To close my 20 Time project, I gave a TED Talk (below) about my journey throughout this project and what I have learned about this topic and about myself. I think my talk went extremely well. I was pretty nervous - as I always am before presentations - but I rehearsed my presentation multiple times throughout the week leading up to the talk and was able to deliver my talk pretty smoothly, so I'm very proud of myself. Watching the video I think I would definitely give myself a pretty good grade for this talk because I worked really hard on making my talk interesting and engaging and I really think I managed to make it both. Looking at the rubric, I think I had good voice inflection and managed to capture and maintain the attention of the class throughout my presentation. I provided examples while I talked about the process of my project in order to help the class relate to my presentation and fully understand the purpose of the presentation: to encourage people to start something that they've always wanted to try. I didn't come up with a specific product as a result of this project, however, I think I managed to do an excellent job of incorporating what I learned into my talk. I'm very enthusiastic about this topic, tried my best to stay within the time limit (but got a little bit carried away), had a works cited, images, and just tried my best to give an authentic and reflective presentation.
The experience of preparing and giving this talk was very eye-opening. Most presentations that I've given throughout high school have been about the product and not about me, so it was a little difficult to turn this presentation around and talk about myself and my growth, rather than the product of the project. So, I started brainstorming ideas for what I could center my presentation around and finally realized that the main thing I learned was that in order to do something new, I had to find the motivation to simply start. Once I realized this, the rest of my presentation fell into place pretty quickly. This project was a huge learning process for me and I think it helped me grow a lot in terms of being more conscious about my diet and what I'm eating. I want to be a healthier person and the first step to that is adopting a healthier lifestyle. This is how I hope to continue my project into college: by being more aware of what I'm putting into my body.
It was also really cool to hear about how other people have been spending 20% of their class time. Each person did something very unique and different, which made all of the presentations engaging and interesting. It was really amazing to see how all these people in class around me had their own different and really big ideas of what they wanted to do for this open-ended project. I love how each person - through they found a stopping point for this project - either learned something about their chosen topic and/or decided to continue pursuing that topic throughout college. I think the idea of having a 20 Time project is so great, because every student got the change to explore and learn about something they wanted to. There was so much freedom, which made it a little difficult to navigate and time, but overall made the process of the 20 Time project more rewarding and educational in a way that was directly relevant to our own lives.
Reflection:
For my 20 Time project, as detailed more extensively in my First 20 Time Blog Post, I wanted to work on self-improvement, as I am going to college next year and really need to start eating healthier. I decided to try eating healthier for a month to see how it could improve my mood and/or blood pressure. My initial goal for this project was to continue my normal diet for one month and then switch to a healthier diet with more regular meals for the second month. I decided to document my meals for both months and compare them at the end of the project. In addition, I jotted down how my mood was at the end of each week to see if the healthier diet improved my mood in any way.
The project went pretty well and smoothly. It was a fairly simple project outline - eat unhealthy for a month and then eat healthy for a month - so I didn't expect any road bumps; however, I definitely came across a couple. My first month of the project (detailed in my Second and Third Blog Posts), went pretty smoothly. The main problem I came across was the transition from the first month to the second month. It was pretty difficult to remember to grab breakfast in the morning (even if it was just a cup of yogurt) and it was also pretty difficult to remind my friends that I needed to go to Safeway or MOD during lunch to get a salad, as I discussed in my Fourth Blog Post. We generally grab food from Panda Express or Starbucks for lunch, so it was hard to resist that temptation and train myself to keep some healthy snacks with me in case we decided to go to one of those restaurants. Another bump in the road came when, mid-project, I decided to see how my blood pressure would be different during the two months. As I talked to the bariatrics doctor who advised me during the project, I realized that I wouldn't see a very big change in my blood pressure because the duration of my project was too short and it generally takes a couple months before a drastic change occurs. I would, however, still consider the project to be a success because I definitely did try very hard to start eating healthy and I learned a lot about how it can help me be more awake and productive throughout the day. It was a 2 month-long project, but I hope to use the lessons I learned from it throughout my life by eating healthier.
During this project, I learned how hard it is to start eating healthy, but how easy it becomes once you simply start. I also learned to be more disciplined and conscious about my eating. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to do this project because these are extremely important skills to have now that I'm going to college. If I had the opportunity to do this project over again, I would increase the length of each "treatment" by eating unhealthy for 4 months and then eating healthy for 4 months, so that the change in blood pressure would be more dramatic. Also, I would be much more strict with my diet, as I would occasionally accidentally eat something unhealthy when I went off campus for lunch with my friends or went somewhere for a birthday party. In addition, I would consistently measure my blood pressure throughout the experiment and graph it so that it would be easier to visualize how it was changing. I don't think I'm going to continue the experiment, per se; however, I'm definitely going to continue this habit of eating healthy into college because I definitely feel better (more awake and able to pay attention) when I eat healthier foods.
Given my initial project goals (which I had mapped out in my First 20 Time Blog Post), I would give myself full credit for this project, as I spent a lot of time talking to the bariatrics doctor who was advising me and doing research. Though the project seems simple, it was pretty hard to keep track of everything and completely change my diet for a month. I was also very conscientious about completing my blog posts in a timely manner and giving feedback to other students/commenting on others' blog posts. I was also pretty good about making sure I spent the class time that was allocated towards working on 20 Time to working on and researching for my project, and managed to finish this project on a very strong note. Though I didn't have a specific final product for this project, the graphs I used to keep track of my eating are attached below and what I learned throughout the process of the project is detailed in the Blog posts (links to which are scattered throughout this post). In conclusion, I would recommend other people to try keeping track of their diets for a month (or more if possible) and take the time to analyze what they want to change and then stick to those goals. It's pretty amazing how much better and more awake healthier diets can make you feel.
