Took a break from worrying about funding to do some climbing in Squamish! (Elowen’s first multi-pitch)

8/8: The changes in place cell stability led to improved coding of spatial location in familiar environments across exposures, with clear implications for spatial memory.

7/8: We found that during proestrus, place fields were more stable across several sessions within the same environment. We also examined remapping between environments, but did not find consistent effects of estrous stage.

6/8: Past work has shown that bAPs are important for dendritic plasticity and place field formation. To test whether the estrous cycle affects place fields, we performed population imaging of CA1 place cells in mice navigating a floating circular track.

5/8: We found that during the proestrus (high spine density stage) there was increased somatodendritic coupling, and back-propagating action potentials (bAPs) would infiltrate farther into the distal dendrites. The opposite was true for estrous (low spine density stage).

4/8: This modulation of spine density leads to substantial differences in excitatory inputs between stages, with implications for dendritic processing. To investigate, we expressed calcium indicators in a subset of CA1 neurons and imaged somatodendritic coupling across the cycle.

3/8: Are the new spines appearing during proestrus immediately pruned during estrus? Looking just at new proestrus spines, we found that many do disappear in the very next session, but a substantial fraction (~36%) become stable spines, persisting throughout our imaging sessions.

2/8: Using implanted microperiscopes, we were able to track individual apical dendrite segments across multiple estrous cycles. We found a pronounced increase in spine density during proestrus (high estradiol stage) followed by a rapid decline during estrus (low estradiol stage).

1/8: Building on classic work (e.g., Woolley et al., J Neurosci, 1990), we used longitudinal two-photon imaging across the estrous cycle in transgenic mice in order to measure spine morphology, dendritic integration, and population activity in CA1 neurons.

Early morning panel on Spatial Perception, Memory, and Navigation today @ 7:30am in the Pyramid Peak room! #wcbr

...and thanks to her coaches at the Santa Barbara Rock Gym!

Shaky cam video of a tough send that helped her clinch a spot on the podium:

Proud papa moment: Elowen finished her first year of bouldering competition with 2nd place in the Region (Southern California, Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii). So cool to see her improvement over the last year!