20 Time Final Post! (for now)

As people who have been keeping up with my 20 Time blog know, I have been working towards seeing if trying new things makes people happier. So after collecting data and talking to different people about trying new things and being happy, I had enough data to talk about the benefits of trying new things. I found that trying new things does lead to increased happiness levels, unless the 'new thing' tried relies on the reaction of another person and that reaction is a negative one. 

I am generally not a fan of speaking in class, let alone presenting in front of my class. What I kept telling myself, however, is that the TED talk is different in the sense that I am the one who researched and collected data for this topic. No one will criticize my knowledge of the topic or try and weaken my points as I obviously know it the best, after all the work I put into it. Everyone in the class was there to hear what I had to say, not analyze it and pick it apart.

Because of my nerves, I forgot to talk a bit more about my research but watching my TED talk I think I covered my points pretty well regardless, but if I could go back I would have mentioned it. I agree with the way I was graded, obviously I lost points for my timing but apart these things, I covered everything I had practiced at home which makes me happy. It definitely made me feel more confident overall. For people who have to do a TED talk, I really would advise practicing in front of other people. It feels weird at first, but once you're up in front of a group of people and doing the real thing you won't feel as uncomfortable.

I really enjoyed watching the other presentations. I heard some people comment about how boring it was to have to hear everyone speak but I had a very different reaction. Seeing the culmination of weeks of work and people's interests was fascinating to me. I learnt a lot not only about the different topics but also about the people in our class.

I'm really pleased that we did this project. It forced me to manage myself and my time in a way that no other teacher has before, and I think it was an excellent experience. I've grown as a person because of this project. As I keep mentioning on my blog, I've learnt to be more patient and understanding with people. And I've gained confidence in myself too. I wouldn't trade doing this project for anything.

Reflexes Lab

In this lab we tested different reflexes of the the body. In class, we learnt that reflexes are involuntary responses due to stimuli. We tested the autonomic reflex (pupil size), knee jerk reflex, the blink reflex, and the plantar reflex. We also tested reflexes in accordance to response time, to see how texting while driving affects our response time.

1. Photopupillary Reflex
This reflex makes the pupil contract when bright light is shone into it. When light was shone into my eye, my pupil rapidly decreased in size. My other pupil was still dilated. After the light was removed, my pupil dilated once more. I think this reflex happens to protect our eyes from bright lights, and in contrast, I think pupils dilate to let more light in and help us see better in dark environments.

Change in pupil size

2. Knee Jerk Reflex (Patellar Reflex)
This reflex makes the lower leg swing out and kick when the spot just below the knee cap is hit. This one is quite odd. I tried telling myself not to kick out, but I genuinely couldn't do anything to stop my leg kicking out. I wonder if this reflex was to move out of harm's way -  before we could think about it, our bodies would have our muscles in our legs moving.

3. Blink Reflex
The blink reflex makes a person blink when something is thrown at them. This one happened, every time a cotton ball was thrown at my face, even through a glass window, I blinked. This reflex is clearly to protect our eyes when things come flying towards our faces.

4. Plantar Reflex
The plantar reflex showed whether a person's toes curled over when the foot was stimulated or if they spread apart. For me, my toes curled over, but if they spread apart, it is a sign of Babinski's, a sign of nerve damage if the test is not being done on a newborn. I think this happens to protect the sole of the foot, the curling of the toes is very characteristic of protecting.

5. Reaction Time Reflex
This reflex is about how fast we react to something we see. We also tested how speed when we were texting. The majority of people slowed right down when they were texting, which teaches us an invaluable lesson about how dangerous texting and driving is. The bar chart below displays the change in reaction time of our class. Our brains react to the images our eyes capture, but while texting, we can't focus solely on paying attention to our surroundings. We can only see our surroundings out of the corner of our eye due to the focus on our phones. Multi-tasking when driving is not safe.

Sheep Brain Dissection

1. 

2. Cerebrum: higher brain function (thought/ activity)

Cerebellum: coordinate/ regulate muscular activity

Brain stem: transport information to and from the brain

3. Myelin increases the speed of nerve function.

4. 

5. Thalamus: involved in sensory/ motor signal transportation and the regulation of consciousness and sleep

Optic nerve: carries images from our retina to our brain so they can be interpreted

Medulla oblongata: helps regulate respiration and circulation

Pons: connector for cerebrum and cerebellum

Midbrain: part of the CNS associated with vision, hearing, motor control, sleep/wake, alertness, and temperature regulation

Corpus callosum: connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain

Hypothalamus: produces many of the body’s essential hormones

6. 

Relate & Review

In the brain dissection, we cut the sheep brain in half and identified the different parts of the brain. We used pins to mark the different sections. The brain was weirdly squishy, totally different to what I expected but very interesting. The brain also looked really similar to diagrams, which sometimes what we dissect doesn't, but the little parts of the brain were a little difficult to identify. It was also weird how similar the sheep brain was to diagrams of the human brain. We did figure it out in the end though. It was really cool to hold an actual brain and dissect it, I think we're all really lucky to have been able to do this lab.

