SfN Neuroblogging 2012: ketamine in neurogenesis and dopamine in obesity

SfN day 3, exhaustion setting in, but the science doesn't quit! Here are some highlights:

ketamine for depression? (source) 

1. Ketamine and the neurogenesis theory of depression. At a nice poster (324.28) R.M. Carter explained that ketamine has fast anti-depressant effects. Some people think that depression is caused by neurodegeneration and cured by neurogenesis (the growth of new neurons). So this group wanted to test whether ketamine could affect the growth of new neurons on the same timescale that ketamine affects depression (a few hours). And it does! Ketamine increased the rate that newly generated neurons in the dentate gyrus became synaptically mature. It will be interesting to see where this theory of depression goes. I would love to see a possible mechanism of action by which an NMDA antagonist could speed up neuron maturity. (Intuitively I would guess it would do the opposite.)

UPDATE 11/5/12: More on mechanisms of ketamine in synaptogenesis.

2. Fat and dopamine. In a nanosymposium (420.06) J. Carlin explained that rats fed a high fat diet from birth had lower dopamine than controls. This goes along with the idea that obesity can be related to a lower sensitivity to reward. The good news is that when the rats were put on a normal diet, the dopamine went back to normal. HOWEVER, this was only true for the males! The female rats did not go back to normal dopamine levels. Yikes, right? Carlin explained that maybe the females do go back to normal dopamine, but just not within the time frame that they tested. As always, more research is necessary.

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SfN Neuroblogging 2012: drunk birds, worms, and robot noses

After a distressing night of not having wifi in my hotel, I am finally able to put this post up.  All of the previous "SfN Neuroblogging" posts can be found here.

And now 3 more highlights from day 2 of SfN:

a bird and his beer (source)

1. Can songbirds be a good model organism in which to study the effects of alcohol? Well yes and no. A poster (207.14), presented by C.R. Olson explains that songbirds don't seem to get addicted to alcohol, so they might not make good subjects for alcoholism studies. But alcohol does effect their song learning. Basically when low levels (below the legal human driving limit) of alcohol were maintained in the songbird's bloodstream while the bird was learning its song, the bird crystallized its song earlier.  That is it stopped practicing and settled on a song faster that the sober birds. The meaning of this is still unclear, as the researchers still need to analyze how 'good' the songs are.

2. What can worms tell us about the relationship between voltage and calcium?  A poster (174.03) directly compared a voltage sensitive dye to a calcium sensitive dye it the C. Elegans nematode. H. Shidara's poster explains that the calcium and voltage signals in the AIY neuron do not necessarily correspond. When the voltage was elevated in the soma and dendrites, the calcium was really only elevated in the dendrites, not the soma. I didn't quite catch the putative explanation for this from the researchers, but I suspect the huge surface to volume difference in a cell body compared to a dendrite might have a strong effect on the calcium dye, but not the voltage dye.

3. Finally, a poster (174.06) explains a new method for making an odor sensor. C. Pickford explains that the drosophila larva (commonly referred to as a maggot) has only so many odor receptors but can detect gazillions of different odors (I don't have the exact numbers here). So basically he is trying to make an odor sensor modeled off of the actual larva nose. This would serve two main purposes: 1. to create an odor sensor that can sense many odors and 2. to actually understand how the larva might be processing the information from its few odor receptors to detect many scents. 

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SfN Neuroblogging 2012: weird receptors

Day 2 of SfN was so packed with awesome science that I have too much to blog about.

here are two highlights:

NMDA receptor (source)

1. A great special lecture by C. Luscher about drugs and synaptic plasticity introduced me to the concept of a calcium impermeable NMDA receptor. As far as I was concerned, calcium permeability was a defining characteristic of the NMDA receptor. Luscher explained that after cocaine exposure (I don't remember how much or how long an exposure), there was a shift in AMPA receptor type from calcium impermeable to permeable. AND a corresponding shift in NMDA recepter type from calcium permeable to impermeable.

2. A poster (236.14) presented by M. Markham on the weakly electric fish introduced me to the sodium activated potassium channel. I was familiar with calcium activated potassium channels, but a sodium activated potassium channel allows the action potential in the electric fish to repolarize super quickly to facilitate very high frequency firing.  Other species of electric fish do not have these channels and do not use such high frequencies.
But here's the really interesting thing: People (and mammals in general) do have these channels (236.17). In fact a mutation in this channel in humans leads to serious serious central nervous system problems.
And here is the even more interesting part. In humans these channels aren't used to create super fast firing frequencies. It is more likely that they trigger essential intracellular signaling cascades.

UPDATE 11/13/12: for more on the sodium-activated potassium channels (SLICK and SLACK) and how they help the auditory system fire precisely, see this new post.

Again, more details will follow SfN and I will post more highlights from today tomorrow.

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SfN neuroblogging 2012: confusion, dopamine, and gay rats

First poster session of SfN. Here are the 3 highlights:

You use too many of them. (source)

1. The worst poster ever. No graphs only words (well one picture of a whole brain) and TABLES! Oh the tables that should have been graphs! But it wasn't just the layout, the presentation was rambly and confusing. I gave them a fair chance to explain their work, asking more than once "what is the main point?" And when they finally got to the point, I said "oh, I see. I didn't get [the main point] until just now." But instead of realizing that the presentation was unclear, they made a bad joke about how neurotransmitter x must not have been working in my brain. um no, just no.

