Final Reflection

Unfortunately I did not make a blog for the cat dissection.  I couldn't really figure out how to caption the cat and I didn't really want to.  Besides that the images are pretty gross.  And disturbing.
I wasn't very good with most of our cat parts.  The muscles and reproductive system really tripped me up but I've been learning the other systems for years so most of that was pretty easy to identify.  I'm good with organs.
This class was very interesting and I learned a lot.  I don't know how I'll use most of the biology part of it but the basics of lab procedure will probably come in handy later.  (I wanna take an astronomy class in college if I can, maybe I'll do labs there?)  For the most part this year of anatomy has been an interesting look at the human side of biology.  But if you ask me what the bones of the torso are I won't be able to list a single one of them. :T
I hope the next group of anatomy students can use my blog to help them.  At least the post about the neuromuscular junction.
Bye bye high school!

How does equilibrium effect heart rate?

For our cardiovascular function lab some classmates and I decided to explore how heart rate and blood pressure are effected by a person's equilibrium.  Would they have a different blood pressure if they were dizzy?  If they were upside down?  Would a girl's blood pressure be different from a guy's?  We set out to study and test this problem.

Hypothesis: Changing the equilibrium of a person will change their blood pressure accordingly as the body will work to adjust to the new position.

Procedure:
We strapped a blood pressure monitor on the wrist of our first subject.  We had the subject sit still for 3 minutes so we could use those readings as the normal state because they would be upright and at rest, meaning there were no other factors to interfere with the results.
Next, we had them stand with their eyes closed for three minutes.  Standing with your eyes closed usually messes with your equilibrium.
After five minutes of sitting, the subject laid down on their side.  As the body is not usually on it's side we believed that the posture would also effect equilibrium.
Another five minutes of sitting and the subject hung upside down.  This was a little hard to accomplish in a classroom environment but we made it work by having the subject hang over the edge of their desk. I should have taken pictures, it was hilarious.
The last test was spinning.  We had the subject sit cross legged on a spinning office chair and I spun them around for 3 minutes.  It's a lot more effort to spin someone than I at first imagined.
We repeated this with the other three test subjects.
Graphs

The girls' systolic pressures stayed pretty close to each other.  As expected, systolic pressure varied from the normal pressure with their position and equilibrium.

The diastolic pressure of their bodies varied in much the same way as their systolic pressures.  As you can see, the diastolic pressure goes above and below the normal pressure depending on the body's equilibrium.

The pulse also followed the same trend as blood pressure.  So we can conclude from these graphs that both heart rate and blood pressure are effected by equilibrium.

Conclusion: Our tests and data confirmed our suppositions about equilibrium and heart rate.  Both blood pressure and heart rate will be effected by the position and equilibrium of the body because the body will try to normalize any state that is awkward or different from usual.  Apparently it is most usual for blood pressure and heart rate to increase with an abnormal position or equilibrium.

3rd Quarter Reflection

Biology is impressive.  In an entire quarter we've only covered two subjects of two tiny things, neurons and the heart, yet there was enough information on both of those things to fill an entire 9 weeks.  I can't believe we only studied the nervous system and the cardiovascular system with how much happened.

Of course, it is the end of those 9 weeks now, as in right now but probably a few hours ago.  And I'm a teeny bit late on posting my blogs.  I put off my anatomy blogs for fear of what they would contain but in the end I actually found them a lot easier to do than my chemistry blogs.  It was a nice surprise.  Next quarter I'll probably end up posting the chemistry blogs late instead since they're so much harder to do.  But hopefully not because that's what I'm trying very hard to fix.

As reflections go this one is pretty short.  Work sucks but I've got to do it before the fun comes back to kill me.  I'm an amazing intellectual, but I need to focus on being a better student instead.

♥ Cardiovascular System ♥

Those are probably Seth's hands.

The cardiovascular system contains a lot of information for only one organ.  This section was a lot of fun.  My favorite part was, of course, the ♥Valentine's Day Heart Dissection♥.  Besides all the Malouff worthy puns available in a ♥V-Day Heart Dissection♥ the event also suited my sense of morbidity.  The point of the heart dissection was to get familiar with the parts of the heart and what it really looked like.  My group dissected a pig heart because it was the closest in size to a human heart.  Besides pigs there were cows and sheep to choose from.  We split our heart in half and took the measurements to get an idea of how different areas of the heart worked and sent blood through.

After the dissection we had a little heart quiz.  Which I aced.  A couple more labels would have given me 100% but my brain vacates on quizes.  I'd have had 19 if he'd have counted that 'Heart' label.  I count it.

If you really care you can click it for a larger image.

The pretty colors were added after the quiz.  The blue shows unoxygenated blood and the red lines show the path of the blood after it's been oxygenated.  In case my hand writing is impossible to read the labels are, in order of blood flow, Superior/inferior venacava, right atrium, tricuspid valve, right ventricle, pulmonary valve, pulmonary artery, capilaries, alveola, pulmonary vein, left atrium, mitral valve, left ventricle, aortic valve, aorta, and the septum is in the middle of all that.  That's seventeen, I also labeled one of the lungs and he counted that even though he didn't count heart. :3 Considering the frightening state of all my other science quizes I'd better not complain.

The Nervous System

There is so much information about how the nervous system works that it's hard to believe it all fits inside our bodies, much less in a leech.  However, leeches happen to have this really convenient nerve along their backs that's easy to access and test.  In a virtual lab I was able to mess around with the leech's nervous system a bit.

Our bodies are full of neurons.  These neurons are the power behind the neuromuscular junction I talked about earlier.  Action potential starts in the cell body of the neuron and continues as a sort of electrical signal down through the axon, protected by myelin sheaths of fat, and through the axon terminal to become sensation.  Neurons pick up the sensations of what we touch or what touches us and transmits this electrical signal to the brain.  Touching a nerve activates the neuron so it can send the sensations to our brains to be processed.

I made this gif to give a visual of a nerve.  I regret it.

What does this have to do with a leech?  The nerve in the leech could be read with a machine.  Touching the nerve of the leech with the probe stimulated an electric response visible with an oscilloscope.  A micromanipulator helped place electrodes on the neurons.  After positioning the electrode I stimulated the nerve by touching it with a probe, a feather, and forceps.  Each produced a different signal with every cell.  I identified the cells by their signal using the chart below.  The leech lab was a good way to get a good idea of how nerves work without having to by all the 2,000 dollar equipment.

Chart from HHMI Virtual Lab

To wrap up our section on the nervous system our class split into groups and researched different projects relating to the nervous system.  My group and I researched schizophrenia.  I've done projects on schizophrenia before for classes like Psychology and Health.  From a biological perspective there's a lot of different information but it's a bit harder to find since most people only care about the psychological side of schizophrenia.  Regardless of that, I think we faired pretty well.

Schizophrenia on Prezi

Unfortunately I don't know as much about the nervous system as Tim Malouff.  I can't put it all into a huge slide show and teach it for five or more minutes unless I crack jokes and get off track the whole time.  It's an amateur knowledge but I accept it.