Science on Tap: A Neuroscience Trivia Night is a No-Brainer

How can we strengthen our brains? That’s one of the questions that neuroscience graduate students Karyn Schy, Brie Brown, Jack Browning, Alana Hutchinson, and Alexis Mann addressed at the April 24, 2025, Science on Tap event “Neuroscience Night.” The interactive and engaging night consisted of three rounds of trivia, two brainy tiebreakers, and ultimately one winning team to walk away with the prize!

    Karyn Schy served as the trivia host, reading questions and giving the audience time to write down their answers. The first round of trivia was themed as “This Week in History.” Questions connected the anniversary of historic events and people to neuroscience trivia. One question, for example, related the first YouTube video to the platform’s popular video genre known for giving listeners “brain tingles.” This genre is known as ASMR (or autonomous sensory meridian response).

    Between trivia rounds, others on the presenter team gave mini-talks about their research while Karyn counted up each trivia team’s score. After the first round, second-year Ph.D. student Jack Browning presented the value of exercise — it’s good for both your body and your brain. Exercising can delay the slowing of blood flow to our brains as we age, which can prolong cognition, or our ability to retain memories. Exercise can also help mitigate stress and encourage good sleep. Our concentration of cortisol (the stress hormone) is the highest when we wake up and then decreases throughout the day; this cycle contributes to good rest at night. People who exercise have a larger spike in cortisol in the morning, leading to lower perceived stress throughout the day and better sleep at night. All of these benefits led Browning to say in conclusion, “Don’t compromise, exercise!”

    Third-year Ph.D. candidate Alana Hutchinson led the first trivia tiebreaker round. After introducing what seemed like a normal game of cornhole, Hutchinson revealed a twist. She explained the concept of proprioception, or the ability to accurately control our bodies. Proprioception is impacted by alcohol, so Hutchinson challenged the participants to play cornhole while wearing distortion goggles, simulating the effects of alcohol. As the two audience members played, they slowly adapted to their new gear and got better at the game. Hutchinson explained that the participants’ progress is an example of neuroplasticity — the ability for the brain to improve in new and different environments.

    After a second round of trivia recapping Browning’s exercise talk, Brie Brown took center stage to talk about the benefits of language learning. Brown’s talk built off the first tiebreaker’s introduction to neuroplasticity, examining the success of language learning once in adulthood. Referring to two studies, Brown showed that it’s most effective to integrate a little bit of language learning into our everyday lives and to use varied learning strategies. Language learning, even in adult life, can reap cognitive benefits after just eleven weeks and can lead to neuroprotection, she said.

    Alexis Mann introduced the final tiebreaker of the night, this time about the Stroop effect. She presented a list of words like purple, pink, and orange — but the color of the ink on her poster did not match the word. For the game, participants were asked to identify the color of the ink. The challenge of the Stroop effect comes when our brains take in two different pieces of competing information. Our brains then have to decide what’s more important, causing people to take more time than expected or to falter.

    The mini-talk and the tiebreaker were followed with a third round of trivia about language learning. Soon after the trivia concluded, the audience took a short break while Schy tallied everyone’s scores. The audience waited with bated breath for the winning team to be revealed. At stake was the ultimate prize: a “trophy adjacent thing,” as the presenters put it, and a swag bag. Schy announced the winners — a team that had gotten a perfect score. Congratulations to the Blue Birds on their impressive win!

    Thank you to Karyn Schy, Brie Brown, Jack Browning, Alana Hutchinson, and Alexis Mann for sharing their brainy trivia and to Rising Silo Brewery for hosting! Science on Tap is a monthly event sponsored and supported by the Center for Communicating Science and by Virginia Tech's chapter of Sigma Xi. Come out to our next event at 5:30 p.m. June 26, 2025, to hear VT professor of mechanical engineering Kevin Kochersberger speak about unmanned flight surveillance.

By Bria Weisz, Center for Communicating Science graduate assistant