Nervous System Power Hour Reading

Neuron

The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a Complex World

Chapter's 1-2: (1) The Brain's Chief Executive: The frontal lobes at a glance and (2) Architecture of the brain: a primer.

This reading focused on the analogy of how the brain works as a CEO of a company; the company is the body and the brain is the CEO that looks after it but there are also other aspects such as the workers in the brain that carry out the functions. The area of the brain that is the executive is the frontal cortex of the brain because it is what makes the human identity.  Next, they talked about how messages get through the brain by using neurotransmitters to send signals through the synapses of different neurons. The neurotransmitters are the particles that are used to carry the information from synapse of one neuron to that of another neurons membrane holding the signal receptors that match that neurotransmitter.

Thesis: The brain is the executive of the body with the help of workers that do specific jobs in the brain to keep the body/company running smoothly/ in homeostasis; if not, changes must be made and or detrimental affects will occur.

The idea that this author is trying to get across is the scientific and informative area of the brain and how it works but also the way the brain makes us do things with out us knowing. His idea is both theoretical and practical because they have the information to entertain the general audience as well as the aspect that intrigues to readers actively learning about the brain. This reading relates to our class in the fact that it goes over the different parts of the brain, such as in chapter 2 the thalamus and ganglia basal were described to relate to the brains function and how certain neurotransmitters go all over the brain but also some go directly to a specific aspect of the brain. A related topic was if the brain was missing a part of the brain or a damaged part of the brain and how the brain would have to reteach another area to perform those tasks as well.

This source is credible because the author worked side by side with his professor to write this book. Plus this is his second book and the first is used by many scientists all over the world in "12 different languages".

The Woman Perpetually Falling!

A woman perpetually falling

"Her brain is decoding signals from her artificial vestibular apparatus... A neuroplastic miracle, because somehow the tingling sensations on her tongue move past her brain cortex to the area of balance"

The woman who is perpetually following is able to use the tingling sensation from her tongue to send signals to her brain that controls the balance in order to help the vestibular apparatus function normally. This makes sense because the brain will be able to use that area of the brain if activity is performed there. Also, this is a much quicker way than Pedro, a man recovering from a stroke who was paralyzed but taught his brain to carry out multiple functions, because instead of taking years to reteach the brain, they can send currents through it to help it work. 

Vestibular Apparatus

"Bach-Y-Rita determined that skin and it's touch receptors could substitute for a retina.... Allow a picture to form on them"
     
The idea that the skin can use touch receptors to substitute for an area is a great idea. Also, the idea that touch is not from skin, seeing is not from the eyes and hearing is not from the ears makes more sense because they are instead from the brain. This relates to why blind people use their walker to touch their surroundings and use their touch as their sight, or when mothers tell their kids to plug their noses when they eat broccoli because when you don't smell the food it is harder to taste it.     

This is the sensory scalpel

"he has developed a device for the NAVY SEALs that helps him cents how their bodies are oriented underwater. And another towel surgeons exact position of a scalpel to a small device attached to their tongues and to their brains"    
I find it astonishing how the device would increase the safety of surgeries and make it easier to perform surgeries by using signaled scalpel and have another place a touch of the tongue where you can use your sense in order to perform the surgery precisely.

Relate and review:

This article was intriguing in the idea that the five senses come from the brain and not from the ear nose tongue and skin. Having a person lose part of their brain and then have neurons and elect electrical signals to go through in order to control the brain is insane. Also, when a person be able to put a chip in their brain or put in an earpiece to have more signals go through their brain to the balance area? Next, having multiple parts of the brain take over the part that is missing is really cool and a very big step in Science because it can help the healing process of injuries that occur later in life to the brain or young infants you have brain damage from birth.

The Clay Brain

The Clay Brain

For our clay brain, we decided to outline our work with pencil first and number the different parts, for the left hemisphere looking from the sagital plane, we started with the brain stem which consists of the medulla oblongata, pons, and then the midbrain. This part of the brain controls digestion, heart rate, breathing, and sensory and motor nerves. Next came the cerebellum that controls balance and motion, and the Diencephalon; this has the thalamus, hypothalamus, and pituitary gland. The thalamus sorts data, the hypothalamus keeps body in homeostasis, and the pineal gland. Hanging off of the hypothalamus is the pituitary gland which secretes hormones when signaled. The very middle of the brain is the corpus callosum and near that is are the Basal Gangli which is a group of nuclei with the same function. 

