International Brain Awareness Week, known internationally as BAW (Brain Awareness Week), has been organized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives – The Dana Foundation since 1996, with the aim of raising public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research. #BrainAwarenessWeek.
 
This year, 2026, it will be celebrated from March 16 to 22, and the Faculty of Health Sciences and Nursing at the Portuguese Catholic University, like partner organizations around the world, will once again participate with a series of initiatives on the UCP campus and beyond.
 
Program:
 
March 16–20 | Open All Week | Neurochallenge: Discover the Brain!
An educational escape room developed as part of the new Bachelor’s Degree in Neuroscience.
 
March 18 | Sessions at Loulé Secondary School
Prof. Joana Rato, Ph.D. (Faculty of Health Sciences and Nursing)

• For 12th-grade students: “What science explains (and myths don’t) about the adolescent brain?”
• For teachers: “Myths and adolescence: a neuroscientific perspective on learning”

March 19 | Do We Communicate? Interactive online activity “To think or not to think: That is the question” | Online  
Sara Costa (PhD Student in Cognitive and Language Sciences)

March 20 | NICE_Talk | 4:00 PM | Room 422
Inês Cabaço (NICE_Lab/ CIIS-UCP) and Marina Nóbrega (IST-UL)