Tim and his colombian twin brother

Llinas lecture and 2 for 1 lobster dinner at Shucker's

In a combined act of gastronomical indulgence and thrift, a group of us took advantage of the buy-one-lobster-get-one-lobster-free Tuesday dinner special at Shucker's.

Later that evening, we had the Grass lecture and some spirited conversations with Rodolfo Llinas

Chris and Llinas discussing learning and plasticity in the cerebellum

Sunday dinner at Fabio's

Hot arepas, fresh vegetables, pepper soup!

Friday the 13th Happy Hour

Some of us had planned to make a beach excursion to view the seemingly giant "Honey Moon" on Friday the 13th...sadly, the fog and rain made this impossible and people had to settle for a mere happy hour at the newly renovated Captain Kidd.  Despite Alberto's severe reservations about the Kidd's new refined aesthetics*, it was a good way to celebrate the start of Woods Hole's scientific season and the intense courses which introduced so many of us to the MBL.

* There's an analogy in here somewhere here about a  pirate reestablishing himself in proper society with the help of stolen booty.  Less salty but more sophisticated--sacrificing adventure for respectability, pizza for lobster bisque, mayo for garlic aioli, etc.

National Xenopus Resource tour

Reyna is working in Xenopus, studying retinal degeneration and regeneration.  She kindly arranged arranged a tour of the National Xenopus Resource center here at the MBL to show us where she works and how the center is run.

The venerable African amphibian has made many scientific contributions, particularly to developmental biology...and it also produces eggs on (hormonal) command.  

The NXR keeps many lines of frogs at different life stages and also provides training in advanced experimental techniques.

Esther Pearl from the Horb lab gave the tour and explained the life cycle and maintenance of the frogs.

Not as racy as it may appear.

One of countless staring contests

Frog optical illusion

Bliss for Chris !!!

Chris is investigating how signals from the motor cortex and the cerebellum -- two important areas of the brain's motor processing circuitry-- are integrated in the thalamus. He is doing this with a combination of the latest available tools, which is very promising and very challenging. Nonetheless, he succeeded to record the first spikes in a running mouse in the Grass lab 2014. But this was already one week ago and in the meantime Chris managed to repeat this recording but this time from single neurons. Given that he even went whole-cell we are curious what will happen next. 

Spikes from a single neuron

Fabio training for Le Tour de France!