How do you teach neuroscience techniques in countries bereft of funding and infrastructure? In Argentina, the education programme of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) found a creative answer: crabs.

John Hildebrand, one of the founders of the IBRO's international schools, chose Buenos Aires for a class on neuroethology, the neural basis of natural behaviour. Crabs, which provide good nervous-system models, were abundant. “Students work with little crabs they collect in mud flats near the seashore,” says Hildebrand, a neuroscience professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “They have no animal-rearing costs. They can work in shirtsleeves and do very beautiful work.”

But the three-week course — which attracted students from several Latin American countries — was no seaside outing. During a week each of lectures, fieldwork and experiments, work started early and discussions continued late into the evenings.

The IBRO offers courses in developing countries at four levels — from basic lectures introducing neuroscience concepts to courses teaching the latest brain-science techniques and analysis of complex data sets. Students can start on the introductory rung and work on up.

The IBRO uses visiting teams of six or seven scientists. They hold classes in places that have had little interaction with the West, including the Andes, Iran and remote parts of Africa. One challenge is deciding what technology to take with them and use in the host countries. Picking the right model organism, such as the crabs in Argentina, provides a way to bridge the resources gap. They have used insects in Africa and frogs in China.

The course has informed and even altered career paths. It inspired one medical student from Uruguay to switch to neuroscience: a bold move because medicine is a more stable, lucrative profession in Latin America. “Doing what she did was a very, very risky decision,” says instructor Martin Giurfa, an Argentinian neuroscience professor now at the University of Toulouse, France. He was gratified when she told him later that she had made the right decision.

In Argentina, the course included discussions of career concerns. Drawing on his own experience (see Nature 451, 494–496; 2008), Giurfa said that pursuing a scientific career in a developing country is challenging, but can be done: “You just have to fight and fight and fight.”