The brain cut in half

The brain with all the pins in it, identifying the different parts

The initial identification of major parts and front/ back

 

Sheep Eye Dissection

In the lab, we dissected a sheep eye. The eye below is fully intact, the cornea covering the front of the eye, and the sclera covering the rest. 

First we cut away any fat (yellow) or muscle left on the sclera, then we cut into the sclera. It was really tough and thick - much tougher than I expected it to be. After we finally made it through the sclera, we cut all the way around it, turning the eyeball into two hemispheres.

 We had to be careful to not cut the optic nerve. We got really lucky in that our cut was right where we wanted it to be. On the anterior half (left in photo), we had the part of the eye that is visible to the world. In it, was a gelatinous vitreous humor.

The vitreous humor maintains the shape of the eye. On the posterior half (right in photo) the retina on our sheep eye was still intact over the choroid coat.

 The retina is where images focused by the lens are collected. The underlying choroid coat nourishes the back of the eye. It has the tapetum lucidum, which is bluish in color and gives animals their night vision. It was fascinating to see that the retina is only connected to the eye in one spot, the blind spot. The blind spot is the spot on the retina where images cannot be focused. We then tipped the vitreous humor out of the front half of the eye. It tipped out quite easily, and we were met with the lens.

The lens focused light and is connected to the eye by suspensory ligaments. The lens will flatten or thicken depending on what needs to be seen. Now, we could also see the other side of the cornea. It was cloudy, because it was not in the living state. It is also to focus light. We could also see the ciliary body underneath it, which looked a bit like the underside of a mushroom.

The iris was brown/ black in colour, and overall the cornea had an oval shape, where humans have a circular cornea. 

Clay Brain

This is the clay brain model our group made in class. It was a model of the left hemisphere along the sagittal plane, and the right cerebral hemisphere. The left hemisphere included the diencephalon, the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the pineal gland, brain stem, midbrain, pons, medulla oblongata, the cerebellum, the spinal cord, the pituitary gland. The right cerebral hemisphere included the occipital lobe, parietal lobe, frontal lobe, cerebellum, transverse fissure, parieto-occipital sulcus, postcentral gyrus, central sulcus, precentral gyrus, and lateral cerebral sulcus.

The Woman with a Hole in her Brain

This article just goes to show how adaptable the human body is. The featured woman was 24 years old when it was discovered she is missing her whole cerebellum and despite a few struggles with motor skills and speech, she manages just fine. It begs the question: could we survive with other parts of our brain missing? The article says it is not unheard of to be missing parts of the brain. We know that a missing cerebellum creates a few impediments, but what does a missing brain part mean for longevity, or long-term health concerns?

From my research, it appears that theoretically a person could survive without a parieto-occipital sulcus. The parieto-occipital sulcus is the ridge between the parietal lobe and the occipital lobe. person may also have a connected parietal and occipital lobe, leading to a whole new breed of problems. It appears to help with planning things - so maybe a person would struggle with forethought without it. The frontal lobe is also involved in planning, so it is possible that if the parieto-occipital sulcus was missing, the frontal lobe could just take over. 

Unit 7 Reflection

Unit 7 is all about the muscular system. We began with how synovial joints let us perform different actions, for example, flexion and extension. We created mini dances that included all the different movements and performed them in front of the class. It was all in good fun, but also uniquely helpful in memorizing each different synovial movement. We also learnt the basic anatomy of muscles: the major muscles in our body, and in a chicken (by dissection), such as the major and minor pectoralis, the deltoid, and the trapezius. The dissection was really cool - seeing all the different muscles and how similar they are to a humans was really impressive.

We then moved onto how muscles are separated and classified into different groups. Next, we zoned in and learnt about how muscles specifically work, right in each muscle fiber. I found the sliding filament theory particularly interesting - how the muscle shortens and lengthens when contracting and relaxing. We made a short video showing how a muscle works. It was challenging, finding a way to portray it clearly, but it was a great learning experience and it was cool how we made an actual short movie on it. Next, we moved onto how muscle fibers respond to different exercise - slow oxidative fibers in marathoners, fast oxidative fibers in a regular person, and fast glycolytic fibers in high intensity/ short burst workout, like sprinters. Finally, we covered performance enhancing substances and how the affect the mind body. The mini project for this section was that we made a satirical ad promoting P.E. substances.

The thing that really stood out to me about this is that none of them are FDA approved, or regulated in anyway, which in turn makes them all very unsafe for consumption. 

I'm really interested in learning more about performance enhancing substances, not only in the body, but those made for the mind as well. They are all so dangerous but many people treat them like no big deal - maybe not the ones aimed at body-building, but the ones that aid in focus and improve mental performance. Overall, I like a lot how my 20 time project is coming along, I'm really satisfied with my progress so far. Going back to my New Year's Goals, I am still working on more actively participating in class but in small groups I am participating a lot more. I am sleeping a fair amount every night - losing an hour to daylight saving wasn't great but I'm making it work the best I can. For horse riding, I am working hard to get to where I want to be - and hopefully a new horse is coming my way in the near future!