Basic Neuroscience - Science topic

I will really appreciate it if somebody could share the software. My lab owns the stimulator but when we acquired it we didn't get the software nor the drivers. Grass doesn't exist anymore and "Natus" which is the company that bought it told me that "S88X" is a discontinued product and they do not longer provide support for it.

Its crucial for us to control the device from a PC.

Thanks in advance

We have mice brains that were over-fixed due to old PFA used during perfusion. Thus, the synapses are no longer being labeled by the Synaptophysin (SY38) mAB. which works perfectly every other time.

I have already tried antigen retrieval, but that has not been helpful either.

It is really important for us to label the synapses and we have no option but to use the over-fixed mice brains we have right now.

I am planning to try other synaptic markers like PSD95 and Synapsin next.

But I am open to more suggestions or troubleshooting ideas.

Would love to hear if someone has faced similar issues.

Thanks a lot.

I have Read a lot of theories regarding Sleeping Paralysis; from your point of view what could be the underlying mechanism/s ? and how we could explore more about the nature of this phenomena?

I mean it is something that unexpectedly happened during sleeping, how we could explore this phenomena in a direct and accurate experiment to understand the underlying mechanisms; What are your Opinions ?

In order to measure the Blood Brain barrier permeability I am trying to inject Evans blue dye and after six hours Ill take the mouse brain but I need to remove the Evans blue out of the blood vessels first,any recommendations please.

1. Does consciousness exist?

2. If so, what is Consciousness and what are its nature and mechanisms?

3. I personally think consciousness is the subjective [and metaphysical] being that (if exists) feels and experiences the cognitive procedures (at least the explicit ones). I think that at some ambiguous abstract and fuzzy border (on an inward metaphysical continuum), cognition ends and consciousness begins. Or maybe cognition does not end, but consciousness is added to it. I don't know if my opinion is correct. What are potential overlaps and differences between consciousness and cognition?

4. Do Freudian "Unconscious mind" or "Subconscious mind" [or their modern counterpart, the hidden observer] have a place in consciousness models? I personally believe these items as well are a part of that "subjective being" (which experiences cognitive procedures); therefore they as well are a part of consciousness. However, in this case we would have unconscious consciousness, which sounds (at least superficially) self-contradictory. But numerous practices indicate the existence of such more hidden layers to consciousness. What do you think about something like an "unconscious consciousness"?

5. What is the nature of Altered States of Consciousness?

Benjamin Libet Experiment has different reflections. Aaron Schurger commented readiness potentional as a kind of "neural noise" (?). Thus, RP does not refer to unconscious process to decision making, it can be always there. He thinks RP must be re-interpret, I suppose. His article titled "An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement" (doi: ) is too technical to understand easily. Could any scholar help me to analyze Dr Schurger's conclusions to express in social sciences?

According to Lovett-Barron, 2021, zebrafish is the only vertebrate in which whole-brain imaging at once has been done. Since then have there been any other vertebrates in which the said strategy is implemented?

Hi. It is well known that we lose consciousness when we fell asleep, as an individual, we stop being conscious of external and internal stimuli, at least, in most cases. In no-dream sleep, brain activity should be one that can unconsciously manage internal and external stimuli, and should not experiment significant changes in blood flow to the brain, as if we were to observe with fMRI, nearly no BOLD signal would appear. Am I right about this last thing? If not, please reply. Thanks to all.

The publication of a research: OPTICAL GEOMETRY IN THE FORBIDDEN CITY, show after carefully analysis of the an metal alloy horse with concave eyes .The investigation show the horse was designed and realized by the Jesuit Painter -Architect:

Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), during his 50th years of service under Nr.3 Qing Emperor , from 1715-1766. As explained in the report the intention of Castiglione was to convert the Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) to Christianity, but due yo rigid protocol in place, he can't due directly, but realizing work of art with technology , in this case (physic concept of light). As he can't be discovered for eventually any questions arising from Emperor about this phenomenon, in particular the left eye, where a triangle is visible ( sign of trinity) , as well as in the link (inserted at the end of pag.1 of the here attached research , to the video of 28th seconds ( eyes became real in the last 12 seconds).

As apparently brain neuronal mechanism of the retina is involved, with calculation and knowledge Castiglione used to realized the virtual image? probably the first in the history.

Considering also that he keep in consideration daily light, as an alibi, as daylight don't show any affects.

Thanks

I am going to use a mas model for the dynamics of a population of neurons. I first used Wilson-Cowan (W-C) model, but the problem is W-C has oscillatory behavior in a limited range of parameters and the frequency of activities is limited.

