Cory Knox - Dr. Liston - Week 2

The pace this week picked up quickly with shadowing, surgeries, and imaging. I opened the week with prepping for what's to come with the Liston lab. This was followed by our reoccurring weekly meeting with the immersion teaching team. Dr. Shih presented his excitement about ChatGPT in medicine and how LLMs work. Afterwards I dove into confocal training with the WCMC Imaging Core. It was awesome to see how a new scope worked and the training session with Janet was comfortable, fast paced, and extremely informative! It's always cool to find new ways to utilize familiar software. Now that I am trained with the core, I will be able to move forward with the first half of my summer research along Shane Johnson, imaging and analyzing various RNAscope samples related to his TMS study. 

The next day I had my first shadowing experience in the OR. It was exciting and overwhelming. Although hard to see (but amazingly and kindly accommodated for by Jess, the head nurse in the room), it was amazing to see medicine in action. The patient ended up undergoing a 5+ hour surgery where vertebrae were fused together and the occipital lobe of the skull was shaved down to relieve pressure on the brain stem. It was very interesting and in truth, I am happy I am not a surgeon. 

From this experience, I jumped right into mouse surgeries! I was able to learn and install 4 prisms into mice this week, which allows for deep brain imaging. The prism is as it sounds, a prism of glass with an angled end that refracts the laser pathway back into the surrounding tissue, reaching several millimeters past the dura. This was a completely new surgery procedure for me and Kenneth, the senior graduate student, was a fantastic teacher! Next week we plan on imaging these mice to check the clarity of the implants. 

Our week concluded with a lecture by Dr. Prince. We discussed various forms of imaging and cases that were applicable to each type, beginning with simple x-rays showing bone fractures and misalignments and concluding with complex MRIs of mothers in various stages of pregnancy. It was a great opportunity to see imaging applied to patient cases and to see the thought process of a radiologist. 

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