Brainzzz!!! by Abe Eldo

Hey everyone!! These past few weeks have been absolutely phenomenal in the TRIP labs. It is truly amazing how inspiring and driven my fellow classmates are. I wholeheartedly enjoyed listening to everyones project proposals and watching classmates collaborate to work out the technicalities of each project. These past few weeks have taught me the importance of having a community that you can trust to provide criticism when it is needed.
    Along with learning the importance of criticism, I have also learned how to successfully dissect and photograph larval fruit fly brains! This dissection is crucial to my independent project, so I was insistent on practicing this dissection as quickly as I could. At first, I was rather slow and sloppy with my dissections. However, as time went on and more brains were dissected, I was able to dissect the brains quicker and cleaner than before.  
    In the coming weeks, I am extremely excited to begin the first trials of my independent project. My project will look at the effects of Kratom, a plant that has effects similar to opioids, use on larval brain size. I am currently preparing myself to withstand the hours of larval brain dissections that I will have to perform in the coming weeks. Although this project will be a lot of work in such a short amount of time, I am excited to start collecting data and analyzing results.

a larval brain under a microscope