Final blog post

I really liked talking about diseases of the brain.  I learned a lot about Alzheimer's and strokes and tumors and I'd love to learn more.

Here are 2 links that my mom told me about a few years ago and I remember thinking these are cool pictures and I learned a lot so I suggest you check this out.

http://www.amenclinics.com/the-science/spect-gallery

http://www.amenclinics.com/the-science/spect-gallery/category/images-of-treatment

http://www.amenclinics.com/the-science/spect-gallery/category/images-of-treatment-2

here are 2 SPECT scans of an Alzheimer's patients brain

the blog post!!!

i liked the yummy neurons.
i learned allot from the owl pellets.

Aaron's last blog post

my favorite part of Anatomy class was when we did the owl pellets. and i feel like i learned a lot about the brain.                                                                                                    

thanks for reading.

Candy neurons!

I liked the candy neurons best this. They were tasty!
I learned a lot about the pig because we worked the longest on it.

NEURONS!!!

I really liked making the candy neurons and learned a lot making them as well! I think that letting kids eat the thing there learning about helps them remember it better, and that all teachers reading this should consider this blog post for future classes they might be teaching! But I leanrend a lot obout every thing coverd in this class!!!!!
THANK YOU JOLIEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cranial Nerves -- 12 pairs of them!

This week, we focused on the 12 pairs of cranial nerves and what they do.

Here are some interesting things we noticed:

• Sheep, cats, and humans all have the same 12 pairs of cranial nerves.  The size can be a bit different, like the olfactory nerves are proportionately larger in smell-oriented animals than humans, but the location and function of the nerves is pretty much the same.
• Three of the 12 are motor nerves for the eye muscles.  They move the eyeballs in different directions.  I guess this must be very important.
• Two of the 12 are involved in taste sensation: one for taste at the tip of the tongue and one for taste in the back of the tongue.
• Some of them are sensory, which means they are transmitting sense information from the sense organ (eye, ear, nose, tongue) to the part of the brain that deals with that information.  Some of them are motor, which means they are transmitting a signal from the brain to a muscle to tell that muscle to move.  Some of the nerves are bundles of axons that have a sensory part and a motor part, so they are considered both sensory and motor nerves.
• The numbering of the cranial nerves is in roman numerals.  They are numbered I through XII (1 - 12) starting from the front of the brain and moving towards the back of the brain (looking down at the underside of the brain).
  
• The names of the nerves are:  
• I: Olfactory: smell information going from nose to brain
• II: Optic: visual information going from eyes to brain
• III: Oculomotor: moves your eyeball and constricts pupil
• IV: Trochlear: moves your eyeball (downward and in towards your nose)
• V: Trigeminal: senses touch from the face and head, and moves your jaw for chewing
• VI: Abducens: moves your eyeball (side to side)
• VII: Facial: taste information going from front of tongue to brain, muscles of facial expressions
• VIII: Vestibulocochlear: hearing and balance information going from ear to brain
• IX: Glossopharyngeal: taste information from back of tongue, and swallowing movement
• X: Vagus: sense and movement in your glands and digestive system
• XI: (Spinal) Accessory: controls muscles for head movement
• XII: Hypoglossal: controls tongue muscles
• There are lots of mnemonics for the cranial nerves.  A mnemonic is something you use to remember something (often a list of things).  Typically, you make a phrase that you can remember that uses the first letter of each item on the list.  For the cranial nerves, here are some of the mnemonics I found:
• Odor Of Orangutan Terrified Tarzan After Forty Voracious Gorillas Viciously Attacked Him
• On Occasion Our Trusty Truck Acts Funny, Very Good Vehicle Any How
• Once One Openly Told Tourists About Fighting Vampires Gobling Various Antelope Herds
• Only Owls Observe Them Traveling And Finding Voldemort Guarding Very Secret Horcruxes
• Old Opie Occasionally Tries Trigonometry And Feels Very Gloomy, Vague And Hypoactive
• Old Oprah Occasionally Trots Triumphantly About, Farting Velveeta Globs, Vaunting Accolades Hysterically
• Once On October Thirteenth, Troublesome Abductors Filched Various Golden Valuables And Heirlooms
•  Old Oppressive Oceanic Trout Trick Aquatic Fauna Very Greedily; Valiant Sharks Hunt (them).
•  Oh Once One Takes The Anatomy Final, Very Good Vacations Are Heavenly.



