The team from Baylor University, including (left to right) Ryan Young, Jeff Seinfeld, Barcleigh Sandvall and Rachel Kressin, reclaimed the trophy in the UT Health Science Center San Antonio’s 2010 Brain Bowl.
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For the 13th year, some of the brainiest undergraduate students from three Texas universities gathered at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio to flaunt their knowledge of neuroscience.

This meeting of the minds, held April 13, was organized by David A. Morilak, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology, and his brain trust of faculty and staff from the Center for Biomedical Neuroscience.

The competitors
Returning champion Trinity University faced two formidable competitors. A few weeks before traveling to San Antonio for the official Brain Bowl, the team from UT Austin held its own unofficial tournament to select the best possible team. And Baylor University had a remarkable string of five consecutive Brain Bowl victories before losing the title in 2007.

“These three teams, bound together by a competitive spirit and their shared passion for neurosciences, will spend the next hour flexing their axons and straining their synapses as they strive for the right to proudly display the coveted Brain Bowl trophy at their school for the next year,” Dr. Morilak said as the Brain Bowl was about to begin.

The ground rules
Dr. Morilak explained the rules. Three open rounds consist of 25 questions each selected from five areas of neuroscience: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, brain and behavior, and drugs and the brain. Each round is more difficult than the last, with more points awarded or penalized accordingly. Speed counts, as the first team to respond gets to answer.

Following the open rounds, the teams can wager any or all of the points they have accumulated on a single challenge-round question, betting on the extent and depth of their neuroscientific knowledge.

“Will the Tigers repeat?” Dr. Morilak asked the audience. “Will the Longhorns regain a title that they, too, once held? Or will the Bears re-establish their interrupted era of Brain Bowl dominance?”

David A. Morilak, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, organized the neuroscience competition for teams of university undergraduates with the assistance of faculty and staff from the Center for Biomedical Neuroscience.

The quiz
Then, those much-anticipated words: “Without further ado, let the mind games begin!”
Over the next hour, the questions came, fast and furious:

“Name the sixth cranial nerve?” (Answer: abducens nerve)

“What does EPSP stand for?” (Answer: Excitatory postsynaptic potential)

“Initially developed in the 1940s as a treatment for tuberculosis, this drug class became the first successful pharmacological treatment for depression.” (Answer: Monoamine oxidase inhibitors, or MAOIs)

The winner
When everything was said and done, Baylor reclaimed its Brain Bowl crown, scoring 508 points, compared with 236 for the University of Texas and 233 for Trinity.

The man behind the contest
From the beginning, Dr. Morilak has been the brains behind the operation. He modeled the Brain Bowl on the 1960s quiz show “University Challenge,” and through his tending, it continues to thrive. He starts preparing for each year’s tournament many months in advance, usually contacting faculty advisors at the competing universities in November.

A reception after each Brain Bowl allows competitors to meet faculty and graduate students in neuroscience from the Health Science Center, and past Brain Bowl competitors have gone on to become students here.