It would be great to have a model to produce oscillation from low (1 Hz) to high (80 Hz) frequencies.

Do you know any references?

Hi everyone,

When I search for the dilution ratios of a number of primary antibodies for IHC (immunohistochemistry) studies, I usually see that the ratios are somewhere between 1/50 and 1/500. Apparently, this range (1/50 - 1/500) generally fits for IHC studies. In case of those antibodies, when it comes to applications for other methods such as western blot, immunofluorescence, the more diluted stock solutions still seem to work (somewhere between 1/500 - 1/1000). Is this just a coincidence, or is there really a linear relationship between application method and dilution ratios ?

If so, for a IHC study, I would like to know if it's a good idea to prepare several dilutions (more diluted) different than the manufacturer's suggested dilution. If the solutions diluted more than the recommended ratio still work just fine, then it would be better to use this way, because by doing so, much less compound would be wasted.

Kind regards,

I am struggling to find any researches where people abilities were tested from a neurophysiological perspective. For example, solving logical puzzles with scaling difficulty from easier to hardest, while being recorded on EEG. It may not be limited to puzzles. Any work would be good. Another example of something I am looking for is where a novice worker solved the problem, and then the same problem was solved by a professional. Maybe chess puzzles solved by different level chess players. I am not limited to EEG, MRI researches or any other brain behaviour recording technique will work for me.

I have heard, that there was a paper detailing the EEG of Einstein solving math equations. I couldn't find it. But practically I need any work in that direction.

I may be missing some keyword, or maybe I just don't know some keystone names. Anyway, I appreciate any sort of direction to where I can look for that sort of researches.

Thanks in advance.

I read papers that report several neuronal properties between experimental and control conditions and wonder how I should be selecting data to report on. I see some trends. Spike half-width, rheobase, input resistance, capacitance, and RMP are often shown. Some include others.

Why? How do I choose which to share. Do people report statistically significant findings?

I am wondering what data to report and why? Are these data points often include to please manuscript reviewers?

Can anyone point me to any literature to explain what neuronal properties are most important to show?

I use CLAMPfit software to analyze electrophysiological data and see a lot of options and measurements taken from our readouts.

I am working EEG signal classification. I am using an EEG cap which is having standard 10-10 electrodes placement system. I am not able to find 3D location for the same. .elc file is available for 10-20 but not for 10-10. Has anyone worked with 10-10 electrodes placement system?

I'm designing a low-grade chronic treatment with this cytokine and I'm wondering how regularly to change the culture medium based on the half-life of the protein in an in vitro environment.

Thank you in advance

Dear all,

I hope this message finds you well. 

I am writing to you as I need your help. My name is Guillaume Lacroix and I am currently studying at ESCP Madrid doing a master's in Marketing and Digital Media. I need your help and connections to be able to do my study.

For my master's thesis, I chose to study the effect of impactful advertising (personalized/psychological) on brand recall. For this, I would like to study and compare the effects of each ad (personalized/psychological) against ads that aren't and see which areas of the brain were triggered for each video. For my study, I plan to have 8 participants.

For my study, I plan to test two categories of video advertising: psychological/personalized ads and humorous ads that are inexplicable (do not tell a story). All the ads that have been chosen for both categories either went viral or were recognized by the public for being unique and original: those are seen as reference in best practices for advertisers. Through my study, I would like to compare both categories (1 video from each) and study the effects they triggered in the brain (explicit and implicit). Ultimately, I aim to conclude what are the dominating elements that have the highest increase in the participants memory and brand recall.

As I do not come from a neuroscience background, nor do I have the tools to conduct this experiment, I am turning to you and your connections. I understand this material and knowledge is costly and I would be willing to pay a bit but I do not have much. Should this be possible, I would be delighted and honored to be able to conduct part of my study with you. Thank you so much for your time.

Wishing you a great day,

Guillaume

Research suggests creativity is associated with disinhibition. This would seem intuitive as cortical spreads of excitation may tile wider "semantic fields". Nonetheless, signal-to-noise ratios can be curtailed, damaging problem-solving skills. Is there such a thing as an optimal level of disinhibition? Are creative geniuses bound to suffer the deleterious effects of a disinhibited network?

I want to know if there is a possibility for sensation of sounds by some kind of non-mechanoreceptors. any evidence in any organism can be useful.

