Thank you

Thank you for following my blog posts throughout these 11 weeks!

My final presentation will be on Saturday, May 6th, at 12 pm in the BASIS Phoenix multi-purpose room. Anyone interested is welcome! The pdf version of my keynote presentation is below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz0vd0nsJE_CR19XeHYtdlBLcDA/view?usp=sharing

A Music Therapy Observation

There is another man in music therapy who really seems to benefit from it. We'll call him Ralph. Ralph possibly suffers from Parkinson's, or some other movement disorder. What exactly it is we are not privileged to know, however we can see very clearly he has much difficulty coordinating his movements and they are often delayed, reluctant, and slow.

Yesterday during music therapy the therapist was asking members of the group to tap a personal tone bar (essentially one component of a xylophone that is handheld) with a stick.

Ralph really struggled with this. He would hold the the bar up and then move his arm to hit it with the stick, but he could not make contact. It seemed the stick was almost repelled from the bar as if by magnets. It would waver back and forth, always close to the bar, but never actually touching it, and one could see Ralph was truly trying very hard to make contact. But he couldn't. After ten or so seconds of struggle and concentration, he would slouch forward with a frown, giving up. Then the music therapist gave him a beat, snapping her fingers and conducting his movements. "One two three FOUR, one two three FOUR." And on four he would move the stick to meet the tone bar, and from it would sound a bright C. It truly was amazing to see how music therapy, literally from one moment to the next, could make such a difference in the abilities of someone with a limiting neurological condition.

Why Should You Care?

Alzheimer's disease is extremely prevalent in the population today, especially the United States. Currently, 5.5 million people are formally diagnosed with the disease, one in nine people aged 65 or over. Right now that population over 65 amounts to about 40 million Americans. With the first members of the baby boom turning 70 last year, by 2050, this population will be more like 90 million.

It is expensive to care for all these people. It costs the United States roughly $200 billion annually, and an expected $1.1 trillion by 2050. It is in our best interest to find a solution for this disease that will only become more prevalent every year; if you do the math, it's a new case every 69 seconds.

As shown below, diseases like cancer, heart disease, and HIV have been causing less deaths in the population since 2000. All of them have decreased in the amounts of deaths caused... except for Alzheimer's disease, which has caused 71% more. Further funds and research is needed to find a solution to this problem.

Wrapping Up

So unfortunately with two weeks left and due to some other complications, I will not be able to complete that psychology experiment. Luckily, it is and experiment that has been done many times before, so for those who are curious about the outcome, here's a summary.

It's still not clear. While music, especially classical, is known to decrease heart and respiratory rates and make you calm and focused, no credible studies have been able to show that certain types of music affect memory recall-- short or long term. So while it makes sense that certain forms of music that promote focus and attention would improve memory, it has not been proven scientifically. Another hypothesis for why music should help memory is that because music we find pleasurable releases dopamine, the "feel-good" chemical in the brain, learning while listening to music becomes a reward response, promoting memorization and learning. It is even hypothesized that listening to music we associate with positive emotions also encourages learning by enhancing memories.

There is one hotly debated subject called "the Mozart Effect." It is a phenomenon where a person's spatial-temporal reasoning is enhanced for a short time (10-15 min) after listening to Mozart's music. Spatial-temporal reasoning exercises include navigating a maze on paper, and paper cutting/folding, or aligning blocks to achieve a certain shape. While some scientists have "proved" this effect to be real, many attribute its apparent presence to chance or faulty experimental design. Again, the subject is disputed and very hard to prove.

All this debate over whether music actually affects memory and even intelligence does prove one thing though; music undeniably impacts us in significant ways. Maybe we can't always prove it, but we can feel it.

Final Preparations

I cannot believe we are heading into week ten! The final senior project presentations have been scheduled for Saturday, May 6. Mine is at 12:00 p.m. in the BASIS Phoenix gym, and I would love for anyone interested to attend.

