Week 3: An adventure

By working in a seizure-focused lab, I had many chances to observe drug-induced seizure in different types of animal models and this week was zebra fish. I have always been wondering, since mice and rat brain surgeries are difficult enough, how to manipulate a fish's brain that's only few millimeter in diameter. It turned out that the single fish that we were doing experiments with would be anesthetized and mounted in agar gel. While observing the zebra fish under a microscope, it looked almost transparent and the blood vessels were so tiny that I could see individual red blood cells flowing. The heartbeat also became the single source to confirm the fish's wellbeing throughout the experiment and every detail of the heart could be seen through that thin transparent layer of skin.  Then the electrodes would be carefully stuck into the fish's brain and with drugs that opens calcium channel, the fish would experience seizure and the neuron activities could be recorded.  Even though it might seem cruel,  I thought the waves of neurons were really beautiful and I could wonder what the zebra fish was thinking when there were interesting-looking shapes.

With the time not in lab or library, we spent a lot of time enjoying ballet performance or learning swing dance in Lincoln Center. On weekends, I went for my regular horse riding lesson and cantered across the park with the coach, then we hopped on jetskis in long island and spent an hour chasing the waves and the wind.