A visual mnemonic for the cranial nerves!

• Here's one I just made up: Often, one opens the top and front velcro, giving villains a hand.
• There are also mnemonics to help you remember which ones are sensory (S), which are motor (M), and which are both (B). 
• Some Say Marry Money, But My Brother Says Big Brains Matter Most
• Silly Superman Made Mortal Brothers Make Bets Since Both Boys Made Money
• Some Say Money Matters, But My Beloved Says Being Beloved Matters More
• Here's one I just made up now:  Share Some Merry Music By Making Brother Shake Both Bongos Mighty Madly

Testing the Cranial Nerves

In class, we did activities to illustrate what daily activities use which cranial nerves.

For the Olfactory Nerve (Cranial Nerve I), we had four boxes that each contained a cotton ball with a scented liquid on it.  We each sniffed the cotton ball, then guessed what the smell was.  The four scents were:

1. vanilla (we discussed why it smells like alcohol -- because the vanilla beans don't dissolve in water, so alcohol is used to get the flavor into a useful form)
2. orange extract
3. vinegar
4. lemon extract

For the Optic Nerve (Cranial Nerve II) we took an eye test.  Students in the class have excellent eyesight!

For the Oculomotor, Trochlear, and Abducens Nerves (Cranial Nerves III, IV, and VI) we moved our eyes in all directions, tracking the movements of my finger without moving the head.

For the Trigeminal Nerve (Cranial Nerve V), we ate some food -- using the muscles that move our jaws to chew -- and I also touched each student's cheeks with a cotton ball.  

Making faces -- cranial nerve VII

For the Facial Nerve (Cranial Nerve VII), we made funny faces and also tasted brownies with the front parts of our tongues.

For the Vestibulocochlear Nerve (Cranial Nerve VIII), we tested our hearing by closing our eyes and raising hands when we hear a quiet snap across the room.  Excellent hearing in all the students.  Then, we balanced on one foot and closed our eyes.  No one fell down!

For the Glossopharyngeal Nerve (Cranial Nerve IX), we swallowed a sip of water.

We forgot to do anything with the Vagus Nerve (Cranial Nerve X) because the website we looked at didn't show anything.  But of course we were using our Vagus Nerve as we digested the foods we were eating!  Students brought bloody rice krispie treats, eyeball mozzarella balls, and breadstick fingers with almond fingernails.  Brownies and carrots were there to balance it out.

For the Spinal Accessory Nerve (Cranial Nerve XI), we partnered up and had one person put their hands on the side of the other's head.  The partner then tried to move their head side to side.  

For the Hypoglossal Nerve (Cranial Nerve XII), we all stuck out our tongues, moved them to the right, then to the left, then back into our mouths.

We all passed with flying colors, and appear to have healthy cranial nerves!!

Strawberrys

Has any body else noticed how strawberry's sort of look like brains?
They have wight "matter" in the middle and red "matter" on the outside and in the very middle, see? Maybe there structure is designed sort of the same.
 

Nervous System Diseases and Their Anatomy

This week we focused on diseases and disorders of the nervous system.  One lead-in to this unit was our homework assignment, which was to do an online virtual brain surgery for treating Parkinson's Disease.  All of us who did the simulation enjoyed it a lot.  Basically, the operation involves the implantation of electrodes into the brain areas that are damaged in Parkinson's Disease.  As I explained to the students, the neurons in that area die and never grow back.  We don't understand exactly how those neurons function, but stimulating that area electrically is very helpful for reducing and sometimes eliminating many of the symptoms of the disease.

