Ye Old brain city gazette - newspaper

Student - Alexander Blofeld

Supervisor - Dr Adil Khan

For my final piece, I am presenting an example puzzle page from the magazine I would create. BrainCITYTM would be a neuroscience-focused magazine aimed at older kids and younger teenagers (10-16). The theme of the magazine is presenting the brain as its own living city – hustling and bustling just like London. Each issue will take you on a tour of different departments and offices. This would include a dive into the history of the topic; Journal Club style articles covering recent papers; a cartoon section where the material is presented as a fictional tale inside the relevant “department” or “company”; and a puzzle page where the puzzles are based on the material covered in that issue. I chose this as my final piece for several reasons. Firstly I wanted to create something which captured the complexity and chaos of the brain – to capture its dynamic nature and to indicate that we still know so little about the bigger questions relating to how we think. By exploring one area per issue it would allow a basis of real science to springboard off and explore more interesting and philosophical questions imaginatively. I also wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to bring a creative lens to studying science – and, indeed that this is often required when working in the real world. Lastly, I wanted to make something fun and engaging: you can’t communicate science if no one is listening