Welcome to day thirty-five in the know your spinal cord series! For the new people, we have a whole neuroanatomy category dedicated to these posts! For everyone else (or those of you just interested in today’s topic, this is going to be on another smaller tract of the spinal cord we haven’t covered yet. Today we are talking about the tectospinal tract, not to be confused with the spinotectal tract, so let’s get started.
No, we’re not moving away from the spine, but we are talking about the cranial nerves.
It’s day thirty-four in our spinal cord series. As usual, if you’re new here welcome and you can find each and every post in our series in the handy neuroanatomy category! All the posts are in reverse chronological order and while we don’t technically have a specific order, you should probably start with the medullary pyramids and work your way forward. If you’re here, then you probably are interested in the vestibulospinal tract, something we haven’t covered yet, but fear not, we are going to do that now.
A human cervical spinal cord slice. Once you’ve read this post, you should be able to identify the major parts and tell which side is the front of the cord.
Welcome to day thirty-three in our series. For those of you who are just finding us, we have every one of these posts in our neuroanatomy category in reverse chronological order. Today we’re going to backtract (get it?) a little and go over something basic, but something we’ve skipped over to this point. We never really talked about the landmarks of a spinal cord slice. So today, we are going to take a detour and go over spinal cord features.
Today is day thirty-two in our know your spinal cord series. If you’re just joining in, as I usually do in the intro, we have a whole neuroanatomy category just for these posts so you don’t have to dig for them! Today we are covering a couple of structures that fall under the same broad category, ramus. What are they and what do they have to do with the spinal cord? Well that’s what we’re about to find out!
Here we are at day thirty one of knowing your spinal cord and we’re still going strong. I’m very happy that I cataloged all of these posts in the super handy neuroanatomy category, which should make it easy for you to find each and every one of them! Today we’re talking about something we’ve touched on in the past, but deserves its own post, the spinal nerves. We need to cover this for the next couple of posts, where things get a little… odd. So let’s get started!
Cross section through human spinal cord (lumbar region, L1) showing motor neurons. Astrocytes and oligodendrocytes are labeled ‘A’ and ‘O’, respectively. The objective magnification used is 40x.
Welcome to day thirty of knowing your spinal cord. I feel like that is a lot of spinal cord knowledge for just covering the basics. In any case, if you’re just finding us, welcome! I’ve created a whole new neuroanatomy category just for these posts so you can find them easy and they are in reverse chronological order. Is the anterior white commissure a tract of the spinal cord? Well not really, but it does have an important job and we keep referencing it, so let’s talk about what it does exactly.
Spinal cord anatomy
Day twenty-nine, wow does time fly! We have over four weeks worth of fun spinal knowledge for you to tap into, all in reverse chronological order in our handy neuroanatomy category! If you read the title, you know we’re back on tract (see what I did there?). Today we’re talking the spino-olivary tract, or is it the olivospinal tract? Keep reading to find out!
Here we are on day twenty-eight of knowing your spinal cord. A friendly reminder, the entire series has its own neuroanatomy category where you can catch up on any posts you missed or if you just want a reminder on something we already covered. We’ve already covered quite a bit of spinal disorders, but there is one more that I want to talk about and like our series where we started at the top of the cord and worked our way down, we are now going to cover damage to the bottom of the cord, specifically the cauda equina.
Kultschitzky staining was used here and shows marked symmetrical demyelination (whitening regions) in the anteriolateral roots (especially pyramidal tract) of the spinal cord
It’s day twenty-six already! For those of you who are just finding us, you can find all of the posts in our super cool neuroanatomy category. We’ve already covered a lot of spinal disorders, but one of the larger diseases that we have yet to cover is motor neuron disease. Technically a family of diseases, we will look at the commonalities and causes, so with that introduction, let’s get going.
We measure the H-reflex by applying an electrical stimulus (S) behind the knee, the ground (G) gets placed around the soleus and the recording electrode (R) is placed inline below, this is the route the nerve takes.
Yesterday we had a bit of a break so I could share a critical review paper. That means this is day twenty-five of the know your spinal cord series! We’ve also hit the halfway mark in our 365 days of academia challenge! If you’re new here, you can find all of the fun spinal cord knowledge we’ve amassed by checking out our neuroanatomy category! We are going to take a step away from spinal cord disorders to talk about something we kind of covered, but deserves a more in-depth exploration. This is all you wanted to know about the H-reflex, so let’s dive in.
Figure 2 of the paper showing examples of the soleus H-reflex (labeled H) during standing and during different phases of walking in a participant without known neurological injuries (top) and in a participant with chronic incomplete SCI (bottom).
