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.
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