Mapped Out Brain

For this assignment, we were asked to look at a 3D model of a brain on this website, and answer these following questions related to what we observed. 

Cerebral Cortex:

1. What do the frontal lobes do?

-They are the command center of the brain, so they affect personality, problem solving, language, and judgement.

2. What is the relationship between selective attention and learning?
- selective attention is when you categorize things that you hear into important and unimportant, therefore only remembering the ideas that you think are important. 

3. What is the last part of your brain to develop and what can you do to prevent it from deteriorating? 

-the frontal lobe is the last part to develop. In order to have it not deteriorate, you need to be engaged in your environment.

4. What does the neo cortex do?

-Controls your senses, spatial awareness, and motor skills.

5. What is the role of the pre-frontal cortex? 

-Controls your personality, social interactions, decision-making, perception, memory, will, and planning.

6. What do we know about the pre-frontal cortex’s relationship with multitasking? 

-It is impossible to multitask. In reality, all we are doing is switching from one task to the other rapidly, resulting in low quality work. 

7. Which part of the brain is associated with speech and language development? Give an interesting fact about this region. 

-Broca's area, which is responsible also for allowing one to learn sign language as well as regular speech. 

8. Which part of your brain is responsible for thinking the following: “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”  

-The somatosensory cortex 

9. What does your visual cortex do for you?

-It distinguishes colors and identifies objects.

10. State three interesting or significant facts about your occipital lobe.

-The occipital lobe deals with both long- and short-term memories, as well as autobiographical events (both real and imagined). It is also engaged when you visualize yourself doing a task. Studies have shown that visualizing yourself doing a task over and over can improve your performance in real life.

11. What would happen if your temporal lobes were damaged?

-This would cause long-term memory loss. You would not be able to remember things like the alphabet, so you would not be able to read.

12. What is your “fast brain” and what does it do? 

-Your "fast brain" is your eye fields. They are called this because they can pick up information in a few milliseconds, faster than the rest of the brain.

Neuron: 
13. State 3 things that you could do that would influence your synapses and have a positive affect on your life and health. 

-Exercising, eating healthy, and sleeping all improve the health of your synapses.

14. What is the relationship between multi-sensory or multi-modal learning and your dendrites? 

-Multi-sensory or multi-modal learning is when you engage multiple parts of your brain, using a variety data stored in your brain. When this happens, your dendrites are stimulated, resulting in better memory.

15. How does “big picture thinking” and mnemonics affect dendrites and/or learning?  

-When you use mnemonics, it takes abstract, meaningless facts and arranges it in a context that categorizes it with other information you have learned in the past, making it easier to remember. 

16. Describe a neurotransmitter that you feel is very important.  Justify your reasoning. 

-Acetylcholine is vital to have because it not only serves in motor control, which in and of itself is important, but also learning and memory. People who have Alzheimer's have an acetycholine deficiency.  

Limbic System: 
17. What does the corpus callosum do? 

-The corpus callosum connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, allowing you to process between sensory input and communication, as well as many other things. 

18. What is the relationship between music and the corpus callosum?  

-Music can strengthen the connection between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, but only if you practice music constantly. 

19. Why is the thalamus important? 

-It is involved with so many different functions, such as motor and sensory skills. 

Relate and Review:

I usually have problems remembering things, and one way that I can strengthen my memory skills is to exercise my brain by using "big picture thinking", or even learn how to train my brain to have selective learning. The corpus Callosum is very important to connecting the two hemispheres and without it, you wouldn't be able to look at a picture as well as say what it is out loud. As i said before, I believe that Acetylcholine is one of the most important neurotransmitters in the body because it aids in motor skills as well as learning and memory. This sounds very much like the job of the thalamus as well. If you have damage to your temporal lobe, you have long-term memory loss, which causes you to not be able to read, but i wonder if alzheimers has this too since it also deals with memory loss. Overall, i enjoyed looking at the 3D model of the brain and also enjoyed learning more about the connections.

Sheep Brain Dissection

Anterior (white), cerebrum (yellow), cerebellum (green), posterior (black), brain stem (red) 

During this lab, we dissected a sheep brain. Upon setting up our station, we identified the meninges surrounding the brain, which is there to protect the brain and spinal cord. After removing the meninges, we located the anterior and posterior sides, as well as the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brain stem. The cerebrum serves in higher brain function such as action and thought, the cerebellum received information from sensory systems, the spinal cord, and other parts of the brain, as well as regulates motor movement. We then cut the brain in half longitudinally and were able to see clearly the difference between gray and white matter. Gray matter contains the cell bodies, dendrites, and axon terminals, whereas white matter connects the different parts of gray matter with axons. From there, we located the thalamus, hypothalamus, optic nerve, medulla oblangata, pons, midbrain and corpus callosum.

Medulla oblangata (Orange), pons (blue), midbrain (black), thalamus (yellow), hypothalamus (white),  optic nerve (green), corpus callosum (red)

Sheep Eye Dissection Lab Analysis

For this lab, my partner and I had to identify key parts of a sheep eye. At first, we had to identify the eye lid, cornea, sclera (white part of the eye) and the fatty tissue. There was more fatty tissue than we had thought there could be, so we had to remove a lot of it. Next we turned the eye over to the posterior side and identified the optic nerve and the extrinsic muscle.  When we were at the point of cutting into the sheep eye, we had to go through the sclera which was very tough. On one half of the eye we identified the vitreous humor as well as the lens. On the other half was the retina which is a very small thin layer around the interior surface of the eye.  Once you remove the retina, which is very easy to peel off as it is only attached to the eye where the optic nerve is located, there is a vibrant aquamarine color underneath. When you look at the half where the lens was located, after you remove the license you can locate the iris and the people underneath.  Overall, this procedure was very fun and easy and I would definitely do it again.

