Know your spinal cord – The lumbar cistern and cerebrospinal fluid
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!
Know your spinal cord – The cauda equina
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!
Know your spinal cord – The spinal cord enlargements
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.
Know your spinal cord – The central pattern generator
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.
Day 168: Review – Static magnetic field stimulation applied over the cervical spinal cord can decrease corticospinal excitability in finger muscle
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.
Know your spinal cord – The reflex pathways
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.
Know your spinal cord – The spinocerebellar tract
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!
Know your spinal cord – The rubrospinal 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!
Know your spinal cord – The grey matter
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.
Know your spinal cord – The spinal nerves
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.
Know your spinal cord – The spinothalamic tract
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.
Know your spinal cord – The medial lemniscus tract
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.
Know your spinal cord – The corticospinal tract
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.
Know your spinal cord – Tract organization
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!
Know your spinal cord – The anatomy
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.
Know your spinal cord – Medullary Pyramids
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!
Day 156: Experiment results
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.
Day 155: Experiments!!
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!
Day 154: Review – Spinal stretch reflexes support efficient hand control
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.
Day 153: The week ahead
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).
Day 150: Surgery update
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.
Day 149: An auspicious start
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.
Day 148: Experimental design
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.
Day 147: First day in the lab
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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Day 143: Meeting with my two PI’s
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?
Day 142: So you want to record from the brain…
My college helping me set up for the experiment I just did. This is how we add gel to the head, there is a tiny hole by each sensor, we then insert a blunt tip needle (we do NOT puncture the skin!) to add the gel between the sensor and the top of the head to eliminate the air gap caused by the hair. Unfortunately it looks scary, but we need something tiny to get around the sensor (if you look close you can seethe tiny, tiny opening each senor has). The lights on each sensor tell us how good of a connection we have, red means bad, yellow means we’re getting close, and green means good.
Today’s post was inspired by a conversation I was having yesterday in the comment section (you know who you are and thank you for the questions). I thought I would elaborate on how we record from the brain and why. There are a lot of different ways we can do this, some of them are super invasive and others are non-invasive. In the lab I work in now, we do things non-invasively there are good things about this and bad things about this, so let’s get into it!
Day 141: PI meeting result
Well I’ve had my first meeting with my main PI (vs my Co-PI). It went well, I’m very happy with the result and while I’m not at the end of my PhD (yet), it seemed like we were in agreement with my progress. I still have the meeting with my PI and Co-PI coming up, but let’s go over some of the things that we talked about in this meeting.
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Day 140: A meeting with my PI
Tools of the trade, an EEG cap I set up for my experiment
With the term about to start (we get another week, even though some schools are already kicking off), I have a few things that I need to do prior to the start. One of those things was make more work for myself, no really. I made a few emails between my two PI’s (which sounds like a TV show) and arranged for a meeting.
Day 136: A look forward
The obligatory photo of a path that goes on into the distance (taken from the hike we went on during the neurotech confrence).
Yesterday we took a look back at the past decade. I’m not a fan of looking back, it’s not how I’ve survived this long, it’s not something I’m particularly comfortable with, and even though it wasn’t a bad thing to do, I would rather look forward and talk about the things that will be happening (hopefully) this year. Let’s ring in the new year with the to-do list for this year!
Day 132: Rat model validation!
Yesterday I mentioned that I had some rat data to go through. It was an old(er) dataset, about five years-old to be exact, but it was one that was going to help me validate some of my findings. Unfortunately there existed no invasive human datasets to compare my human data to, so I needed to find an animal model, in this case a rat model. Let’s discuss the importance.
Day 124: On the importance of time off
When I left the military, I threw myself into work. I was offered — and I took — all the overtime I could get. If I stayed busy, I didn’t have to think about anything else and at the time, it is what I wanted. I didn’t want to have to think about anything else. It was an unhealthy and unsustainable lifestyle, one I don’t necessarily regret, just one I had to learn from.
Day 123: Well I HAD a meeting
Today I reluctantly had two things to do on my list, this despite being sick. Now, I don’t normally like going out when I’m unwell, I don’t want to get others sick, I don’t want to suffer more, blah blah blah. The usual things you’re supposed to do when you are sick. Well today I was not that lucky, let’s talk about why.
Day 122: Moving forward
After the events of the past week, I need a break. Not just because of all the excitement that has occurred, but because I am sick. Like bad. There is never a good time to be sick per say, but if I had to be sick, this was about as good of timing as I could ask for. Let’s talk about what’s next once I’m feeling better.
Day 121: Qualifying Exam Aftermath
I don’t normally share photos of myself, but I thought I would share the final slide, I love it so much.
Well if you don’t follow me on twitter, then you don’t know the results of my qualifying exam. Well I’ll tell you, but not yet. First let’s talk about how it went and what the qualifying exam is (I know we’ve covered this already here, but it would be good to do it again).