During the game, you first see the patient with her symptoms, which are that her hands shake (the "tremor" that is typical of this disease).  Next, you go through all the steps of the procedure: inserting screws called fiducials into the skull, using them to precisely map the path for the electrodes to follow, drilling into the skull and placing the equipment for guiding the electrodes, slowly and carefully pushing the electrodes into position, waking the patient to use their reported sensations to show whether they have been placed correctly, closing up and removing the equipment, then two weeks later testing for the correct power, placing the batteries into the chest region and connecting them to the electrodes.  Another more complete explanation is here.  It was detailed and fascinating to actually do the simulated surgeries!

After discussing the simulation and why we did it, we moved on to an active discussion of nervous system diseases and disorders.  There are a huge number of problems that happen with the nervous system, and I fully admitted that I am not an expert on all of them, or even very many of them.  I have studied a few nervous system diseases in depth, which we discussed, but most of what we are talking about are diseases that I know a fair number of basic details about.

I brought in two brain models that I borrowed from the UW Neuroscience Training Program.  One was a rather large, colorful brain model labeled with each region's function.  We didn't spend a lot of time on it, but it is very helpful for seeing exactly where the regions we are discussing are located.  It also illustrates the mapping of the body parts onto the motor area (where the neurons are that tell that body part to move) and the sensory area (where the neurons are that tell us we are sensing touch at that body part).  It comes apart into four parts, so you can see some inside brain regions too, but we couldn't find the substantia nigra (area first affected in Parkinson's Disease).

The other model was specifically designed to illustrate a number of fairly common nervous system diseases.  Unfortunately, it was missing the informational card that would confirm for sure which parts of the model were supposed to illustrate what, and also there was a piece of brain blood vessels that was missing.  The diseases modeled were: 

• alcoholism
• Alzheimer’s disease
• aneurysm
• depression related tumor
• seizure related tumor
• migraine
• multiple sclerosis
• Parkinson’s disease
• stroke
• subdural hematoma

We only had time to discuss some of these diseases.  For each disease, we got up out of our seats and made a respectful effort to act out the symptoms of the disease.  This was to solidify what we discussed, get a feel for what it might be like to suffer from the disease, and of course to stay active.  Here's what we actually discussed:

• Parkinson's diease begins with the loss of neurons in the substantia nigra, and the model showed us two substantia nigras:  one looks like a little, blackish, half mustache, and the other was blank.  The blank one had lost over 90% of the neurons that had been there, and showed what that area looks like in a Parkinson's disease patient.  Normally, there are I think at least a million neurons in the substantia nigra on each side.
• Alzheimer's disease is a progressive disease that first and most deeply affects the memory.  It is a disease that involves dementia, or a specific type of memory loss.  Dementia is a general term for the type of memory loss in which the patient has severe enough problems with thinking, memory, and reasoning that is severe enough to interfere with daily functioning.  Sometimes the person will forget people they've known for a long time or forget what they're doing.  

• I once cared for a woman with advanced Alzheimer's disease for an evening, and it was very interesting and sad to see firsthand the effects of the disease.  This woman told the same brief story over and over again, seeming not to know that she had told the same story just a few minutes before.  She had been retired for years, but forgot that and had a hard time believing me when I told her that she didn't need to go to work.  Her apartment door needed to be locked to prevent her from wandering out and getting lost.  
• As you can see in the picture to the right, many areas of the brain get much smaller in advanced Alzheimer's disease.  Vision and motor areas are not badly affected, and patients don't have a lot of problems with movement or sight, but memory areas are destroyed, olfactory areas (sense of smell) are damaged, and the frontal lobe of the brain, which helps us think ahead and plan, is severely affected.
• Aneurysm is when a blood vessel in the brain has a weak spot that then fills up like a balloon.  Eventually, it can leak and/or rupture, and this is a major problem.  Doctors can do surgery to fix the area by clipping the aneurysm.  If they do this in time, the patient is fine, but if the aneurysm ruptures, there is generally no way to save the patient and he or she dies.
• A friend of my had an aneurysm that started to leak and might have ruptured if it hadn't been
  