I plan to conduct two more surveys this week: the one for classical music and the one for pop music. I hope everyone enjoys Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and 24K Magic.

In the lab I have been learning a different technique: the Western Blot. It is much trickier than the immuno. It's purpose is to visualize certain target proteins that have been separated by means of gel electrophoresis (separating particles based on their size and charge). To break it down simply (I hope), the first step is to perform the gel electrophoresis. In this step, the liquid samples-- in this case brain tissue samples-- are "loaded" into the wells using a pipette. They are often dyed a dark color so they can be seen. Then, using electricity, the different sized particle fragments separate out through the gel, where smaller fragments travel further.

Then the proteins that ran in the gel must be transferred to a membrane. To do this, you must prepare a stack as shown below and then run electricity through it.

Lastly, you do the antibody staining, much like an immuno, to visualize your target proteins. Here is what a final Western Blot might look like. This one used chemiluminescence and was visualized using fluorescence, where the protein of interest was tagged with a molecule that fluoresces under a certain light.

Thanks!

Some Bumps in the Road

Planning an experiment is hard...

As I explained previously, each participant is to play the memory game with or without music, and then report their score on the survey. I capped that score at 12,000, with the final highest score report option being ">12,000." I clearly failed to account for some of BASIS' most forgotten geniuses: the teachers. Thanks Mr. McCorkle for pointing out your score was well above 12,000. We get it. You're brilliant.

To account for this lack of information above 12,000, I have adjusted the rest of the surveys to extend to 18,000 (I really hope that's enough), which will allow me to collect better, more precise data, and ultimately calculate a more accurate measurement of how participants score on the following surveys. I unfortunately cannot re-do that first survey, however I do not think the lack of information at the high levels will ultimately affect the overview of the results, because the vast majority of participants scored below that initial cap, so the number of scores affected was very few. Even still, the following surveys are now better designed. Research and experience entail learning from your mistakes.

With the teacher responses, I have 81 total for the first survey! The next round will likely take place on Thursday.

First Survey

I conducted survey number one on Friday for the a.m. and p.m. AP Psychology classes. That's fifty responses!

I do not want to speak too soon about the results of the survey because I still need the responses from the teachers (hopefully on Monday) and I do not want to in any way impact the results for psychology students who may read this blog. That said, I can say that between both classes, 40% of the students are male, and 60% are female, 74% of the students are an age between 13 and 15, and 26% between 16 and 18.

The scores range across the board, but no, there is no score that is "good" or "bad." I was asked that question a lot, especially by the students of the p.m. class (they seem a bit more competitive). The a.m. class did great; they were very quiet throughout the process, and quick to submit their results. The p.m. class had more issues. The students were more noisy, and it took about twice as long for all of them to submit their surveys, about twenty minutes instead of the ten from the morning class. Because of this, I do have concerns that some of the students of the p.m. class may have cheated and played the game multiple times to improve their score despite having been asked not to and informed as to how this skews and invalidates data. Because my sample size will be fairly large, especially with the teachers, I am not worried that the results of a few students will impact the experiment overall.

I am excited to introduce the music... that should be interesting.

So Many Solutions

This week has been more relaxed.

The music therapy intern is in her last week of her internship before she will be officially hired by Neurologic Music Therapy Services of Arizona (NMTSA), so while she will still be around after Friday, she will not be at the daycare center with me and the therapist. She is really passionate about what she does and is also fantastic at it, so I'll miss her but I know she will continue to do great things. She promised me she'll bring her viola on Friday so we can duet "name that tune." I look forward to it.

This week in the lab has been one GIANT immunohistochemistry experiment. I have never seen so many slides used in the protocol simultaneously. Because there are so many slides, the protocol requires large amounts of certain solutions that we use for the immuno. I have made about 14 liters of  this buffer solution called TBS, which maintains the pH of the slides in the solution, as well as liters upon liters of other solutions such as Citric Acid used to limit unnecessary binding between antibodies and antigens (see previous post "Immunohistochemistry" for explanation of how IHC works), and Imidazole to enhance correct staining of whichever antigen we are targeting.

