**3. Results**

150 Blood Cell – An Overview of Studies in Hematology

mazes, and to dilute the PMN sample.

**Figure 3.** An EM image of one set of mazes on a slide. Note the taper at the entrance of each maze and the flow-through gap at the terminal ends of the mazes (0um at the base to 3um at the top of the maze

After gentle sedimentation, PMNs (along with some other white cells and platelets) were removed from the buffy coat by micropipette and, along with associated plasma. The 5.7 µm gap of standard slides and coverslips is smaller than the average diameter of PMNs, leading to some mechanical compression of the cells and contributing to their activation, as well as allowing the cell to move along the slide substrate and cover slip simultaneously (Malawista and deBoisfleury Chevance, 1997). The slides used in this study do not suffer from these deficits. All samples were drawn from 5 healthy, adult volunteers (3F, 2M, ages 25-47). All slides were pre-filled with Lactated Ringer's solution, that is isotonic with blood. This was done to avoid cells being deposited into the maze ends, as well as to avoid trapped air in the

**Figure 4.** Shows a typical trial, in which a PMN (with evident lobular nuclei) translocates up the

vertical leg of a control T-maze while another lingers outside the maze.

walls). These allow the passage of medium, but not the entry or exit of PMN.

Left-Right choices in the control maze were not significantly different from equiprobability (Left=49.02%; Right=50.98%; χ2(1)=0.039, ρ=0.843). However, in the forced-turn T-maze, 63.16% of the cells that had been forced to turn Right previously, turned Left at the decision point (χ2(1)=3.947, ρ=0.0469) . Contrary to initial expectation of the disappearance of the SAB effect with the increased length of the vertical leg of the maze, this effect persisted and even appeared to be strengthened in the long-legged forced-turn maze, in which 67.07% (χ2(1)= 9.561, ρ=0.0021) of completing cells turned Left at the decision point, long after a forced Right turn.
