Hollis / Brookline High School EKS Lab Tour

On October 5, 1998 35 high school students from Hollis/Brookline High School in Hollis New Hampshire visited three Shriver Center laboratories as part of their field trip activities associated with their Anatomy and Physiology class. Their teachers, Julie Whitcomb and John Kitteridge, accompanied the sophomores and juniors as they watched demonstrations and explanations of ongoing research occurring in the Animal Learning Laboratory, the Neurohistology Laboratory and the Electron Microscopy Core Facility.

	Animal Learning Laboratory Dr. Sheila Mihalick, Psychological Sciences Division, discusses her research on learning and memory in a rodent model of fetal alcohol syndrome. Students could view experimental rats learning auditory discrimination tasks in the automated testing apparati pictured here.
Neurohistology Laboratory Interested and curious high schoolers look to Darlene Butler (right) as she explains how she uses a cryostat in her neuroanatomical research on the developing brain in the laboratory of Dr. James Crandall. Darlene demonstrated a wide range of tissue cutting instruments for light microscopy, including the Vibratome for cutting fresh tissue, the rotary microtome for cutting paraffin sections and the sledge microtome for cutting frozen sections. She also illustrated how a Nissl staining method, the cresyl violet stain, works that is routinely used in histology labs.
	Electron Microscopy Core Facility Laboratory Students viewed the Philips 300 transmission electron microscope in action in this core facility at the Shriver Center. Dr. James Crandall demonstrated how the instrument takes pictures of ultrathin sections at a variety of magnifications ranging from 1000-50,000X. They also watched the ultratome prepare extremely thin sections with a diamond knife that can subsequently be placed on copper grids for placement in the vacuum controlled microscope column. Several students took advantage of the opportunity to "drive" the microscope controls to view different areas of tissue specimens, while others helped recording data by taking several pictures of developing brain tissue.

In addition, Dr. Crandall displayed the subjects of his research, normal and reeler mutant mice of both adult and newborn ages. Students observed how rapidly mice grow and mature as well as how normal mice differ from this particular neurological mutant, in both their behavior and developing brain structure.

A litter of newborn mice were on display during the visit. Even though their size is relatively small compare to the penny, and their eyes and ears are closed at this age, the extremely important senses of touch and smell are functioning at birth to insure proper nutrition and maternal bonding.

A group of adult mice of the C6B3 strain contains both typical and atypical (reeler mutant) littermates. Although it is difficult to tell from stationary pictures, the visiting high schoolers were able to distinguish, based on behavior, the normals from the mutants. The underlying cellular mechanisms that malfunction during nervous system development that could result in this abnormal motor behavior were discussed with the group.