Finally, a quick update on the experiment I will be conducting, it is beginning soon! Likely Friday or sometime next week. I'll keep you posted.

Maybe Next Time

So... I didn't get to play "name that tune" on Friday, which, while unfortunate for me, is not really a bad thing in itself: here's why.

Group music therapy is thought to be useful and effective in groups up to as large as twelve or thirteen people. At the daycare center however, this one hour segment of the day is such a hit, that EVERYONE wants to participate, and that is upwards of twenty five people! Because of such high demand, instead of doing one hour-long session with only twelve people, we did two half hour-long sessions so that we could cater to twenty four(ish). As a result, "name that tune" became a very brief exercise as there was not much time after introductions and movement exercises. While I did not get to play, everyone did get to participate.

Also, the intern forgot her viola so she ended up using my violin instead.

While I was disappointed, having two groups made of different people did reveal how the therapists must change their tactics in order to reach their audience. For example, we only did a brief round of "name that tune" in the first group, one peopled by members who were more aware, alert, and in-touch with reality and themselves. "Name that tune" is a great exercise for them, because their recognition of certain songs strengthens their memory, improves their focus, etc. [See my previous post to learn more about how "name that tune" is so beneficial for the participants.] However, we did not play "name that tune" with the second group, one made of participants in a more faded mental state. While they might have enjoyed the music they were hearing, even if they could not show it, they would not have the ability to identify songs, though they might recognize them. In addition, such an exercise requires a large amount of focus and attention, something that would be much more difficult for the second group. Instead, the music therapists prioritized movement and rhythm, and did other, easier focus/attention exercises that were more geared towards the level of the group.

I am bringing my violin again on Wednesday and hope the circumstances are better for my purpose. I will be sure to post about it if they are.

Searching for the Sense of Self in the Dementia-Afflicted Brain

We know music runs through many structures and areas of the brain and is very involved with memory processes. We remember hundreds if not thousands of tunes and melodies, can recall titles, lyrics, and artists, associate certain songs with emotions and events, and remember all this many decades after it is first learned. Clearly however memory works, music might be a great way in which we can come to understand it.

It all starts at the auditory nerve that processes sound and allows us to hear the music in the first place. From there, we are not so sure. The top theories out there say that because music affects emotions, it must be processed in the limbic system, an inner brain pathway that consists of the multiple areas shown below.

While the limbic area controls many aspects of function, it is largely involved with emotion. The amygdala in particular is known to control emotional behavior and motivation. This means it ultimately affects our emotional moods and actions that we do not really control, or autonomic responses, via communication with the thalamus and frontal lobe. Another part of the limbic system, the hippocampus, is involved with memory in regards to factual information, or declarative memory, and might be why certain music is thought to help students memorize vocabulary while studying for an exam.

Memories are deemed more valuable and seem to perpetuate longer when they are emotionally significant. It's easier to recall your happiest, angriest, and saddest moments versus those from emotionally uncharged circumstances. Songs which carry an emotional significance seem to trigger these memories, and this is especially important for those with dementia. When many of their most important and valuable memories seem permanently lost, music allows certain emotions, and the memories associated with them, to reappear. Concetta Tomaino, a renowned music therapist who has truly pioneered the field, wonders if in this way, music can be used to re-access the sense of self in a dementia patient who has essentially forgotten who they are. She even quotes world-renowned neuroscientist Oliver Sacks from his novel "Music and the Brain" which I have also happened read for the purpose of this project, that I feel perfectly sums up this idea that music can rekindle lost memories and even oneself: "[I]t is the inner life of music which can still make contact with their inner lives which can awaken the hidden, seemingly extinguished soul; and evoke a wholly personal response of memory, associations, feelings, images, a return of thought and sensibility, an answering identity."

