Dorsal root ganglion

Another close-to-home image for today; this one was taken by Susanne, who sits right next to me these days, whilst she was doing her Diploma Thesis at the NMI Natural and Medical Science Institute at the University of Tuebingen (in Germany) three years ago.

Susanne's image shows a dorsal root ganglion from a chicken. You normally find dorsal root ganglia (or DRGs) just next to the spinal cord, and dorsal to it (towards the back. Like a dorsal fin! Anatomy aide-memoire!). The ganglia bit in the name means that it is a mass of neuron cell bodies. And it's the root of a spinal nerve: a whole bunch of neurons all leaving the spinal cord and traveling out to the periphery together. DRGs like this one here contain sensory neurons, the ones bringing information back to your brain. The neurons that take information out to your periphery (like the motor neurons in Friday's picture, which cause movement of skeletal muscles) leave via the other side of the spinal cord.

The green staining is showing neurons, growing and projecting outwards from the DRG. The blue staining is showing the nuclei of all the cells (most of which aren't neurons, so we can only see their nuclei).

Once again, for scale, the bar represents 500μm (0.05cm, so 16 times bigger than the last image!).

If you like the images leave me a comment, it would be a delight to hear from you. Or subscribe by hitting the 'subscribe to' link at the bottom of the page. It will put a bookmark on your toolbar and put posts in it! Amazing! I have just discovered this nifty trick (I am sure it has been around for relative eons, but there you go). 

Laura

Neuromuscular junctions

Copyright seems more complicated than I could ever have imagined! And all I want to do is make neuroscience images more widely available.

So, to combat the copyright headache I will make my first image one that I know no-one else owns, since it is one of mine...

 

What you are looking at here is the connection between nerve (shown in green) and muscle (red) in the foot of a mouse. This connection is called a neuromuscular junction (for obvious reasons, when you break it down!), and they are responsible for every voluntary movement we make. Pretty useful little fellows. 

Normal healthy neuromuscular junctions look like the one on the right. The green nerve is spreading out across the bit of the muscle which is specialised to receive the signal about when to contract and produce movement. The one on the left is having a bit of a hard time. He's been severed from the rest of the nerve cell, and without connection to the cell body, way off in the spinal cord, the nerve has fragmented, and will soon be cleared away. That scale bar at the bottom represents 30μm. So 0.003cm. Otherwise known as pretty tiny.

I used to think they looked a bit like poppies. Now I just think they look like neuromuscular junctions. I suppose that's the effect of looking at them for four years, but I love them all the more for it. 

I'll hopefully bring you someone else's images soon! There are some unbelievable ones out there, you'll want them framed and on your wall...

Laura

Under construction...

Hello everyone,

I am currently in the process of setting up this blog, please bear with me whilst it looks entirely empty.

The idea is to post images from scientific articles, which are both beautiful on an aesthetic level, and awesome on a scientific level. And then to explain a little of the science behind them. The issue here is that all these images are copyright, and I can't work out whether they can be used on here with proper accreditation. Or if that is entirely illegal.

I'll keep trawling the web for answers, and find a way to bring you some images soon...