20 Time Reflection

      I can't believe we finished presenting our TED Talk! The semester went by so fast and I'm proud of the presentation Alyssa and I gave! We achieved our goal of informing people about the drought through our TED talk. We talked about the causes of the drought relating to agriculture, specifically the types of crops that are grown in California and factory farming. We also found solutions to the drought like desalination, drip irrigation, and recycling water. We didn't get to our final project: filmed interviews of people in our community asking them what they thought about the drought. This way we could find out what the public already knew about the drought. We didn't want to ramble off about things that everyone already knew about during our TED talk. We also would have liked to talk to some officials, people who study the drought every day and how it's affecting our community. The most successful part of our project was the survey we put out. We got almost 50 responses and it helped us find the focus of our project.

 (Links to an extOur TED Talk!

      Our TED talk went well! I did talk quickly because I was a bit nervous. There was just so much information Alyssa and I wanted to include in our project but we had to stick to the time limit. While prepping for the presentation, we had gone on talking for a really long time. We were really passionate about the subjects and we wanted to share everything we had learned with the class. It was hard to cut down on the info. In all I learned that you really need to plan out a timeline for big projects. I think the reason we sort of fell behind in was because we only planned what we needed to do for a week, not for multiple weeks. We also didn't find the focus for our project very early on, since the drought has so many different aspects. So time management will be something that I continue to work on. I also learned a lot about teamwork. This 20 Time project was a great experience especially because I got to work on something that I'm passionate about and will help the environment! 

Reflexes Lab Analysis

      In this lab we tested our reflexes! First, we tested the photopupillary reflex. The smooth muscles in our eyes control the size of our pupils. If an intense light is shined into the eye, the pupil's size decreases keeping all the light from entering and damaging the eye. This reflex protects the photoreceptors in our eyes.

      Next, we tested the knee jerk reflex. At first, we didn't get any results. But after multiple tries and help from other people, my leg moved involuntarily. It was a very weird feeling. My patella tendon had flexed. I learned that this reflex is what helps us keep balance while walking and running. After doing a few squats, we tested the reflex again. This time my leg didn't move. This is probably because my thigh muscles were fatigued from the squats. There was not enough ATP in my leg for the muscle to contract.

      We also tested our blink reflexes. Even with a shield to cover our eyes from the cotton ball, both of us blinked when we saw it coming towards us. This reflex protects objects from flying into our eyes and damaging them. Then, we tested the plantar reflex. When dragging a pen up the foot, the toes flex and move close together. People with Multiple Sclerosis are more likely to show Babinski's sign. If there is nerve damage in the foot, the toes spread apart instead of together.

     Lastly, we tested our response time to something that we see. It took me an average time of 0.20 seconds to catch a falling yardstick. While on my phone, it took me an average time of 0.29 seconds to catch the falling yardstick. It was hard to focus on catching the yardstick without looking at it. This is important for drivers to understand. The brain is not very good at multitasking, especially when it can't see one of the tasks it is doing. My response time was almost 0.10 seconds slower while texting. Those 0.10 seconds could mean the difference between life and death on the road.

Here are the average response times of our class!

Brain Map

Cerebral Cortex

• What do the frontal lobes do?
• The frontal lobes are the command center of the brain. They control personalities, problem-solving, memory, language, and judgement.
• What is the relationship between selective attention and learning?
• Selective attention makes your memory capacity greater so you can prioritize more important information above little-used information. 
• 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 of the brain to develop. To prevent the frontal lobe from deteriorating, always be engaged with your environment and transform information instead of just memorizing it. 
• What does the neo cortex do?
• The neo cortex helps us navigate our bodies. It controls our senses, spatial awareness, and motor skills.
• What is the role of the pre frontal cortex?
• The pre frontal cortex controls our personalities and our behavior in social situations. 
• What do we know about the pre frontal cortex’s relationship with multitasking?
• It prevents us from doing more than two big tasks at the same time. We can't actually multitask; our brain jumps back and forth between tasks, meaning we do both tasks inadequately.  
• Which part of the brain is associated with speech and language development?  Give an interesting fact about this region.
• Broca's Area is responsible for speech production and language development. Mirror neurons are found in this part of the brain and they to learn language production and comprehension.
• Which part of your brain is responsible for thinking the following: “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”
• The somatosensory cortex responds to touch and interprets temperature.
• What does your visual cortex do for you?
• The visual cortex differentiates colors and faces.
• State three interesting or significant facts about your occipital lobe.
• collects and catagorizes visual information to be stored in other parts of the brain
• deals with imagination and processing memories
• visualizing doing a task multiple times will help you perform that task better
• What would happen if your temporal lobes were damaged?
• If your temporal lobes were damaged, you wouldn't have a long term memory so you would forget things like faces and the alphabet.
• What is your “fast brain” and what does it do?
• The eye fields control eye movement and help the brain process movement quickly.