TED Talk Outline:
1. Talk about unhealthy eating habits and how it's a vicious cycle
2. Process of consciously keeping track of eating
3. Difficulty of eating healthy especially when I was stressed
4. Put reminders on phone for lunch and kept healthy snacks on me at all times
5. Growth and what I've learned
This morning, we all met up at the San Tomas Aquino River (4974 Westmont Avenue, San Jose) to clean up the trash that had been accumulating near the river as it was National River Clean Up Day. We put on gloves and walked along the side of the creek picking up trash that had gotten caught in the rocks and trees near the river with trash pickers. Below are some pictures of Divya and I reaching under the trees to collect trash. We worked in pairs, in which one partner carried a black bag for trash and the other partner carried a white bag for recycling. As we walked along the river, we picked up the trash we found and split it into trash and recycling so that the event organizers could discard of the trash appropriately.
It was pretty eye-opening to see how all of the individual pieces of trash we collected added up to a lot of trash, as shown in the images below. We have all been culprits of littering at some point or another. For example, when we're sitting at a table eating lunch and someone else's empty chip bag flies away, it's pretty easy to sit back and let it fly away - after all, it wasn't your chip bag anyways. But, what we don't realize in that moment, is that all these individual pieces of trash accumulate near rivers and pollute the ecosystems there, which can be extremely detrimental overtime as it contaminates our water and injures/kills wildlife.
Individually, each bag didn't seem to contain too much trash, BUT...
Together, all of our bags added up to a lot of trash
The event organizers also had all of the participants take a survey (shown below) of what items were most common in our bags of trash. What most of us found was that bags of chips, food wrappers, and plastic shopping bags that we handle everyday were the most common. This just goes to show that having clean local creeks really is in our hands. This was an extremely astonishing experience that made me realize how conscious and cautious we need to be of trash disposal. It takes 30 extra seconds to walk to a trash can after lunch and dispose of any trash. Though those 30 seconds may add up to a lot of "lost time," it ultimately outweighs the alternative of having our creeks and rivers polluted. We all need to take more responsibility when disposing of trash because soon, the damage done by pollution and littering will become irreversible. Right now, because we can do something to alleviate the damage, we must. I will definitely be participating in events like this in the future as it is extremely crucial - now more than ever - that we play an active role in keeping our planet clean.
In this unit, we talked a lot about the muscular system and how our muscles are classified. We also talked about muscle contraction, What Happens When You Stretch, and the various types of muscle twitch fibers.
The main themes we discussed were how the muscular system enables the movement of bones and fluids, maintains posture and body position, stabilizes the joints, and allows the body to generate heat. Muscles are generally named and classified by the direction of its fibers, size, shape, action, number of origins, and/or location of the muscle. We also talked a lot about the structure of muscles (shown in the diagram below). Each muscle fiber is an individual cell and has its own sarcoplasm and contains many microfibrils. These all make up sarcomeres.
We then went on to discuss how muscles contract (as shown in the diagram below) in what's known as the sliding filament theory. The main steps in muscle contractions are that the motor neurons send an impulse to the muscle that trigger acetylcholine to be released from vesicles. The acetylcholine binds to receptors that activate the second action potential. Then, calcium ions are released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum and into the cytoplasm. The calcium then binds to proteins that are wrapped around actin filaments. The binding of binding of the calcium ions causes myosin filaments to bid to and pull on the actin filaments, which causes the sarcomere to shorten, causing the muscle to contract. We also discussed the various muscle twitch fibers: slow twitch fibers, fast twitch A fibers, and fast twitch B fibers, and how each fiber is specialized for the type of exercise being done by that person. We also talked about how strenuous exercise can cause hypertrophy (when the muscle cells increase in size) and hyperplasia (when the muscle cells increase in number). We also discussed the difference between ligaments and tendons, the effects of muscle inactivity, and why our muscles get sore after exercise. In addition to these, we talked about the weight training basics like overload, progression, rest and recovery, and how the various muscle contractions are used in weight training.
Some unanswered questions I still have about the muscular system are: do muscles contract faster in people who work out more? where and how exactly does lactic acid fermentation occur in muscles?
In addition, we did a really cool Chicken Dissection to compare the anatomy of a chicken to our own anatomy, which furthered my understanding of the muscular system because it allowed me to visualize the different muscles and how they function. In addition, we did an activity on Creating a Better Joint which also helped me understand how various tendons, muscles, and blood vessels work together to keep a muscle from suffering any injuries. Throughout this unit, I've been pretty busy as we've had a lot of family visiting, so it's been hard to stay up to date with all the work. However, when it came time to study for the test, I remembered that the VARK questionnaire we did last semester told me that I learn better when I look at diagrams and draw/label pictures. Thus, I reviewed my chicken dissection and creating a better joint assignment in order to be able to visualize the various joints and muscles of the body.
I also looked back at my New Years Resolutions and realized that I've been meeting them a lot better now. I've been sleeping before 12 most days as I've realized that I do much better on tests and can concentrate much better in class when I sleep earlier rather than when I cram throughout the night. I've also noticed that I'm a lot more confident now that I was earlier in the semester. Now that all the college forms have been filled out, it's become more of a reality that I will be attending college next year. I'm so unbelievably excited to meet new people and learn new subjects that even my friends and family have noticed that I stand straighter and am overall much more willing to talk to people and reach out to people confidently.
