Neuroscience

I don’t consider having more or better ideas than others. But I gradually realized I have less and less time for some activities like programming, electronics etc. Maybe that’s how we realize we are getting older now adults. So I decided to share these ideas rather than fueling the illusory idea that I will implement them one day. So idea 1 is about measuring sleep. I recorded animals’sleep during my Ph.D. - but it was thanks to an EEG device. I think that if you want to understand or improve something you have to first measure it in a way or another. So I started to try to measure my own sleep with an app ( Sleep Cycle). But despite its good reviews it doesn’t work, at least for me. ...

As I promised before, you’ll find here the text and slides of my Ph.D. thesis (btw text and slides are in French). The oral presentation was on March 24th, 2010 and everything was fine :-) Slides can be watched below. Effets du sommeil et de la privation de sommeil sur le protéome hippocampique de rat après apprentissage topographique http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=3557617&stripped_title=effets-du-sommeil-et-de-la-privation-de-sommeil-sur-le-protome-hippocampique-de-rat-aprs-apprentissage-topographique-3557617 ...

Since I published some videos of Morris Water Maze (MWM) experiments, I received questions about the set-up of the maze and its concept in general. I tried my best to answer them. I collected them and here are the Frequently Asked Questions about the Morris Water Maze. If you have some more questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Along with all the videos of all FOSDEM editions, the FOSDEM team put the 2009 videos on YouTube. So here is the video about Gemvid: [youtube &hl=en&fs=1] The presentation in PDF is still available from the Gemvid webpage (and in live here).

After a while, here is why I got a TV tuner for my Linux laptop, took screen captures and wrote a script to add a timestamp on pictures … I wanted to know how my (then 5-month-old) son was sleeping (his mom can be reassured: I was not planning to put electrodes on his scalp ;-) ). Get the Flash Player to see this player. var s1 = new SWFObject("../videos/player.swf",“ply”,“360”,“240”,“9”,"#FFFFFF"); s1.addParam(“allowfullscreen”,“false”); s1.addParam(“allowscriptaccess”,“sameDomain”); s1.addParam(“flashvars”,“file=../videos/081129-night.flv&image=../videos/081129-night.jpg”); s1.write(“container”); ...

Finally, a seventh scientific paper is published by the Poirrier-Falisse. After a huge batch of articles from Nandini, here is my second paper: Poirrier J.E., Guillonneau F., Renaut J., Sergeant K., Luxen A., Maquet P. and Leprince P.: " Proteomic changes in rat hippocampus and adrenals following short-term sleep deprivation" Proteome Science, 2008, 6(1):14 doi: 10.1186/1477-5956-6-14 Very briefly, in this study we show the influence of 4 hours of prolonged wakefulness in rats hippocampus and adrenals proteome. As usual, this paper is published in an Open Access journal. Here is my updated BibTeX file (and I also updated Nandini’s BibTeX file). ...

I was very pleased to see my first publication in Nature( 1), the scientific journal with an impact factor of 26! Well, it’s not really what you can expect (especially if you are one of my two mentors): one of my photos on Flickr, representing a rat eating (or praying?), was chosen to illustrate a summary of UK Academy of Medical Sciences report on animal-human chimeras :-) Click on the thumbnail above to see the full screenshot ...

Since I already posted a lot about IT here, I decided not to mix everything, not to confuse some readers and to start another blog dedicated to neurosciences on the Nature Network. So, here is the branching-plot novel choice: You want to read more entries on IT? Stay here. You want to read more entries on neurosciences? Go there.

Since my Ph.D. is related to memory consolidation, I was interested in a strange idea from Francis Crick. He asked the question of long-term storage of the memory trace 1. How is this memory trace stored in our brain? And, more importantly, how is it protected against molecular turnover? In his view, Crick suggested three hypothesis: Memory could be encoded in alterations of some part of the cell DNA. This will imply that each neuron synapse would be represented by a part of the neuron DNA since the actual paradigm states that memory is encoded in the strength of individual synapse. This first hypothesis seems unlikely. Memory could otherwise be stored in a local piece of DNA or RNA, at the synapse (a bit like the mitochondrion has its own DNA). This piece would be immune to the molecular turnover. Although more logical, this hypothesis seems unlikely too. Finally, Crick’s last hypothesis states that molecules at the synapse level would interact in such a way they could be replaced by new ones, one at a time, without altering the general status (strength). The figure below shows a working example of this hypothesis … ...

“Que du bonheur” (French) can be translated into “Pure Happiness”. I found this ad for a hotel/casino on the way back from Luxembourg where I won the best poster award at the Benelux Sleep Congress 2007. So, I’m really happy! :-D The winning poster is the one on the left, on the photo above. The poster on the right was about Gemvid and was ranked second :-)