Behaviour-Induced Neural Events after Brain Injury

Poster 850

Dr. Hawrylak: Hope you are enjoying the meeting. Great poster.I have a question about this quote from your conclusions: "We find it of interest that the number of astrocytes in the SON-VGL was unchanged across all groups, as it indicates that the reduced thickness which we have seen in two separate studies (Bobak and Salm, 1996; Hawrylak et al., 1998) is not due to an overall reduction in the number of cells. This is surprising, since we have evidence for cell death in the SON-VGL at both the light and electron microscopic levels using both morphological (Bobak et al., 1997) and TUNEL labeling (Gavrieli and Ben-Sasson, 1992) as criteria." What is the incidence of cell death? Is it possible that when you are looking for cell death, you will find it even if it is 1-2% but this difference will not be detected when you are counting the total number of cells? I am just to trying to reconcile your two conclusions.

Sat Dec 5