Next we drew out the right side to show the lobes of the cortex. the first lobe is the Frontal lobe that gives us emotion and stability, then there is the parietal lobe which senses the environment, the occipital lobe which controls vision, and lastly the temporal lobe which controls language, hearing, and memory. Inside of the parietal lobe is the somatosensory cortex that control the sensors going in and the frontal lobe is the reaction  a.k.a the motor cortex that sends signals back.  Between the occipital lobe and the cerebellum is the transverse fissure, between the frontal and the parietal lobe is the central sulcus, and the postcentral and precentral gyrus is located in the front and back of the central sulcus. Between the frontal and the temporal lobe is the lateral cerebral sulcus and between the parietal and the occipital lobe is the parieto-occipital sulcus.

That is our Clay Brain!

A Woman with a Hole in her Brian!

A Woman with a Hole in her Brian!

In the article "The Woman with a Hole in her Brain", by Helen Thomson, a woman was admitted to a hospital in the Shandong Province after experiencing nausea and dizziness. Turns out she was missing her cerebellum; this part of the brain controls the body's motion and balance. At a young age she learned to speak later than most kids, age 6, and also was a later walker than most. Considering this, her motion most likely came from the temporal lobe or the parietal lobe because they have to do with speech and language. If those two lobes took over her motion and balance then she would be slow to function and develop in both areas, speech and motion. 

Hypothalamus: The hypothalamus is located south of the thalamus and controls the body's homeostasis (temperature, osmosis, etc). When signals are sent through the hypothalamus, the way the body keeps its homeostasis is by the secretion of hormones. I f a person were to be missing their hypothalamus, they would not grow properly, they would have hormone imbalance and they would have a hard time keeping a normal body temperature. Certain aspects of the hypothalamus can be controlled by the brain stem such as heart rate but the other aspects such as regulation of emotional hormones could be taken over by the frontal cortex and the signals for thirst or hunger could go through the somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe of the cerebrum cortex.

20% of Time 100% Natural

20TIME blog post #1

Natural stimulants

        20 time is where I am able to spend 20% of my time in class working on a project of my interest. My essential question, for my project, is how to heal those who have been trafficked or suffer from PTSD without the drugs that are prescribed by the government. 

        My project research will include learning about different neurotransmitters that are affected when drugs are in the system of a person. If I can figure out what natural smells or senses can trigger those same neurotransmitters for the same calm and joyous

feeling that drugs can, then the healing process will not be detrimental to the patients later in their lives. I chose this topic because my National Charity League class's senior project was to help this organization that creates backpacks for those who are rescued from being trafficked. We were told that 75% of those rescued go to drugs for comfort because they are afraid to go home; that made me think of other ways to help then and the way the brain works has always interested me so I decided to combine the two.

        I will be able to measure my progress by whether or not I've completed certain research topics. The first that I have completed is what parts of the brain the neurotransmitters associated with drugs, emotion, stress, and fear. The final research needed to be done is which drugs have similar transmitters to what natural oils, herbs, or plants and how they will be made into lotions, perfumes, candles etc. If I have spare time, I want to research the stimulants of certain colors and the effects they have on emotion and mood to hopefully add those in as well. My plan for moving forward is to follow my schedule and also get together with a lady I met from NCL who works for a natural oil company and interviewing her and having her help me put together my final product. Since she works for a natural oil company, she mentioned to me that she would like to see my final project to see if their company could so something simular. 

