Day 4

Today we were presented to by Dario Motti, Ph.D., although it was initially supposed to be presented by his associate, Brian K. Kaspar, Ph.D., and they are both researchers in Kaspar's laboratory at Nationwide Children's Hospital. He covered his wide range of international experience and the topic of gene therapy. He discussed several very important and groundbreaking cases in which the folks in the lab, as well as other labs around the nation, saved the lives of children and the like. He had to withhold a lot of information about the cases due to legal reasons, and there were so many specifics it is hard to recall what happened. What I recall him telling the lecture group was that they use specific cells as transport mediums for viruses to get to the central nervous system, which is composed of the spinal cord and the brain.

After that, my particular group chilled out and played 'brain games.' It was basically just trivia and identification of the different parts of the brain. There was also a game where we would throw beanbags at a target, then put on goggles that shifted our vision. With those goggles, our brains eventually learned to adjust our tosses at the target, which initially, were completely ruined by the shifted field of view. After our brain adjusted, we would take the goggles off, and find that our toss would be completely off, yet again. This is because of our brains adjustment to the shifted vision, although in the end, our brains readjusted much faster than they initially adjusted.

After lunch, and for the rest of the day, my group ventured off to the retina lab which is under Andy J. Fischer, Ph.D., and what they study about the retina is the regeneration of neural tissue in the eye. They use several different species in their research, such as turtles, fish, mice, and baby chicks. He showed us the neuroscience department's $240,000 microscope which is able to create three-dimensional images on computers, and he told us that those types of microscopes can actually reach the price range of up to $1 million. He is an extremely involved individual and just so incredibly passionate about what he does that I believe that he was the most enticing and interesting professor that I have met so far.