UW-Madison’s Cool Science Image Contest: Waisman Winners

Matt Zammit, PhD, Waisman scientist in the Brain Imaging Core, and affiliate investigator Erik Dent, PhD, are both winners of UW-Madison’s Cool Science Image Contest. Zammit’s animation combines 15 years of study PET scans to show where protein plaques most often develop in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. Dent’s image is of labeled neurons from the brain of a mouse. Check out their images and all of the other winners here.

Erik Dent
Neurons in a mouse can migrate among the outer layers of the brain, called the cortex. Researchers in Erik Dent’s lab label parts of the cells — greenish cell bodies and red axons (the branches the cells use to reach out to their neighbors) — to track the way shifting protein levels affect migration.

Erik Dent, professor, neuroscience
Kendra Taylor, graduate student, Neuroscience
Scanning confocal microscope

On average, people with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer’s disease about 30 years earlier than neurotypical people. UW–Madison researchers are tracking the progression of Alzheimer’s in Down syndrome patients by scanning their brains for the development of clumps, called plaques, of a protein called beta-amyloid. This animationm ade by combining the PET scans of many Down syndrome patients collected over 15 years, reveals the areas (in deepening red) in which beta-amyloid plaques developed most often.

Matthew Zammit, scientist, Waisman Center Brain Imaging Core

 

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