Dr. Daniel Peruzzi, staff scientist, shares his thoughts below: Customers often ask Staff Scientists at MBF Bioscience why it is sometimes difficult to reproduce certain published stereological results. For example, we get the question, “The estimates that I make of cell number in the region I’m researching do not match numbers reported in the literature. Can you help me understand why?” To solve this dilemma, we encourage...
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During a chicken embryo's twenty-one days of incubation, its eyes develop in astonishing ways. Muscles form, neurons branch, innervation occurs. Researchers at Dr. Rae Nishi's lab at the University of Vermont, including two MBF Bioscience staff scientists Julie Simpson, Ph.D. and Julie Keefe, M.S. are studying the development of a chicken embryo's nervous system. Their specific focus is on the behavior of neurons in the...
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A crux of Dr. Eric Kandel's career has been the integration of psychiatric with biological research. After earning a degree in psychiatry from NYU Medical School, he turned his attention to the brain's molecular structure, and later pioneered a reductionist approach to neurobiology by using the Aplysia sea slug as his model organism. An MBF Bioscience customer for many years, Dr. Kandel's research on learning and...
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Stereology has come a long way since Dr. Mark West started using the method of quantitative analysis in his research. The assumption-based or model-based stereological methods of the 1970s have been replaced by the more sophisticated design-based or unbiased stereological methods used today. Dr. West, a Professor of Medical Neurobiology at Aarhus University in Denmark and author of the most cited scientific papers on the...
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A Vermont Public Television crew brought several cameras into our Williston office today to learn more about MBF Bioscience and Henry Markram, a long time customer of MBF. Dr. Markram, director of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, is using Neurolucida to create a complete simulation of the 89 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections in the human brain by 2023....
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When an adult rat learns new things about its physical environment, the newborn neurons in its brain change – dendrites branch, spines increase, soma grows. But what about mature neurons? Might they also undergo structural changes in response to learning? “Yes,” say scientists at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research and the University of Bordeaux, in Bordeaux, France. Led by Drs. Valérie Lemaire, Sophie...
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There's a groundbreaking new tool in town. It's called WormLab, and it's going to revolutionize the way scientists analyze the behavior of C. elegans – tiny worms used as model organisms in research studies. WormLab helps scientists analyze the locomotion and behavior of C. elegans by providing precise information and analyses about their speed, direction, position, and wavelength. The software can track multiple worms as they...
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Rats lose brain cells as they get older. But that doesn't mean they can't find their way through a water maze as quickly as their younger cohorts can. Using unbiased stereology to quantify neurons in the prefrontal cortex of young and old rats, scientists at John Hopkins University in Baltimore found the total neuron number in the dorsal prefrontal cortex (dPFC) decreases with age. But despite...
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We were honored to receive the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf's 16th Annual Ben Blood Anti-Hunger Award last week. For over ten years MBF Bioscience has supported the organization, which provides fresh produce, bread, and groceries to Vermont families in need. “I have seen how beneficial the food shelf's work is,” said MBF Bioscience President Jack Glaser. “They provide a really important service to people who are...
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Draw the shades, hit the lights, it's time for bed. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles say the best sleep happens in the dark, and they've identified the neurons responsible for this function. They’re located in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that controls things like hunger, body temperature, and sleep, these neurons release hypocretin, a neurotransmitter which tells the brain...
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