Neurosciences

EMMA

Client - The Scripps Research Institute and Mount Sinai School of Medicine

(Circa 1987) EMMA (Electronic Morphometry and Mapping Analysis) is a collection of programs designed to control some of the earliest motorized research microscopes. These microscopes were outfitted with stepper motor based X, Y and Z motors from Ludl and Martzhauser of Germany. The first generation system ran on a LSI-11/23 microcomputer running RT-11 real-time operating system. The software was written in Oregon Software Pascal-2. The video cameras were all NTSC color cameras on Zeiss Inverted microscopes. This system has been credited as one of the earliest fully featured mapping systems available for neuroscientists on a generalized level. Later versions were adopted to run on Apple's first UNIX operating system, A/UX. A/UX was used as the video and microscope server, controlling any number of microscopes in the laboratory. The user interface was written for X Windows and could be run on an X Server on DecStations or Apple A/UX.

Loaded brain cell captured on a Zeiss laser confocal microscope

This is a picture is a brain cell from primate tissue, loaded with a special dye so that the fibers and processes on the cell body can be seen. Imaging is done on a Zeiss laser confocal microscope. Successive images of the cell are captured until the cell can be described and visualized three-dimensionally. The image is captured by A/UX programs written in C and in X. The laser microscope is controlled by the A/UX programs. The A/UX system acts as a video and microscope server so multiple networked X workstations such as Macintoshes running A/UX or MacX can execute these programs and examine brain tissue.

Optical density scan of prefrontal cortex highlighting amyloid polypeptide

A color graphic display of an optical density scan of prefrontal cortex from a cynomolgus monkey, hybridized with an RNA probe transcribed from complementary DNA clone Am4 coding for Alzheimer amyloid polypeptide. Each color represents an optical density range of grain clusters, with red as highest, green as intermediate, and blue as lowest density. See page 873. [Graphic provided by John H. Morrison, Gerald A. Higgins, David A. Lewis, and Michael C. Wilson, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, La Jolla, CA 92037; and Sina Bahmanyar, Dmitry Goldgaber, S. K. Shankar, and D. Carleton Gajdusek, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20205; computer software (E.M.M.A.) by Warren Young and Mark Shin, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation]