Peddie EXP 2017

As my week came to an end so did a lot of the summer students. Because so many students were ending and the PI had come back from paternity leave we had a lab presentation where all the summer students presented their experiments and findings from their time there. Having finally finished analyzing and recording all the pup calls I was assigned to do, I could graph the information and make some conclusions. Jenn was at a conference in Brazil for my last week so I was stuck trying to use the graphing program by myself. I use Graphpad prism on windows 98 which I had honestly never seen before. I had no idea what to do or how to even start and the wifi in Brazil was basically useless. But after a few frustrating hours, I was able to input the data and make some helpful graphs.  I made two each for frequency, interval duration, and motif duration (one separated by age and one covering all pup calls). I was looking for any kind of variation either between the ages or ...

With one more week to go, I have been trying to finish up my project and prepare for my presentation both in school and in the lab. I have officially finished analyzing the recorded calls and have added my data to the file already in the database. At this point, we have over 10,000 data points which will be used in determining the acoustic boundaries of the USVs and thus how maternal mice are able to categorize and understand the pup calls despite alterations. The next step is to graph this information and compare it with the recorded behavior and neural activity of the mothers when exposed to the USVs. The tones, frequency, speed etc. per age will be used to determine a general structure for an average pup call which will then be played back to a mother with varying alterations. By process of elimination, they will be able to understand what the mother is hearing and how she is categorizing the sounds she hears as calls. They have been procrastinating the analysis of these calls...

I have been continuing to measure the pup call but this week I have finally started to find some consistencies between ages. I am optimistic that this means something and will hold true throughout the other samples. Nevertheless, I graphed the data and recorded the average pup call of p3, p5 and p8 ages. This will help determine how the mother is recognizing the USVs (ultrasonic vocalizations). Previously I had been doing mostly the pup call recordings and watching the brain related aspect of my grad student's project, but this week I transitioned into the behavioral.  When learning anything, the brain takes a singular experience and is able to generalize this to accommodate later experiences like this. When a maternal mouse hears their pup cry they learn the sound of the cry and are able to recognize that cry no matter which pup it is coming from.  For example, when an English speaker hears the word "hello" they are able to understand the meaning no ma...

6/14- 6/23 My first week and a half has now come to an end at the Froemke Lab at Tish Hospital in NY. Almost every experience I have had so far has been a new one but I have tackled each new thing successfully so far. First is traveling in NY alone and using public transport to commute there, both of which are new to me. I usually get into the lab at around 10 - 10:30 which means I have to leave the house at about 8:45. I take the 9:10 train from Princeton Junction to New York Penn Station, then take a bus from there to a block from the hospital (although I will walk if the weather is nice). It takes me about an hour and 20 min total to get from home to the lab. It is one thing to think about the commute in theory but another to actually do it every day. I am realizing this now... Thankfully my Grad student has been very lenient with the time that I come in. It is a small lab with 13 people: 8 grad students, 1 postdoc, 2 undergrads, and 2 high school students (me included...