one of the most interesting ways to kind of explore and get at some of those universal questions about, you know, who we are and how we function. I’ve actually found, you know, that there are a lot of organizations that try to, you know, provide answers to those questions, actually. And often I felt like there was some kind of an agenda, or like they were trying to get you to join this or join that. And then actually, with science and research and investigation like this, it was just people who were super curious and interested and also willing to kind of get in there, like to actually get into the brain. And, you know, how is it built? You know, what is it made of? What does the structure tell us about? You know, what it does. And that is, I found, in my experience, like one of the best ways to approach some of these topics,
Erin Borla 2:55
Well, and with Northwest Noggin, not so you’re and every time I see you, you’re either holding a 3d printed brain, or you’re making a neuron out of pipe cleaners, which folks won’t be able to see, but your hands are always moving, and there’s this interconnection, because when you show up to places, whether it’s a rural community school or a juvenile justice center, you’re bringing actual brain specimens, and it’s anything from like, Was it like a mouse or a raccoon? Did I remember that, right, that you had, like, a raccoon brain?
Bill Grieser 3:26
Oh, yeah, we had definitely had a raccoon brain. Yes, absolutely, yeah.
Erin Borla 3:30
And then you you have human brains as well, like you have one over here in the office, yeah?
Oh my goodness. It’s interesting, because it’s probably the first time a student is actually holding or looking at what a brain looks like.
Bill Grieser 3:46
Yes, and I kind of wanted that I was thinking as I was a kid, like I was always questioning, like, Why do I feel the way I do? Why am I acting the way I do? Why do people see me the way I do? And then I didn’t think at all about like, what is behind my head at that point, nobody told me that, you know, nobody tells you, necessarily, that you have, there’s a brain, and it’s made of all these cells, and they’re growing and developing and changing their their patterns of network connection, and that, literally, they’re that structure and sort of how information flows along those networks is all those thoughts and ideas and memories and and also the fact that there is such tremendous potential for change, you know, and how that they’re not static, they are going to alter. And there are things that we can do, like go places, like challenge ourselves in new environments. It’s a very positive experience, basically, for all we found that actually, like, it’s been really interesting, going to, like DC and stuff like that, to, you know, to talk to folks who are in a very kind of rigid system sometimes. But then when there’s all this art there, they just completely open up, and they’re really they say what they mean, and they say what they participate. We all hear our stories and share them, and then people leave with a change in their understanding and like what they might predict about what might happen that’s in a very positive direction. So I think it’s really cool to tie the brain to all of this.
Erin Borla 5:17
You talked about students asking questions and questions that they would often have, and especially now, as we talk about mental health of young people across the country, and being able to understand sort of and holding a brain and having that interconnection of like, am I the only one that feels like this? Yes, what are some of those questions that you’re getting from students, and how are you supporting them through that,
Bill Grieser 5:41
Can you eat a brain? Can’t like, one of the things we definitely get like, oh, sometimes they’re the questions, like, are so poignant that you’re like, oh, like, you know, I’m really afraid of testing. And we have these big tests next week, and, you know, I’m I get sick and I throw up, so how does what’s going on in the brain when you’re nauseous and you throw up? And I’m like, Okay, first of all, why are we doing these tests like this? This just seems like outrageous. There’s a bigger question here. But actually, it’s really interesting. The kids find it when you start to look at the circuitry, like, what’s going on in the brain, like, how it the circuitry for like nausea and for puking and things like that. A lot of brainstem circuitry. It can be driven by a lot of things that you consume and stuff that then travels through the bloodstream and things like that. But it can also be influenced by what you’re thinking about and dwelling on. So if you start understanding that kind of network, kind of organization of our brains, kids start to realize, like, oh, then maybe, how do I take control of that to some extent? Well, you can distract yourself, you know, do something that you’re interested in, you know, go outside, you know, you know, play, talk to people, watch a movie, do something different, and that can pull you out of that and make you less, you know, nauseous in that moment. You could also talk people. Tell them, tell the teacher and say, you know, let them know that this is the experience that you’re having. You know, a huge thing is actually when we go to like we’ve been going to high schools for many years. There’s a number of high schools that start ridiculously early in the morning for adolescent, healthy adolescent brain development. Because it turns out that our circadian cycles shift, you know, they change across development. So, you know, babies, famously, they go to bed, they wake up, they go to bed, they wake up all night long and things like that. But when you’re you hit like puberty, you know, late middle school into high school, there’s a normal kind of shift in those circadian cycles to, you know, staying up later, staying up significantly later. And kids, often, they don’t necessarily want to stay up later, you know. And in fact, actually, they are often, initially, they tell us, like, you