Comments for Functional Neurogenesis

Comment on Virus: a new tool for generating pretty pictures by Dr Becca

Dr Becca — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:54:28 +0000

Awesome pictures, Jason! And congrats on the new gig! I expect a seminar invite to UBC to be forthcoming…

Comment on Virus: a new tool for generating pretty pictures by katiesci

katiesci — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:32:08 +0000

Congrats on the job!! BC is so gorgeous and I hear it’s a fun place to live too. Plus: your own lab! Super exciting.

Also, I aspire to take pictures half as pretty as yours. Unfortunately, my near future is filled with light instead of confocal microscopy.

Comment on Virus: a new tool for generating pretty pictures by Andy McKenzie

Andy McKenzie — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:18:03 +0000

Congrats on the lab at UBC, Jason! You earned it. I’m sure that you will do some great science there.

Comment on A list of experiments that relate adult hippocampal neurogenesis to behavior by J.V.W

J.V.W — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:44:23 +0000

One more study to expand your list: Lack of cyclin D2 impairing adult brain neurogenesis alters hippocampal-dependent behavioral tasks without reducing learning ability. Jedynak et al., PMID: 22101301

Best!

Comment on Forming and recalling memories. Artificially. by Zejun Wang

Zejun Wang — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:28:34 +0000

Excellent comments! I am just thinking about if granule cells can work for different behaviors such as pattern separation and completion. One paper recently published on Cell also from Tonegawa lab said that there is a possibility that young and old granule cells might be responsible for oppositing behaviors. In fact, researchers have already found the similar results from piriform cortex, which driving the same or different ensembles of piriform cortex will induce opposite behaviors (aversive or appetitive) by using ChR2.

Comment on Forming and recalling memories. Artificially. by Jason Snyder

Jason Snyder — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:40:47 +0000

That does sound like a cool direction – and it adds a new level of specificity, by activation one memory vs another. Also adds a level of complexity because you’d have to differentially label and activate two distinct populations. But I think such an experiment will eventually be done.

Comment on Forming and recalling memories. Artificially. by AndrewHires

AndrewHires — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 03:25:37 +0000

What’s a ‘normal’ level of cfos expression? The relationship between neural activity, cell type, and cfos expression is poorly understood and the timescale of dox-on dox-off is long. This makes interpretation murky.

It is clearly possible to trigger a crude expression of behavioral modification (freezing) via activating a subset of neurons that were paired with a fearful stimulus. Its quite another thing to say “Our results show that memories really do reside in very specific brain cells,” Liu says, “and simply by reactivating these cells by physical means, such as light, an entire memory can be recalled.”

Comment on Forming and recalling memories. Artificially. by Lucas

Lucas — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 02:46:51 +0000

I think it would be quite interesting to test them on a simple t-maze task to asymptotic criterion where they must go left if they smell a neutral smell (say “wood”) or right if they smell “grass”. Find those populations for each of those memories (presumably, smelling one thing will cue the rest of the associative memory which would be distinct, possibly, from the other associative memory), and see if, by activating the reverse population, they can change the mouse’s behavior.

Comment on Forming and recalling memories. Artificially. by Action Potential: Fear of the Light : Action Potential

Action Potential: Fear of the Light : Action Potential — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:20:30 +0000

[...] Your prayers have been answered because Jason Snyder of the Functional Neurogenesis blog has written up more on the complementary paper from the Mayford group. Even more coverage from science writer Ed [...]

Comment on Forming and recalling memories. Artificially. by John Sakon

John Sakon — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:20:21 +0000

Still need to do a lot of reading before I can fully grasp how all this ties together, but my initial thought is the difference between how the DG differentiates similar and non-similar contexts can account for some of these distinct cell populations being summoned in the DG. For example Sahay et al. (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7344/full/nature09817.html) showed how a different context, context C, was not treated the same way by the DG as context B, a similar context, in comparison to the original context A (same idea in Nakashiba et al http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2812%2900157-2 with only new neurons involved). Then the overlap amongst cells is seen in the more cell (and association) rich CA3 ( http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=19cacc88-faab-469f-a013-34f7592d3b43&cKey=1cfee4ef-a30d-402b-8012-6fee78a34272&mKey={8334BE29-8911-4991-8C31-32B32DD5E6C8} ).