Kids are used to using their brains, but it’s rare that they
hold one. It’s so rare, that’s one of the favorite activities at
an open house for middle-school students at the National Museum
of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring during Brain Awareness
Week, which was celebrated nationwide March 11 to 17. Outfitted
with purple nitrile gloves, students could hold a real brain,
look at its parts and feel the weight of a lifetime’s learning
under the watchful eye of the museum’s brain collection manager,
Archie Fobbs. “It was cool — different than I expected,” Molly
Quinn, a seventh-grader at Our Lady of Lourdes School in
Bethesda, said. “I thought the color would not be as tan. I
thought it would be more pink,” Joanne Odenkirchin, from the
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the
National Institutes of Health, helped students take off the
protective gloves and soothed those who were leery about
touching the specimen. “It’s not brain juice,” she told the
students of the liquid dripping from