know, their parents say, go to bed. You got to go to bed by nine, or whatever, 10 o’clock or something like that. And they’re trying to go to bed. But then they just, like, stare at the ceiling. They can’t, cannot get to bed. And that’s normal. Totally, there’s, there’s a lot of interesting theories about like, you know, they need to sort of separate from us, from the adults, you know, a little bit at their own time to explore and take risks and things like that. But what that means in practice is, if you have a 7:25am, start time for high school the next morning, they are significantly sleep deprived. And that’s not healthy for, you know, brain development at all. So one of the things that we found with this kind of outreach is that if you can tie the question that they’ve got about, Why am I always so tired, or, you know, why can’t I get to bed before a certain time, to this knowledge of how our brain works, how our circadian cycles work, and then tie that To like, well, look at what the policy, you know, he is here that is exacerbating the circumstance of making it worse and more difficult for you. Then take that research, you know, advocate and change that start time. And in Vancouver public schools, they did that, and it was wonderful, because at the board meeting last year, one of the board members said when they voted for it, they said, Okay, I’m voting for this partly because I don’t want to read a Northwest Noggin that we’re damaging adolescent brains anymore. And it was great because when we went back to these high school biology classes the next year, every all the students were there, like when we went the years before, half the class wouldn’t even show up because they were not able to get up in time. They had to travel. There was a mess, and they were all there, and some of they were there, they gave us a standing ovation. It was pretty awesome, actually. Yeah. So we like, we really like that whole package, like, where you can go someplace, hear something that people are interested in and curious about, do digging, figure out what the research says on these topics, and then consider collectively, what is a good policy response, you know, to address whatever this initial concern was, you know to begin with, so
Erin Borla 9:57
Well and you center science-based communication in almost all of your work, it all comes back to like, how are we communicating about this topic? Yeah, and that can be really difficult for folks that are scientists or academics to get out of that sort of academic focus. Or like, I’m only talking to my peers, versus like, no, there’s, there’s a greater, greater population that needs to hear this information. Why is that important?
Bill Grieser 10:26
So first of all, the federal government paid for my graduate education, and that that always struck me as like something incredible. And I feel in some ways that there is a responsibility to give back, because the public invested in us, and you have, you should give back, and the public is investing, and a lot of the public doesn’t always know that they’re investing in all of this extraordinary research, and some of it is really fascinating and actionable, like you can learn from this stuff, and you can, you can actually apply it in your own life in very Effective Ways. So yeah, I’m a huge believer in science communication. And you know, we were just at an event for Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who’s retiring. He was the chair of the House Neuroscience Caucus in the House of Representatives. And we were at OHSU, and there were a whole bunch of scientists there that were speaking and asking him, like, oh, you know, what are we get? What are we going to do? Is, Woe is me. Like, you know, everybody hates us, that people don’t like scientists, they they don’t welcome us. There were they think that we’re biased or this, and of course, they’re biased. But you know, part of it is they said they receive us so poorly, and blah, blah, blah, I just definitely were like, Hello. Okay, we’ve been to like, all these places, like all over the country. Actually, we’ve never had anybody angry or upset. I mean, people are just curious. If so, part of the thing is, stop talking about this just to yourselves on the hill, but get off the hill and go out and listen to what people think about it. And yeah, maybe they’ll have some some thoughts about it. You might have some thoughts too, you know, you might be willing to suppress them in those moments too. So, I mean, it’s actually you can have an actual conversation, you know, all over the place about these topics. And I think we really should, because, again, I I think a huge part of it is, like, if you, if you are, if you see this work, and you see these like, what we’re learning about the brain and stuff like that, and how fascinating it is, again, it goes back to that idea that they it addresses, like, what we’re doing through research often addresses some really universal questions that we all have and that we’re all kind of curious about. We have different stories or different ways of talking about kind of the same thing. And it’s we can learn from each other, actually very positively and powerfully in settings that will, you know, especially if they’re art filled, that can open our brains to be a little more plastic and hear each other and form sort of community connections that match a little bit what’s going on in our brains.
Erin Borla 12:54
So, yeah, listening to each other, right? Like being able to get outside of your bubble and be able to listen to others. And, you know, this show is a lot about how philanthropy can support rural spaces. And oftentimes we have that same conversation like, how do you get out of who you normally talk to and go talk to somebody else? So how do you think philanthropy could play a role in maybe helping adjust or change that that rhetoric, or that idea that nobody likes what we have to say, or we don’t know how to do this, or what what are. What’s another role that philanthropy can help serve in?
