Steve’s paper

This was an amazing read for me as I met Steve Ramirez on my CO-OP at HMS where he came to give us a talk on this paper and explained to us the procedure he decided on to conduct this experiment.  (This was right before he published this paper, so I didn't actually get a chance to read it first) . In turn, I got to witness other top Neuroscience experts in their fields give his advice on how to proceed for future studied and point out the flaws in his design. This paper was also my first introduction to the awesome optogenetic techniques we read about, also utilizing the AAV virus delivery mechanism we covered.

The simple fact that activating a cell causes the freeing response in a mouse without being in the boxed context, means that there are tremendous possible applications of such technologies in humans. If we talk about PTSD like last week, we could someday be able to manipulate the traumatic event and inhibit it. There are also negative applications as well, as shown by moving the normal box A memory and associating it with shock in box B caused the cell to associate the two contexts, means that memory manipulation may also be possible. I was wondering about the developmental pattern of granule cells, since I know that they migrate from the external granule layer to their proper positions, it would be interesting to examine mice with improper granule structure in the DG to be able to compare them with the normal type mice. I also think that although the possible applications of such tech is boundless, it would be subject to much ethical scrutiny. I would also like to see the application of structural studies into these neurons, connectomes, as I think finding a function-structure correlate may provide ambient cues about memory encoding and storage in brain matter, allowing wide-scale modification of brain tissue for behavioral and mental disorder treatments.

Notes *f1G - light green shade indicates Dox