Week 6: Amelia

This week we did the 2 photon calcium imaging of the rest of our cranial window mice, and were able to get good fields of view from all of them which was exciting! Not sure if the video attachment will work but attempting to add a video of the calcium imaging to the post. Arina and I also did a bunch of head plates this week - 30 in total. On Wednesday we were able to observe neurosurgery - the one I saw was GPi DBS stage 2 - this was the second surgery performed on the patient (the first one occurred a week prior) for deep brain stimulation. In the first surgery, the stimulators are implanted into the brain, and their placement is confirmed with imaging and efficacy is confirmed by asking the patient to perform motor tasks and repeat words (this is the surgery the patient is awake for). In the second surgery, wires threaded underneath the skin are connected to a battery that is implanted in the chest so that the DBS treatment can be continued without more surgeries. Some patients even receive rechargeable batteries. This was an amazing surgery to be able to observe.