Busy-busy-busy

It has been a while since my last post, but guess what; I have actually been quite busy. In the mean while I have filled out a ton of forms at NSI/OHSU to allow get my own badge and keys to all areas. I took some preliminary courses on respect/harassment/discrimination at the university, privacy while working with patient records and safe working with research animals and lab equipment. I don't think they have told me anything new but, since this the USA possible liability claims have been taken care of... In the mean time I spend the weekends working at Martin and Angees old house, and I must say it has turned from "just helping out" into a kind of "it WILL be done before july"..

At the lab we started recording last week and we had some really succesful days with lots of nice cells to record from. The last couple of days however were worthless but the mice we used those days were older and heavier and we found out that the anesthetic we kept at room temperature should have been kept at 4 degrees celsius. The mice still were anesthesized nicely, but there were probably some side-effects.

For all that are interested I will try to explain what it is that we are doing; In the cerebellum (part of the brain) a lot of sensory information is collected and finds a way to the motor cortex (other part of the brain) from which movements are initiated. The area we're looking at collects information from eye movements and the vestibular organ (balance organ/inner ear organ). There are different types of nerve-cells in this area; Purkinje-cells (Pcells) are the central output to the motor cortex and different types of helper cels (interneurons) are located systematically around these Pcells creating a kind of circuitry. The anatomy and signal transduction of this circuitry is pretty well known but the functional circuitry is still unknown and our point of interest. The respons of Pcells is known but the origin of this response is not. We use vestibular stimuli (a moving table) in combination with electrophysiological recordings in an anesthesized mouse's cerebellum to map the responses of the different interneurons. this will eventually unravel the circuitry I mentioned before and might bring us closer to a cure for Tinnitus, Meniere's disease and motion sickness. If anyone cares and wants to know more, feel free to ask me. I hope I managed to explain things a bit clearly....

Saturday 4 June sucked. It was my girlfriend's birthday and I was at the other side the world. I send here some flowers and talked to her on the phone, but being there would have been way better. Well, I guess I just have to wait another two months and then she will be here to visit! That'll be great. Other than that I miss Sita somewhat, I am not really bothered with any form of homesickness. After all, a lab is a lab, whether it is in the Netherlands or the USA and I have been to busy to even realize I have been here for a month already. I guess it helps a lot that I am getting along with family very well. I took Max to the pool last week without his dad coming along and of course this was quite an adventure for the little guy. Especially when I told him we were going to walk (he called it "hike", but it's only 10 minutes) and take a secret path. Then he even saw a woodpecker and we came along a tunnel; all very exciting when your 4. At the pool he behaved perfectly (besides the standard attempts to get candy and play the videogames), guess there's no point in whining if your parents aren't there. Well it's sunday night, I am about to hit the showers and go to sleep. Tomorrow we'll see if we have any luck in our scheduled recordings. I hope to post again a bit sooner next time..