Neuroscience

In the last issue of the Journal of Neuroscience Methods (impact factor: 1.5), 3 papers deal with animal behaviour monitoring and 2 of them introduce open source software. Roseanna Ramazani and her colleagues “designed an automated system for the collection and analysis of locomotor behavior data, using the IEEE 1394 acquisition program dvgrab, the image toolkit ImageMagick and the programming language Perl” [1]. What is interesting is that they highlight the longevity and reliability of open source software, leaving behing the simplistic view “open source = free as in free beer”: ...

Since a few days, I am back to my previous laboratory to collect some more samples. While looking after my rats, I measured the noise level with a dBmeter. The conditions are: 8.30 am doors are left open (except in the housing unit) as it is usually the case five samples per room: one in each corner of the room (without moving any furniture) and one in the middle measures taken at ear height device: YF-20 (YFE) ...

It will be possible on this Saturday March 17th, 2007! For the EDAB Brain Awareness Week, one of my lab is organizing some conferences and you’ll also have the opportunity to visit the lab and see demonstrations on experiments we do and how we do. One of my mentors, Dr. P. Leprince, will tell (and show) you how we can identify proteins and identify their roles. Other workshops include microscopy, electrophysiology, behaviour. Conference topics include stem cells, drug addiction, injuries in the brain. You can have more info on the lab website (look for our activities, in French). ...

This friday, I attended the Symposium on Neuroproteomics organised at the University of Gent (B). Apart from Deborah Dumont’s excellent talk, lectures were almost only focused on oxydative stress, neurological diseases and gel-free proteomics (like 2D-LC). One speaker even seemed to talk only to his computer or his presentation. So, it was not very interesting for me (finishing my thesis based on gel proteomics). The organisation was very “basic” and we even didn’t have any free pen + paper (fortunately, I took two pens and a notebook).

Hannah Wallash put their slides about Dasher on the web (quite the same as these ones from her mentor). Dasher is an “information-efficient text-entry interface”. What made me interested in Dasher is her introduction about the way we communicate with computers and how they help us to communicate with them. There are keyboards (even reduced ones), gesture alphabets, text entry prediction, etc. I am interested in the ways people can enter text on a touch-screen, without physical keyboard. Usually, people use a virtual keyboard (like in kiosks for tourists or in handheld devices). But they are apparently not the best solutions. ...

These last 1.5 days, I was in Maastricht (NL) for the 10th Euron PhD days. Euron is the “European graduate school of neuroscience”. I presented a poster and did an 15 minutes oral presentation of my last results. It was a good meeting in its 1st meaning: I met interesting people. I also enjoyed listening to other Ph.D. students’presentations since it always gives you i) a glimpse at what other people (in other universities) are interested in (by other means that paper/digital articles) and ii) the impression that you are not the only one to have problems with your protocol, your animals, your proteins, … The location was great ( Fort Sint Pieter), sun was there. The ULg team was very small (only 4 Ph.D. students and 2 senior scientists on a total of about 100 participants) but this gave an occasion to know other students better. ...

A media looked for someone with experience in scientific mazes. They contacted Rudy D’Hooge, from the Laboratory of Neurochemistry & Behaviour, University of Antwerp (with Prof. De Deyn, he wrote an authoritative review on the subject). He gave my name and my lab as a reference for the Morris water maze (*). Maybe he gave other names and labs but … Nearly 4 years ago, I took the train to visit his laboratory in order to see how we could install a water maze in our lab, what protocol we need to use, pittfalls to avoid, … We were nowhere, I learned from them (**) and now they cited us as a reference lab. After so much toil and trouble, it is heart warming. Thank you. ...

At least, that’s what the Thunderbird speller found ;-) OK, it was also associated with “bioscience” and “omniscience”. I just thought it was fun after a day full of experiments and reading interesting articles ( neuroscience is a real science).

Finally, a second scientific paper is published by the Poirrier-Falisse (a first paper for me): Poirrier JE., Poirrier L., Leprince P., Maquet P. " Gemvid, an open source, modular, automated activity recording system for rats using digital video". Journal of Circadian Rhythms 2006, 4:10 ( full text, doi) It is still in a provisional PDF version but already available on the web and Open Access (of course)! Here is my BibTex entry. I will upload source code tonight on the project website.

Sunday, we went to a restaurant with my in-laws. They used to go there since a long time and they personally know the restaurant owner. Each time they eat there, it’s an opportunity to chat about the respective families ; so, when my wife is with her parents, the owner remembers what my wife is doing in life. But, since a few months, we went there three or four times alone (i.e. just my wife and me) and the owner never recognised my wife. ...