Dana & Richelle: Week 13

Dana's update:

This week, Richelle and I talked about more questions we could pose for our collaborative project, which will use both text and images to explore neuroscience.  So far, most of the questions have been about autism research and why scientists work with animals.  Richelle suggested that she could aim for more variety in the images if I wrote about more different topics.  Since we were originally matched to collaborate based on our interest in microscopic and macroscopic nature, we discussed posing some questions about these patterns.  With texts about what cerebellar Purkinje cells and other neurons look like, Richelle will have a chance to illustrate my neurons and draw comparisons between large Purkinje-shaped structures in macroscopic nature.  So far, Richelle and I have found similar structures in Purkinje cell dendrites, coral, social networks, river tributaries, trees branches, tree roots, and broccoli.
 
Here are some questions I am looking to create short texts for:

1. What is a Purkinje cell?
2. What do Purkinje cells look like?
3. How are Purkinje cells different from other neurons?
4. What are other examples of the Purkinje pattern in nature?

This is a photo of a Purkinje cell, which is a neuron in the cerebellum. I took this picture a few days ago in the lab by acquiring a z-stack of about 50 images in planes that were vertically separated by ~0.85 µm using our confocal microscope.

With these texts, Richelle and I would have some entries about autism, and some about cerebellar neurons.  I think it would also be great to create entries about experimental techniques such as patching cells, as well as to create entries about who scientists are today and what daily life is like as a scientist.  Maybe we’ll even create some entries about how to slice a brain!
 
Here are some other questions I would like to answer in this collaboration:
 

1. What does a scientist look like today?
2. What do dendrites do?
3. What do neurons have to do with forming memories and learning?
4. How do you slice a brain? 

Here’s a picture of some Purkinje cell dendrites that I used in a recent calcium imaging experiment.

​If you have questions about the brain, autism, or anything else in neuroscience, tweet them @dhsimmons1, and I’ll get you an answer.  Cheers!