Talk:Transneuronal degeneration

My name is Margaret McIntee. I go to Boston College and am working on a project for my Neuroscience class. I am working with Kayla Morse and Alexander Layton. We were assigned to update this page, Transneuronal degeneration in an effort to aid the Society for Neuroscience in improving neuroscience Wikipedia articles. This is a work in progress and we will be making edits throughout the semester. The details of our assignment are outlined on our class webpage. Please feel free to express comments and concerns here so that we can improve the page to the best of our abilities. Our final project will be done on November 5th.

Peer Review
Hey guys. Really good job on the article. All the sections are equally informative and complete. Organizationally, it might be helpful to add a few more subsections. For example, in the Associated Diseases section, it may be useful to create subsections addressing each different disease. Also, you say that the degeneration is an excitotoxic process. It would probably be helpful to add a hyperlink here. However, I think that this may be a situation in which a hyperlink is not sufficient. You might want to expand on what this process is. In other words, explain the mechanism by which these neurons die, not just what causes the degeneration and what the effects of degeneration are. Tranas (talk) 20:12, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

'''Thank you for your feedback. I agree that a hyperlink was needed for excitotoxic process and I added a brief explanation. Due to the fact that transneuronal degeneration can affect a wide variety of neurons, I could not say specifically which neurotransmitters cause the overstimulation and death because it's virtually any neurotransmitter. I also created subsections for the disease section.''' Mcintee (talk) 23:50, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

2
Firstly, well done- it is clear you all did a lot of work and research on this topic.

Secondly, feel free to add some summary sentences to prepare the reader for what is coming next/ summarize what they just read. Again it is clear you all worked very hard to obtain a lot of research on this topic, spreading it out might make it easier for someone who has no background in this area to understand.

Also, if you are introducing a term that may not be common knowledge, for example neurotubules, synaptic specializations, etc., it never hurts to add a claus defining the term for the ease of the reader (especially if the term is not hyperlinked, though a hyperlink should not deter you from extra clarification if you think it would be helpful).

Finally, it might behoove you to add more to the introduction. While you may end up repeating yourself later, mentioning more in the introduction can give the reader a working understanding of the topic simply from reading the introduction and it can also give them a better idea of what is to come in the rest of the article. Practically, some may visit this page to quickly get an idea of what transneuronal degeneration is, but they might not read the entire article. A solid introduction, while it may repeat some of the ideas that come later, can go a long way to giving them this working knowledge. Zandrow (talk) 01:58, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

'''Thanks for the feedback. We added some summarizing information to the article, and we added some definitions for terms like neurotubule, as you mentioned. We also added some more information to the introduction as you and others suggested to help make it more accessible/easier to get the main idea. Thanks again for the input.''' Amlayton (talk) 17:30, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

3
Overall, the article was very well-written ad highly researched. I only have a few comments that could improve the overall quality of your article. For the benefit of a reader that does not have a background in neuroscience, linking some of the terms such as excitotoxic in the Introduction section and axonopathy in the Retrograde Transneuronal degeneration section.

Grammatically the sentence, “ Loss of Betz cells is a variable effect of this disease but the loss of these cells in this disease demonstrate the “dying-back” axonopathy due to the changes in upper motor neurons” should have demonstrates rather than demonstrate for subject-verb agreement. Also, in the sentence, “Transneuronal degeneration effects dendrites and axons as well,” effects should be affects.

Lastly, I wasn’t sure whether the title Associate Diseases should be Associated Diseases?

I really enjoyed the setup of your article as I felt it had a great flow with each topic moving into the next. Clarkat (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

'''I added the hyperlink to both excitotoxic and axonopathy and fixed the grammatical errors. I think you are right and that it should be associated diseases, so I made that change as well. Thank you for your feedback.''' Mcintee (talk) 11:57, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

4
Your article was a pleasure to read! Everything flowed so nicely. I think that you included just enough detail to give the article depth but not too much detail to make it impossible to understand for those who have less of an understanding of neuroscience. For instance, I loved how you just included the take home message for the studies summarized in current and future research.

It would be helpful to hyperlink words like anterograde, retrograde, and trophic.

I agree with Tranas, that more subtitles would be really beneficial. That way, readers can quickly scan each section for the areas that they are interested in.

Also, a picture or a diagram of the effects of transneuronal degradation would really help the reader to understand the processes that are going on.

Finally you should consider adding a section for the advanced neuroscience student who might want to know more about the molecular mechanisms of transneuronal degradation, if that information is known.