In the past month I've learned that it is incredibly difficult to suddenly start eating healthy. When I'm stressed (especially during AP testing weeks), I constantly find myself reaching for a bag of hot cheetos or walking towards the cafeteria to buy some cinnamon buns during tutorial. This was a pretty big setback during the first week and a half of this month, so I started bringing a box of cut fruit to school so that I would always have something healthy to munch on for when I got hungry. This proved to be an extremely successful tactic to make sure my snacks are healthy too because I rarely found the need to buy food from the cafeteria or eat hot cheetos when I had fruits in my backpack or on the table next to me. I've learned that I have a pretty hard time eating healthy when I'm stressed and often skip meals because I don't get hungry or just forget to eat. This project has forced me to be more conscious of what I eat and kept my meals regular and in check.
The next steps for my project will be to compare my recordings about my mood and sleepiness from the two months and compare how my blood pressure and possibly my BMI were affected by my month of eating healthy. The bariatric doctor I have been talking to mentioned that it may be difficult to find solid evidence of a change in these readings, however, because the diet change was only for a month. Typically, she said, it takes around 3-4 months to see actual results. I never considered myself to be a binge-snacker, but after this project I think it's safe to say that binge-snacking is a huge problem, especially for people with anxiety and people who are stressed out. I think a lesson I learned that other people can apply to their lives is how to conquer binge snacking: always keep a healthy alternate snack option nearby so that when you get hungry, you will eat that instead of searching the kitchen for junk food.
The table I used to keep track of the foods I ate during meals is below:
Abstract: For this project, I chose to find a way to fix “shin splints.” For this project, I first researched the bones and muscles that make up the lower leg or what we call our shins. I focused on one specific type of shin splints - the medial tibial stress syndrome. What I found is that medial tibial stress syndrome occurs when the muscles of the lower leg are strained and pull on the periosteum. This may cause inflammation and irritation, so I began to think of ways to reduce stress on the lower leg. I hypothesized that if the areas surrounding the periosteum of the shin bone were more heavily supported by muscles, it would make it harder to strain the shin. Thus, I decided to design my better shin with more muscles and tendons surrounding the tibia bone as I believe these additions would make the shin harder to strain.
Main Body: Medial tibial stress syndrome (commonly known as “shin splints”) is a very common cause of shin pain in runners, tennis players, and even dancers, and is primarily the result of the overuse or repetitive strain of the sheath surrounding the bone, which then causes inflammation and pain. In medial tibial stress syndrome, when the muscles of the lower leg are strained, they start to pull on the periosteum (the sheath that surrounds the the shin bone), which rapidly causes pain and inflammation. This injury normally results when a person suddenly overuses the shin muscles by running too far too fast, training on hard surfaces, failing to stretch before running, wearing worn out shoes and running on your toes. There are also a number of factors that can increase the likelihood of getting medial tibial stress syndrome: overpronation, oversupination, inadequate footwear and training too quickly.
Medial tibial stress syndrome - shown in the image above on the left - mainly affects the shinbone (tibia) and the calf muscles that surround the tibia, like the tibialis anterior, soleus and gastrocnemius. The tibialis anterior muscle (the muscle I focused on) is a very long and slender muscle located on the anterior side of the leg below the knee. It originates from the proximal edge of the tibia and it runs vertically down the front of the leg, parallel and lateral to the tibia.
One design feature that may reduce the frequency of the medial tibial stress syndrome is adding more muscles around the shin bone (the tibia). The addition of muscles would bolster the shin and reduce the inflammation and pain that occurs when the shin is overused. Because there is more muscle padding, the muscles will be less likely to tear or wear out when overused and will be more resistant to strain from workouts. In addition, more tendons to connect the newly added muscles to the tibia bone would support both, the bone and muscles of the shin. Because tendons are strong collections of fibrous collagenous tissue, they will make movements like pronation and supination (which can cause shin splints) much easier to do, while the added muscles will prevent overpronation and oversupination from causing damage to the shins.
In addition, these newly added muscles and tendons would need support from the three main arteries of the lower leg: peroneal (fibular) artery, anterior medial malleolar artery, posterior tibial artery, and anterior tibial artery. The posterior tibial artery and anterior tibial artery both run down the course of the lower leg and distribute nutrients to the superficial and deep muscles surrounding the tibia. These three arteries would need to be slightly longer so that they can provide nutrients to the additional muscles.
As a track and field sprinter, I’m especially familiar with shin splints. I’ve had shin splints many times, especially when the season starts and we rapidly begin full-speed training or when I immediately start sprint workouts after not having run for a couple days. Sprinters most commonly get shin splints from to overtraining because the muscles in the shin and/or the tibia bone are damaged. The “easy fix” that athletic trainers give to sprinters that show early symptoms of medial tibial stress syndrome is to wrap their ankles and shins with athletic wrap in order to hold the muscles in place. The point of this is to try to stabilize the muscles for the short term. In the long run, though, sprinters are advised to warm up their muscles before running and to strengthen their muscles. Adding more muscles and tendons around the tibia would accomplish all of these goals and act as a sort of “permanent tape” to reduce the chances of a person getting shin splints. The tendons would stabilize the muscles and hold them in place and the additional muscles would support the tibia, all of which would make the shins stronger and more resistant to sudden exercise.
One potential setback from this modification to the shin is that adding more muscles could limit the range of motion for the shin. In much the same way that wrapping ankles and shins limits the ankle joint from dorsiflexion, plantar flexion, inversion, and eversion, these modifications may limit movement as they will make the lower leg much more bulky. However, when the lower leg is pronated and supinated, these modifications will definitely support the shin and prevent injury.
