On November 14th, we had the pleasure of welcoming to CERVO (and the lab!) seven young people from Sept-Îles, Pikogan, Lac-Simon, Mingan, and Natashquan, along with their two friendly supervisors, as part of the BECOME (DEVIENS) initiative of the New Pathways Foundation (Fondation Nouveaux Sentiers). The foundation’s mission is to engage and support young people from First Nations in Quebec in their well-being, individual and collective development, and growth. The DEVIENS internships aim to promote academic perseverance and career orientation for high school First Nations students.

On their day at CERVO, organized by Pascale, the lab director, our visitors met several students and researchers interested in the brain, and they interacted with various healthcare professionals, including a speech-language pathologist, an audiologist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a social worker, and a radiologic technologist. The students visited Professor Parent’s brain bank (Figure 2), and participated in microscopy workshops with different types of tissues, including fish, thanks to the students of Professors Silvia Pozzi, Paul De Koninck, and Flavie Cardial. They learned about cognitive functions and how they are measured, took electroencephalography (EEG) measurements (Figure 3), and observed the effects of brain stimulation (thanks to Alexandre for lending us his brain for the occasion!). They also visited the brand-new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) center at CERVO (Figure 4) and met with the director, Céline, who taught them more about brain imaging and MRI physics.