Today is my third attempt at a critical review paper. Since my PI gets a copy, so do all of you! You can read my first looking at elbow spinal stretch reflexes here. Or my second where I review modulating spinal cord excitability with a static magnetic field here. Today is an interesting paper on soleus stretch reflex and H-reflex. I really appreciate the methodology the researchers used and they did an excellent job of highlighting the limitations to the study, which is always important. Per the usual disclaimer, this is my third critical review, so you can take my opinion n the methodology and findings how you will. Read the rest of this page »
We’ve made it to day twenty-four of fun spinal cord knowledge! If you’re just joining us, we have a whole new neuroanatomy category for you to find all the posts in this series in reverse chronological order. If you want to know everything, then you’ll want to start at the beginning with the medullary pyramids. Over the past week in our series we’ve been talking about spinal cord disorders and today we are looking at something called tabes dorsalis, let’s begin!
MRI showing Lichtheim’s disease caused from nitrous oxide (we show another case below)
It’s day twenty-three in our little series called know your spinal cord. For those just finding us, you can read the rest of the posts in our special neuroanatomy category created just for these posts! If I’ve counted correctly, this will be the seventh post on different spinal cord disorders and today we are covering something called Lichtheim’s disease, so let’s take a look.
Welcome to day twenty two in the knowing your spinal cord series! As per my usual intro, you can find the rest of the series in reverse chronological order under our spiffy new neuroanatomy category. Today we are covering another type of spinal cord injury, like the last two posts, this will cover what happens when a certain area (central area) of the cord is damaged. With that, let’s talk spinal cord.
Today we hit the three week mark in knowing your spinal cord! I’m hoping we can do a full four weeks, that would be quite the collection of knowledge. For those of you just joining in, you can find all of our posts in the neuroanatomy category ordered in reverse chronological order. As per the last few posts, we’ve covered the majority of the anatomy and now we are looking at different disorders of the spinal cord. Today we’re going to cover another type of injury, this one called anterior spinal artery syndrome, so let’s get started!
We’ve made it to day twenty in our little series on knowing your spinal cord. As always, you can find each and every post in this series through our neuroanatomy category. Since we’ve covered all the major neuroanatomy, the latest posts have been on spinal cord diseases and disorders. That said, today we’re covering Brown-Sequard syndrome, so let’s take a look at what this is.
This is day nineteen of knowing your spinal cord! We covered all the big neuroanatomy and while we may go back and cover some of the minor things, we’re in the middle of spinal deformities. For those just starting, we have a neuroanatomy category to make it easy to find these posts. For everyone else, today we’re talking about spina bifida.
Diastematomyelia, a complicated name for a split spinal cord.
Day eighteen! Almost three weeks worth of fun spinal knowledge. For those tuning in, we have a neuroanatomy category just for these posts. Since we’ve covered most of the anatomy portion of the spinal cord, we’ve just started covering spinal disorders. If you’re here you’re probably wondering what diastematomyelia is, so let’s get started!
This has been a fun series of posts and today is day seventeen! As usual, you can check out all of our posts under the neuroanatomy category. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is we’re still going! The bad news is we’ve pretty much covered the anatomy. So for the next few posts, we will look at some issues the spinal cord may have. First up, let’s talk about a tethered spinal cord!
Day sixteen of knowing your spinal cord! So many posts, much knowledge! For those who are just finding us, we have a whole neuroanatomy category dedicated to these posts. If you want to take it from the top (literally) you should start with the medullary pyramids post. If you’ve been following along or only interested in this particular topic today we are covering the meninges and you’ll learn my really dumb way for remembering them, so let’s get started.
We are well on our way to finishing up the know your spinal cord series that I am doing. Today is day fifteen and as usual if you’re just tuning in we have a whole neuroanatomy category dedicated to these posts for you to check out organized in reverse chronological order. If you want to start at the beginning, that would be the medullary pyramids. Today we are at the other end of the cord, this is the lumbar cistern!
Here we are at day fourteen of knowing your spinal cord. By now you’re all experts on the spinal cord and I’m not even sure what I’m doing here. For those just joining us, we have a neuroanatomy category with all the posts so you don’t have to dig for them. If you want to start at the beginning, that would be the medullary pyramids. For the rest of you this is the end, not the end of the posts because we have a lot more to cover, but the end of the spinal cord. Let’s talk the cauda equina!
Mitochondria in a section of spinal cord
Here we are at day thirteen of knowing your spinal cord! As always, we have a whole special category for these posts called neuroanatomy and if you’re not after a specific topic, I recommend starting at the medullary pyramids. Today’s post is about something important that we haven’t touched on very much, the cervical and lumbar enlargements of the spinal cord, so let’s get started.
