I am spending the summer in Grinnell doing Neuroscience research at the college. Specifically, I am investigating never before researched connections between two brain structures, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and the orbitofrontal cortex. Both of these structures are involved in the way the brain processes fear. Basically, my research consists of spending about 9 hours a day in the basement of the science building on campus for 10 weeks. Although having to spend a large amount of my summer cooped up in an academic building is rough, we get to do some pretty cool stuff. The basic research process is very hands on. We begin each case study by performing brain surgery on a rat. Basically, we anesthetize the rat, drill a hole in its skull, and inject a very small amount of dye into the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. After we stitch the rat back up, we let it live for about a week. Once we have given the dye a long enough time to be projected from one area of the brain to another, we euthanize the rat and remove its brain. This a very strange process which, strangely enough, includes the use of a tiny rat guillotine. We then cut the brain into very thin slices and use some chemicals to elucidate the dye. Finally, using a microscope we examine which brain structures the dye has been projected to. So far the results have been very promising. If the data is strong enough, my results will be presented at a national neuroscience conference in Chicago this fall.
