Entorhinal Cortex Isolation - (Feb/08/2011 )
Hi all,
I am wondering if anyone has experience in entorhinal cortex (EC) isolation of mice? Previously, I was focusing on hippocampus and could separate it out well, but when I started to look for EC at the area adjacent to the hippocampus, I have no idea where it is exactly located in relation to the hippocampus.
I checked two stereostatic atlas and found the size of the area shown inconsistant. And most of the pictures were in coronal view, which made it extra difficult for me, who have a rather poor 3D imagination. The pictures I found on the web were not specific either.
Any suggestion/advice would be extremely appreciated!!! 
Well I don't have a particularly good answer for you, but the Allen Brain Atlas has some free software you can download which gives you a 3D view of the mouse brain. Of course it's meant to be used to examine gene expression in the brain, but perhaps it is a place to start in which you can begin to visualize the brain in 3D which may help with your dissections a bit. I think the software's name is Brain Explorer.
The other thing to consider for your dissections is using a brain matrix. This will allow you to slice up your brain in a couple of different axes, which may assist in isolating the entorhinal cortex. The difficulty, of course, is that there are not going to be any clear landmarks in the cortex for you to use to ensure that you have the entorhinal cortex specifically. If you have a specific hypothesis about how the entorhinal cortex is involved in whatever it is you are looking at, I would suggest dissecting out adjacent regions at the same time to demonstrate that whatever effect you are looking at is specific to the entorhinal cortex and is not a general phenomenon. This would also strengthen your argument that you did indeed dissect out the entorhinal cortex and help to give you confidence in your data.
Hope that helps.
MM
Mighty Mouse on Mon Feb 14 22:26:55 2011 said:
Well I don't have a particularly good answer for you, but the Allen Brain Atlas has some free software you can download which gives you a 3D view of the mouse brain. Of course it's meant to be used to examine gene expression in the brain, but perhaps it is a place to start in which you can begin to visualize the brain in 3D which may help with your dissections a bit. I think the software's name is Brain Explorer.
The other thing to consider for your dissections is using a brain matrix. This will allow you to slice up your brain in a couple of different axes, which may assist in isolating the entorhinal cortex. The difficulty, of course, is that there are not going to be any clear landmarks in the cortex for you to use to ensure that you have the entorhinal cortex specifically. If you have a specific hypothesis about how the entorhinal cortex is involved in whatever it is you are looking at, I would suggest dissecting out adjacent regions at the same time to demonstrate that whatever effect you are looking at is specific to the entorhinal cortex and is not a general phenomenon. This would also strengthen your argument that you did indeed dissect out the entorhinal cortex and help to give you confidence in your data.
Hope that helps.
MM
Thanks a lot!