SfN 2011

(Oops, never clicked publish on this post.

I am at the Society for Neuroscience Conference 2011! I opted to use the online version of the conference program because it had an itinerary planner that you could use with your mobile device. I knew there would be >30,000 people here. I still goggled at the length of the list of poster sessions, but when my friend picked up her physical, paper program, my jaw completely dropped to the floor (or it would've if it weren't hinged on to the rest of my skull). This is what it looks like:

7 books. 7 WHOLE BOOKS. Wow. It's a bit overwhelming.

The jet lag doesn't help either, so I'm going to go check out the 10-15 posters/areas on my list for this afternoon and head back to the hotel for a nap.

Final Impressions

My arms feel like noodles right now. Today was the first time in 6 weeks that I was finally able to go to yongmudo! The one week when I was here on a Wednesday night, I was sick. And Mondays are usually spent in the lab, but that wasn't going to work out today, so instead I worked out today.

So basically, interviews are over. Of the places I went to, I got accepted to most (but not UCSF) and waitlisted at one (Hopkins). And now, I have to decide where I want to go. This is a really hard choice because all of these schools have top-flight neuroscience programs. My top 3 keep fluctuating, so I was waiting a couple days after this last visit to allow them to solidify, and I think they're getting there. Stanford and Hopkins are at the top (contingent on my actually getting in to the latter), with Rockefeller close by. I can't just rule it out yet because it's a completely different type of program (not neuroscience alone), and I'm soon going to have to decide just what I want. Harvard and UCSD are right beyond that.

Many of the other interviewees I met are choosing between Harvard and UCSF, but those two didn't feel quite right for me. Harvard felt a bit more tense, which might be unfair because it was the first interview, but another recruit, an undergrad there, independently agreed with my assessment (pictures, by the way, are not all of the campuses, but just my favorites I took in each place). The thing is, I really liked Harvard, but then I went to Hopkins and liked it more.

UCSF, on the other hand, felt, if anything, too familiar. I did an internship there a couple summers ago, and while it was fun, it made me decide not to go into strictly computational work. And maybe that feeling was sticking around, making an appearance as soon as we visited the Mission Bay campus (lovely as it is there). When I learned I hadn't gotten in here, I was not all that disappointed.

I liked the feeling at Hopkins, though I don't know why. For whatever reason, I came home feeling like I could live and work there and be happy for the next 5 years. More importantly, that feeling stuck around beyond the first weekend, unlike with some of the others.

The same went for Stanford, where I felt not only extremely comfortable, but very excited about the professors and labs (probably because more exposure to current goings-on in neuro over the course of interviews meant I understood more).The weekend there was also common for all of the biosciences, and it did in fact feel like there was more collaboration between departments.

Rockefeller, on the other hand, does not have a neuroscience-specific grad program. There are fewer neuro labs, but much more exposure to a broader range of topics in biology and chemistry. I loved hearing not only about the neuro, but also about cancer metastasis and developmental cell death that isn't run by apoptotic machinery. I thought I was extremely interested in neuro, which is still true, but having that breadth around me felt nice. That's how you make discoveries, by drawing together different fields and new ideas.

I also feel a strong connection to the place because that's where my postdoc mentor worked for a while. That's where another postdoc in our lab was a grad student. And most importantly, that's where my parents, then postdocs working at Rockefeller, lived when I was born. That's where I lived until I was 8 months old. I've got history there.

At any rate, it's going to be a very difficult decision. Fortunately, I have some time to decide, and wherever I end up going, I will probably end up happy. Unfortunately, I now have to use my noodly arms to lift my heavy genetics book and study for my quiz/midterm/midterm this week, so that's all for now, folks!

The Placebo Effect

We talked about placebos for a little while in the "Psychology of Consciousness" class I'm taking this semester. So far, it's been mostly the various theories that encompass the history of the study of consciousness, but is still sometimes a little too abstract for me. That said, the placebo effect is pretty real and pretty fascinating.



There seems to be a physiological basis for the placebo effect in pain - some neurons of the Raphe nuclei in the brainstem project down to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, where primary sensory neurons enter on their way up from the body. Those involved in sensing pain make a synapse here, and that's where this effect can act. The Raphe neurons release serotonin to stimulate inhibitory interneurons, which then release enkephalin (an endogenous opioid) directly onto the axons of the pain-sensing neurons before they transmit the signal to the secondary neurons in the pain pathway. So less pain.

But this still doesn't answer the question of how our beliefs can affect the size of the effect, and why that effect is always about half of whatever we believe it should be. And then there's the placebos that are used for things other than just pain (homeopathy, for instance). Do they in fact work better than no treatment at all? And if they do, how? So many questions, so little known.

Brainzzzz

Last Thursday, I had my first lab for my Mammalian Neuroanatomy class. We got some human brains to look at, touch and play with a little, and then sheep brains to begin the dissection. Well, it was mostly preparation because it was the first day. We cut off the dura mater (the outer meninge, or membrane, that covers the brain/spinal cord), and took a peek at the pineal gland (in olden days, the purported seat of the soul) before returning the brains.

The term dura mater literally means "tough mother", and it really is a tough mother of a membrane. The pia mater, the innermost of the three layers, is soft and sticks to the brain. The arachnoid mater is a spider-webby network of membrane in between the two, through which cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows. But the dura (from what I could tell through my gloves) feels a bit like tightly woven cloth, and is not very stretchy.

See that stuff peeled off to the side and labeled "1"? That's the dura mater. That's really how thick it is.

The dura dives into the gap between the two hemispheres of the cerebrum with a clever little move called the falx cerebri ("4" in the above picture). In the human brain, the separation goes quite deep, but even the millimetric depth of falx cerebri in the sheep brain made it extremely difficult to cut (it was hard to get the scissors under it without poking into the brain tissue).

All in all, it was a pretty cool lab, except for the pungent odor of formaldehyde. We didn't realize just how thoroughly we had to wash our brains to get rid of it before we began, and fumes from the remaining formaldehyde stung our eyes whenever we leaned in for an extended period of time. That of course meant three out of every four minutes, because our tasks involved things like identifying tiny little cranial nerves and cutting off the dura mater while sparing as many of those tiny little cranial nerves as possible.

Don't worry though, my dearies. That was only because we didn't prepare well enough. Next time, the brainwashing will be complete! Muahahaha!