Citations

Tomaino, C. (2009, May 20). Cognition ~ How Music Can Reach the Silenced Brain. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/blog/cognition/how-music-can-reach-the-silenced-brain/?p=31

Name That Tune

One of the "games" the music therapists play with the participants at the daycare center for the elderly is called "name that tune." It is actually run by the music therapy intern who studied and earned a music degree from Berklee College of Music, and plays violin, viola, guitar, ukulele, and I'm sure every other instrument under the sun. Essentially, she plays on her violin a few bars of an old song that the residents might have loved in their youth, and has them try to puzzle out what it is. Once they do, she'll play more of each song so that they can sing along with the lyrics, which they often know!

It's a fantastic exercise on many levels. One, it triggers the memory. The participants recognize and identify songs that are likely many decades old and that they have not heard in a long time. They recall melodies and lyrics that they sang in their youth-- a fun and effective exercise to revive memories that sit deep within their minds. This long-term memory recall also has an emotional component, where songs from a past time in the residents' lives stir up feelings of happiness and nostalgia, or whatever other emotions they might have tied to a particular song. This is beneficial to overall well-being-- ensuring residents' happiness, and brightening their days at the center. Lastly, a key objective of playing "name that tune" is to engage the participants' focus. Many of the people at this center are often unaware of or inattentive to their surroundings, so a game that strengthens their focus and engages them so that they must pay attention is beneficial to their overall mental health and allows them to be more alert and function at a higher level throughout the day.

On Friday I have the opportunity to bring in my own violin and co-run this exercise with the music therapy intern; I am so excited to offer my own experience to the men and women at the center. I have to say, my "name that tune" repertoire doesn't really extend far beyond "Oh Suzanna," "La Vie En Rose," and "Happy Birthday." I guess it's time to add some Elvis, Sinatra, and Beatles music to the mix. Any forties, fifties, or sixties suggestions?

Stories of People and the Music that Impacted Them

Neurologic Music Therapy is known to be effective, allowing individuals to cope with and sometimes heal their mental or cognitive afflictions. Aside from these common cases of music at work in the human brain, there are also some seemingly miraculous and mind-blowing stories of music and its ability to rewire the brain.

Sam: A man in his sixties and recovering from a stroke that affected his left side, Sam experienced significant weakness that caused him to have a faltering gait where his left foot would drag behind him.Traditional physical therapy offered little improvement. Then Sam tried music therapy. The therapist found music that exactly matched the tempo of his stride, and after a short time, not only was Sam able to walk more normally and with confidence but to dance along the way, clicking his heels and sliding his feet. In his youth he danced at the gym, and so he applied those experiences to the present, focusing not on walking but on dancing to the rhythm. With more therapy sessions, Sam was soon able to lift his left foot off the floor, and though he was not consciously aware of it, had more control and was regaining sensation of his left side. Turn the music off though, and all progress was lost. In Sam's case, his internal rhythm, or movement of his legs, matched the external rhythm of the music to which he listened. His mechanisms for conscious movement were damaged, but through subconscious connections tied to music, he was able to move in ways previously impossible. Music therapy gave him the ability to move freely again.

Sally: Sally suffers from leukoencephalopathy, a degenerative disease that destroys the white matter of the brain. In the nursing home in which she lived, she spent her days pacing the halls and crying. In fact, her crying was the only vocalization she made; she was mute. One day, as a therapist was playing music for some other residents, Sally began to sing the full lyrics of the song, and dance along into her room. Sally's sister confirmed that Sally had loved music in her youth and would sing and play the piano for house guests, and she was blown away by her sister's transformation. The staff would sing with Sally everyday. Soon she began to regain her speech, she stopped endlessly wandering the halls, and no longer continued to cry. Music released her from her personal imprisonment in her brain.

