1 in 8700: Lisa Bernardin

Six years ago, Lisa Bernardin read a newspaper article that would alter the course of her life.  It was during a state of “oscillation,” as she said, that Bernardin came across an article about the winner of the International Brain Bee.

The Brain Bee is an international neuroscience competition for high school students.  Starting with a statewide competition, winners of the Brain Bee move on to a nationwide competition.  The winner of the nationwide Brain Bee then competes against representatives of 18 different countries for the title of International World Brain Bee Champion.

Immediately after reading the article, Bernardin looked to see where the nearest Brain Bee was, only to discover that Vermont had no Brain Bee.  She soon became Vermont’s first Brain Bee coordinator, and has been for the past five years.

“My job as coordinator is to get the participants,” Bernardin said. “So I have to get excitement about learning about the brain and how it functions.”

Fortunately, there is nobody more excited about this subject than Bernardin herself.

“Everybody’s got to know about neuroscience,” Bernardin said. “It’s the way we function.  I mean in some ways it is vital.  It’s how we live, but… we live without really knowing that we need that information.”

One might assume that Bernardin had a background in neuroscience before becoming involved in the Brain Bee, but she had never been educated in neuroscience.  Rather, her interest in the field came from both a love of teaching and also a tragic car accident 29 years ago.

“A woman hit us head on and so I was in a coma for seven weeks,” Bernardin said. “The coma was the big thing because it’s hidden. You can look normal but yet you … have all these [memory and the organizational] issues... that causes stress.”

She’s now part of the Middlebury brain injury support group due to her Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).  She has a persistent frontal lobe injury, which means she continues to have trouble with organization, planning, decision-making and other “executive” cognitive functions.

Although her injury made her job as a speech pathologist too difficult to manage, her passion for the Brain Bee has transformed her injury into an opportunity.

“It’s not a job but I make it like a job in that I always have stuff to do,” Bernardin said.  “I’m always looking to get more schools and more high school students [involved].”

She’s eager to get college students involved in Brain Bee as well — Middlebury seniors have been helping to run Brain Bee clubs at Middlebury High School since the start of the program.

“I’d love to get more involved with the College,” Bernardin said.

For now, her job as coordinator will involve helping the winner of the Vermont competition to prepare for the nationwide Brain Bee. She said that she is exccited “to see the high school students wanting to learn about something that someday they might help cure” such as Alzheimers and schizophrenia.

Bernardin herself recognizes that her brain injury puts her at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease. This risk, however, is not the reason behind her passion for neuroscience.

“Sometimes I’ll say that [I’m at higher risk] but sometimes I don’t,” she said. “I think it’s just more important that neuroscience is out there for people to grasp and to learn about.  If they help discover something for Alzheimers, that’s fabulous.”

Her goal for next year’s Brain Bee is to  increase the number of students participating back up to around 30 from the 18 students that competed this year.  This will involve recruiting more Vermont high schools.  Bernardin also plans to meet with the State Department of Education, which she has done once before, and explain her goals of stronger student recruitment and more emphasis on neuroscience in the classroom.

“High school students, I think, are a really important age,” Bernardin said. “Because they don’t have brains that are fully developed.”