Day (or really post) twelve on knowing your spinal cord. We have a whole category for the posts, neuroanatomy. Today we are going to talk about the curious case of the central pattern generators (CPG’s). Unfortunately, we cannot talk about them without talking about the experiments that found them, meaning we will be covering animal studies. In particular, some animal studies that might not sit well with some people. I attempted to be general where I can, just know that it is coming.
Figure 1 of the paper showing how the intervention was applied to the spinal cord
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, this is my second critical review paper. You can read my first looking at spinal reflexes here. Today we are looking at a novel way to modulate spinal cord excitability. Overall I find the paper very interesting. Although the authors performed a limited experiment and no follow up (as of now) has been done, it still looks very promising and would provide a new way to explore the circuitry of the spinal cord. This is my second attempt at a “critical review” so you can take my opinion on the methodology and findings how you will.
Beautiful spinal cord art, used with permission by Greg Dunn design.
Day eleven, we’ve almost spent two weeks covering your spinal cord! Tomorrow we will take a brief break as every two weeks I have a review paper due to my PI in the spinal cord feild, so tomorrow I will share it with all of you as well. For today, remember we have a neuroanatomy category with all of the posts we’ve done. If you’re new I would suggest you start with the medullary pyramids post and work forward, for the rest of you or those of you who are only interested in reflexes, let’s talk about some legos.
Drawing of a spinal cord cross section by Ramon y Cajal, a famous Spanish neuroscientist.
Here we are on day ten of knowing your spinal cord. As always, you can find the aggregated posts in my totally new, fresh off the line category, neuroanatomy. There posts are organized in reverse chronological order, so the first post on the medullary pyramids would be at the bottom, which is where I recommend you start if you’re new. For everyone who’s followed along or those of you who are just interested in this one tract, let’s talk about the spinocerebellar tract!
Drawing of a spinal cord slice by Ramon y Cajal, a Spanish neuroscientist and Nobel prize winner
This is day nine of know your spinal cord. Now for my usual bits, we have a whole category that I created just for these posts. They are in chronological order with the newest posts first, so I would recommend you start from the beginning post or dive in where you’re interested. That said, we’re going to tackle one of the smaller, but still important tracts, the rubrospinal tract!
Drawing by Ramon y Cajal, a famous Spanish neuroscientist.
Today is day eight! I can hardly believe it, but here we are, day eight of spinal anatomy. For those of you who are just joining us, we have a whole new category just for these posts and they are in order from newest to oldest, so start at the bottom and work your way up. For those of you who have been following along, today we are tackling the grey matter of the spinal cord, a somewhat complex region where all the action takes place.
Here we are, a week into knowing your spinal cord (remember we have a new category for you to find these posts). If you’re just starting out, you may want to look at our new neuroanatomy category and start with the first post. For those of you who have been following along, we covered some of the major tracts of the spinal cord, so let’s dive into the structure some! First up, let’s talk about spinal nerves and what exactly these guys do.
Day six already! Today is day six of knowing your spinal cord and we’re talking about the spinothalamic tract today. If you’re interested in the other posts, the first covers the medullary pyramids and I even have a category just for these posts. Of all the tracts of the spinal cord, this is probably my favorite becuase it is just so weird! You’ll see what I mean, so let’s get to it.
Here we are day five of knowing your spinal cord. If you’re just joining us, I’ve created a new category where you can find all the posts. Or you can start at the beginning with the medullary pyramids (technically not part of the spine, but close enough). If you’re all caught up or just want to learn about this specific tract, then let’s get started.
We’ve made it to day four of knowing your spinal cord. I’ve introduced a new category just for this, which makes these posts easier to find for future reference (yours or mine). For those of you just starting out, you may want to go from the first post on the medullary pyramids. For the rest of you, you’re probably here to learn about the corticospinal tract. This will be fun, so let’s get started.
For those of us just tuning in, today is the third part in a … well a lot of posts on the spinal cord! If you’re just joining us, you should probably start from the top (literally) here and this post covers the anatomy of the cord. Today we are going to talk spinal organization, for that reason we also should talk about how the brain is organized, which will help us make sense of why the spinal cord is organized the way it is, so let’s get started!
Now that we took it from the top, let’s get an overview of what exactly makes up the spinal cord. There is a lot, so we’re not going to do a comprehensive review since that would be a whole class and not a single post. Most of the structures we cover today, will have a seperate post where we can go into detail.
I’m excited that today we are starting the know your spinal cord series that I’ve been working on. Today we are going to take it from the top, no really. We’re starting at the top of the cord and we will work our way down. So without further delay, let’s look at the curious case of the medullary pyramids!
Well to say it’s been a busy week is probably an understatement and it doesn’t seem like it will be slowing down anytime soon. As it stands today was the end of our data collection. We managed to get ~15 subjects to go through our protocol and while I cannot share anything (yet) I can talk about the stuff I’ve learned and what is coming.