Bill Grieser 13:27
Well, you know, philanthropy, like the Roundhouse Foundation, has been extraordinary, because part of it is so first of all, our model is we are entirely volunteer. So all we really need are relatively small investments to be able to do, I feel pretty extraordinary things, because Are we up such so first of all, this, this is a model that that enthuses students like you wouldn’t believe they just like, absolutely want to go places, and they do want to bring what they’re learning into public spaces, including rural spaces, including Like indigenous, like Native American communities, including, like, public schools, including, you know, Congress and things like that too. They want to go places. So basically, all we need, really typically, is, like, housing, transportation and some food, especially with undergraduates and graduate students, they need to eat. It’s good for your brain. But a lot of the, a lot of the the funding mechanisms, and we just talked about this in DC, like that is not what an NIH grant is about at all. I mean, like that there, it’s like, Absolutely not. It’s like, these big grants that you have to know, you know how to apply specifically for this thing. It’s all these acronyms. There’s all this stuff. And you know, a lot of the people that are, if you’re in an all volunteer organization like this, you are also teaching. You’re working. You’ve got, like, a lot of other stuff going on. You do have none of that knowledge, or, you know, time to really do that, and really, what you’re looking for is something so small that there’s no real mechanism to get in anyway. So, so it’s been super powerful to have the money you provided for us to go to Siletz. That was wonderful. And, in fact, we’re going to hopefully be going back, I think, this fall, to attend a powwow at their invitation. Because it was a very powerful experience, like, all the way around, like, we learned things like, for example, like, when you’re talking, it was like a, like a largely Native American school population. And there was the Siletz culture teacher, Theresa Smith, that we worked with, and we were in a class of high school students, and they were asking us questions, like, so why do we call this part of the neuron, the dendrites? Like, where did that name come from? And so it was really interesting. We said, well, actually, you know, these were named by Europeans, right? And basically, they had been forced to study these languages, you know, Latin and Greek. And dendrite is Greek for branch. And they just looked at this, this structure, and it appeared, it looked like a branch to them, right? So they applied knowledge that they had already. So it may seem like it’s a word that, if you don’t know Greek, you got to learn, oh, this other word that’s not in your vocabulary. But for them it was, it was kind of part of their educational background and experience. So they were asking like, Well, why? Why can’t we name it, like something out of the Dani language? And we said, you why not? Absolutely. So they we looked at and they wanted tree needles, which is Queenie, and then my favorite. I forgot how to say it in the moment here, but it was the Dani word for long and skinny. It was teach, because there was one of the kids who was like, long and skinny. And he said, like, you know, the axon, which is the wire, like, component of a neuron, is long and skinny. I like that. He goes, but you know, it carries electricity, right? We said, Yeah. He said, so why don’t we call it long and skinny lightning? So it was like a longer phrase that we decided is a better phrase. It’s a functional phrase. It actually gives you more information, as opposed to just the axis, you know, the structure.
Erin Borla 16:57
So oftentimes bigger research institutions or universities are centered more in urban communities or more Metro places, and oftentimes that’s where our philanthropy communities are located as well. Yes, what challenges do you see that present from your perspective when it comes to serving communities that are are not close to those urban centers?