Discussion: I arrived at the idea for this design when I began reading more in depth about the functions of muscles and tendons and how they work together to create movement in and around joints. While researching, I realized that what I needed to prevent the shin from medial tibial stress disorder was to reduce the stress on the tibia. Thus, I concluded that adding more muscle and tendons around the shin bone (tibia) would act as a cushion and make the shin more stable and secure from injury. This assignment definitely furthered my understanding of the functions of muscles and tendons, how they work together to enable movement, and how they work together to prevent injury.
Because we cannot actually redesign our joints, we must rethink how we treat our bodies instead. Because this injury normally results from overuse of the shin muscles, we must ease into workouts, train on softer surfaces, remember to stretch before running, wear shoes that are intact and try not to run on our toes. All of these will decrease the likelihood of getting medial tibial stress syndrome by controlling pronation and supination and preventing injuries that are caused from poor or worn out footwear and training too quickly.
Works Cited:
"Arteries of the Lower Limb." TeachMeAnatomy. N.p., 15 Feb. 2017. Web. 09 May 2017.
"Shin Pain (Shin Splints)." Summit Medical Group. McKesson Corporation, 2014. Web. 09 May 2017.
"Shin Splints and Stress Fractures." Chiro Up. ChiroUp, 10 Mar. 2017. Web. 09 May 2017.
Tortora, Gerard J. Introduction to the Human Body. New York: Wiley, 2006. Print.
1. "When a muscle is stretched, some of its fibers lengthen, but other fibers may remain at rest. The current length of the entire muscle depends upon the number of stretched fibers." When a muscle is stretched, the fibers of the sarcomeres lengthen. The length of a muscle when it's stretched depends on how many of the fibers in the sarcomeres are stretched and how many remain at rest. The more a muscle is stretched, the more fibers are stretched, and so the longer it will be.
2. "There are two kinds of muscle fibers: intrafusal muscle fibers and extrafusal muscle fibers." Extrafusal fibers are made up of myofibrils and have intrafusal fibers (a.k.a muscle spindles) that lie parallel to them. Both of these fibers work and move together when muscles stretch. Thus, when a muscle lengthens, they lengthen together and when muscles contract, these fibers contract together.
3. "With extensive training, the stretch reflex of certain muscles can be controlled so that there is little or no reflex contraction in response to a sudden stretch. While this type of control provides the opportunity for the greatest gains in flexibility, it also provides the greatest risk of injury if used improperly." When a muscle is suddenly stretched, the result is generally a reflex contraction. This is why we generally hold stretches for a couple minutes and must ease into and ease out of them: to avoid the reflex contraction, as it can make muscles much more prone to injury.
Relate and Review:
In this article, I learned that there are many ways by which muscles work together and stretch. When a muscle stretches, the sarcomeres (bundles of muscle fibers) spread out and elongate. Because the connective tissue simultaneously stretches with the sarcomeres, the muscle fibers lengthen. One of the main sources of body perception are sensory receptors in the muscles known as proprioceptors. The two main kinds of muscle fibers are extrafusal fibers and intrafusal fibers, which run parallel to the extrafusal fibers. These two fibers work together to enable stretching of the muscles. There are also two types of muscle fibers: nuclear chain fibers and nuclear bag fibers. Nuclear chain fibers are generally used in static stretching, which nuclear bag fibers are used in dynamic stretching. This relates to the Wellness Project that I did last semester about static and dynamic stretching and furthered my understanding of how muscles work differently depending on what kind of stretch is being done.
Last class, we did a chicken dissection in order to compare how similar the muscles of a chicken are to the muscles of a human. When we dissected the breast of the chicken, we found the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor, which are shown in the image below. In birds, these two muscles, with the humerus and sternum, help lift the wing vertically and dorsally. This is extremely similar to the anatomy of humans, in which the pectoralis minor and major pull the shoulder up and down. Thus, we can see how the bones of the skeletal system and muscles in the muscular system help humans and animals move.
Pectoralis Major (white) - makes up the bulk of the breast muscle
Pectoralis Minor (yellow) - thin and triangular in shape
Many other similarities can be seen between the anatomy of a chicken and that of humans. In fact, many of the structures are homologous. The deltoid, biceps brachii, and the triceps humeralis, for example, are all structures involved in moving the wings of birds and also, similarly, are involved in moving the arms of humans. A third similarity can be seen in the flexor carpi ulnaris and brachioradialis of birds and humans, which aid in flexing and pulling back the hand.
Another important concept related to muscles that we learned is the origin and insertion of muscles. This can best be seen in the movements of the first wing segment/drumette of the chicken. The triceps humeralis works to straighten the arm or wing and the biceps brachii works in flexing the arm or wing. The chicken's upper arm also has the deltoid, which raises the arm. The origin of the arm is the shoulder, as that's where it attaches to the body. The insertion includes all the muscles that move in order to flex and extend the arm.
Deltoid (blue) - round and triangular muscle at the upper most part of the shoulder
Biceps brachii (green) - lies between the shoulder and the elbow
Triceps humeralis (white) - the main bone of the upper arm
Some additional pictures from the chicken dissection and the functions of the muscles depicted are shown below:
Thigh (black)
Drumstick (blue)
Both aid in moving the legs
Iliotibialis (red) - extends the thigh and flexes the leg
Sartorius (blue) - flexes the thigh, allowing the crossing of the knee
Biceps femoris (yellow) - flexes the leg
Semimembranosus (green) - extends the thigh
Semitendenosus (white) - extends the thigh
Quadriceps femoris (red) - flexes the thigh and extends the lower leg
Gastrocnemius (blue) - extends the foot and flexes the lower leg
Peroneus longus (black) - extends the foot
Tibialis anterior (yellow) - flexes the foot
Trapezius (yellow) - pull the shoulders back
Latissimus dorsi (green) - extend/pull the wing or arm
This unit was all about the skeletal system, bones, and our joints, and how they work to allow our body to move. We started off the unit by discussing how bones are classified based on their shape - long, short, flat, or irregular. Long bones are typically longer than they are wide and have a shaft with circular heads on both ends and contain mainly compact bone. These bones generally have a diaphysis (the shaft) with an epiphysis on either end that is composed mainly of spongy bone. The image below illustrates and labels the major parts of a typical long bone.
