Sheep Eye Dissection

4/26/16

Sheep Eye Dissection Analysis

1. Observed outside of the eye. Identified fatty tissue, cornea, extrinsic muscles. Fatty tissue cushions the eye while in the socket. Cornea is for protection mostly. Extrinsic muscles help move the eye.
2. Identified optic nerve and sclera. Removed the fatty tissue and extrinsic muscle. Optic nerve connects to the brain and sends signals. Sclera is very tough and is what makes up the eye.
3. Made an incision halfway between cornea and optic nerve. Cut through sclera to open the eye. Identified lens, vitreous humor, choroid, blind spot, retina, tapetum lucidum. Lens focuses light on the retina. Vitreous humor helps the eye maintain its shape. Choroid brings blood with oxygen and nutrients to the eye. Blind spot is where the one spot where the retina is attached. Tapetum lucidum reflects light onto the retina.
4. Identified ciliary body and back of iris. Ciliary body helps change shape of the lens and secretes aqueous humor.
5. Removed vitreous humor and lens. Identified suspensory ligaments, lens, vitreous humor. Suspensory ligaments keep lens in place. 
6. Removed cornea. Identified iris, pupil, and aqueous humor. Iris regulates pupil size. Pupil controls how much light is let into the eye. Aqueous humor helps to also maintain shape of the eye.

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PC: Alexandria Tsao

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Moving Toward the End

4/18/16

20 Time: Fourth Update

The past few weeks have been pretty busy with spring break, college trips, and tons of finals. I have continued research on how the arts are beneficial to older people (teenagers, adults, elderly). It's been interesting to see how the arts help the elderly with maintaining good mental health (link) especially when we all have older loved ones in our lives; this information really applies to all of us sooner or later.
A few setbacks have taken place with the lack of posting and scheduling difficulties. I don't want to be the only one posting on the page, yet it is a lot harder to convince everyone else to post. Perhaps I will send out a mass Facebook message to encourage people to participate in my project. On the second issue, my friend and I were set to film the video sometime this month; however, both she and I were out the entire spring break and could not meet up when we were an whole country apart. I do believe that we will film it sometime in the next few weeks since we keep pushing the date off due to school events.
I guess my next steps are to send out that Facebook message, have some friends to some advertising, and really adhere to filming dates.

The Clay Brain

4/14/16

The Clay Brain

  We created a clay brain in class today. Basically we put together a 2D model of the brain from two views: the left hemisphere along the sagittal plane and the right cerebral hemisphere. Each region is color coded and a key was made at the bottom for easy identification. 

"The Woman with a Hole in Her Brain"

4/13/16

"The Woman with a Hole in Her Brain"

  A 24- year old woman went to a hospital in China complaining of nausea and dizziness. She also has had problems with walking steadily and was a slow developer as a child. After a CAT scan, doctors found that the woman was missing her cerebellum, a region underneath the two hemispheres that makes up 10% of the brain. The cerebellum is known as the "little brain" as it contains a different structure, made up of denser folds and contains 50% of the brain's neurons. Most people die with such a condition and normally suffer from conditions like severe mental impairment, movement disorder, epilepsy, or buildup of fluid.

  On a similar topic, if one was missing or damaged their occipital lobe, he/ she would probably live. They, however, would possibly have symptoms like loss of some/all vision, inability to identify colors, or hallucinations (brainandspinalcord.org). Since damage to the occipital lobe affects the vision, the body would lose visual function and perception, and therefore would  need to compensate. In an effort to rebalance the body, the other sense would have to work more. The brain does this by sending the signals from the occipital lobe to other parts of the brain such as the temporal lobe, which processes sound (NCBI).