Today I started working on the first prototype for the laser set-up. Previously, I had tried to make a laser show out of bass speakers. However, I found that the bass speakers that I had did not allow me the range of motion that I wanted. A picture of the bass speaker set up that […]

I went out to the field in Ann Arbor, MI yesterday and in my mind, I wanted to catch at least 20 grasshoppers to last me about two weeks of data collection. After two hours of navigating through a vast tall grass field in the Nichols Arboretum in the scorching summer heat, I had to […]

After going through surgery, usually humans can wake up from the anesthesia and function quite normally. Snails are not the same. After this procedure, they need to stay hydrated, but in something less anesthetic and more similar to their blood plasma. This is called a snail saline solution, or Ringer’s solution. It’s essentially 1 liter […]

More clearly explained, inject the snail before it hides behind its trap door anyway. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve had considerable trouble getting the needle into the snail to inject it with the anesthesia solution before the snail locked itself away in its trap door. It’s actually a very fast and strong protection mechanism, […]

Over the course of the next 10 weeks, I will be designing and running a neuroethological study on the electrical behavior of the South American weakly electric fish. My goal is to develop a Backyard Brains-esque tool to listen to, record, and manipulate the electrical discharge of the electric fish. I will be posting routine […]

Below is the preliminary design for my electrophysiology setup. The Backyard Brains SpikerBox has a piece of cardboard on top, so after being anesthetized in ice, the little grasshopper will chill out there for the experiment, which would last about an hour. The grasshopper’s belly (ventral side) would face up, so I can place the […]

Neural recordings: Yesterday, I recorded from the neuron of the dragonfly without the lasers, just to ensure the materials are working and that I can find the TSDNs. For the neural recordings of the dragonfly, I aimed to place the electrode in the TSDN. These neurons run down the dragonfly’s neck, on the right and […]

Catching the dragonflies: The first step of my project is to collect the dragonflies. Dragonflies love vegetation near waterways (rivers, streams, ponds, lakes etc.) All you need to catch them is a butterfly net and a mesh cage. Once I caught enough, I put the dragonflies in individual cups and place them in the refrigerator […]

I have chosen the bugs with alien heads as my study organism for this vision neuroscience project, and so the first step is to seek out existing knowledge and familiarize myself with the grasshopper’s morphology and neuroanatomy. Grasshoppers belong to the kingdom Animalia, phylum Arthopoda, class Insecta– the largest and most biodiverse group of animals […]

The dragonfly is a killing machine.  They can use their 360° visual span to swoop down and devour their prey mid-flight with a 95% kill rate.  They are superheroes- or maybe super villains – of the insect world. Incredibly biologically equipped, dragonflies have eyes with four or five opsins (in contrast to the human’s three), […]

Many EEG experiments are done using 21 electrode helmets to gain better localization resolution. In our case, this will not be necessary. Since the secondary motor area generates the readiness potential, the strongest RP signal is found immediately over that region, contralateral to the side of the body performing the task. In our case, the […]

On June 17th, the A2 Tech Trek took place in downtown Ann Arbor hosted by Ann Arbor SPARK. The purpose of the Tech Trek was for ‘Downtown Ann Arbor technology companies opening their doors to the public’. Over 50 companies participated in this event with close to 500 people pre-registered. Backyard Brains participated in this year’s Tech Trek, […]