Hi all,

I am trying to wrap my head around splitting cells into different surface-area flasks. I could really use your help! I currently have 8 T-25 flasks of HEK-293T cells. I am familiar with splitting from a T-25 to T-25 or a T-75 to T-75. However, at some point, I would like to split perhaps 4 of the T-25 cells into T-75 flasks. Is that possible? If yes, how would the dilution be? A detailed explanation would be really helpful! Thank you in advance:)

Best Regards,

Mathangi

What are the latest updates about the route of transmission and its impact?

Dear Scientists

Due to serious pandemic threat and the "stay at home" recommendation, I would like to ask you for recommendations of good online biomedical courses. My focus is to get better with the most recent techniques of molecular biology. If you know any good courses with the explanations and videos of biomolecular experiments, let me know.

We can also start the general topic with recommendations of courses related to other research fields, so if you, your colleagues or your student took part in good online courses - please share it with us. I will edit this post or I will add an answer with all your recommendations.

Thanks for all your help and stay safe :)

In order to do increase quantification sensitivity of usually "semi-quantitative" method such as immunofluorescence I was thinking about a ratiometric approach with some housekeeping probe that would allow me to express protein of interest signal in kind of "X/correction factor" manner . Do you have any suggestions or experience with this kind of approach? One solution that comes to my mind would be to do co-expression immunofluorescence with antibody against protein of interest (eg. beta-actin), take pictures at different wavelengths and do image intensity calculations for single cells. Another way would be to counterstain with some non-specific protein stain, take brightfield pictures for all IF pictures and do correction based on brightfield quantification for single cells. Eosin comes to mind, but its wide fluorescence spectrum would probably be troublesome. Any ideas for non-specific protein stain that would not interfere with the fluorescent quantification?

Thanks!

What are your favorite and/or "gold standard" RNA-seq datasets for neurodegenerative diseases?

I come from the field of computational cancer genomics where there are some datasets that are well-known as "high-quality" ones in cancer. I want to benchmark some of the computational tools I'm currently developing on RNA-seq datasets for neurodegenerative diseases: I want to make sure I can identify known regulators with the tools I am testing. Therefore, I am looking for high-quality RNA-seq datasets for neurodegenerative diseases. Any advice on where to find such datasets?

In the following video, we suggested an important surgery for our macaque monkey to find whether there are entanglements between the retina and the visual stimulus, and whether tachyon (faster than light particle) does exist; and we wish to hear opinions for the scholars in the field! See the video below:

In article below, the figure 4 (page 8) shows a diagram in which the correlation between EEG and d2 test is plotted.

I couldn't find any sources describing how to plot d2 results.

May anybody help me?

.. My Rat spinal cord samples are preserved in sucrose 30% .. I cut the sections using cryostat at 40 micron, All my buffer solutions for 1ry & 2ry Antibodies, blocking solution, washes are composed of TBS 10 x 10 % , BSA 0.25 % , 0.3 % Triton X - 100 that I use all through my protocol.

N.B, Blocking Solution (which is always Horse Serum) not matching that of 2ry antibodies' Hosts.

Problem: I have my staining all through my samples not confined to certain cells as supposed or layers of spinal cord. I have used different antibodies using this protocol and the results are the same, unspecific stains everywhere .. Can it be a result of using Triton 0.3 % all through the whole steps? Thanks a lot.

I understand that external factors like smell and colour of a room can affect the mood or performance of a person. But to what level is the effect ? Is there any quantitative measure of its influence.

Has anyone did a real life testing ?

Thank you

What happen in our brains when we prejudge about someone or something? Our prejudices also affect our decision making mechanism, how does it occur among neurons?

And if you know research that used fMRI, you can share with us.

Dear all,

Which medium to use after differentiation of SHSY5Y? I used RA+BDNF and I need to use different treatment for next 2 days. Keep them in the differentiation medium or I can use standard medium for SHSY5Y cell excl. FCS, or they need some supplements?

Dear Researchers,

I am working on an animal study and I want to produce high quality of tissue imaging. The probelm, is that I have low quality of cryosectioning which can be noticed after tissue imaging.

Current Lab Protocol:

Harvest the brain without perfusion.

Freeze it directly on DRY ICE, without Liquid nitrogen or Cooled Isopentane.

Freeze at -80.

Cryosection at -16 and champer tempreture -20 degree (12um sections) with Leica CM1850 Cryostat .

Any ideas?

Thank you!

Best Mohammed AHMED.

I'm currently conducting a 16S microbiome analysis on 18 mice that were sampled at five time points. They were divided into three groups of six and given either a MOG+CFA emulsion, only CFA, or were left untreated. There was a single time point for each mouse taken before treatment administration.