Matt: A middle-aged man, Matt has suffered from severe Tourette Syndrome his entire life, his body wracked with uncontrollable involuntary movements, called tics, that interfered with his everyday life, and tortured him as a child, making him violent and reserved. Then he began playing the drums, and as he did so, his tics disappeared. As soon as he stops drumming, they appear again. Even so, playing the drums or simply drumming on whatever surfaces he has available, has alleviated his involuntary movements and allowed him to take control of his life again. Now he wants to help others, and has started a drumming workshop for people with Tourette's, helping them to manage a syndrome was previously thought to be uncontrollable.

Citations

Tomaino, C. (2009, May 20). Cognition ~ How Music Can Reach the Silenced Brain. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/blog/cognition/how-music-can-reach-the-silenced-brain/?p=31

(2015, September 14). Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqrNEmuSCis

Music Picks

In preparation for my experiment in April, I have designed six surveys. Survey number one is the control, where the test will be taken in silence. Survey number two has the classical music treatment. The participants will listen to Mozart's well known Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K 525 Allegro. Survey number three features pop music, represented by Bruno Mars' 24K Magic (the clean version of course). Number four is hip-hop/rap with the song Put On by Young Jeezy featuring Kanye West. Number five showcases rock music with Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild, and finally survey six has electronic dance music (EDM) represented by Marshmello's Ritual featuring Wrabel.

All of these songs were chosen with the intent to best represent their respective genre of music.

Because different types of music stimulate the brain differently, it should be interesting to see how certain genres might impact immediate visual memory recall. Some music stimulates the motor cortex, causing us to dance, some stimulates the visual cortex, allowing us to conjure up images, and music with words trigger language centers in the frontal and temporal lobes. These multiple ways in which music affects us may ultimately affect our memory as well. More on that soon.

More on the Experiment

I would like to talk more about the experiment I plan to conduct before I begin in April.

The entire process will span roughly three weeks, possibly more, and will consist of six surveys. Each survey is structurally identical, but features a different genre of music. I ask the introductory questions: 1)What is your age, 2)If you are in school, what is your grade level, and 3)How do you identify. Then, a link included in the survey will send the participants to the memory game they will be playing, and they only play it once. Survey number one will be the control without music, however for surveys two through six, I will play a song from a certain genre of music throughout the room for the participants to listen to while they play the memory game. Finally, question four on the survey requests their score on the game. It is roughly a five minute process. Quick and easy!

The people participating in this experiment are the BASIS Phoenix AP psychology classes, as well as the BASIS Phoenix faculty and staff. I hope this experience will be both fun for them and yield interesting results for me. I guess we will see.

Experimenting with Music

I have planned to perform an experiment... on the students and staff of BASIS Phoenix. It will take place over several weeks starting in April and will consist of multiple trials that measure memory recall. I will be using an online memory game to test the participants while they listen to different genres of music, or no music at all.

At this point I have narrowed down the genres to classical, rap, hip-hop, electronic dance music (EDM), and hard rock, as well as the no music control. I am not sure what the outcome of the experiment will be, but I am hypothesizing the classical or no-music treatments will yield the highest memory scores because they are less distracting and allow for better focus.

I think in terms of strictly long-term memory, the outcome would be different. Music can be used to trigger declarative long-term memory, such as in the memorization of certain facts such as words or items after the span of a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even longer.

I might have to conduct another experiment.

This One Client

Each week at music therapy we work with a small group of men and women. We might see some faces on Wednesday and different faces on Friday, but generally the group remains the same. One particular participant, I'll call him Bernard, is younger than many of the others-- maybe late fifties, early sixties. While I do not know what he suffers from, it leaves him unable to communicate and move of his own free will.