Unit 5 Relection

Unit 5 reflection

This unit was all about how the body is able to take in food, digest using enzymes, absorb, and the factors that help along the process.  To begin, our first topic was about the digestive system. This system is separated into the Alimentary canal and the accessory digestive organs. The main functions of the digestive system is to ingest, secrete, mix, digest, absorb, and defecate. Injection is anchored by the oral cavity containing the tongue that pushes food to the hard palate to create bolus and then sends down the soft palate through the pharynx (throat), and the esophagus into the stomach. the bolus is now called peristalsis. In the stomach, chemical changes, the stomach walls mash up the peristalsis by contracting, and the peristalsis is now chyme. The chyme leaves the stomach to go to the small intestine. In the small intestine the chyme goes through the duodenum, then Jejunum, and then the ileum. Most chemical digestion and absorption occurs here. 

There are accessory organs for the small intestine; the liver which produces bile for large fats, gallbladder, which stores bile for liver, and the pancreas, which produces enzymes. the enzymes used include peptidase, intestinal lipase, Maltase, sucrose, and lactose. The small intestine is lined with micro villi to increase absorption. 

Lastly the large intestine pulls out all of the water to dry out the undigested food. The large intestine is filled with bacteria to digest in small intestine and the rest that are eliminated end up in feces. Here large mounts of mucus is lubricated to help the process flow. the passage goes from the cecum to the appendix to the ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon, to the sigmoid colon, to the rectum, and lastly the anus. 

Next topic was the fuel metabolism; here most starch is used as energy along with parts of proteins, lipids, and vitamins. To begin, ATP is the universal energy carrier but it does not necessarily store energy, it stores the components to make a reaction to create energy. It can be generated by the oxidation of glucose, fatty acid, and amino acids. Stage one in extracting energy from food is  breaking down macromoluecules into their monomeres.  Stage 2 is turning the small molecules of monomeres into Acetyl CoA. Stage 3 is the Krebs cycle and the Electron transport chain. Now that we have gone over the energy portion here are the states of energy. The Fed State, also known as the absorption state, is when sugar is absorbed by the intestines and the pancrease releases insulin. The majority of glucose is converted into glucose but the rest is converted to triglycerides. The Fasting State is with in one hour of eating and the insulin drops while glucagon levels rise. THe glycogen is converted into glucose through glucuneogenesis, in the liver. To conserve the glucose for the brain, the body uses fats as energy and the liver converts fatty acids to Ketone Bodies by the help of Acetyl CoA. Ketosis is when there are too many ketone bodies in the blood stream. Next is the starvation state where muscles rely on adipose tissue for fuel and the fats are all depleted. Now thr body depends on the proteins for fuel. 

During exercise, the muscles rely on glycolysis for ATP creating lactic acid which  then absorbed by the liver and reconverted into glucose. This is called the Cori cycle. The liver is what stores the glucose for these incidences so that glyconeogenisis can perform. 

As stated in a previous blog, insulin signals the high glucose levels and causes storage tissue to promote fat storage while glucagon signals low glucose levels. Adrenaline and nor adrenaline increases the heart rate and activates the storage of fats and glucose into the adipose cells.  

To go off of high insulin levels, diabetes I is due to no insulin made there is no protein for insulin. Type II is when the body rejects insulin because all of the GLUT 4 transporters are trapped inside the cell. Exercise is able to increase the production of GLUT 4 to prevent diabetes. Type II comes from chronic high blood sugar levels. 

The endocrine system  includes the steroid and nonsteroid hormones, soluble and nonsoluble respectively. The endocrine system sends negative feed back when the body is not in homeostesis and there are different glands that help with the balance; pancrease regulates glucose transport and the thyroid glaand regulates metabolism. 

They lymphatic system, explained in detail in a previous blog, talks about lymph, a clear fluid, and how it flows through lymphatic vessels to send out T cells, B cells, Helper T cells and macrophages (white blood cells). The spleen carries the RBC's and the thymus holds and makes the WBC's. 

Through this unit, I have connected ideas to my health of how well I eat and the health of loved ones around me and how they are able to control diabetes or prevent it. Also my goals for this year to stay on task and get work done efficiently to be able to get sleep and hang out with friends more has been successful because I make time for my family and friends on my higher weekends and the weekends that I know I have a lot the next weekend, I stay at home to get the work done and not become the sterio-typical second semester senior.