Short bones, on the other hand, are generally cube shaped (wider than they are long) and contain mostly spongy bone. Another type of bone - flat bones - are thin and flattened bones that are usually curved and have thin layers of compact bone around a layer of spongy bone. Lastly, irregular bones are the ones that don't fit into any of the above three categories and so are considered irregular in shape. The image below depicts the various shape-categories that bones are classified into.
Continuing the theme of this class (learning about the function of a part of the body by first exploring its disfunction), we then learned about the various disorders of the skeletal system. Arthritis, as we learned, is caused by the inflammation of the joints. Osteoporosis, another disorder, is a condition in which the bones have lost their minerals and so become weak and more brittle. Scoliosis (abnormal curvature of the spine), kyphosis (excessive curvature of the thoracic vertebrae of the spine), and lordosis (excessive curvature of the lumbar spine) are all problems that the "Assessment of Stresses in the Cervical Spine Caused by Posture and Position of the Head" reading discussed. These three disorders in particular have become increasingly more prominent in our population - and adolescents, especially - as we constantly have bad posture when using technological gadgets like phones and laptops.
We also learned about the different types of bone cells we have and how they play a role in a process known as bone remodeling. Osteocytes are what actually make up bones and are the mature bone cells. Osteoblasts are the bone building cells of the body. Osteogenic cells (also known as osteoprogenitor cells) are dividing cells that are at the growth plates of bones and eventually develop into osteoblasts. And osteoclasts are the bone-destroying cells that breakdown the bone matrix in order for bone remodeling and the release of calcium to occur.
As we learned how these cells make up bones, we began talking about how the bones also behave as the body's reservoir for calcium, which is necessary in many body processes. Parathyroid hormone (PTH) and calcitonin are the two hormones that work together to regulate the blood calcium levels in the body. Vitamins (Vitamin D, especially) are also needed in order to regulate blood calcium and make sure the bones are healthy. In addition we learned about bone remodeling (explained more in depth in the video below), which is the process by which bones are rebuilt after a bone injury and also occurs throughout the day to maintain homeostasis. Basically, in this process, osteoclasts resorb bone so that osteoblasts can refill the cavities left by osteoclasts. The osteoblasts that get trapped inside the matrix they secrete become osteocytes. Ossification, the process by which new bones are formed, occurs in a similar way.
Then we talked more about the different bones in our body and how they make up the skeletal system. Before we did this though, we once again learned about the disfunction of bones and the various types of fractures that can occur: complete fractures where the bone is completely broken through, incomplete fractures where the fracture does not extend through the bone), and closed/simple fractures where the bone does not tear through the skin. The way that bone repair after a fracture occurs is just like the bone remodeling process. First, bleeding and inflammation occurs to produce a blood clot. Then, the blood clot softens and produces a mass of protein fibers, called a procallus. Fibroblasts arrive and secrete dense connective tissue that replaces the procallus. Finally, chondroblasts and osteoclasts arrive and trigger the bone remodeling process. Pictures of some typical bone fractures are shown below:
We discussed the skeletal system in even more depth and even did an Owl Pellet Dissection to compare how our skeletal systems are similar or different to those of other animals and to see if we could put together the pieces of another organism's skeleton. We also discussed the joints in this unit. We can functionally classify joints into synarthroses or immovable joints, amphiarthroses which are slightly movable joints, and diarthroses which are completely freely movable joints. Structurally, joints can be classified even further into fibrous joints which are made of connective tissue or collagen, cartilaginous joints which are made of hyaline tissue - also known as cartilage - and synovial joints which have a membrane containing synovial fluid. These joints can be classified into different types even further as shown in the image below:
I still want to learn more about how we can fix bad posture and whether or not back rests and chiropractic stretches actually help with fixing back problems. In addition, I want to know more about how the muscles shift and adapt to back problems and whether muscular problems can also lead to back problems. In addition, I would like to learn more about to what extent drinking milk can help small children grow taller and what limits a person's growth - when do the growth plates of bones start to fuse. Lastly, I want to know whether or not sleeping can help a person's bones grow so that he/she can grow taller and how it would do that.
As I've been pretty busy visiting colleges and then catching up on my school work, I must admit I've been falling behind on my New Years' Resolution - I have actually been sleeping later, rather than earlier. Now that I've caught it, though, I will definitely start trying to sleep earlier. In addition, work on my 20 Time Project has been going pretty smoothly. I have come across some bumps in the road, but am working to find solutions. In addition, I've moved on to Month 2 (the month of eating healthier) and it's been going pretty smoothly; however, it has been pretty difficult to remind myself to eat healthier. I guess the bad habits of eating unhealthy are a little to ingrained! I've been working a lot on my study habits, though, in preparation for college next year. The VARK Questionnaire that we did earlier this semester has really helped me in that respect, as I've been taking advantage of diagrams and flowcharts to help me study in almost ever class and have seen a difference. When we did the Bone Lab and the Owl Pellet Lab, for example, we drew out the different bones and labelled them and were able to visualize them. This really helped me internalize the concepts we had been learning throughout the unit, so I have high hopes for the upcoming test!