I spoke with the music therapy student who began interning in October, and she told me how when she first met Bernard, he would often sleep through the hour-long therapy session and his movement would be minimal to none. Since then, and especially since I have seen him over the past three weeks, Bernard has improved. While still nonverbal, the start of each session puts a happy grin on his face. His feet begin tapping to the music, and his eyes follow the therapist as she guides the activities and leads the songs. I am not the only one who has noticed this improvement; the music therapist has caught on as well and has begun giving him extra time and attention while the therapy student takes over. Today she held a hand drum slightly above his knee, asking him to lift his leg to tap it. And he did-- multiple times even. Last week he was able to popcorn drum (see previous post They Don't Know It's Therapy) at his own pace where before he would not even move his arms at all. Bernard's progress with the help of music therapy is truly amazing and very rewarding for everyone involved. Music therapy works.

They Don't Know It's Therapy

Music therapy is so enjoyable that the elderly clients at the daycare center do not even know it is therapy. When the music starts, not only do their faces but entire bodies light up. That in itself is therapy-- increasing attention and alertness in individuals who have lost the normal ability to focus and concentrate. This is a technique known as Musical Sensory Orientation Training (MSOT), where music is used facilitate responsiveness and awareness of person, time, and place.

The therapists play fun and challenging games with the clients that are designed to improve different aspects of physical and cognitive function. One of these is called “popcorn drumming,” where the participants sit in a large circle and the therapist, holding two hand drums, presents them at different heights for individuals to hit with their hands. She does it in quick succession and can go to any person at any time, keeping the participants on their toes and maintaining high levels of concentration. This game employs a technique called Therapeutic Instrumental Music Performance (TIMP), which stimulates functional patterns of movement and orients the participant to their position as they reach out to hit a drum. It is meant to improve range of motion and limb coordination, as well as engage the participant mentally.

On Wednesday the therapist let me have a go at it, moving the drums all around for me to hit as fast as possible. I noticed the experience is very similar to the phone app Piano Tiles where you must tap the black tiles as fast as possible before they leave the screen. The app engages the player in the exact same way as popcorn drumming engages the participants, except popcorn drumming has the added aspect of space as well. It is a surprisingly fun challenge!

Other examples of TIMP are foot placement or tapping and leg movement. The videos below show how this incorporates music. The steady timing and beat of each movement allows for strengthened cognitive planning and for the patient to overcome their difficulty in coordination. It also strengthens the muscles used in the process.

More to come soon!

Now for some Music

I realize I have been talking quite a bit about the brain, and not as much about music and how it relates to the brain!

While certain functions and senses of the human body are controlled by one or a few particular areas, music overlaps multiple systems across the entire brain. It engages motor, sensory, auditory, and visual cortices, as well as centers for behavior, decision-making, emotion, and memory. I find the diagram below particularly insightful.

Music affects components throughout the entire brain. So what? The real value of this knowledge lies in our ability to apply it practically. This is what neurologic music therapy does; it uses these neuroscience principles to treat people suffering from neurological injuries and disorders such as dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy, brain tumors and aneurysms, and stroke. It has been proven to improve strength, motor coordination, cardiorespiratory fitness, gait, memory, attention, verbal expression, and motivation, as well as provide an outlet for self-expression and a source of enjoyment.

For the purpose of this project, the sessions I attend with the Neurological Music Therapy Services of Arizona involve primarily patients with Alzheimer's, Dementia, and Parkinson's. This way, I can understand the physiological mechanisms of these neurodegenerative diseases as well as how individuals can heal using music as a treatment.

Until next time!

Experimenting with Immunohistochemistry...

As I thought, this week has had a lot more going on! The lab staff has begun to give me more responsibility, and I have now begun my first protocol: a two-day Immunohistochemistry (IHC) experiment.

Autocorrect tells me "immunohistochemistry" is not a word. Trust me, it is. I would be just as lost if not for my internship in Dr. Gallitano's biomedical lab at the University of Arizona this past Summer. IHC, colloquially known as "immuno," is a process I am already very familiar with, and have performed before at the last lab under different conditions. Instead of using mouse brain tissue floating in solution, we are using human brain tissue that has already been mounted onto slides.

