About Functional Neurogenesis
Author Pages: Jason Snyder, Michael Drew
Functional Neurogenesis was started by Jason Snyder and Michael Drew – two neuroscientists currently researching the behavioral function of adult neurogenesis. The content of this site is centered around the function of adult neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, including discussion of scientific research papers, methods and protocols, and other trends or observations about the field. However, since we cannot truly understand the function of adult hippocampal neurogenesis without also studying memory systems, other forms of plasticity, development etc., we will invariably comment on findings in areas outside of the adult neurogenesis literature, that we feel are interesting or are relevant to the field.
In creating this site we were driven by the observation that there are many great websites and blogs devoted to ideas about the brain. But there are hardly any sites devoted to specialized disciplines within neuroscience, limiting fruitful consultation to meetings, email, and the slow process of peer-review publishing. We hope that Functional Neurogenesis can fill this void and be a forum for discussing interesting papers, methods, and experimental concepts.
Hello! I have just recently found your blog and I have enjoyed reading your posts over the past month. I am in the lab of Dr. Tracey Shors and I am interested in what factors mediate the effect of trace eyeblink conditioning on the survival of new neurons in the DG. Part of my project calls for staining BrdU-labeled cells and other markers. Our lab largely uses immunoperoxidase staining, but I have been trying to use immunofluorescence staining in order to determine if certain cell surface receptors are expressed on BrdU+ cells. I noticed in your papers that you have successfully stained tissue for BrdU and other markers. I have played around with frozen tissue and tissue kept in cryoprotectant and tried multiple protocols, but I haven’t had much success. If you have a free moment, I would greatly appreciated any advice you could offer. Are there certains things such as tissue thickness, the time the tissue spends in HCl and the particular antibody used that you find matter quite a bit when it comes to reliably staining tissue for BrdU and other markers? Thank you in advanced and looking forward to reading more from you both.
– Megan