Yes….it’s even hot in Woods Hole, although the high 80’s can’t compare to what the rest of the East Coast of the US is experiencing. And by evening, with the sea breezes, it’s pretty comfortable. Nevertheless, the first annual Ed Kravitz MBL lecture last night (Eve Marder, the new President of the Society for Neuroscience) was moved from the non-airconditioned Meigs Room to Whitman Auditorium where cool is the rule.
Marder’s talk last night was devoted to a model neuronal network of approximately 30 cells that she has worked on all her career: the crustacean stomatogastic ganglion (STG). Several interesting neural dynamics themes in her talk:
First, understanding the rules that allows for compensation in the neuronal and network function between and within-individuals.
Second, how tightly tuned are the intrinsic parameters for “good enough” appropriate network behaviors.
For me, the most interesting result is how mRNA copy number of ionic channels is very closely correlated to the magnitude of the corresponding ionic currents…and how the ratio of correlated mRNA expression of two channel types varies by STG cell type.
Marder is a professor at Brandeis–she publishes often in Nature Neuroscience.
Today I am having lunch with Gary Borisy, the newly installed Director and CEO of the MBL. It’ll be interesting to compare notes with him.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 