We put this question to Dr Michael Coleman:

Michael -   That’s a very good question.  We cut axons in a culture dish because that’s a very well defined beginning of the degeneration period, and it gives us good control over when that degeneration starts.  But there’s very good evidence now that a similar mechanism of degeneration takes place in several neurodegenerative disorders; motor neuron disease;  glaucoma, where pressure in the eye actually causes the axons to degenerate, and probably an Alzheimer’s disease too.  So, we’re using the cutting model as a model for what’s happening in the neurodegenerative disorders.  A good analogy, going back again to the traffic holdup, it would be the difference between actually closing a motorway, so you totally block the motorway - that will be the cut - and restricting the traffic for example to one lane or some speed limits.  That the type of holdup is quite different, but the particular traffic that’s affected by that is actually going to be quite similar.

We put this question to Dr Tom Drummond:

Tom -   Well, this business of taking the real world and building virtual models of it is something we also work on.  In context of computer version, that’s called reconstruction.  And indeed, one of the things that we do in the lab, for the purposes of producing content for augmented reality, is to have a system whereby you can put an item in front of a webcam, rotate it slowly in front of the camera, and the computer will automatically build an accurate 3-D model of what it’s looking at.  Now, that’s at the small scale, but indeed, people do work on building larger systems for forensic purposes as well.

Helen -   So there you go.  It could actually be real.  Excellent.  Thanks very much.

Ben -   Well, that’s quite nice to know.  It does look to be absolutely incredible whenever they do it on TV.  A bit like their incredible ability to reconstruct things from a reflection in a raindrop on a window somewhere, and from that of course, they can read car number plates or get very accurate pictures!