This Week's Sci-light

Photo courtesy of Don Arnold

If you've been following this blog, you may wonder if I'm becoming obsessed with glowing green.  If you're confused, scroll down to last week's Sci-light and you'll understand.  I'm not going to ask you what you see.  I'll just tell you instead--this is a neuron actively engaged in making memories.

Let's consider the picture.  The large yellow and green sphere is a brain cell called a neuron.  From it you see branches stretching out called dendrites.  Signals pass between neurons by electrochemicals that pass between the dendrites at junctions called synapses.  So what are the small bright spots?  They are the synapses that excite as electrochemical signals pass between the dendrites.  What Drs. Arnold and Roberts observe is the change of those spots that indicate how "synaptic structures in the brain have been altered by the new data," according to author Robert Perkins.

Scientists Don Arnold and Richard Roberts at the University of Southern California have been researching how memories form in our brains using mice as model organisms.  Robert Perkins author of "Memories Illuminated", describes how "the team has engineered microscopic probes that light up synapses in a living neuron in real time by attaching fluorescent markers onto synaptic proteins."  This process doesn't inhibit the cell's ability to function; it does enable the scientist to observe the physical changes in the brain.


The article goes on to talk about how the proteins that fluoresce are selected and used as well as the implications of this research for the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative. 

This Sci-light is almost a memory and I can now imagine my synapses firing away and altering the synaptic structures of my brain.  What about yours?  My guess is that you, too, are restructuring.  After all, you're Sci-Curious!