Damn It, Basal Ganglia
The basal ganglia is a core part of the brain, deep inside your skull, that helps control movement. Unless something upsets the chain of command. In this short, Jad and Robert meet a young researcher who was studying what happens when the basal ganglia gets short-circuited in mice...until one fateful day, when things got really, really weird.
- Duration
- 12m
- Broadcast on
- 09 Aug 2011
- Audio Format
- other
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
The basal ganglia is a core part of the brain, deep inside your skull, that helps control movement. Unless something upsets the chain of command. In this short, Jad and Robert meet a young researcher who was studying what happens when the basal ganglia gets short-circuited in mice...until one fateful day, when things got really, really weird.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
you wait you're listening to radio lab and NPR hey I'm jadda boomeron I'm robert crow which is radio lab the podcast yes and today at the podcast we're gonna present a story that the whole thing is an accident really yeah we were on tour a few months ago doing the symmetry thing in San Francisco and right as we were there we got an email from a woman who lives there hmm telling us this nutty story something odd had happened to her and she wanted to share it with us so he met her in the lobby I missed I didn't hit the record button fast enough could you just tell me your name again and the my name is Liza Schonfeld and I'm a research technician at the Glaz Institute at the University of California San Francisco now Liza is just getting started with her scientific career finish my undergraduate degree about a year and a half ago and this story takes place as she was about to take that next step after college and apply to grad school and the star of our story other than of course Liza herself is a little mischievous part of her brain well everyone's brain part of your brain called the basal ganglia basal ganglia which at the time she'd been studying just so we understand basal and ganglia so basal is not the thing from which pesto is made in your case no what does basal mean okay let's go to go on to ganglia so ganglia you know collections of neurons big collections the basal ganglia is a fairly large part of your brain it's actually this big hunk deep in the center and it's responsible for controlling and coordinating movement when I move my net back and forth am I using my basal ganglia yeah when I wink am I using my basal ganglia yeah when I make an expression in my face am I using my basal family what about if I'm reading the New Yorker I don't think so apologies to the New Yorker and its employees point is this part of your brain is really basic and at the lab where she was working they had figured out this particular basal ganglia trick using this really cool technology called optogenetics maybe trick isn't quite the right word what they've done is they found a way to take a mouse thread a little fiber optic cable through its skull deep into its brain into its basal ganglia so that when you shine a blue laser literally we just shine lasers into mouse brains they could actually turn its basal ganglia or parts of it on or off when this is in a live mouse this is in a live mouse so we have these really cool videos showing a mouse running around having a great mouse time you turn the light on we can get him to freeze in mid-stride yeah so you hit the laser and boom the mouse stops like this so you use light to like puppetize the mouse yes if you're this mouse no matter how hard you try move feet move as long as that light is on come on move you can't do it liza is holding the strings not exactly it turns out she doesn't get to play with the laser that I'm kind of like I'm the bottom of the totem pole so I do a lot of pipetting it's like where you squirt liquid from one tube to another I'm working on my pipetting space oh I could beat anyone in the thumb rest like a petition right now so at a certain point she was like enough of this time for me to apply to grad school yeah I applied to five University of California San Diego University of Washington in Seattle UCSF Rockefeller University and Harvard okay so you're going big yeah go big or go home right exactly so she heads off to her first interview University of Washington went great I loved it okay I went to Penn University Pennsylvania went down to UCSD in San Diego it's a beautiful place great scientists it's actually the largest neuroscience community in the world so far so good did you ever go back to San Francisco where we are now this is where things get strange yes so my last
Transcription truncated.
The basal ganglia is a core part of the brain, deep inside your skull, that helps control movement. Unless something upsets the chain of command. In this short, Jad and Robert meet a young researcher who was studying what happens when the basal ganglia gets short-circuited in mice...until one fateful day, when things got really, really weird.