Keeping track of my diet, just like we did in the Nutrition Analysis last semester has made me increasingly aware of how many carbohydrates I consume because of how often I eat food from restaurants. According to my doctor, I should be consuming about 1300 calories per day in order to maintain my weight and I consume almost double that. Though I genetically have a fast metabolism and so may appear skinny, I've learned that the reality is that I'm pretty unfit. The entire month I also noticed that I was pretty cranky and constantly tired. I just finished my month of eating how I normally do (my chart tracking my food intake is shown below) and have started a month of eating healthier. As I've begun this month, the main setback I've faced is that it's really hard to get out of my routine of skipping breakfast and having to constantly remind myself to go somewhere for lunch where I can get a salad. I also visited an doctor who specializes in bariatrics who did a couple tests, the results of which I should get next week. The next steps in my 20 time project are to start eating healthier and exercise more regularly to see how those two changes in my lifestyle could change how fit/healthy I am in just one month. I have a feeling that even though the change in eating and exercise habits was just for one month, the results will be very dramatic. If my hypothesis is supported, I hope to advocate that others also lead healthier lifestyles and are more conscious of what they eat. Looking at the chart after the last day of this month, I realized how bad my eating habits are. They have become so routine that I probably would not have noticed or tried to make a change for a very long time unless I had chosen it as my 20 time project.
In this lab, we were given an owl pellet which we dissected to find the remnants of the organism that the owl had consumed. We first took down the mass, length, and width of the pellet as 5.82 g, 3.7 cm, and 3.0 cm respectively. Then using forceps and a probe we separated the bones in the pellet from the fur, making one pile of each. Using the key on page 15 in our dissection lab handout and measurements of the bones we found, we were then tasked with deciding what animal it was. Unfortunately, we were unable to find enough bones to piece together the entire skeleton of our organism, but we found enough evidence to make a claim as to what it might be.
Claim: From the results of this lab, we concluded that the skeleton we found in our owl pellet most likely belonged to a mouse.
Evidence: The skull we found has teeth with a gap (diastema) between the incisor teeth and molar teeth. Because these teeth - when inspected under a dissecting microscope - had a rounded shape with no visible roots, we could narrow down that the skeleton belonged to either a rat or a mouse. Because the length of the skull was less than 25 mm (it was 15 mm) and the length of the lower jaw was between 9-16 mm (it was 11 mm), we concluded that the skeleton belonged to a mouse. In addition, the hip bones we found were similar to images of mouse hip bones shown on page 16 of the lab handout.
Reasoning: Following the steps of the dichotomous key on Page 15 of the lab manual, we went from step 1 to step 2 to step 3 to step 4, ending at (b) of step 4. In this way, we were able to conclude that the skeleton we found belonged to a mouse. In addition, the bones we found in the owl pellet matched the images and scale of what mouse bones should look like, as shown on Page 16 of the lab handout. Both, the dichotomous key on Page 15 and the pictures of various rodent bones on Page 16 helped us reason out that the organism was most likely a mouse.
The skeleton of the shrew we found could be compared to that of a human.
Some similarities we noticed between the mouse and a human skeleton were:
(1) The mouse skull and human skull shared many structural similarities - the structure of the jaw/mandible was similar and the location of the eyes, mouth, and nose, were similar in both skulls.
(2) The mouse hip bones (tibia, fibia, and femur) which we pieced together very similarly matched the anatomy of the human hip bone.
(3) Both, the mouse skull and human skull have teeth with similar structures and the teeth are found in the same place in both the mouse and human skull.
Some differences we noticed between the mouse and a human skeleton were:
(1) The mouse skull has a gap (diastema) between the incisor and molar teeth, which the human skull does not have.
(2) The human skull is longer vertically, whereas the mouse skull is longer horizontally.
(3) The human eye socket is circular, whereas the mouse skull we found had more oval-shaped eye socket.
During the Power Hour Reading, I read an excerpt from The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D. I found this book quite fascinating, so I took it home and read the whole thing to learn more about brain plasticity. The first chapter, which we read in class, discusses how a woman named Cheryl regains the ability to balance. See more about the first chapter of this book in my previous blog post about it here. Similarly, the rest of the chapters in his novel detail different people and their stories about how their brains managed to adapt to and compensate for various brain injuries. The major claim/thesis that the author, Norman Doidge, makes throughout this book is that the brain can adapt to overcome injuries and take over the jobs of parts of the brain that die or are affected by the injury - a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity.
It’s funny how I’ve been learning so much in AP Biology about how the animals around us have been adapting for millions of years to fit the changing environment and conditions on Earth. It’s interesting to see how this same principle of evolving and changing is evident in our own brains as well. Doidge draws a direct parallel to this when he says, “the brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.” In much the same way that organisms evolve to the changing conditions on Earth, our brains change and adapt to the conditions of our body. This quote articulates the principle of neuroplasticity quite perfectly. In addition, Doidge personifies the brain a little bit to reiterate his main point when he says, “We must be learning if we are to feel fully alive, and when life, or love, becomes too predictable and it seems like there is little left to learn, we become restless - a protest, perhaps, of the plastic brain when it can no longer perform its essential task.” This is another great quote that quite beautifully illustrates this principle of elasticity. He compares our human desire to constantly learn to that of the brain. When a part of the brain dies, it stops learning. However, the brain cannot stand to be plastic and so it will retaliate and do what it needs to in order to keep learning. Thus, the brain will get restless and reorganize its neural pathways to try to regain whatever function was lost from a brain injury. A common thread throughout the anecdotes shared in these chapters is that the individuals all “have senses [that they] didn't know [they] have until [they] lose them.” This quote, although seemingly unrelated to the main point of neuroplasticity, really resonated with me. It echoed the same principle that we’ve been taught since we were children that “you never know what you’ve got until you don’t have it anymore.” This is ever more apparent with the brain injury patients that are discussed in this novel - they all take the functions of their brain for granted until something goes wrong and they are forced to reteach their brains to do something. They realize how every sensation and neural pathway is important for them to function and live normally. This just goes to show how we need to appreciate the power of our brains and take care of ourselves. But if and when something does go wrong, we owe it to ourselves to bear grueling therapy to reteach our brains the functions that were lost.
