Here you find all MIT undergrad courses online, download the course material, watch the lectures and even take the MIT exams. It might be annoying that certain figures are not shown during the lectures due to potential conflict of interest, but nonetheless I think this is a  great resource in particular undergrads.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Happy holidays btw.

Here are nice videos about RNAi

http://www.nature.com/focus/rnai/animations/index.html

Here is an article in the NY times about H.M.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05hm.html?_r=1&em

This seems a pretty cool website with many interesting interviews. It's for a broader audience... .


http://docartemis.com/brainsciencepodcast/

Where did you find this?

Thanks dude!

Hi everybody,

If anyone come across an atlas showing the peripheral nervous system and spinal cord of the mouse please post it here. I would like to know at which level I should obtain sc slices to get the part that receives projections from motor neurons innervating the hind limbs.

Thanks,
Thi

Thanks Steffen, I hope you had a nice halloween, too. After distributing candy to more than 500 kids (at my Prof.'s house) I really needed the weekend:).

I would suggest neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger:

http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/index.html

I attended some of his talks which rather impressed me.

[Berlin Brain Days 2008]

The Berlin Brain Days 2008 is jointly organized by the seven Phd-programs in Berlin to foster exchange and interaction between neuroscience faculty and students across Berlin. On this symposium PhD students will present their research in lectures and poster presentations. Prof. Dr. Helmut Kettenmann – Chair

This year's invited keynot speakers are:

Ranulfo Romo (opening lecture) Professor of Neuroscience Institute of Cellular Physiology National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Moses Chao Professor of Cell Biology, Physiology and Neuroscience and Psychiatry Departments of Cell Biology (Skirball) and Physiology and Neuroscience and Psychiatry New York University

Ray Dolan Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging University College London

Jutta Engel Cellular and molecular physiology – Hair cell physiology University of Tübingen

Magdalena Goetz Professor of Physiological Genomics Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

David McAlpine Professor of Auditory Neuroscience and Director of the Ear Institute University College London

Registration is open on the BBD 2008 website.

Of course, I meant paired-pulse-ratio, sorry for the confusion dude . Reading that you want to record over 4h I assume you want to have both E-LTP and L-LTP. Well honestly I haven't done L-LTP so far and I guess your slice prep has to be different from what I did to allow for such long recording times. Moreover, I don't understand what you mean by the LTP "doesn't screw up...". If you mean it doesn't increase - well I have never heard of LTP getting stronger in vitro over recording time, it normally approaches the baseline asymptotically. If you mean the LTP does breaks down it is most likely your slice quality that gradually deteriorates or maybe even a part of your experiment (depedning on whether/how you manipulate), I believe.
To your last question, I have never done L-LTP, but one thing's for sure I've never managed to get valid recordings for anything on a daily basis .

I forgot to mention the extracellular solution. Do you add Gabazine (or any GABA-receptor-blocker) to your aCSF?

Ok so you're doing LTP (double-pulse-timulation would be applied for STP/STD). Considering your unstable baseline I would say that it could be bad positioning of both recording and stimulation pipette, especially if you want to record LTP at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses this is crucial because CA3 receives rather little input from the dentate gyrus as compared to CA1 from CA3. It also happened to me once that the optimal stimulation intensity is just not in the range of what you can adjust on the multiplier (i.e. because the steps are too gross if using old multipliers) though this was just a single case.
Apart from that anything could disturb your recordings, be it bad animal peparation (i.e. too much anaesthesia), an unsteadily fixed stage, too much noise from the electrical devices (check the grounding)... .
If you receive proper inputs once in a while it might be your handling (bad slices, pipette positioning etc.), if you never manage to get proper data it is most likely your setup, I believe. Maybe you should try neglecting the bad baseline and just go for the tetanus stimulation to see what the responses look like. Again, if you have at least bigger but unclean signals it should be your setup or pipettes, if you see no LTP at all well then it is your slice which lost consciousness for good;-).

I am sure this did not solve your problem but maybe it gave you some hints.
Keep me posted on things:-).

Could you specify what kind of experiment you want to perform and what you mean by baseline? It appears to me you want to apply double-pulse stimulation to check for STP/STD?

One aspect of rule 3 is that to become principal investigator with your own lab you need to publish really high at first stage, so that I think age is very important indeed.