So what is immunohistochemistry? It is a process that allows us to stain certain proteins in cells such that they can be seen and documented. The best way to explain it is to break down the word itself. First, we have "immuno." Just as it sounds, this means IHC involves immunology, in this case, the use of antibodies (found in the immune system), that bind to certain antigens (proteins on the surface of or in cells). Next, we have "histo," as in "histology"- the study of animal tissues. So we are using immunology techniques such as the use of antibodies in animal tissues. Lastly, we have chemistry-- the chemical analysis of whatever tissue we are studying using this technique. In one definition, immunohistochemistry is the process of introducing specific antibodies to animal tissue in order to bind specific antigens, and thus be able to visualize those proteins under a microscope. Hopefully I haven't lost you yet.

The diagram above is very helpful. At my old lab, we did the protocol on right, immunofluorescence. At the Mufson lab, we do the one on the left, indirect immunohistochemistry. Both follow the same general principles.

You start with a protein you want to "label", the one you want to be able to visualize in the cells to confirm their presence (or absence). At this lab it might be plaques, abnormal clusters of beta-amyloid proteins that build up between brain cells and are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. So, if you want to label for beta-amyloid, you have to introduce the antibody that will bind to it, anti-beta-amyloid. Because this is in humans, the antibody needs to be made in a different species such as mouse, so it will not bind to any other human proteins. This first antibody we use, the primary antibody, in this case would be mouse anti-beta-amyloid. In the diagram above, the primary antibody is in red. In the immunofluorescence protocol on the right, this antibody has a fluorescent tag bound to it, a protein that fluoresces under certain light. At the old lab we used green fluorescent protein (GFP) produced in jellyfish that indicated the cells which housed our target protein.

In this lab we need a secondary antibody that binds to the first in order to label our target protein. Because the secondary antibody is binding to the primary, it needs to be anti-whatever the primary antibody was made in. If our primary was mouse anti-beta amyloid, the secondary would have to be something anti-mouse. It could be goat, chicken, or horse anti-mouse, as long as it is produced in a different species and targets the mouse primary. In the diagram above, the secondary is in blue. Attached to the secondary antibody (represented by the pink circle) is a protein enzyme called horseradish peroxidase (HRPO). Yes, it is derived from the horseradish plant, specifically the roots. By itself, it does not do much. However, when we add diaminobenzidine (DAB) and some hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), the HRPO catalyzes a reaction between the two that produces an insoluble brown precipitate (colored solid) attached wherever your antibody has bound to your target antigen. You have labelled your protein!

The images below from leicabiosystems.com show actual indirect immunohistochemistry staining.

This image depicts beta-amyloid immunohistochemical staining of an Alzheimer's Disease affected brain. The brown staining of the plaques is very clear.

Similarly, this image depicts immunohistochemical staining in AD affected brain tissue for something called amyloid precursor protein (APP). Beta amyloid is produced as a fragment of this protein, and so the presence of APP is also considered a characteristic of Alzheimer's Disease, and is identified through IHC protocol.

I am conducting an IHC experiment that I will write about soon! I'll keep you posted.

Citations:

Brains and Brawn - Antibodies in Research and Diagnosis. (n.d.). Retrieved February 15, 2017, from http://www.leicabiosystems.com/pathologyleaders/brains-and-brawn-antibodies-in-research-and-diagnosis/

Welcome to the Lab

We have a fridge full of human brain tissue: containers upon containers stacked one on top of the other, each filled nearly to the brim with floating segments of formalin soaked tissue. Each one holds segments of one individual-- possibly a non-dementia affected control, or a Parkinson’s (PD) and/or Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affected tissue. The glass is labelled as such: control, PD, AD, or PD + AD, as well as for how many years the person was affected, the date the brain was received, all the days and times it was fixed so that the tissue remains preserved, and an ID-- the series of three letters starting with ‘R.’ In the image below, the pink taped container in the top center has been preserved since 1995.

The container below was once very full of tissue, however multiple segments have been removed and dissected.