In Chapter 5 (one of my favorite chapters), for example, Doidge discusses how a stroke patient regained the ability to move and speak. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts, reading about this is always very personal and fascinating for me because my grandmother had a stroke 3 years ago and I also did research on this topic this past summer. Michael Bernstein - the patient discussed in this chapter - had a stroke to the same side of the brain that my grandmother did and the stroke initially paralyzed the entire left side of his body. This is because when a person has a stroke, the tissue on the side of the brain that doesn’t get blood permanently dies. Similarly, when my grandmother had her stroke, her speech, the mobility of her left arm, and her ability to walk properly were all affected. Slowly but surely, with physical and occupational therapy, she was able to train other parts of her brain to take over the functions that the right side of her brain was once responsible for. In doing so, she was able to regain the ability to speak without a slur and walk without hobbling even though the right side of her brain never actually recovered. She never regained sensation or the ability to control her left arm and it has become permanently paralyzed, demonstrating how even though the brain is elastic, it’s ability to adapt is not perfect. The chapter also discusses how a man by the name of Edward Taub experimented with monkeys to see how positive reinforcement in what’s he coined “shaping” during the period after a stroke known as “spinal shock” (when the neurons have trouble firing) could make it easier to relearn actions that were lost during the stroke. He concluded that use of the limb that’s been paralyzed made it much easier for the brain to adapt, not slings and disuse.
Chapter 5 in particular did an excellent job of demonstrating how what we’ve been learning in class can be applied to and seen in the real world. This chapter tied together a previous unit from this class with our most recent unit, specifically the Cardiovascular Diseases (Part 2) Vodcast - in which we learned about how strokes occur - with the Brain Division, Specialization, and Adaptation Vodcast - in which we discussed brain plasticity and how the brain can reorganize neural pathways to make up for brain injuries. Bernstein suffered from a stroke, in which (as we learned in the Cardiovascular Diseases Vodcast) a blood clot forms in a blood vessel going to the brain. Thus, that part of the brain died, preventing the neurons in that section of the brain from receiving input and sending output. The neural pathways to that part of the brain had to (as we learned in the Brain Vodcast) reroute themselves to send sensory input to a different part of the brain that would then take over that particular function. Thus, this book really managed to bring together the various topics we’ve learned throughout the year regarding injuries to the brain and how neurons work to send signals to the brain.
Though - as seen from the inability of my grandma to regain the function of her left arm - the brain cannot self-heal every single brain injury for every single person, it most definitely does have plasticity. The plasticity is just limited. If I were to get the opportunity to ask author Norman Doidge two questions about his work I would ask him (1) what factors play a role in those limits - if a person has a healthier lifestyle, does their brain have more potential to reroute the neural pathways when they suffer an injury? What about age - do younger people have greater brain plasticity? Are there ways to modify one’s lifestyle in order to maximize the chances of having your brain self-heal when it gets injured? Also, (2) do genetics play a role in how elastic your brain is? If so, what factors in one’s family history or genetic makeup would make the brain have more plasticity? How could we design experiments or studies to find answers to these two questions?
I especially enjoyed reading the various ideas Doidge presents in this novel regarding Pascual-Leone’s theory that the brain’s anatomy can be changed with one’s imagination and the use of a transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) and the chapter about how neuroplasticity can be a curse when it comes to phantom pain from phantom limbs, in particular, because of how mysterious they are. Take the latter for example. Not much is known about phantom limbs but it was exciting to read how neurologists like V.S. Ramachandran have been working to try and see if phantom paralysis and pain can be “unlearned.” Doidge's work is most definitely not just theoretical because evidence of the phenomenon of neuroplasticity is clear and evident in the cases he discusses throughout the book.
This book is very credible and realistic because it is composed of actual stories and anecdotes from the lives of real people.The ideas about neuroplasticity that Doidge discusses in his novel have also been widely discussed by others in the medical world as it may have incredible practical implications for the future of neuroscience and neurosurgery. If we can figure out how to harness the power of the brain to reorganize neural pathways and then create surgeries and procedures modeled after it, we can make it much easier for people with brain injuries to regain functions that the injury ruined. In the future, such procedures could even render physical and occupational therapies useless. Such procedures and advancements in medicine made based on neuroplasticity would greatly benefit individuals in our society that have been handicapped by brain injuries and could soon have even greater applications when it comes to other mental disorders in which certain sections of the brain aren’t functioning properly.
