This week’s post is from Kelsey Stilson, a PhD student in biology at the University of Chicago, specialising in neurobiology and functional anatomy. It’s a post with teeth, in more ways than one! If you would like to write for Anatomy to You, get in touch via Facebook or Twitter. I study opossums. Specifically, I study…
Tag: nervous system
Section through an octopus shows the mouth passing through the brain
Octopuses and other cephalopods are well-known for their exceptional intelligence and complex brains, which appear to outstrip all other invertebrates’. But, they work within one strange constraint – like all other molluscs (snails, slugs, oysters and more), the nerve ring at the centre of their nervous system encircles the oesophagus. In cephalopods, this nerve ring…
Virtual reconstructions suggest the dodo was less ‘bird-brained’ than we thought
We can probably all agree that the dodo has had a tough time these last few centuries. After peacefully inhabiting the beautiful Mauritius they were swiftly wiped out when human visitors began frequenting the island, and have been widely regarded as comedically dumpy, foolish and ridiculous birds ever since. But this is finally changing, and…
#fossilfriday: Preserved brain visible in 520 million year-old arthropod
Almost all fossils represent the hard parts of long-gone animals: teeth, shells, bones and others. But palaeontologists do occasionally find fossilised soft tissue, too. This remarkable fossil was the first to be described where the brain and parts of the nervous system are visible – astonishingly – after more than 500 million years! Fuxianhuia protensa, an ancient…
Section through lower spinal cord, labelled with fluorescent markers
Lumbar (lower) spinal cord, sectioned and labelled using fluorescent markers. The markers attach to antibodies which are introduced by the researcher and designed to bind to specific proteins. This technique is called immunofluorescence. Here, green indicates markers for sensory neurons, red shows motor neurons and blue highlights rough endoplasmic reticulum – where most protein synthesis takes…
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