The scientist-- an expert in neuroanatomy-- lays the pieces out on the bench and cuts out particular sections to be sliced and mounted onto slides to be studied.

The fridge contains upwards of 200 of these containers, arranged in alphabetical order, and the lab is constantly retrieving different ones to collect particular segments of the brain they wish to study.

Of particular interest is a small group of neurons called the Nucleus basalis of Meynert (nbM), located in the basal forebrain (see image below). It is part of what is called the cholinergic system, a neurotransmitter system that uses acetylcholine to transmit nerve impulses. The system projects throughout the neocortex and the hippocampus of the brain (again, see image below), and is involved with memory, learning, and arousal. “[N]euronal loss within the cholinergic nucleus basalis of Meynert (nbM) correlates with cognitive decline in dementing disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD)” (Liu, Chang, Pearce, & Gentleman, 2015). The Mufson lab hopes to discover more.

Citations

Liu, A. K., Chang, R. C., Pearce, R. K., & Gentleman, S. M. (2015). Nucleus basalis of Meynert revisited: anatomy, history and differential involvement in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Acta Neuropathologica, 129(4), 527-540. doi:10.1007/s00401-015-1392-5

Just Getting Started

This week I became an official volunteer at St. Joseph's Hospital so that I could work in Dr. Elliott Mufson's lab at Barrow Neurological. The hospital staff here are extremely friendly and are just as eager as I am for me to get started. They are also very helpful with directions, as this campus is huge and I am lost constantly.

The Mufson lab uses human brain tissue to study primarily Alzheimer's Disease, and more recently, Down Syndrome, as the two disorders have the shared occurrence of tau tangles and plaques that are thought to cause the problems with neurological function and the development of dementia common in affected individuals. While I do not yet know much more than this, I have a few research papers to read that I am sure will go into more detail.

This is only my second day in the lab, so I do not have much about which to write. Next week, because it will be my first full week, will likely have much more activity. Also, starting next week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I will be attending the Neurological Music Therapy Services of Arizona's (NMTSA) music therapy sessions, first as an observer, but then hopefully as a participant.

My opportunities and responsibilities as an intern will not be completely clear until next week. Whatever they may be, I look forward to the experience and will learn as much as I can about music and its workings in the brain.

Let's Begin

Hello all and welcome to my Senior Research Project (SRP) blog.

My name is Anila Tynan, and I am a senior at BASIS Phoenix. I joined the school as an eighth grader when it opened in 2012, and after five challenging, yet educationally enlightening years, I have the opportunity to forego my classes and pursue a senior project fro the entire third trimester. As a BASIS student, I have been exposed to all the subjects equally-- the social/applied/natural sciences, arts, humanities, languages-- but now it is time to pursue the topics that have really captured my interest and that I hope to pursue after I graduate in May.

Very little is known about how music affects the human brain. What we do know is how it makes us feel. Music can rouse us to sing and dance, give us goosebumps, and make us cry. It brings people together, defines cultures, and spans the entire globe. People of all ages can recognize and even create some sort of "music," and in the United States alone, the music industry is worth over $130 billion. No other species regards music as we do-- it defines us as human.

This clear impact that music has on the brain has infinite unexplored implications, especially in regards to neuroscience. Music and the Brain: How music affects our memories serves as an introduction to this field and how music might relate to the study of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Dementia, and Parkinson's. Over the next eleven weeks, I will be working in a research laboratory at the Barrow Neurological Institute learning lab techniques and studying Alzheimer's and Dementia, as well as participating in music therapy sessions run by the Neurological Music Therapy Services of Arizona, working with clients who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases, and seeing firsthand how music impacts their lives.

Overtime, as I expand my knowledge of the workings of the brain and of these diseases, as well as of the physical, mental, and emotional effects music therapy has on clients with these disorders, I hope to be able to decipher a fraction of what there is to discover about how music and the brain are connected.

Check out my SRP Proposal as well as the links to my internship websites to the right, and subscribe to keep updated on my project!