The idea was floated by my PI that I should lump all observations across treatments into a single pre-treatment group and that when I do any statistical testing, differential abundance analysis, etc. where the treatment group is taken into account that for time=0, ALL mice are included in this group and considered either "CFA" "CTRL" or "MOG".

My question is if this is even a statistically sound decision? I've been given the argument that since the mice are all pre-treatment that they can be considered equivalent. But since we are doing a time series analysis, I feel like adding all mice into each treatment group would add an additional source of variation to anything I do. Subsequent time points depend on the corresponding time points from the previous individual and we could be introducing cohort specific effects with this in anything we do. Are there any takes on this approach?

Currently doing a research project for my Honor's Chemistry class, lately I've been looking into Brain Machine Interfaces on the side for research later on this summer, however, I was hoping to find a relationship between BMI's and chemistry so that I can use this project as an addendum for my internship.

The scope of the project is essentially on current research in chemistry, or historical importance of chemistry.

that being said I'm aware there is some chemistry involved in BMI's however, I can't find anything to specifically research on.

Any ideas or advice?

Consciousness defies definition. We need to understand it, and a metric, to measure it. Can trust provide both, even if in a limiied fashion?

Is this control value differ globally in different country region?

I am almost new to using XPPAUT. I am going to calculate the phase responce curve of Hodgkin Huxley model with a specific input current.

Do you have any guide or example for caclulation of prcin XPPAUT?

I appreciate any help in advanced.

Corpus callosum is the main bond between the brain’s left and right hemispheres. It is sometimes damaged or cut out because of a disease, this is called split brain, in this case the two halves of brain do not exchange information efficiently. In one experiment a word was flashed briefly to the right field of view of a split brain patient and the patient was asked what he saw and because the input from the right field of view is processed by the left hemisphere which is also responsible for verbal processing the patient’s answer matched the word, next the word was flashed to his left field of view and the experiment was repeated and the patient said that he did not see anything but when he was asked to draw a picture with his left hand he drew a picture of the word. The question is are there some stimuli in our environment that we can’t sense but affect our decisions? In other words do we decide or our behavior may be a reaction to the things that we are not aware of?

Regarding the ease of use, quality of graphics, accessibility, etc.

Hi,

For some reason I get much higher c-fos background signal in the rat brain for one animal than for the other (see attached photo). The staining protocol is the same for both specimens, as well as the blocking step (1 hour @ 25°C with 10% NDS). I have repeated the staining protocol several times and the bakground difference is the same time and time again. It is also consistent no matter what part of the brain or brain stem I look at. How to approach this difference? Is this definitely non-specific staining? What do you suggest?

Thanks,

Jan

Hi! 

Please let me know if you or your lab in Europe have  Ndnf-IRES2-dgCre-D transgenic mice. I will be extremely grateful!

Many thanks!

We are small Prion research group from The University of Melbourne.   We are working on the human brain tissue in one of ours project. Our interest is to identify pre and postsynaptic proteins state between the normal healthy human brain and CJD patient brain samples. We are only interested in hippocampus tissue. Our group is able to collect a good number of CJD patient hippocampus tissue but on the other hand, we collect a minimum number of healthy human brain hippocampus tissue. We already get some interesting results. Still, we need few more healthy brain tissue. We are happy to collaborate and support in transportation facilities. 

I am working on a project on cortical neuron and I need to know if there is any expression or overexpression of Matrix metalloproteinases around the periphery of cortical neuron. So, please suggest me in this issue and it will be very much helpful if you mention appropriate journals.

I am trying to perform a Duolink (Proximity Ligation Assay, Sigma) assay on freeze-mounted rat brain sections - so far without sucess - and am wondering if someone has some insider-knowledge to share.

I have tested the antibodies and the Duolink kit in cell culture and got a beautiful positive response.

I also optimized the antibody staining of the sections for immunefluorescence. They are paraformaldehyde fixed, freeze-mounted, microwaved in citrate buffer for antigen retrieval, permeabilized with triton for 1 h, and blocked for 1 h with horse serum/BSA/PBS

Now, the only thing that still doesnt work is the combination of the two protocols.

Who has successfully done Duolink on PFA-fixed and freeze-mounted sections?

Thanks for your input!

I have a Alzheimer disease mouse model and I plan to inject 2 different AAVs as described below:

1. neuron specific promoter-EGFP-WPRE-SpA  -AAV2 serotype

2. astrocyte specific promoter-RFP-H1 promoter-target gene shRNA-WPRE-SpA  -AAV5 serotype.

