Neuroscience

In the summer of 2022, the Lisman Labs for Neuroscience has learned about the molecular and cell biology of neurons as well as some basic brain anatomy. Student researchers have dissected rat and sheep brains, looked at the electrical activity in cockroach legs, and studied the effects of the neurotransmitter nicotine on crickets and designed experiments to examine the role of olfaction in taste. They are also exploring the Allen Institute database to apply and expand on this knowledge. This database is an extraordinary collection of data on thousands of individual neurons in the mouse brain. The database contains the morphology, electrophysiology and RNAseq data for individual neurons in the mouse brain as a publicly available dataset. Student researchers have learned how to use Python to manipulate the data. Next, they plan to design an in silico experiment to look for genes that might regulate cell morphology.