So it turns out when you have 12 hours of experiments to do there isn’t much time for other things. Yesterday we had 3 experiments, today we have another 3 experiments (technically I’m writing this yesterday night, confusing I know). So basically I don’t have a whole lot of time to write. I’m going off to get some sleep and tomorrow (today, again confusing I know) I get to do this all over again. I hope wednesday I will have a bit more time and we can get into why the spinal cord is so cool! In any case, stay tuned!
Fig 1 (a) from the paper, showing the multijoint perturbation away from target (red) with simultaneous flexion at the elbow and either flexion, extension, or no perturbation at the wrist joint.
Today is that critical review paper I promised. Everything following this introduction explains how the experiment was done, what they found, and why I think it is particularly interesting. To me the experiment was so well thought out I couldn’t think of anything I would change. Instead I focused on the methodology they used and why it highlights the importance of a well thought out experiment. This is really my first attempt at a “critical review” so take it how you will.
Tomorrow is more experiments! We’re doing all the experiments tomorrow. Okay, not all of them, but we have an ambitious three experiments lined up for tomorrow so it will definately be a long, long day. Still recovering from surgery too… so yeah it’s going to be a time. There are a few other things going on this week, so let’s look ahead and maybe talk about what I’m thinking of doing for the next round of themed posts (educational topic posts).
One of the outcomes of my recent meeting with my PI (my main one), is that I am going to be actively working on my writing. While I do this to improve my writing, this is far more informal than the writing I would be doing for a confrence or journal paper (both of which I’ve written). That isn’t to say that I cannot improve, there’s always room for improvement and I could use a LOT of improvement.
Nice and foggy today, look at that nasty roof! Got to love the VA (even though it looks more like a prison, which I guess it sort of is.
Now that I’m somewhat out of my anesthesia sickness (seriously not fun), I figured I would give a rundown on what having surgery through the VA looks like and some of the things you have to do pre-surgery to get ready. Since I’ve never had a surgery outside of the VA, it would be interesting to see how much of this applies to other hospitals, but I suspect that the answer would be not much.
Well I’m alive, despite the VA’s best efforts. I’m struggling with some serious nausea to the point of vomiting, which has never happened to me before. I’m also in a lot of pain, but that was expected. In any case, start to finish (start as in the operating room and finish as in getting home so +30 minutes or so to the actual finish time) it took ~9 hours total good times for everyone. Anywho, I feel like death so I’ll write more later.
Well we did an experiment. I wish I could talk more about what we did, how we did, and why we did. Alas, I cannot. So instead, let’s talk about the vague how it went metric as in, maybe we found something maybe we didn’t, also this experiment highlights several quarks between the my school lab and the clinical lab.
Today is day one of ten for the time that I have to do some experiments. It’s an awkward time for sure, I mean surgery, school, etc. However, that’s just the way things work in academia, I actually had a break, so I’m ready to go to be honest. Which really means this isn’t horrible timing. I’ve already discussed the million things going on these weeks, but let’s talk about what goes into experiments, really.
A semi good photo of our lab!
Today is the first day in the lab since break. It was nice to have some time off, I got some housework done, got to spend the bulk of my time sick (not my idea of fun), and best of all I got to see some of the city. It’s been good and now that I’m ready to get back to it, the week is looking to be busy.
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My photo, but not my school, just one I visited.
Tomorrow is the big day, back to school, back to classes. This means that any and all house projects will inevitably come to a screeching halt until spring break (most likely) and it marks the shift in blog posts from life outside the lab to life in the lab. There are a few things I like to do to get ready for classes the day before, so let’s talk school.
Well, I moved. Okay, I moved over a year ago. The problem with that is I have been so busy with everything, I haven’t had a time to get out and see the sights. Sure, I’ve visited a few places, but in the terms of what this new city has to offer, I have yet to see pretty much anything outside of school. So let’s take a look at my visit the local museum of natural science!
An endless VA hallway, it feels like a metaphor for something… can’t quite put my finger on it.
It’s been an interesting few days, I’ve had several meetings with my PI and my Co-PI, I’ve got classes starting again, and I have a surprise experiment. However, I have something else coming up that I failed to mention, I’m also having surgery! Which means the inevitable jumping through hoops to get ready. Each VA seems to do things differently, so this will be a fun attempt at explaining how it works.
Some of our exoskeletons from the lab
Today was an interesting set of events. I had my meeting with my two PI’s (which I still think would make a hilarious television show). The meeting went well, I’m very excited, but I’m also getting ready to be very, VERY busy. Let’s breakdown how it went shall we?
Oh hi there!
Lunatic Laboratories 