I am planning to inject them simultaneously into the cortex of AD mouse model and carry out 2-photon imaging  to examine how target gene knockdown in astrocytes influences neuronal number, pathological abnormalities development in a longitudinal study.

Has anyone, injected mixture of AAVs with different serotypes and carried out 2-photon imaging?

 I have come across articles where 2-photon imaging of one cell type (either neuron or astrocytes but not together) has been carried out.

I have fluorophore with different excitation/emission parameters, also different serotype, can there be any cross-interaction during 2-photon imaging?

Any particular advice would be helpful.

We are trying to develop an active pharmaceutical ingredient to stop addiction of nicotine for smoker. So far in market we find nicotine patch, gum to reduce the addition. We were thinking to apply Levodopa, a precursor of dopamine. We can supplement Levodopa with an inhibitor of peripheral decarboxylation at controlled rate to maintain the required Dopamine level in brain eliminating nicotine dependency.

Can this program be of some use? It seems to have memory-like behavior? Here is a Matlab program, it can memorize the stimuli it receives.

We have one and love it, but have misplaced the power supply. I know its 12V, but need to know the amperage rating so I can replace it.

My research is focused on Preventing dementia by administrating certain compounds in animals. Prior, to that I like to screen my compounds in SK-N-SH cell line by creating a cytotoxic condition using amyloid beta. But I do no how to dissolve, dilute and induce beta amyloid in cell line? There are many manuscripts regarding this topic but I cant get standard and step by step protocol.

Can any one give me a data set of a person's EEG who has experienced the process of death? (About the during of data set we mean it it must include five minutes before and five minute after the event of death).

I am recently planning to do some stereotaxic injections to some mice brain nuclei. Due to the various choices (in particular the G number) of Hamilton needles, I was wondering which one would be the best for my surgery.

If available, may I also have the "cat no" please? (I am thinking of purchasing one)

Thank you very much in advance once again!

I am planning to do a stereotaxic injection to the medial forebrain bundle (MFB) of mice. I have tried AP:-1.2; ML:-1.1; DV:-5.0mm, but this does not seem to work.

I was wondering whether there is any preferences from anyone please?

Thank you very much in advance!

Why does BCCAO affect only the hippocampus?

I'm trying to specifically express some RNAi and GFP into specific cells type in mice. I already have my mice with specific cell type promoter that drives tTA expression. I was wondering if I could use the TARGATT mice to put these RNAi and GFP under a TRE promoter? Do you think knock-in RNAi and GFP at the Hipp11 site will still allow me tissue specificity with the tTA mice or do you think my transgene will be ubiquitously express?

I would like to patch neurons using this technique. I have read several protocols on how to do so, but would like more practical details...

I am trying to examine the effect of MEK1 on a promotor activity by dual-luciferase reporter assay, but I can not distinguish between the exogenous and endogenous effect of MEK1.

I am searching for human microglial cell lines (best would be immortalized and easily transfectable) and I would really appreciate any hint or comment.

If yes, how much effective will be this target?

Tripartite synapse was studied and modeled by many researchers such as Pereira, Hydon, Nadkarni, and Postnov, but how is the network really structured?

What is the ratio of neurons to astrocytes in this network?

How do astrocytes connect with each other using connexins (Cx43,26,30)?

According to the recent studies about computational power of astrocytes (for review see Min, Rogier 2012) or their role in health and diseases (for review see Philip G. Haydon 2009, Domingues, AMJ M Antonio 2010) and so on (see book of Verkhratsky, A 2009), it seems astrocytes are very important cells in the brain and we are in the astrocytes decade.

In the wake of my questions about astrocytes, I want to know your opinion about using "neuroglia-science" or "glia-science" or "astro-science" like neuroscience for studying glia cells? they are mysterious and powerful cells.

Is it possible that rAAV vectors (while carrying some fluorescent tags) still cross synapses and pass from one neuron to the other? Any evidence, publication on this issue?

I came across several options for chronic infusion of drugs (especially Antidepressant). What would you suggest? Peristaltic, osmotic, programmable for chronic infusion in rats and mice.

Sometimes I have problems with field recordings from hippocampal slices. The fEPSP signal will disappear after HFS for LTP but after 5-10 min regain the signal. I used stainless steel electrode having an impedance of below 5Mohm.

In studying the physiological interactions between two interconnected brain areas using electrophyiological techniques, how do you differentiate between antidromic and orthodromic signals?