Reflex Lab

In this lab, we tested different reflexes of the human body. Many of these reflexes are needed for survival or protection so they go from the sensory neurons to the spinal cord and the orders are formed and sent.  The pupil shrinks in the light because it needs to make sure there is not too much light coming in. In the lab, we see when there is more light the eye adjusts to there is less coming in because there is more.
The knee-jerk helps to keep you upright. When you start to lean it triggers the contraction of the muscles, recentering us. After the squats, the response was reduced because the muscles were tired and less able to contract.
Blinking when something is thrown at your face is because if that thing were to hit you it might injure your eyeball. The eyelid serves as extra protection to the eye.

The reflex times in the ruler drop were significantly increased when texting. This is because our attention is diverted to something other than grabbing the ruler. this is why texting while driving is dangerous; our attention is on something other than the road. Then our attention finally comes back to the road and it is too late.

Unit 6 Review

In this unit we went over the nervous system, senses, and brain.
Senses allow us to experience the world in many different ways. The way this works is the different receptors in different areas relay the information through a nerve to the brain. This is called sensation. Once it reaches and is processed by the brain it sends signals in response to the stimulus. This is called perception. Pain, hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste, sight, temperature, balance,  pressure and limb perception are all different types of senses that allow us to experience the world how we do. When one of these senses do not communicate to the brain. When this signal becomes interrupted in the brain sometimes the brain can rewire itself to regain some of the sense back. With medical treatment the brain can make new connections to experience the same sense in different ways. This concept of changing is called brain plasticity.  The homunculus is a diagram of the relative proportions of the different areas of the body and how many touch receptors they have on it; the lips and fingers have a high density of touch receptors.
Many things can go wrong in the nervous system. In the CNS most of the disorders lead to major life impacts. These can lead to a shortened and severely altered lifestyle. In the PNS diseases, they are often centrally located and do not have as big of an impact on the person's life. Addiction is a disease when the person becomes dependent on a substance and their neurons start relying on it in the neurotransmitters. The person eventually becomes out of control over whether or not they use.
I want to look more into neurotransmitters and how that impacts who we are.

The brain can change and mold to our environments.

 Pain is thought to be negative, but this is what happens without pain. Pain is used as an evolutionary advantage to prevent us from getting hurt. 

My new year's goals were to run and stay organized. I have been keeping up with the running and walking daily, but I have not stayed organized. All except 2 notes I wrote R&R for immediately. I needed to glue in the notes faster. This next unit I just hope to do the homework on time. 

Loss of Inspiration

So far I have gone to places I am familiar with around my house and wildwood park. I have learned that I overthink things a lot. Most of this project I have been obsessing over how to make a change in our community. I have not always come up with the answer and it resulted in a strong spite for people, the community, and school in general. It's not that I despise exploring and learning but more the deception of this project. In my past experience, I have found just showing people what I am interested in has impacted them. But this project, which wants people to find internal motivation is essentially going against itself by shoving ideas down other people's throats instead of hearing about them and deciding for themselves. So that has been an obstacle of mine: the thinking of the ulterior motives for this project and why we really are trying to change the world. Another setback has been not wanting to do the project which has resulted in me turning to the external motivation of failure if I do not do it.
These past couple weeks I figured out how to make a facebook account for sharing my pictures. This took a while because I could not figure out how to post on Instagram then I went to facebook. My next step is to get the message out to my peers and to add writings about the community and life to my pictures.

Brain Dissection

The myelin makes the signal go faster down the neuron and keeps it insulated. 

Color	Structure	Function
Yellow	Cerebrum	Higher thinking and function
Green	Cerebellum	Balance and coordination
Grey	Brain stem	Breathing, heartbeat, and consciousness

Color	Structure	Function
Yellow	Thalamus	Motor function, emotions, relaying signals to rest of brain, perceive pain
Green	Optic nerve	Bring signals and info from the eyes
White	Medulla oblongata	Autonomic functions, relay signals to other areas of brain
Grey	Pons	Autonomic functions and sleep cycles
Blue	Midbrain	path way between fore and hind brain
Red	Corpus callosum	Connect the 2 hemispheres and send info between
Black	Hypothalamus	Hormone secretion

In this dissection we looked at the different parts of the brain and sorted out the different functions they have. The dissection also relates to what we learned in the distinctions between grey and white matter. We learned that myelin coats neurons which they have to send a signal fast. In the brain stem I noticed there is hardly any grey matter as this is the area that has lots of information coming in that must be quickly sorted. Once it branches off it is still white matter then it turns to grey matter. The branches of white matter are obvious in the cerebrum and the cerebellum. They continually get smaller until it turns to grey matter to communicate and process the information. In the cerebellum the small bumps were clearly seen and able to be separated showing how the brain specializes. Two hemispheres also became apparent in this dissection as they are only connected by the corpus callosum and the meninges holds them together (not attaches) by being in the enclosed area together.

Eye Dissection

When light enters the sheep's eye it passes through the cornea, then through the pupil, that the ciliary bodies adjust the amount of light allowed by adjusting the iris around the pupil. Then it enters the aqueous humor that flowed out when we opened up the eye and directly into the lens, which was yellow, hard, and clouded due to cataracts, then it enters the vitreous humor, which not only holds the shape of the eye it has the light travel through it. Then the light hits the retina which turns the light into electrical impulses that travel through the optic nerve and out to the brain to be turned into a picture.

The eye before being dissected. The cornea is the dark circle. Surrounding it is fat that covers the sclera, the white of the eye. 

This is the lens detached from the vitreous humor and the ciliary bodies. The black lines are the ciliary bodies that have not been removed. The lens feels hard like a ball of dried wax.  

The retina peels off of the back half of the eye to reveal the tapedum lucidium. This is used to reflect light and allow the animal to see better at night. This is why cat's eyes glow in the dark when light is shone on them.