This unit was mainly focused on the brain, the senses, neurons, and disorders of the PNS and CNS. We talked a lot about how the brain is divided into major structures like the posterior pituitary, brainstem, hypothalamus, thalamus, cerebellum, and cerebrum, and then is further divided into more structures with their own specialized functions. We talked about brain lateralization, the important connection that the corpus callosum provides, and the different lobes of the cerebral cortex that aid in higher level thinking. See my blog posts on the Clay Brain Activity and Brain Dissection that we did in class to learn more about the anatomy and physiology of the brain. To build upon the topic of higher level thinking, we read the article "How to Become a Superager," which discussed how the various regions of the brain have been categorized broadly into a cognitive region and an emotional region. Researchers found that extensive use of one's emotional region during younger ages can actually enhance their cognitive abilities later on in life. This was a pretty astonishing conclusion because the two regions of the brain were thought to be separate, but this demonstrates how the parts of the brain are actually very interconnected. It talks about how we must exercise all the regions of our brain, even when facing dilemmas or uncomfortable situations, because it helps develop a more healthy brain, which will have many advantages later on in life. We also talked a lot about brain plasticity, a topic discussed further in a reading we did entitled "A Woman Perpetually Falling" (I posted a summary on a previous blog post here), which discussed how a woman named Cheryl lost the ability to stand without falling. This reading also talked about how she found a device that brought back her balance; however, soon she was able to walk perfectly without the brain. Overtime, the brain managed to redelegate the effected senses to other regions of the brain, demonstrating the elasticity of the brain. Feel free to check out my previous blog post for more information on this reading.
A topic interconnected with our brain is our senses, the main ones being: vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Each sense has different organs, receptors, and sensory cells that work together to take in sensory information in different ways, sent the information to the brain where it is integrated, and send back a motor signal, which we see as our response to the stimulus. To help us sense changes in the environment, we have special senses (which include sight, hearing, taste, and smell) because they have their own organ and somatic senses. The different types of receptors that take in the information has thermoreceptors which take in temperature, nociceptors which take in pain senses, photoreceptors which bring in light rays, chemoreceptors which sense chemicals, and mechanoreceptors that take in movement and pressure signals. See my blog post on the Sheep Eye Dissection to learn more about the sense of vision and how what we see is interpreted by the brain. As we learned more about how the body interprets stimuli from its surroundings with its senses we read the article, "Fit Body, Fit Brain, and other Fitness Techniques." This article basically talked about how all types of physical activity actually help strengthen a person's memory and thinking abilities in their brain and help people stay strong later in life. It also talked about how exercise helped keep the white matter in a person's brain more in tact later on in life, which is extremely important because white matter is what is responsible for passing messages between different parts of the brain. Thus, the researchers in this article reached the conclusion that exercise can help improve and help develop certain parts of a person's brain and hence, improve his/her cognitive abilities, which is a huge motivation for people to start exercising more regularly. We also read "How We Get Addicted" to learn how addictions like drugs and alcohol actually impair the brain's cognitive abilities by creating an all-consuming pattern of uncontrollable craving for the body. It discussed how the analytical regions of the brain generally evaluate the consequences of doing a certain action and override the mere pleasure seeking regions of the brain in a healthy brain; however, this fails to occur in an addict's brain. To see how specific chemicals in drugs thwart signals to the brain, we learned about neurons. The three main types of neurons in the body are sensory, integrative, and motor neurons, all of which have their own functions. The neurons are also divided further into the Central Nervous System (CNS) which includes the brain and spinal chord and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) composed of the spinal and cranial nerves that serve as communication lines. Various neurons work to pass information from the integrative neurons (with sensory receptors) to the integrative neurons (in the brain) to the motor neurons (that do some action) by passing chemical signals down the axon of one neuron, depositing the receptor into the synapse of the neighboring neuron and so on. We also did a Reflex Lab to reinforce what we had learned in the lecture about neurons and how they sense information from the environment to produce some action from the body. This unit went pretty smoothly. A fan of dissections, I really enjoyed the Sheep Brain and Sheep Eye dissections and they were definitely one of my strengths in this unit. I learned so much from being able to see the organ in front of me and be able to visualize what the structures actually look like. As my VARK Questionnaire had revealed earlier this semester, I am a visual and spatial learner, so doing these dissections and making models with clay really helped me visualize the concepts we were learning and picture them clearly. A weakness I must admit is that there are so many concepts in this unit and so much material to understand and digest, that it was hard to put the concepts together and memorize everything while studying, however, lots of flowcharts and pictoral diagrams made it a little bit easier. Some unanswered questions I still have about the brain are: How does loss of function in certain regions of the brain (like with Cheryl in "A Woman Perpetually Falling") differ from the loss of functions for stroke patients? Are there only certain regions of the brain that are "elastic" and can be taught new functions - can only certain parts of the brain learn certain tasks? Are there certain tasks that cannot be relearned? Looking back at my New Year Goals, I can say that I've definitely improved on my confidence. Having performed in Bombay in the Bay this year for the fourth year in a row and seeing all the people in the audience looking back at me no longer scared me. In addition, by now I've had multiple college interviews - most of which went extremely well - and I think those helped me work on my confidence significantly. I tried my best to just be myself, remind myself to breath, and remind myself to stay calm, and for the most part, it worked really well. I can definitely say I've been making tremendous strides towards achieving this new years goal. Lastly, I'm still working on my goal to sleep earlier. As a second semester senior with a relatively more difficult class schedule than most of my friends, it's hard to find a balance between enjoying the "Second Semester Senior Life" and finishing all of my classwork on time and getting to bed on time. There definitely have been some days when I've managed to sleep by 11 or 11:30pm; however, they are very intermittent, and I need to work on making them more regular so I'm not a zombie in class. Looking back at my New Year Goals really made me realize that I need to refocus on meeting my goals and will start being more serious about finishing my work as soon as I get home so that I can get to bed earlier.
