YasAmy's Neuro Blog

[yasamy]

Attack of the tab monster!

[yasamy]

In the upcoming weeks, Yasamin and I have the awesome opportunity of facilitating some neuroscience related activities at a local summer camp. Today, we made these brain puzzles for one of our activities. We had lots of fun And we really look forward to the camp!

[yasamy]

The Neuroscience of Social Influence | Beautiful Minds, Scientific American Blog Network

Can neural activity predict which ideas will succeed? 

[yasamy]

A beautiful image of light sensing neurons in a fruit fly eye.

http://www.brainfacts.org/brain-basics/brain-development/articles/2013/image-of-the-week-directing-traffic/

[yasamy]

Neuroscience Field Course - Part 6

Today we took a much needed break as a class and went on a 5 hour hike. It was definitely exhausting but it was great to chat with our class mates and look at the beautiful scenery at Kananaskis. 

We don't think words will really be effective at describing how breathtaking the view was so we will keep this blog short and sweet. 

Here are the pictures:

a) This is look out at the very top. The platform that you see is for helicopter landing. Only a couple of people from our class made it to this peak. The view was definitely worth the extra half an hour of hike.

b) It was about to rain so that is why the clouds look like that.

c) This is the peak that most of the class hiked to. Beautiful.

d) See the "S" shaped road? That is highway 1.

e) The look out shown in a is the Barrier Lookout at an elevation of 1981m.

[yasamy]

Neuroscience Field Course - Part 4 & 5

Today we have some pretty exciting news to tell you! Yesterday was a lot of stress for sure but everything that has happened today was definitely worth it. 

At about 12AM best thing so far in the field trip happened! After hours of work, more than 10 failed CNS isolation and multiple failed nerve recordings, we finally had one perfect recording. Needless to say, we were jumping up and down like 5 year olds on a Christmas morning. 

Now time for some pictures!

top left: using a glass capillary filled with water to write YasAmy on a piece of napkin. haha see nerds do have fun!

top right: this is a fine stream of water coming out of a glass capillary. We jokingly said this would be great for a water fight. Also if you ever get a chance to feel the water coming out of glass capillary, do it! The slight tingle is one of the coolest feelings ever.

bottom left: this electrical recording is the reason why we were so excited at 12 AM. We added something to reduce the electrical activity and then we added something else which was able to almost restore that electrical activity. Pretty neat, eh?

bottom right: if you look very carefully, it says YasAmy on the napkin.

[yasamy]

Neuroscience Field Course - Part 3

Like the previous two days, today has been quite eventful. Definitely a little exhausted right now but I am glad that after a long day I can finally sit down, relax, and write this post.

Right after breakfast we did some righting response tests on the snails. This involves turning the snails upside down to see how long it takes for them to turn themselves right side up. This gives us information about the effects of our treatment on their cognitive and motor functions. Although the snails couldn’t hear us, we were definitely cheering them on.

Much like yesterday, we spent a large portion of the day taking readings on the spectrophotometer and also dissecting snails.

So far our original plans are slightly delayed. However this experience taught us to leave plenty of “free time” when planning for experiments because there may always be outside factors that can cause delay.

One new thing that we did was plating the central nervous system on a dish with tiny insect pins. Using an electrode and an apparatus (involving a tube attached onto a syringe), we were able to suck up the nerves to record its electrical potential.  Everything looks good and easy on paper. But not so much when we actually try to do it ourselves… There is for sure a learning curve but I am confident we will get better soon.

  Here are some pictures that illustrates our day:

a) This is how the different groups keep their snails.

b) Isolated brain of snail

c) Two snails flipped upside down during our right response test

d) Cuvette of resazurin

e) Cuvette of reduced resazurin with a brain inside (see the little orange dot? That’s the brain!)

[yasamy]

Neuroscience Field Course - Part 2

Hello again! 

If yesterday was exhausting, I don't know what today was! We were busy all day working on our experiments and also enjoying our time together. 

Breakfast was served at 7AM (cue groan) - but the food was definitely worth the early wake time. Afterwards, it was straight to the lab to perform a variety of procedures on the Lymnaea, including some more injections. 

I'll describe very briefly some of the tests we ran today. We performed a behavioural test known as the "righting response", which basically involves flipping a snail on its back and measuring the time it takes for it to orient itself "right" again. We also isolated snail CNS (10 of them, to be exact!) to run a colorimetric assay of redox activity. We immersed the CNS in cuvettes containing our dye and used a spectrophotometer to measure change in absorbance. Unfortunately some things went wrong with the wavelength we used, so we'll have to repeat this set. Oh well - we learn from our mistakes, and science just works this way! What was interesting was that through the process of trying to figuring out what went wrong, the two of us truly learned the process by which spectrophotometry operates, as well as the procedure for determining maximum absorbence peaks for a coloured compound. So really, in the end I feel we gained something. 

As we headed back from the lab in the evening, the weather was quite lovely, so we spent a bit of time outdoors throwing a frisbee around. After a bit of conversing with fellow students (and of course, writing this entry), it's really time for us to go to bed. Stay tuned for more tomorrow - until then, goodnight! 