Seriously, great job with this article!

Also, I think that Clarkat just put the wrong date for their peer review... because theirs was there before mine. Don't want them to get counted late for the assignment. Figueredo (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

'''There are no links for anterograde and retrograde, but we added a hyperlink for trophic. We added more subtitles under the effects, causes, associated diseases, and future research sections. While we would have liked to have added more information about the molecular mechanisms of transneuronal degeneration, there is not enough information known on this topic. Thanks for you input''' Mcintee (talk) 0:55, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

5
This topic has obviously been thoroughly researched and is off to a great start. Most of my comments relate to the organization of the article and small, specific line edits.

I think in the introduction, the second half of the last sentence, "researchers.... works." could be deleted and kept in the current and future research section. This information is not central to transneuronal degeneration.

I think the sentence directly underneath Types- " Transneuronal degeneration can be grouped... retrograde." could also be deleted due to redundancy.

I think that the section "Effects" should be broken down into sub-sections. For example, cellular & dendritic/ axonal. I also think this section could be renamed "morphological effects" or something more specific. I also think that "varying degrees of degeneration" should be removed from this section and placed in a different section, maybe "pathogenesis".

The section name "causes" should be replaced by "etiology." This section should also be broken down into sub-sections. The sentence "the technical causes of..." is slightly confusing and could use some clarification. I also think the information from the last paragraph about research studies could be removed and put in the "Current and Future research" section.

The current and future research section is excellent. I think that if it is possible, include the authors of the studies you are paraphrasing within the section.

Ideas for further research on the topic:
 * epidemiological studies
 * MRI data
 * Medical or physical therapy
 * Picture (maybe a MRI scan?)

Great start. BSByrne (talk) 22:54, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

'''Thanks for your comments! I looked up other wiki articles and it looks like it is okay to have information on current research in the introduction so we decided to keep that sentence. We broke the sections "causes" and "effects" into subsections as you suggested to make the article more clear and easier to follow. In order to keep the article easy to understand, we decided to keep the section names "causes" and "effects". The sentence beginning with "the technical causes of...." was edited to be more clear. The last paragraph on lobectomy was also edited to make it more clear that it is a cause and not a current research method. Thanks again for all of your help! Morsekb (talk) 22:19, 2 December 2012 (UTC)'''

6
Congradulations on constructing a more or less on point article. Your description of the condition here is well put together and I have only minor adjustments to suggest. I would suggest adding a little to the introduction as it seems a bit short and could be used a bit more to talk about the process. Your "Causes" and "Effects" sections are the part that I think needs to be amended a little. The "Causes" section seems to get a little disorganized and become just a list of things that either do or don't cause neuronal degeneration. The "Effects" Section, however, seems too general and should emphasize more that degeneration can occur in different ways. With these small changes I think your group will have accomplished a very well polished article. kendalse (talk) 12:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

'''We added more to the introduction. While we did not want to be too redundant, you were right it was a little brief. Also we moved the section that talked about the somatic motor system to be under the subsection with lesions. Although this is the part of the causes section that we believe you are referencing when you said "things that do not cause neuronal degeneration" we feel that it is still pertinent. Lesions have been shown to lead to transneuronal degeneration, but not in the somatic motor system, which we found to be important because it emphasizes the fact that convergence plays a role in preventing the effects of the degeneration. As for the effects section, we added subsections as well. While degeneration can result from different causes, the effects are generally the same for all degeneration (we did not find specific effects for specific types of degeneration in our research). Thank you for your help and feedback.''' Mcintee (talk) 11:46, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Review
Great job! Just a few minor suggestions: your "Causes" and "Effects" sections are quite long and organizationally I think it would help if you included subsections here. Next, "Associate diseases" should read "Associated diseases." Also, are there any images on WikiCommons that you can include? - Reedich (talk) 19:41, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

'''We added the subsections to the "Causes" and "Effects" sections and changed "Associate disease" into "Associated diseases". As far as the picture goes, we tried searching for an image on WikiCommons, but we were unsuccessful. There were some images of degeneration in Alzheimer patients, but this was a different type of degeneration (granuovacular) and did not really emphasize transneuronal degernation enough for us to add it to our page. We tried adding an image we found on a website to the commons to use it, but it was removed from the commons, so we were unable to use it. Thanks for all your help on this project!''' Mcintee (talk) 1:23, 30 November 2012 (UTC)