Intro Mice, fruit flies, worms, and monkeys. These are just some of the many animal species that are commonly used by scientists to learn about the nervous system, often with the goal of uncovering something about the human nervous system. If that’s the case, then the species being used is said to be a model […]
Category Archives: Methods
June
10
What is a topology and why is it in my neuroscience?!
posted by JC Gorman
[En Español] Time to go back to math class and into a world where a coffee mug and a donut are the same thing. If you ignore distances and shapes, and instead focus on continuity and relations, a donut can easily be morphed into a coffee mug, making them “topologically equivalent”. The hole is the […]
May
27
How to Write a Scientific Paper
posted by Nicole Mlynaryk
Most people learn how to write a scientific paper or proposal through trial and error. This guide hopes to make that process easier.
April
01
How do we use magnets to take pictures of the brain?
posted by Seraphina Solders
Magnets are everywhere – they exist in our electronics, cars, refrigerators, and so on. The Earth itself is one giant magnet, which is why we can use compasses to navigate! They also have many incredible biomedical applications, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which allows us to take pictures of biological tissues and organs in a […]
December
31
Life After Death(?): From Strokes to Sci-Fi
posted by James R. Howe VI
Death is not a singular event, as implied when we refer to the “time of death” or “moment of death”. It is a relatively long, drawn out, active process: these terms merely simplify and provide a hard boundary. Not everything in the brain (or the rest of the body) dies at the same time, at […]
August
13
Diffusion MRI: Mapping the structural highways of the brain
posted by Seraphina Solders
Some of my favorite scientific images to look at come from scanning the human brain with a tool called diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (or diffusion MRI). These images depict the long fibers that connect one part of the brain to another in a color-coded fashion, with a beautiful result: a colorful map of the brain’s […]
April
23
I Can See it in Your Face: Facial Expressions in Mice
posted by Drew Schreiner
How do you know what an animal is feeling? Unfortunately, you can’t ask a dog, mouse, or fly how they are feeling or what they are thinking. This is one of the chief problems in animal research – we just don’t have ready access to their internal thoughts and feelings. This inability to access the […]
June
13
BrainEx: Restoring Brain Circulation After Death
posted by Seraphina Solders
[En español] In May of 2018, headlines across the internet warned of a creepy new “brain in a bucket” experiment, in which scientists had “reanimated” the disembodied brains of pigs from slaughterhouses, and surely promised a “living hell” for humans. Very little was known about this study at the time, as the lead scientist, Nenad […]
March
14
Me, my cells and I: a love poem
posted by nhoffner
matte black curtains are taped tightly to the windows the only light allowed here is the gentle yellow glow that illuminates the stage gracefully getting into position I delicately balance between thumb and forefinger a thin disk carried with a careful reverence placed gently on the altar humble sighs aside my hands rise […]
December
27
The Trouble with Drug Development
posted by James R. Howe VI
Open a new tab, load up a science media site you know. What do you first see across the front page? You will almost certainly find a headline blaring “NEW FINDINGS SHOW AUTISM’S DAYS ARE NUMBERED” or “UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER CURES PARKINSON’S DISEASE”. Open the page up next week, and you will almost certainly see some […]
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