The Gateway Science Museum’s “Museum Without Walls” lecture series is back in Chico with large turnouts in Siskiyou Hall. The series topic for Spring 2018 is neuroscience and the human brain, and the lecture this past Wednesday was given by Dr. Jonathan Day, the chair for Chico State’s Department of Biological Sciences. He spoke on memories and how aging affects the human brain, as well as some insight into keeping a brain healthy in old age.

The small Siskiyou classroom filled every seat before the lecture started, and some people even had to be turned away. The crowd ranged from college students to seniors, all ready to take notes on Dr. Day’s slideshow presentation.

You can see the last lecture in the series tonight at Siskiyou 120. Doors open at 7 p.m. and there is limited seating.

Marcia Moore is on the Community Advisory Board for the museum, and she helps prepare Siskiyou Hall for the lectures.

“We started (Museum Without Walls) 15 years ago, the museum itself had been in the planning stages for over 20 years. It’s a joint community/university project, and we’ve been working through three administrations — President Esteban, Zingg and now Hutchinson — with the community advisory board, and now the staff itself since we opened 8 years ago.”

The museum holds the MWOW series biannually, with different focuses for each group of lectures which are presented by experts from the Chico community. The fall series theme is Nanotechnology.

“Before the museum was even built, one of our ideas was to start what we knew we would eventually do once the museum was established which was utilize professors in the community, physicians, people from Fish & Wildlife, people from PG&E to talk about issues that are relevant and maybe controversial that have to do with science and how science is impactful on all of our lives. And we realized that this was a good way to outreach to the community and give us some exposure.”

Mitchell Kret can be reached at [email protected] or @theorion_arts on Twitter.