Clay Brain

 For this in-class activity, we used clay to create a 2-D model of certain structures of the brain. We first looked at the left hemisphere from the right looking at the sagittal plane, and then a lateral view of the right hemisphere. Since the cerebrum was not included in the list, the brain is not fully filled. It was a little difficult to get the proportions of the structures right, but it was fun being able to use clay to construct the model.

Missing Brain Parts

"The Woman With a Hole in Her Brain":
-Imagine going to the hospital because you were feeling dizzy and having trouble walking to find out that you are missing a rather big part of your brain, the cerebellum. This is what happened to a 24 year old lady, but fortunately for her, the rest of her brain was able to take over most of the function of the cerebellum. These functions include motor skills, and balance. There are only 9 people known who were born with the cerebellum missing! Usually, this can lead to severe speech and movement impairment, and dangerous build-up of fluids, but lucky for the 24 year old, she only had slightly slurred speech and some other slight lack motor skills.



-So, what other parts of the brain can we potentially live without? The Corpus Callosum is neural fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Without this part of the brain, seizures may occur, followed by the inability to hold up your body(head up, sitting, standing, or walking). Mental and physical development will be impaired and the person will also have lack of visual and auditory memory. You can survive without this part of the brain, although with some of the effects listed above.

Power Hour Reading- Nervous System

Inside of a Dog-What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
"Umwelt: From the Dog's Point of Nose"

This book was about the behaviours of dogs and how owners tend to make assumptions of the dogs feelings based on their reactions to certain experiences in relation to how a person would react to it as well.

If you have an animal, you think that you know what the animal likes, dislikes, feels, etc., based on being around them for so long. One example of this that it shows it shows in the book is if your dog doesn't like to go outside when it is raining. You could take this as he doesn't like rain, or if you put a coat on the dog when it rains, it could be more likely that he feels dominated by the pressure of the rain coat. Domestic dogs don't usually feel dominated in the same way as wild dogs, but they still have that instinct in them that when something is pressing against their neck, that they have to show submission.

What Alexandra Horowitz encourages readers to do from the very beginning of the book is to try to forget everything you think you know about this dog. Pretend as if it is not only a stranger's dog, but maybe even a wild dog. Now, you would make assumptions of how the dog is feeling most likely by if their shackles are raised, if their tail is wagging, or if they are "smiling". You wouldn't "know" the dog's behavior as if it were your own.

Another example that the book had was about chickens. If chickens were like people they would tend to not pick a train full of hot sweaty people, but instead pick one that is more empty. However, if you put chickens into different parts of a house that is spacious, they tend to stick together rather than wanting their own space.

This just goes to show that humans tend to perceive animals based on their own like/dislikes and how humans would react to the situation. But, humans as individuals tend to react to different things differently even though we try to categorize animals as a whole.

This reading relates to everyday life and the class because people tend to make assumptions all the time about how they think certain people would react to something they would say or do. Like when we did our synovial Joint dances in class, many people would pick on another group to do their dance so that they didn't have to embarrass themselves and they feared what other people would think of them. (Assumptions)

Muscular System Reflection Unit 7

To start off with in this Unit, we learned about directional terms and joint movements. We learned a little bit about this in the last unit when talking about synovial joints, such as elevation/depression, plantar flexion, supination/pronation, and retraction/protraction. The next section we learned about was properties of muscle tissue such as contractibilty, excitability, extensibility, and elasticity. We then learned about different components of a muscle. There is the fascia, which is the thin sheet of fibrous connective tissue that hold the muscle fibers together; then there is epimysium, perimysium, and endomysium, which are the smaller building blocks that make up muscle fibers (a lot like the layers of skin and also similar root words found in the heart); and also tendons, which attaches the muscle periosteum to bone.


After learning about this section, we did a Chicken Dissection, and then did a blog post of the Chicken Dissection Lab Analysis. To sum that experience up, we cut into the chickens breast, back, wings and legs to find a whole list of certain muscles. 


Muscle Contractions are when a muscle contracts and the myosin and actin filaments slide past each other. This causes the muscles to shorten. There is a whole lot more to this process and we were told to make a stop motion video depicting how a muscle contraction worked: Stop Motion Video. This was pretty fun to make but it was a little difficult as well. None of the people in my group were great artists as you can probably tell so it didn't turn out as pretty as I had hoped. In part of it we were trying to have the picture to the left be out guide, and then we had to repeat that process three times. This was where the ATP attaches to the ATP binding site on the myosin crossbridge to move the muscle. The ATP turns into ADP+P and then the P flies off and the myosin head binds to binding site on actin. The ADP is then pushed off as well causing the myosin to swivel back to its resting state. 

The last thing we learned about was muscle enhancers. Commonly known ones are steroids, and athletes usually take them to boost heart rate and blood pressure to perform better. Different types of performance enhancers do different things, but they all have bad side effects. While some enhancers such as caffeine only make you jittery and dehydrated, other such as Erythropoietin can cause heart attack, stroke, or pulmonary edema. For Anatomy homework, a partner and I had to make a Satirical Ad on Performance Enhancers.

Even though this Unit was about muscle, we didn't really hit on the disease aspect of it. Since my sister has muscular sclerosis, I was hoping to learn a little bit more about that. Butt, throughout this unit, I learned a lot of others things. It was a lot of information to take in, but it was interesting.