After 11 years of organizing the Atlanta Science Festival, co-founder Meisa Salaita finally touched a human brain for the first time last year. She had many opportunities to feel the brain’s tofu-like texture, firm and squishy, over the years, but the thought had always wigged her out.
Last year, however, Salaita met a young woman at Georgia Tech who told her a story. “She was like, ‘Look, when I was a kid, my parents took me to the Atlanta Science Festival because they said I could touch a brain. Now I’m a neuroscience student at Georgia Tech,’” Salaita remembers. “I said, ‘I need that on video.’” The college student agreed to film her story if Salaita touched the brain. She did.
