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Friday, November 01, 2002
What a boring day..I spent about two and a half hours counting astrocytes (special cells in the brain). They are the star-shaped ones with the arrows pointing to them in the picture below:
I'm sad because I know I'll probably be doing this more in the future with more slides..so, why are we counting them? These cells typically are activated when the brain receives an insult (from chemicals, not verbal ones). The astrocyte count for injured brains is higher than for normal brains. My lab is exploring the neuroprotective effects of nicotine. In examining nicotine-treated brains, we figure the count will be somewhere between the injured brain and the normal brains..but that may not be the case, because nicotine may not work through this particular cell type, but we don't/won't know..at least not until I finish these experiments. Tediousness.
3:55 PM Albert
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..a life in DUO