Bill Grieser 17:20
So again, it’s, like, it’s, again, that sort of, like, isolation of the brain. Like, I mean, you’re basically only getting, you know, a certain kind of input, like, you know, when you’re in an urban community, and that’s where all the funding is going, you know, we find that a lot with like, big grants for community engagement around neuroscience, like, through The Dana Foundation, etc. They’ve, they’ve often gone like Harvard and Yale and Stanford and University of Chicago. Like, if you see the list of folks who get this, it’s the same, the usual suspects again, and you know, somebody, because we just were really frustrated. There was a whole effort to try to diversify. They were, they were, they were, they were supposed to reach underprivileged communities the way they talk about it, which also annoys me, because we often talk about like, like, challenging the the over representation of certain communities actually, as opposed to like, somehow, these are the underprivileged. Because part of it is that people who are, you know, have different backgrounds and experience than you do, have a lot to offer you. You like you, you are going to learn something new in that circumstance, and you’re not going to just hear the same thing. That’s the thing about conferences. And you know, scientists who talk just who primarily just talk to each other, as opposed to talking to the public or talking to different communities. There’s a lot of actually assumptions and sort of cultural assumptions and biases that people bring to these conversations that don’t get challenged in those kinds of environments. You know, one of the things that I think is really fascinating is how a middle schooler can ask a grad student something about the research that they’re trying to explain that will make the grad students stop and go, like, Wait a minute. So we use this term all the time, and you know, maybe I don’t really fully understand that term, or maybe there are some assumptions that we’re making using those terms that need to be challenged or questioned a bit more like this middle schooler is like identifying some gaps here because, you know, they’re, we’re trying. We have to explain it to an audience that’s not just used to us using, you know, the language that we always use, you know. So, yeah, so there’s, there’s such benefit to broadening the investment in education, research, you know, knowledge around the brain, you know, etc, that’ll benefit us all. So, yeah, there’s this really interesting theory by Eric Hoel about the overfitted brain so it’s called the overfitted brain hypothesis. So part of it is when you stay in your comfortable environment and you are reinforced daily, you know, if you’re like this guy, I think often of like a faculty meeting, you know, etc, if you’re, if you’re and you’re just going to conferences with other people who are the same, and things like that, your brain gets kind of overfitted to that data set. And this is actually his, his idea comes out of, actually, a lot of AI work, because they found that when they tried to train these AI systems on a specific data set, the AI would get kind of overfitted to just that data set, and when you introduce something new or different, it didn’t really know how to handle it or deal with it. And so what they figured out is, what if they introduced noise into the data? If they gave it some something ridiculous, you know, they added some things that were completely bizarre or unusual. It actually became a much more flexible kind of system if they added novelty, you know, to the system. And so his idea is a little bit like we dream, you know, often, you know, every night, pretty much, if we are lucky, right? And that adds some noise to the data, but we also this is where, if my colleague, Jeff, who’s the artist, would be really wonderful to be speaking of this, because he loves this idea. We also create art, we create fiction, we create poetry, we create movies, we we create stories that also kind of challenge some of the existing narrative and add noise, but actually kind of wonder and awe and inspiration into the system too. That also improves our ability to be a little bit more flexible.
Erin Borla 21:30
I’d love to hear from your perspective how organizations like philanthropy or governmental funding agencies can better serve whether that’s rural communities or indigenous communities or others about inspiring asking those questions.
Bill Grieser 21:46
Well, you know, again, money is really important money. But also, I have to say the other thing is, like, you guys are really good at like connecting people too. I think it’s also like providing access to more brains, again, like more people. And I don’t mean like the ones that are in jars, but I mean like people who are, like, actual people who have knowledge and understanding and interests, and, you know, can share some of their skills and stories. I think is really very powerful. So actually, you know, I find like opportunities to convene with others, to put on events, like, if you’re interested in, like, more engagement with rural and native communities and things like that. Maybe having opportunities where people, where lots of different stakeholders, can come together, you know, and maybe around a topic or something, and then think about just getting a chance to meet each other and talk to each other and see what comes out of that. Because I’ve had, we’ve had opportunities. That’s one of the things we do like about, you know, some of these some of these conferences and things like that, is that you actually do, sometimes get to meet with folks, and then you end up with really cool kinds of projects that you end up working on, you know, that that take you in interesting directions.
Erin Borla 22:56
Oh, awesome. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you again. Other parting thoughts.
Bill Grieser 23:02
Erin, I just want to say thank you so much for this opportunity. It is really wonderful to speak with you, and yeah, it’s a lot of fun.
Erin Borla 23:22
We all know that we’re out of covid, and everybody’s having these in person convenings now. And so hearing Bill talk about how important it is to get people together is not something that we haven’t heard before, right? And so I think it’s how do we structure those meetings where there’s less structure and more casual opportunity, how to, how to, how do we get out of the way so that people can connect organically, those hallway conversations, that’s the main reason I travel to conferences, is to talk to people outside of the big sessions and hear what they’re working on, and hear how we can work together. How do we provide that as philanthropists for partners that we work with, I think that’s the next goal, right? Is not just providing an opportunity to get to something, but giving them the tools to also learn how they can connect with folks when they’re there. Northwest Noggin has brought young people to the table, and there’s so many other organizations that are doing that, where there’s an opportunity for the youth voice that they want to be involved and they want to inspire change. So making sure that that’s a critical piece of any time that we do convenings, that we bring younger people to the table and they’re inspired and engaged and encouraged to not only connect with others, but learning how to network and how their story can make an impact, and the things that they hear, they can bring back to their community to then make change locally. Thanks so much for listening to Funding Rural as always. Head to FundingRural.com For show notes, transcripts and more. And just a heads up, we’re going to take a break for the election and the holidays. We’ll be back with more episodes of season two in the new year.
Transcribed by AI. Please forgive any errors.
