Tag: Society for Neuroscience

November 2014

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Our main news this month is that Annisa’s paper has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Neuroscience!  Entitled ‘A distinct sub-type of dopaminergic interneuron displays inverted structural plasticity at the axon initial segment’, it not only describes different, functionally distinct classes of dopaminergic cells in the olfactory bulb, but also characterises a novel form of plasticity in one of these classes.  It was a lot of work from Annisa and Elisa, as well as a significant contribution from our project student Rob Chesters, and they can be rightly proud of what they’ve produced.  The manuscript will be Open Access as soon as it’s out, and we’ll post the appropriate link here next time so you can read it for yourselves.

Adna and Matt thinking very hard about the AIS

Adna and Matt thinking very hard about the AIS

Elisa presenting her poster at SfN 2014

Elisa presenting her poster at SfN 2014

Annisa's AIS is this big

Annisa’s AIS is this big

Annisa found out about the paper when she was still in Washington DC, where the lab attended this year’s Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting.  Adna, Annisa and Elisa all presented posters and all were very well received, despite us book-ending the meeting with Saturday and Wednesday afternoon timeslots (we’ll get luckier next time, because we’re overdue on that now…).

Overall the meeting was great, with a nice buzz around the meeting halls, some impressive plenaries, and a lot of really useful contacts made. Plus everyone apart from Matt made the most of being in the US afterwards: Elisa to go and visit her collaborators at Harvard, Adna to scope out potential post-docs in New York, and Annisa went to see the Space Shuttle Discovery.

While we were in DC our newest lab member Darren held the fort admirably, and even generated some quality data!  Darren’s on a joint PhD studentship between our department and the SGDP at the Institute of Psychiatry, and in his rotation with us has already demonstrated a knack for patching that means we hope we can persuade him to stick around…

Finally, we’re continuing to spread our influence as widely as possible.  Matt recently interviewed to become an inaugural member of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence, and spent a fantastic day advising the Theatre-Rites production company on its plans for building a human brain to stick in a puppet. And Elisa was interviewed and accepted as a Brilliant Club mentor, which means she’ll be teaching neuroscience to widen access to university-level education for outstanding pupils from non-selective state schools.

Tired poster presenters in the Wednesday afternoon "graveyard slot"

Tired poster presenters in the Wednesday afternoon “graveyard slot”

This is Gao, new honorary member of the Grubb Lab.

This is Gao, new honorary member of the Grubb Lab.

Post-poster reward of chili cheese fries and half smokes at Ben's Chili Bowl

Post-poster reward of chili cheese fries and half smokes at Ben’s Chili Bowl

November 2011

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Sabrina

Sabrina

The main event this month was the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Washington DC.  Matt co-chaired a minisymposium on ‘Short- and long-term plasticity at the axon initial segment’ which brought together six young(ish!) researchers to present their recent AIS work, and which was a huge amount of fun – lots of fresh data, some great talks, some lively questions, and a brilliant opportunity to spend some time talking science with others in the field.  Thanks to everyone who contributed and to everyone who came along, especially those who spared the time to chat to us afterwards.  The minisymposium also spawned a little cross-continental state-of-the-art review in the Journal of Neuroscience, which you should be able to read here.

Not forgetting the rest of the lab, Annisa and Mark were in DC, too.  When we weren’t eating half-smokes or getting shot at, we were busy presenting two well-received posters which you can see here (Annisa, Mark).  Thanks again to all those who took the time to come and talk about olfactory bulb and hippocampal AIS plasticity – we left the meeting with some extremely useful contacts and a lot of good feedback.

And while we’re in conference season, we just heard that Sabrina – our summer student from UC Irvine – presented her work at the ABRCMS meeting in St. Louis and came away with a poster prize.  Jolly well done Sabrina!

February 2011

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We’ve had a good few productive months since the last post, with everyone getting their heads down, battling the frost & snow, and coming into the lab to produce some really exciting preliminary data on all projects.  We can’t reveal any details just yet, but watch this space!

We’ve also got a new lab member: in between training to become a ‘proper’ doctor, Tom Watkins has joined us for his intercalated BSc lab project, looking at synaptic inputs to the AIS in hippocampal cultures.  He’s already re-worked our standard Matlab scripts and acquired a big stack of confocal pictures, so there should be some of his images up in the Gallery soon…

Finally, we’ve just heard that Matt’s going to be co-chairing a minisymposium at this year’s Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Washington DC (November 12-16).  It’s titled ‘Short- and long-term plasticity at the axon initial segment’, and will involve talks from six young(ish) researchers interested in various aspects of AIS plasticity.  More details to come, but save the dates!