Neuroscience lab equipment for universities
Enhance your teaching & expand your impact
Backyard Brains neuroscience kits are used in undergraduate labs, psychology courses, and biomedical engineering programs at leading universities worldwide. We provide affordable electrophysiology experiments for students who want to learn neural recording techniques without the cost and complexity of high-end lab equipment.
For Professors & college lab courses
Neuroscience Lab Courses
An undergraduate neurophysiology lab: students record real neurons from a cockroach leg and see the action potential.
Psychology & Cognitive Science
Reaction-time and EEG experiments for psychology and cognitive science courses.
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology teaching lab equipment: the EMG ECG EEG teaching lab, recording students’ own bodies.
Outreach & Education Research
Neuroscience labs for the classroom, with the kits and lab papers behind them.
Anatomy & Physiology
Review human EMG and ECG labs, measurement limits, assessment ideas and department implementation for undergraduate A&P.
Led by peer-reviewed lab papers
Peer-reviewed papers from the Backyard Brains team on labs for undergraduate biology and neuroscience courses.
Wave and event-related EEG labs
Low-cost classroom and laboratory exercises for investigating both wave and event-related electroencephalogram potentials. K Smith et al., 2024. Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education 22 (3), A197.
Study while you sleep
Study while you sleep: using targeted memory reactivation as an independent research project for undergraduates. J Mar’i et al., 2025. Advances in Physiology Education 49 (1), 1–10.
Electrical signals in plants
A library of electrophysiological responses in plants — a model of transversal education and open science. D Madariaga et al., 2024. Plant Signaling & Behavior 19 (1), 2310977.
Grasshopper vision & escape
Grasshopper DCMD: an undergraduate electrophysiology lab for investigating single-unit responses to behaviorally-relevant stimuli. DMT Nguyen et al., 2017. Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education 15 (2), A162.
Nerve conduction in earthworms
Portable conduction velocity experiments using earthworms for the college and high school neuroscience teaching laboratory. KM Shannon et al., 2014. Advances in Physiology Education 38 (1), 62–70.
All publications
Every paper, poster and chapter from the Backyard Brains team.
WHAT DO PROFESSORS SAY?
DR. Manuel Diaz-RiosProfessor of Neuroscience and Biology at Bowdoin College, Brunswick (ME)“Our students engage in open-ended neuroscience experiments, making real discoveries in class.”
SpikeStation. Coming 2027.
A research-grade amplifier for upper-level and graduate neurophysiology labs, priced so departments can buy in quantity. A new university curriculum is being built with partner faculty. Price announced at launch.
High-impedance electrodes
Use suction electrodes, crayfish and insect preparations, not just pins.
Record and stimulate
Stimulate and record at the same time on two isolated channels.
Extracellular recording
Choose AC or DC mode for extracellular experiments.
Plan your lab course
Enter your lab course and enrollment. You get the stations, the kit list, a year of supplies, the total and the price per student, ready for a cart or a formal quote.
Pick a course and a class size, then build: you get the kit list, the total and the price per student.
Lab class sets
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Classroom Lab
Serves 30 students in 8 stations
Eight lab stations, each with a Neuron SpikerBox and a Human SpikerBox: students record real neurons in a cockroach leg and the signals of their own muscles, heart and brain.
What’s inside
- 8 × Neuron SpikerBox 10% off
- 8 × Human SpikerBox 10% off
- List price
- $4,399.84
- Class-set saving
- −$439.84
- Total
- $3,960.00
- Per student
- $132 (rounded to the dollar)
Add a semester of supplies: electrodes, electrode gel and cockroaches, at list price.
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Human SpikerBox Class Set
Serves 30 students in 10 stations
Ten Human SpikerBoxes, so every lab group records muscle, heart and brain signals from their own bodies.
What’s inside
- 10 × Human SpikerBox 15% off
- List price
- $2,999.90
- Class-set saving
- −$449.90
- Total
- $2,550.00
- Per student
- $85 (rounded to the dollar)
Add a semester of supplies: electrodes and electrode gel, at list price.
