Ambience: Operating Room
Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries – a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. John Beggs is a Biophysicist at Indiana University, who is studying the workings of the human brain. Today we hear from some of his students, who have traveled to Indianapolis to collect brain tissue from a neurosurgeon. The brain samples are being donated to the Beggs lab, in the hope that by learning more about the brain, new treatments can be developed for disorders such as epilepsy.
STUDENT 1: “So we’re at Riley Children’s Hospital. Today what we’re planning to do is hopefully we’re going to be able to get a human tissue slice, and then once we get that tissue slice we’ll prepare it and bring it back to the lab for analysis and for recording.”
STUDENT 2: “So right now we’re just chilling solutions getting ready to harvest the tissue. When the brain comes out it’ll go into a seizure unless it’s put into a sucrose solution that’s chilled. And then we’ll put it in the same solution in the slicer and we’ll slice that up hopefully, without damaging it. And take it back to Bloomington, and hopefully we have activity.”
NEUROSURGEON: “So this area, this frontal lobe was scarred due to a contusion at the time of the motor vehicle accident he was involved in when he was six months old.”
STUDENT 1: “So, the tissue was just removed.”
STUDENT 2: “This is a really big piece of tissue.”
STUDENT 1: “What do you want for time information?”
STUDENT 2: “Maybe four minutes. We’ll pull the tissue out, I’ll stick it on here. We’ll use the chem.-wipe to take some of the solution off, but not all.”
STUDENT 2 “This tissue is alive as soon as we get it. I mean, this just came from the brain.”
Ambience: slicer sound
The chilled brain samples are then taken to John Beggs’ lab to be studied. We’ll hear more that in future programs and on our website at pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.