Summary
A University of Helsinki neuroscience lab adopted JoVE to train staff, adopt new techniques, and show offsite colleagues relevant protocols — this move enabled researchers to cut training time on a surgery technique by 96%.
Challenge
Dr. Leonard Khiroug is an assistant professor at the University of Helsinki who specializes in studying the central nervous system. His lab faced challenges researching the functional and morphological plasticity of neurons and glial cells. The lab relied on a variety of special investigation techniques, including:
- Two-photon microscopy
- Patch clamp electrophysiology
- Total internal reflection microscopy (TIRF)
With so many investigative techniques deployed, the lab needed to standardize on a reliable set of training methods to ensure staff proficiency.
Dr. Leonard Khiroug
Solution
To streamline the teaching process internally, Dr. Khiroug’s lab began relying on JoVE’s peer-reviewed streaming video articles. Visualization-enabled teaching offers multiple advantages over traditional in-person and text-based protocol training techniques. As Dr. Khiroug says: “JoVE offers the possibility to show and tell (through video and audio, respectively) how the experiments are done, including fine details that are difficult to communicate via text and figures alone.”
The Results
Among the ways the lab uses JoVE articles:
- To train news students in existing methods
- To implement new protocols in the lab
- To share existing protocols with geographically remote colleagues
There were a variety of benefits to the new teaching platform. For instance, using the JoVE video platform enabled Dr. Khiroug and his neuroscience lab to adopt a new surgical protocol in two weeks. Typically, using traditional techniques, it would have taken a year to learn this method — this represents a 96 percent reduction in the required learning time.