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Neuron SpikerBox Class Set
Serves 30 students in 10 stations
Ten Neuron SpikerBoxes, so every lab group hears and records real neurons firing in a cockroach leg.
What’s inside
- 10 × Neuron SpikerBox 15% off
- List price
- $2,499.90
- Class-set saving
- −$374.90
- Total
- $2,125.00
- Per student
- $71 (rounded to the dollar)
Add a semester of supplies: cockroaches, at list price.
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Claw Class Set
Serves 30 students in 10 stations
Ten Claws: every group controls a robotic gripper with the electrical signals of their own muscles.
What’s inside
- 10 × The Claw 15% off
- List price
- $1,499.90
- Class-set saving
- −$224.90
- Total
- $1,275.00
- Per student
- $43 (rounded to the dollar)
Add a semester of supplies: electrodes and electrode gel, at list price.
List price is our education price. Buying a class set? 5 or more of the same kit: 10% off those kits. 10 or more: 15% off.
Buy for your school or lab
Instant quote
Build a quote with your items and shipping address, and see tax and your total before you order.
Pay by purchase order
Net 30. Open your quote, choose Send PO, enter your PO number and upload the PO as a PDF. We invoice you, due in 30 days. $20 PO processing fee on orders of $1,000 or less; no fee over $1,000.
Tax-exempt?
If your school or district has a sales-tax exemption, check its status in the tax exemption section of your account.
Paperwork
Our signed W-9 is one click away. Purchasing offices that need a sole-source justification can use our sole-source letter (PDF).
Questions?
Our education team can help you choose kits, plan a district order or answer a paperwork question. Not sure a kit runs on your computers or iPads? See the device compatibility grid.
Teaching a big lecture?
Plan a 250-student neuroscience demo: the kits in order, the room setup and the volunteer roles.
For University outreach & AP science
Bring the cutting-edge of brain science into your AP Biology, AP Psychology, or Human Anatomy & Physiology classrooms with real-time neural experiments.
Our affordable, research-grade tools let students record real neuron activity, explore reaction times, and even control movement using bioelectric signals.
Neuroscience outreach partnerships
Want to create a neuroscience outreach initiative? Let’s collaborate to bring hands-on neuroscience education to your community.
Run a Brain Awareness Week program
Using hands-on demos.
Provide neuroscience experiments
For high school summer programs.
Incorporate EEG & neural activity demos
Into student-led STEM outreach events.
Enhance your labs & outreach with Backyard Brains
Upgrade your labs & outreach with hands-on neuroscience!
AS FEATURED ON
Keep exploring
Follow these paths to compare labs, kits and research.
Lesson Finder
Filter the labs by course, time and NGSS standard, and see every step.
Open the Lesson FinderKits and class sets
Compare each kit’s devices and price, with the class-set bundles for your course.
Browse kitsPublications
Read the peer-reviewed lab papers behind the course.
Read the papers
Plan the lab from the course outcome, then pick the kits. For a neurophysiology or action potential lab, the Neuron SpikerBox records a real neuron from a cockroach or earthworm leg. For EMG, ECG and EEG teaching labs, the Human SpikerBox records the students’ own signals. The class lab builder above lists the stations, a year of supplies and the price per student.
Plan three or four students per kit. A lab of 24 needs six to eight kits. If the room has fewer, students can rotate through a few shared stations.
Yes, on Net 30 terms. Build a quote with your stations and shipping address, choose Send PO and upload the PO as a PDF. A $20 PO fee applies to orders of $1,000 or less; orders over $1,000 pay no PO fee.
Yes. The signed W-9 and the sole-source letter (PDF) are in the Paperwork step above. A purchasing office can attach the letter to its sole-source justification, and a tax-exempt department checks its status in its account.
Our kits work on Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook and Android. On iPhone and iPad, only the Neuron SpikerBox, Human SpikerBox and SpikeStation (coming 2027) work, because they have Apple’s iAP chip. The SpikeRecorder 3.0 app for Chromebooks is soft-launched through our support team.
List price is our education price. Buying a class set? 5 or more of the same kit: 10% off those kits. 10 or more: 15% off. Lab orders are quoted with the same tiers, so send your course’s station list to our education team.