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By Jim Detjen
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Can you outwit the mazemaster?
 Stop by the Franklin Institute today
and Saturday and see if you can work through an intricate, 6-foot maze in less time
than it takes David Anson Russo to make one.
Russo, 31, will demonstrate his amazing
maze skills at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. both days during the grand opening of the science
museum's new exhibit on the brain, "It's All in Your Head."
The $1 million exhibit, which runs through
Sept. 7 in the William Penn Gallery, is itself pretty amazing.
In the grand tradition of the institute's
hands-on, interactive style of teaching about science, there are a multitude of playful
exhibits to participate in.
These include:
- A zany "Name That Tune" computer game in which anyone able to identify tunes such as
"Hang on Sloopy" can hear a game-show announcer boom out in a mock seriousness: "You've
won an all-expense-paid trip to the temporal lobe of your brain!"
- A giant, walk-through brain in which you can watch internal lights pulse red, green
and blue -- depending upon whether the mass is asleep or awake. Inside, the steady drumming
of a heart mingles with the noises of people laughing and singing lullabies, and other
familiar sounds.
- Two small alcoves where individuals can quietly watch five-minute video case studies of
real people who suffer from schizophrenia, depression, epilepsy, stroke, drug and alcohol
addiction, head injury and severe headaches.
- A "brain bar," where people can hold real brains and observe how strokes, cancer and
other diseases damage the three-pound bundle of neurons that controls our every action.
- A chance to take apart, put together, rotate and slice a brain on a video screen of
an interactive computer.
Development of the new exhibit was
overseen by Roberta Goldshlag Cooks, a psychiatrist, who has collected many of the findings
by neuroscientists during the last decade.
If you want to find out how the brains
of men and women differ, how 10 billion neurons interact to form memories, and how the
intelligence of a poet differs from that of an architect, this is an excellent exhibit
for adults and children over 8.
The exhibits sophisticated, interactive
computers combine video and audio to teach about the brain. You can put together video
puzzles of the Mona Lisa and Independence Hall as well as teach a computer character
known as "Pinhead" to balance a pole.
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But there also are a lot of non-computer
demostrations. You can hit a life-sized skeleton's knee to find out about reflexes, test your
balance on a moveable platform to learn about your cerebellum, hear a bee buzz around
your head while listening to 3-D sound, and test your intelligence in a variety of ways.
And if you stop by today or Saturday, you
can meet Russo, the mazemaster, whose work in recent months has sprouted in a multitude of
places. Last fall, Simon & Schuster published Russo's The Ultimate Maze Book; his
intricate mazes have appeared on T-shirts, calendars and jigsaw puzzles, and in April, an
Absolut Vodka advertisement featured his three-dimensional maze of a vodka bottle.
"I make mazes because they're interactive art."
says Russo. "When someone tries to solve one of my mazes, they're playing against me --
it's artist as adversary."
Beginning July 9, the institute will hold
a series of informal talks with top neuroscientists, who will discuess the latest research
on the brain. The sessions are scheduled for Thursday evenings at 7. The first one features
Richard Restak, author of eight books on the mind and behavior including The Brain,
which accompanied the 1984 PBS television series.
"It's All in Your Head" continues
through Sept. 7 at the William Penn Gallery
at the Franklin Institute, 20th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The exhibit
is open 9:30 a.m. to 5: p.m. daily, until 8 p.m. Thursdays from July 9 to Aug. 27.
David Anson Russo will demostrate his mazes at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m., today and Saturday.
Admission is $8.50 for adults; $7.50 for children 4 to 11 and senior citizens 62 and older;
free for children under 4. Phone: 215-448-1254.
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