Week 9: Poking Holes

Last week at the lab was short, so my post for the week is pretty short too.

Before I went out of town on Wednesday, I ran 4 of the 6 pilot experiments that I needed to before we analyze data. I thought I’d be able to have all 6 done, but that’s how research goes. One mouse had a bad eye and the other ran incorrectly.

At lab meeting, we read a very interesting paper concerning the exact strain of mouse I am running experiments on. Our lab was able to poke so many holes in that paper that there wasn’t much left of it. The most salient thing I took away was to pay attention to the numbers and statistics and how they’re interpreted; it seems that the most distortion of the findings occurs there. In addition, looking at the figures helps elucidate what was actually statistically significant, and more importantly, what wasn’t.

I’ve also found that while I’m now pretty good at understanding behavioral experiments, I have trouble understanding and interpreting findings from electrophysiological recordings (sticking an electrode in the brain and picking up electrical signals from neurons). That’s only to be expected, because I don’t have experience with it, but this is an area in which I will continue to grow during the last leg of my project.

That’s all, folks! See you next week!