Charlie Litchfield knew the lowdown on Prozac, and he is now West Springfield High's top brain buff.
Litchfield, a senior, won the first "Brain Bee" at West Springfield on Friday, Jan. 21. He is one of two students who will represent the school at the upcoming Regional Brain Bee to be held on Feb. 8 at the American Association for the Advancement of Neuroscience in Washington, D.C.
"I got a flier and thought, 'Hey, let's try it,'" said Charlie, one of four students in Ed Linz's AP Physics class who were brave enough to participate in the competition.
The West Springfield competition consisted of three rounds, each narrowing the contestants down by one. The first round was a 50-question quiz, in which students showed their answers to Linz after each question. The questions were related to the brain and other aspects of the nervous system. A sample question: "What is the name of the sheet of photoreceptors that process vision?"
Only one of the four students correctly answered "retina" on that one.
The second round consisted of more questions in similar fashion, only this time the first student to answer three questions wrong was eliminated. That left two contestants, Charlie, and senior Andrew Sukhu. Both students moved on, but a champion needed to be crowned. Again, the first student to miss three — this time Andrew — was eliminated, leaving Litchfield as the champion.
To prepare for the Bee, students studied the booklet "Brain Facts: A Primer on the Brain and Nervous System," published by The Society for Neuroscience, which sponsors the competition as part of its annual Brain Awareness Week, which will be March 14-20.
That's exactly what the competition was for the four students, three of whom aspire to study biomedical engineering in college. The other hopes to be a neurosurgeon.
"Because I didn't know anything about the brain, it was a good primer," said senior Mayank Tandon.
If the students move beyond the next round, they will compete in the International Brain Bee, which takes place March 19 and 20 in Baltimore.
Getting that far in the first year of competition would be a dream, said Charlie, but he was happy his students showed an interest in the competition despite their busy schedules.
"It's exam time, and I'm happy they did as well as they did," he said.