Neuron

• State 3 things that you could do that would influence your synapses, and have a positive affect on your life and health.
• Active learning, sleep, and exercise would influence your synapses. 
• What is the relationship between multi-sensory or multi-modal learning and your dendrites?
• By engaging multiple parts of the brain in storing information, the brain will convert the information from memorized to learned.
• How does “big picture thinking” and mnemonics affect dendrites and/or learning?
• "Big picture thinking" helps one to fully comprehend a subject. Mnemonics help us remember subjects based on personal or relatable information. 
• Describe a neurotransmitter that you feel is very important.  Justify your reasoning.
• Glutamate is a very important neurotransmitter because it helps with long term memory. It is also affects the way we learn and strengthens our synapses. 

Limbic System

• What does the corpus callosum do?
• The corpus callosum communicates between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. It is responsible for motor, cognitive, and sensory functions between the hemispheres.
• What is the relationship between music and the corpus callosum? 
• Studies have shown that musical practice can strengthen the communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. 
• Why is the thalamus important?
• The thalamus relays information from the senses to the cortex. It also processes some information.

I learned more about the way all the parts of the brain work together. I also realized that multiple parts of the brain had similar functions. I think that's why if one part of the brain is damaged, it can still function normally, because the other parts of the brain take over for it. I learned about different neurotransmitters like oxytocin, glutamate, and dopamine. I learned the parts of the limbic system that I didn't really know about before like the basal ganglia and amygdala. 

Sheep Brain Dissection

We dissected a brain!  First, we took off some of the meninges. Even though the two hemispheres of the brain are only connected by the corpus callosum, it wasn't easy to pull both sides apart because of the meninges. I also noticed that in some of the parts where where the meninges were removed, the brain had lost it's structure. We marked the parts of the brain with pins. Then we cut the brain into the right and left hemispheres. At first, it was hard to identify some of the parts like the optic nerve, even though they were clearly seen in the book. Lastly, we cut the cerebrum to see the center of it. It was very easy to tell white matter from gray matter.

Sheep Eye Dissection

Here's a picture of the eye before we dissected it! The oval shaped structure in the center is the cornea, which helps focus the light entering the eye. Surrounding the cornea is the sclera, also known as the white of the eye. The sclera is a tough outer coat that protects the eye. It was very hard to cut into it. On top of the sclera is fatty tissue and external eye muscle remnants that we cut off later.

Cornea and sclera seen from the outside of the eye.

Cornea and sclera seen from the inside of the eye.

The small bump on the top of the eye is the optic nerve which sends the visual information from the retina to the brain. 

Here is the eye cut into two hemispheres. On the left, there is the retina and tapetum lucidum. The retina, bunched up at the top on the left, contains the photoreceptors for vision. The blue part under the retina is the tapetum lucidum. It's part of the choroid layer and reflects light onto the retina. The choroid is the black layer that  nourishes the back of the eye. The tapetum lucidum isn't found in humans, but it is in the eyes of many nocturnal animals to help them see at night. The ciliary body is in the right side of the eye. It is made up of muscles and controls and shapes the lens.

The round structure at the bottom of the picture is the lens. The lens changes shape to focus light on the retina. I thought that it would be squishy because it changes shape; however, the lens was hard like a marble. The liquid, which had the consistency of a gel, around the lens is the vitreous humor. It fills the central cavity of the eye. The suspensory ligament can be seen around the lens and connects the lens to the ciliary body.

This is the iris, or the colored portion of the eye. The hole in the center is the pupil. This is where light passes through into the eye.

The Clay Brain

     Our new unit is about the brain, so we made one out of clay in class! After looking through the textbook we started to outline the shape of the brain. We used different colored clay for each part of the brain and then labelled the parts. We shaped the bigger parts of the brain first, like the frontal lobe and temporal lobe. Then we added the smaller parts of the brain like the transverse fissure and central sulcus in between the lobes. This activity helped me learn the names of parts of the brain and how they all are connected.

Missing Parts of the Brain?

     This article is about a woman was able to survive for 24 years without a cerebellum. The cerebellum is essential for motor control, muscle memory, and speech. It modifies the motor commands before sending them to the muscles to make sure the command is accurate. The cerebellum also has about half of the total neurons in the brain. This would explain why the woman had problems keeping balance while walking and felt dizzy. Missing part of the brain is a rare case; cases like these reveal how the brain is able adapt and continue to function even without a large part of it.
     The lateral cerebral sulcus separates the frontal and parietal lobes from the temporal lobe. The sulci are the grooves in the brain. These folds help the brain take in more glucose and oxygen and help the brain fit into our skull. The more grooves an organism's brain has, the more complex functions the organism can perform. An absence of these grooves is known as lissencephaly, which causes developmental delays and brain malformation. Polymicrogyria is a condition where there are too many folds in the brain which can cause neurological problems like seizures, delayed development, and muscle weakness.