2. Dopamine neurons might not only release dopamine, new research from the Sabatini lab at Harvard suggests that they also release GABA, the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. This has interesting implications for Parkinson's Disease because the dopamine neurons die. Instead of only thinking about dopamine imbalances, maybe researchers should investigate GABA imbalances in PD.

 UPDATE 10/28/12: Here is a more detailed look at dopamine and GABA

3. Turning rats gay. you heard me right. A group in Mexico can make a male rat gay for another male rat by injecting him with a dopamine D2 agonist Quinpirole when he is around the other male. Eventually the quin-treated male will prefer the  other male even over a 'receptive' female.
The poster I went to today was presenting an extension of this research, inducing same-sex preference in females. This requires oxytocin in addition to quinpirole.
I didn't get a chance to ask about the further implications for this research because the poster was pretty well attended. mostly by young men.

UPDATE 10/23/12: Here is a more detailed look at turning rats gay.

I will post a more detailed analysis of both of these studies after SfN is over. As I've said already, I'll post brief summaries of the daily highlights, and more in-depth posts later.

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SfN Neuroblogging 2012: The long hard road to the Big Easy

You want to get to SfN on time, so here's a pro tip about how airlines work. 

How do airlines work?

I know it's a little late for this, but maybe you can take heed of this advice for next years SfN.

Airlines oversell their flights, ALWAYs. Especially if everyone in the universe is trying to get to the same place for a gigantic conference. So just because you bought a ticket, you don't actually have a guaranteed seat on that flight.

I witnessed the horrible tragedy of a woman not getting to her satellite event talk because she didn't have a seat on a plane for which she had bought a seat. They asked my flight for 8 volunteers to bump to another flight to New Orleans. 8 people! That means that 8 people who BOUGHT tickets did not have seats on the plane. 

They didn't have enough volunteers so some people were involuntarily bumped! Including our noble heroine who bravely decided to drive from our connecting city all the way to New Orleans to at least get there the same day, but unfortunately not in time to give her talk. (7 hour drive)

Ok so how can you avoid being in this situation?

As far as I can tell, the best way to lock in your seat is to actually check into your flight as early as possible. That usually means going online and printing your boarding pass. But that alone is not good enough. The online checkin process usually opens 24 hours before the flight, so my advice is to set an alarm exactly 24 hours before your flight and checkin online right then.

One of the airlines I ended up taking doesn't even automatically give boarding passes to the last 15 people who check in.  They give 'security passes' so you can get through security and to the gate but you do not have official permission to board your flight. 

So check in early and if you are presenting on Saturday afternoon get a flight on Friday. DO NOT count on everything going smoothly at the airport.

What I have just described is pretty much a worst-case scenario, and obviously plenty of people made it to New Orleans without much trouble (check out the #SfN12 tag to read about all the fun things people are doing there).

So yeah, I am writing this at the airport...but at least I'm not driving. And thank goodness my poster is not until Wednesday.

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Diagnosing Ovarian Cancer and Treatment Options

(Image credit to ‘Shutterstock’)


Diagnosing ovarian cancer is very important to determine the stage of the disease, which then also very crucial for the doctor in deciding the appropriately treatment options to cure the disease. In the previous article, we have clearly understood that diagnosing the disease at a much earlier stage is significantly helpful to encourage the successful of the

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SfN Neuroblogging 2012: unofficial rules

SfN gives some official rules for presenting posters. These are great and all, but there are some unofficial rules that you should follow as well.

Poster presenting should look like this (source)

Here are the official rules from the SfN website.

• Poster Dimensions Authors scheduled in poster sessions are assigned posterboard space (six feet wide x four feet high or 1.8 m x 1.2 m) for displaying illustrative material (graphs, charts, and tables). Posters cannot exceed these dimensions.
• E-mail Confirmation Authors will receive e-mail confirmation listing session title, session date, and location in late June. Authors will receive another e-mail with board numbers and presentation times in late July. This e-mail will also ask presenters for audiovisual equipment requests.
• Author Presence Presenters are required at poster boards during a scheduled one-hour presentation time, and posters are to be mounted for the duration of a four-hour poster session. No presentation may be given by an individual who is not an author on the abstract.
• Photography
  Photography is prohibited on the poster floor.

And here are some unofficial rules:

• Be at your poster the whole time: They say you only need to be there during the one hour that you are scheduled, but it's a good idea to be there basically the whole time. If there really are posters you want to see during your 4 hour poster-slot, then have a co-author stay by your poster during that time. If you're lucky, you will be talking non-stop for the full four hours, and won't have time to even think about leaving.

• Groom yourself: Nothing makes me want to get away from a poster faster that BAD BREATH. You don't need to look like a supermodel and you certainly don't need to wear a suit. But please brush your teeth, and then when you have that all important mid-morning coffee, chew some gum for a minute afterwards (then spit it out, because you don't want to smacking gum in someone's face either).

• Engage your audience: If some one stares at your poster for more than 30 seconds, say something to them.  "Would you like me to take you through it?" or "Do you have any questions?" are perfectly fine things to say. If they say no, then let them read the poster. Though it's their loss. 

• Don't waste your audience's time: If there are only one or two people at a time at your poster, ask them about themselves. "Are you familiar with grid cells?" or "Do you know how the striatum works?" are a great way to get a feel for what you should be telling them. You might have someone who barely knows anything about neuroscience, and for them you should start simple. But it is equally likely that you will be talking to some experts in your field. They will only want to know the newest most interesting aspect of your project. And they are probably busy and don't want to spend more than 5 minutes hearing about your poster. You shouldn't start explaining that a neuron is a cell in your brain to these people.

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