Hey, and welcome back. I am sharing a quick recap of week three before I dive into my final week at my lab.
Lab work is so fascinating, but I don’t know if it is something I will do again as it is very to yourself and pretty quiet during work time. Everyone is doing their own thing. I have been doing a lot of work with the vibratome. (The machine to slice the brain- explained in the previous post.) This week, after mounting the brains from last week, I got to help image them. This lab has very expensive and high-tech microscopes I am pretty hesitant to touch them, even though my mentor thinks I am ready to use the machine on my own. The microscope can image the brain at a very high resolution, and as you can see below, the brain glows green. This is because the mice were injected with a specific virus that makes their brains florescent. This allows the researchers to see exactly where the thoughts were occurring in the mouse’s brain through neuro pathways. For example, I was the last thing the mouse saw before being euthanized, so my image is somewhere in the mouse’s neurons. I think that the clusters of neurons look like stars in the sky. I think it is very cool!
I also wanted to send a quick update on my presentation to my lab from Monday! The presentation went well, and it is always great to work on my public speaking skills.
In my free time, I have gone to the beach to try to catch the sunset. Several nights there was a fog layer so we couldn’t see the sun drop. Sunsets over the beach are my favorite. My roommate left yesterday, and I actually moved in with my parents for the last week. Big thanks to everyone who has had a positive impact on this week of learning. I am so excited to see what my last week holds.
roommate + i
lovely socal sunset!
image of a brain slice with the fluorescent virus. the bright green clump near the bottom is where all of the neurons were firing.
my presentation to my lab
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