  caught in time.  Her symptom was a severe headache like she never felt before, and luckily she was right across the street from Duke University Medical Center when it happened (one of the best hospitals in the country, #8 on US News & World Report).  They gave her top notch care, including a relatively new procedure involving raising the patient's blood pressure to prevent the brains blood vessels from closing.  When this happened, I immediately did research to better understand aneurysm and learned that if the patient survives the aneurysm by getting it surgically fixed before it ruptures, blood that leaks from the aneurysm causes a reaction over the next few weeks in which blood vessels can close up.  If that happens, it is almost like a stroke because that part of the brain stops getting blood and oxygen, which can cause permanent damage.  Fortunately, my friend was able to fully recover with no permanent damage, which was at least partly due to excellent care at Duke!
• Stroke is when a blood clot gets stuck in the brain and causes a small or large part of the brain to be without blood and oxygen for a period of time.  There are blood vessels all over the brain, and where the clot gets stuck determines what part of the brain is damaged and therefore what the patient's
  
  symptoms are.  If the speech area is affected, the person may not be able to talk.  If the area relates to memory, they may have memory loss.  Often many areas are affected, and the person may have some paralysis, some speech problems, and some memory loss.  
• There's an interesting book called My Stroke of Insight, which is written by a neuroscientist who had a major stroke. She survived and recovered, and was able to describe what it was like.  It was so severe that she lost her understanding of what numbers were and what a phone was for, and so even though she was near a phone, she couldn't figure out how to call someone for help!  Luckily, someone called her, and hearing her speech get weird, they knew she needed help and got her to the hospital right away.
• Migraine is a special type of headache that is very severe and is thought to be related to dilation of blood vessels in and around the brain.  For some people, there is an aura, which is usually a visual phenomenon like flashes of light a few minutes before the migraine hits.  
• Brain tumors are cancer cells in the brain.  Cancer cells grow and divide without properly obeying the normal signals to stop growing.  Some brain tumors invade healthy tissue and damage it, while some stay separate from the healthy tissue but push into it and cause brain damage due to the pressure. 

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a brain disease that affects the part of your brain, brain stem, and spinal cord that controls muscles we control by thinking about, and don't move by them selves (like your heart does). You have two sections of neurons that mainly do this, the upper and the lower. The upper is in your brain and the lower is in your spinal cord. the neurons in these parts of brain, spinal cord, and brain stem are called "Motor neurons". The disease is were the motor neurons slowly decrease in function and eventually stop sending messages to muscles like the ones that control your arms and legs. The victims amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also lose function in there muscles in the diaphragm and chest resulting in failure to breathe without some kind of respiratory system. if you want to know ALS is sometimes called Lou Gehrig's disease, read this artical, Its about a baseball player named Lou Gehrig who had ALS. ALS is fatal, and most patients die within 4-5 years. But some (about 10%)  live for 10 years.

If you want to know more about ALS go to this site.

Touching a human brain

This week, we each got to touch a real human brain.  The Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin Madison has an outreach kit that they allowed me to check out for demonstration for the students.  Included was:

• one whole human brain, fixed, with the membranes on it.  No information was available on the person who donated it, for confidentiality reasons.  So all we know was that the person passed away and had chosen before their death to donate their brain to science.  It was pretty large, so we thought perhaps it belonged to a male.
• one half human brain, fixed.  Because it was cut down the middle, we could see the inside parts of the brain easily.  I'll detail those below.  It was smaller than the whole brain, so perhaps it belonged to a woman.  
• gloves and a tray for looking at the brains.
• two brain exhibits, showing the brains with eyes of several animals.  One had perch, frog, snake, and cat, while the other had 
• a bag of foam brains, like the one shown here:  --->  They are squishy, like stress balls, and we could each have one to take home.  We used them later on, in one of our games.
• two mirror writing set-ups, which are boxes that show how we use our brains to learn new skills.  You put the box together and then put a paper in the bottom, which you can see through the mirror but not directly.  You have to draw between the lines of the shape by looking through the mirror.

