(This one isn’t really a project, but I hope you’ll bear with me.)

In August 2009 I got my first tattoo: an image of a reconstruction of a pyramidal neuron from area CA1 of the rat hippocampus. The reconstruction is taken from the paper:

Nace L Golding, Timothy J Mickus, Yael Katz, William L Kath, and Nelson Spruston. Factors mediating powerful voltage attenuation along CA1 pyramidal neuron dendrites. J Physiol October 1, 2005 568 (1) 69-82.

The paper can be found here. Dr Spruston provided more info about the model:

Scientifically, it’s one of three CA1 cells we reconstructed in detail after recording simultaneously from the soma and a dendrite. The recordings (performed by Nace Golding) were technically very diffcult and the reconstructions took several hours of tedious and careful work. The experiments provided data that constrained the model and provided more information about the basic properties of the neurons. Subsequently, the models have been really helpful in making predictions that led to new experimental discoveries.

I submitted my tattoo to Carl Zimmer’s excellent Science Tattoo Emporium, which was part of my inspiration for the venture.  It was published here on August 15th, 2009.

On November 1, 2011, a fleshed-out version of the blog post appeared in Zimmer’s book Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed (Amazon link).  My page can be seen here: