Writing up an electrophysiology methods and materials: what should i describe?

[Genecks]

When and what should I discuss these things?

Should I at all discuss them?

 

Project: Extracellular, Single-unit recording of snail motor neurons

 

Here are things I want to discuss:

1) microscopes used

2) amplifiers used

3) computer program used to observe spikes

4) electrode puller used and variables used to generate electrodes

[hypervalent_iodine]

In chemistry, if these sorts if things (equipment and program suites, etc.) are usually mentioned in the experimental section under the subheading 'general methods' (or something similar). It doesn't need to be detailed, just a simple, 'this was used to do this'.

 

This is an example from an assignment I did in undergrad:

Experimental

General Methods

 

Melting points of crude and recrystallised products were determined using a Stuart melting point apparatus. TLC solvent system used throughout this experiment was 15% ethylacetate in petroleum spirits, unless otherwise stated. ¹H NMRspectra were obtained using a 300MHz spectrometer. Chemical shifts are reported herein as δ parts per million and calibrated relative to CDCl₃ (s, 7.24ppm). A Perkin Elmer FT-IR 2000 KBr disc apparatus was used to record IR spectra of each compound. Data analysis and calculations were executed using standard protocol.

 

Edited February 2, 2011 by hypervalent_iodine

[lionelmessi123]

It doesn't need to be detailed, just a simple, 'this was used to do this'.

______________

 

account creation

 

[Genecks]

Information on this is no longer required.

 

Thank you for the posts, folks.

[hypervalent_iodine]

No problems

 

I figured it might not be, but it could very well be a helping hand to someone else in the future.

[Genecks]

Understood. Something I did not know months ago was there are people who desire a particular standard when attempting to submit electrophysiology data:

 

The Minimum Information about a Neuroscience investigation (MINI) family of reporting guideline documents, produced by community consultation and continually available for public comment aims to provide a consistent set of guidelines in order to report an electrophysiology experiment. A MINI module represents the minimum information that should be reported about a dataset to facilitate computational access and analysis to allow a reader to interpret and critically evaluate the processes performed and the conclusions reached, and to support their experimental corroboration. In practice a MINI module comprises a checklist of information that should be provided (for example about the protocols employed) whena data set is described for publication. The full specification of the MINI module can be found here [6].

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrophysiology#Reporting_guidelines_for_electrophysiology_experiments

 

I've always been fascinated how scientific papers tend to rattle off facts rather than create nice rhetorical transitions. I've read very old papers, though, and they seem to have more of a transition than a modern scientific publication.

Edited February 21, 2011 by Genecks