Day 120: The art of the data request (update)
Today is the big day, it’s my qualifier day. Since it hasn’t happened yet I cannot tell you how it went, but I feel pretty good about it. However, I still have a lot of other news to share, like my data request update. So let’s get to it.
Day 119: Conference Day 4
The winners of the pitch competition giving a surprise 1-2 minute elevator pitch
Well, I’m finally home. It’s been exhausting, but super exciting. I’ve got so much to share I’m not even sure where to start. Let’s go over how yesterday went first. It was our last day at the confrence and our trainees got to present their company pitches. We named the top three (of ten) teams and they got prizes (surprisingly useful and super nice prizes, a wireless phone charger in fact). We also had some talks, so let’s go through the highlights.
Day 117: Conference Day 2
Today is the first day of the neurotech workshop (day 2 of my confrence schedule since I had 2 conferences back to back) and man did I do something evil. Well… maybe not that evil, but more evil genius. They gave me some creative power and I found a way to make it funny. Let’s take a look at the result, shall we?
Day 116: Conference Day 1
Shot I took of the moon
Made it in one piece to my destination! Since I’m writing this before today’s events start, let’s talk about yesterday. While the bulk of the time was spent traveling it wouldn’t hurt to muse on a few of the events, especially since today will be a much busier (or at least more event packed) day.
Day 115: Conference time!
Well today is the day, I’m packed and ready for the … festivities? Okay, so maybe not something that is a party, but conferences are a good chance to meet with people and share ideas. While this is a small one for our research group, it’s still a way to let others know what advancements have been made in the field.
Day 114: Classifier Update
Behold! My amazing predictive power!! *insert evil laugh here*
It’s been a long and exhaustive road to get to here. As you may recall, I’ve given several updates already on my progress and I THINK I’ve finally hit success. In fact, I know I have, the problem now? Well what the neural net saw to make the predictions is a mystery to me, so I don’t know why or how it works… yet.
Day 113: Practice makes… better?
Conference is coming! With my talk right around the corner today is prep day. Basically I’m giving my talk today to the lab in the hopes that when I do it for real, it doesn’t completely suck. So practice, practice, practice!
Day 112: Conference Prep
We are just a few days away from my first of two events back to back. First up is the confrence I keep mentioning. It’s a meeting with collaborators from several schools to discuss work we’ve been doing that the group funded. I have one of those projects, so I will be presenting a powerpoint with an update on the work along with a poster that I’ve made.
Day 111: A prosthetic update
Prosthetic I’ve designed for Lucas, you can see the full view further into the post.
Now that the term is over, you would think I get some time to myself. That is unfortunately not true. There is still quite a bit of work ahead for me before I can take some time over the winter break to relax. One of the more important things that needs to happen is the prosthetic project I’ve been working on for some time.
Day 110: Experiment!
This is an actual photo from my experiment setup, one of my colleagues is adding gel to the sensors. While the giant syringe looks scary, it isn’t. It’s full of conductive gel that gets placed between the head and the sensor. There is no pain or puncturing of the skin involved. Afterwards the gel washes out of the hair. The real pain is sitting for ~30 minutes or so while we gel each electrode enough to get a good reading.
A few days ago I mentioned I did a thing, well an experimental thing really. It was… fun? It was definitely something. Overall it went well, but I said I would give everyone an update and I try to be a man of my word, so let’s do this.
Day 109: Post exam exhaustion
It’s over. The term has finally come to an end and I’ve taken my final as of yesterday. It’s bittersweet, on one hand I can now (sort of) relax. On the other, it means that there are exactly zero chances for me to improve my grade. I’ve done my best and now I need to hope that it is enough to get me to the finish line.
Day 108: Final today!
Well today is the day, finals! Well the only final I have this term really. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but as you may have noticed from yesterday’s post, I’m a little stressed out… to say the least. So what’s happening today?
Day 106: Super Busy!!!!!
Today I had my experiment (yay), so now I need to process the data. I also sat in another PhD defense for one of our lab members, so now that I have a free second I wanted to give an update. Expect a longer post tomorrow, but for today, I have sooooo much work to do!
Until next time, don’t stop learning!
Day 105: Defense day #1
This basically sums up today’s post…
Here we are another day another post. Today I will be spending the bulk of my time studying and getting my slides ready for the confrence I’ll be attending next week. That will be … fun? However today is also an important day for one of my fellow students, he’s defending his PhD.
Day 104: Experiment Prep
It looks like things are moving a little quicker than I thought for me. As you may or may not know, I’m getting ready to do an experiment. Well, we finally (finally!) finalized the protocol and just in time too. While I won’t make the deadline for my project update, I will have some data to show when we get to the conference, which is a good consolation prize.
Day 103: A day off…
I’ve got a lot going on, but today is a day off. It’s important to take time for yourself so when you need to do the work, you actually do the work. I’m sure we’ve all felt that way, where you force yourself to do something and spend 4+ hours doing something that you could do in less than an hour. Sometimes you need a break.
Lunatic Laboratories 