In vivo imaging : Cracking the skull open
On a rainy Durham afternoon after getting my car fixed, I drove to Bryan research center , parked illegally and managed to find room301c where Dr.Richard Mooney’s lab was located.
The main goal of Dr.Mooney’s research is to understand the biological basis of learning. He focuses on in vivo imaging of neuronal structures of zebra finches. They use lentivirus/GFP (same family as HIV) constructs to label neurons fluorescently , retrograde tracers to localize the boundaries of HVC(previously known as higher vocal center) and two-photon microscopy to image dendritic spines on individual HVC neurons through a surgically implanted cranial window in male zebra finches.
There’s a developmental window for learning birdsongs , and this research compares the differences btw birds who’ve been tutored during this window versus those who were untutored.
Here’s some fresh images from the lab:
The technique is limiting in that they can only look at superficial structures but they can move ~100u in z dimension that allows them to collect z stacks .I’ll be playing with these z stacks in Processing.
Yet by composing these images in ImageJ (photoshop for scientists) they can get better quality images.
i’ll be visiting the lab again to meet with Katie Tschida, phd student in Dr.Mooney’s lab who has been using the technique intensively. In vivo imaging is mind-blowing.