Here are some pictures of today's events!  But what are these images?  a) Snail in Listerine for anaesthesia b) Full snail, pinned down under microscope c) Cuvettes containing dye (Resazurin) for colorimetric assay d) Pink form of colorimetric assay - this is what the reduced form looks like e) & f) After we finished our experiment, we had to properly retrieve dispose of the isolated CNS; here they are (somewhat dried) on a Kimwipe, as seen under a microscope ;)

[yasamy]

Neuroscience Field Course - Part 1

Hello everybody! 

We arrived in Kananaskis this morning, and we've already done so much!

We got on the bus at 9AM sharp, arriving at our destination in an hour. After, we got an introduction to the field station, including some tips on how to deal with a bear encounter - yikes!  We had a bit of time before lunch, so we headed out to find a geocache located on site. This was a multi-cache taking the form of a stroll through WWII history. We found the first cache in the series, and learned that we were actually on the site of a WWII internment camp. More to come over the next days as we learn more about the historical significance of our surroundings. On our way back, we came across a fairly massive anthill, which was an impressive and slightly disconcerting sight. After lunch, we headed down to the lab and performed our first set of injections on our snails. It took a bit of practice to master the technique, as it's important to be confident and not at all hesitant with the needle. We also practiced isolating the Lymnaea CNS - a skill we'll need for our future assays.  The rest of the evening was fairly relaxing, and involved a delicious dinner (including ice cream), soccer and volleyball. The night was concluded with über-competitive rounds of Bananagram and Taboo (sidenote: Taboo was played in the form of battle of the sexes - girls won by 2 points :P )

Here are some photos to recap our day: 

Alright folks, we're exhausted from a very eventful day, so we'll be heading to sleep soon. Stay posted for more updates on our adventures here in Kananaskis!

[yasamy]

Neuroscience Field Course - Part 0

Hello everyone!

We (Yas & Amy) are currently doing a neuroscience field course as part of our program. We spent the last week at the university attending lectures and becoming familiar with the lab techniques, because this week we get to go to Kananaskis for 10 days to work on our very own original research projects! 

We use snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) as our model system. In the past week, we've tested their rasping response, used video-tracking to assess their locomotion, performed electrophysiology on them and performed a backfill stain on the neurons. Here are some pictures - hope you enjoy!

This is the setup used for extracellular recordings; the CNS is pinned down on the plate, electrodes are attached and the whole setup is places in a (grounded) Faraday cage. We're recording from one of the lip nerves emerging from the buccal ganglia. The purpose was to assess the response to sucrose. Essentially, would there be a greater degree of electrical activity once sugar was added to the medium? 

Here is a snapshot of what we were recording. This is a "burst" in electrical activity. Later, we analyzed this data to find patterns in particular types of activity representing the acting of certain neurons:

Here is another picture of the overall setup: 

We used a nickel-lysine dye to perform a backfill staining. The dye is carried back up to the ganglion. If we were doing an experiment on nerve regeneration, we would use this technique to assess the integrity of the damaged neuron; the less dye in the ganglion, the more damaged the neuron is. In this image you're looking at the two buccal ganglia. What's really cool and impressive about this photo is the connection between the ganglia. If you look closely, you can see that the dye has carried over to a tract connection the ganglia, and as a result of backfill staining on the left, we now have some traces of blue in the right ganglion!

More to come when we travel to the field station!

- Yas

[colchrishadfield]

Calgary AB, glowing up into space, early on Sunday morning.

[yasamy]

Home.

[biocanvas]

Astrocytes (in red) are the most abundant cell in the brain and help support neurons (in green) by recycling old cellular byproducts and regulating a healthy environment for neuronal function. Unlike other organs of the body where an injury results in a fibrous scar, the brain instead forms an astrocyte scar to promote neuron survival.

Image by Dr. Shelley Jacobs, McMaster University.

[colchrishadfield]

Shiraz, Iran - A city of culture and technology. The colourful roof choices complement the landscape well.

[afracturedreality]

Retinal Neurons

The mature retina contains five classes of neurons: photoreceptors (purple), horizontal cells (yellow), bipolar neurons (green), amacrine cells (pink and blue), and ganglion cells (pink and blue). In this cross section of an adult mouse retina, only a subset of bipolar cells, “the ON bipolar cells” are visible by their expression of GFP. The pink and blue speckled striations at the bottom of the image mark the fiber layer, which contains the ganglion cell axons that will form the optic nerve.

Imaged by Josh Morgan, courtesy of Rachel Wong, University of Washington

[colchrishadfield]

Spaceship command. A huge personal and professional moment for me, nicely captured in a photograph.

[yasamy]

Congratulations to an inspiring Canadian!

[yasamy]

Intense anthro study session - primate classification is serious business.

[yasamy]

This is a very interesting article about a 67 year old neuroscientist who was stereoblind for almost all of his life until he watched Hugo in 3D. He was able to see the movie in 3D. However even after the movie, the 3D vision remained. The small surcharge on a pair of 3D glasses altered his life forever. This articles explains the possible neuroscience behind this and suggests making vision therapy more entertaining for the patients.