Neuroanatomy & The Sheep Brain Dissection

This week, we really got into the brain anatomy more deeply and did the sheep brain dissection.  First, we discussed human brain anatomy and watched this movie.  It goes through some basic brain anatomy and uses a 3D model system to show different parts.  We also discussed a variety of brain topics, including watching this video of a girl who had half of her brain removed due to severe epilepsy.  During the video, I went over these details:

• The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body
• So, her paralysis on the left side of her body shows that it was the right side of her brain that they removed in the surgery.  
• It's pretty amazing that the remaining half of her brain was able to take over a lot of the work of the missing half, so that she can walk and talk, and the droopiness of the left side of her face became much less noticeable.  She was able to re-learn most of what she needed to and is doing well in school
• They did not remove some of the very deep structures of the right side of her brain, because they are important for basic things like breathing and keeping the heart beating.

We talked about another brain disease before the dissection, which was Parkinson's Disease.  I showed the students what part of the brain is affected when you have PD, which a small area called the substantia nigra.  The reason it is called that is because it is one of the only naturally pigmented areas of the brain, and it looks like little iron filings scattered in a mustache shape deep in the brain.  People don't have any symptoms until about 90% of the neurons there have died.  They first notice a little twitch, like in their pinky finger, and then they gradually develop a tremor.  The tremor can be treated for a while with various drugs that make it go away for a few hours, but then it keeps coming back and getting worse and worse.  Eventually, the person has more and more problems and passes away, typically after 20 or more years of symptoms.  For the homework, we will explore a surgical technique to help with PD symptoms.

The above image is a view of the brain by a coronal section, as illustrated in the small figure.  We talked about cutting a brain horizontally and sagitally too.  Here is a picture of the different ways of cutting the brain.  During most of my research, I have done sagittal sections of brain, and that is what we did for the sheep brain dissection.  To do a sagittal section, we cut the brain down the middle from above.  

For the dissection itself, we followed the student guides and also this procedure.  Some things we talked about during the dissection:

A view of the dissected sheep brain

• Meningitis is when the membrane covering the brain (called the meninges) gets infected.  It is very serious and can kill you, because swelling within the skull causes high pressure, which then squishes the brain and causes irreversible damage.
• The bulges all over the surface of the brain are called gyri (plural of gyrus), and the grooves are called sulci (plural of sulcus).
• There are a lot of nuclei in the brain (plural of nucleus), which are groups of neurons that do some specific function.
• The hypothalamus is a small structure near the brainstem that has several nuclei.  One of them controls things like hunger, thirst, and sleep.
• The pituitary is a gland that releases hormones, including growth hormone to tell the body when it should grow.
• Sheep have large olfactory bulbs that they use for understanding smells in their world.  Most mammals rely more on smell than we humans do, and their brain olfactory areas are proportionately larger.
• The cerebellum is important for learning motor skills, like riding a bike, mirror writing, and throwing a ball.
• My neuroscience program has several sets of prism glasse
  
  s they use for demonstrations.  You throw a ball into a basket very easily, then put on the glasses.  Now, you start missing the basket.  If you keep trying, your cerebellum helps make the right adjustments to your throwing and you start to get baskets again.  Then when you take them off, you start missing again and need to keep practicing to adjust back to how to throw.  This all happens within seconds to minutes!  Learning to ride a bike takes a bit longer, but once you get the hang of it, you don't use your cerebellum much for that skill anymore.



The ventricles of the human brain

• A man who had a major memory impairment due to stroke lost his ability to make new conscious memories.  Everyone he met after his stroke he promptly forgot who they were.  But he worked with researchers over many years who taught him motor skills like mirror writing.  While he had no memory of ever trying the task, his skill improved at it, showing that the motor learning happened in a different part of the brain than his stroke damaged area.
• The corpus callosum is where axons from neurons in the brain cross over from one side to the other.  Surprisingly, people function pretty well if their corpus callosum is cut or never forms.
• Ventricles in the brain are areas with fluid in them instead of cells.  The fluid that the brain and spinal cord sit in is called CSF, or cerebrospinal fluid, and it helps keep the brain healthy.

Brain Video

Hey my mom showed me and my brother this video and thought it might be good for tomorrow sorry for doing the homework late

Hope u guys get a kick out of it like we did