Thank you for your kind attention...

Halfway to Christmas!!  I am enjoying the light and the warmth and beauty of these fine fall days.

I hope you are finding our study of the brain an interesting endeavor, and that your mind is expanding even as you practice discerning the difference between a supported scientific claim  and what is really only an opinion--and also telling the difference between a good and bad opinion.  I am fine with you having your own as you seek both wisdom and truth.

I would love to hear what your opinion is, especially as you look at some of the new studies on the teenage brain.  Agree/disagree??  There are six segments to the long video, and the first is really annoying, but don't give up, it should pick up.

Happy diligent studying.
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Current Events:  10 years ago we finished mapping the human genome, now underway is an effort to map the neural connections of the brain.  It's called the Connectome.

1. The human connectome. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain when it is at rest (sometimes called resting state fMRI) has emerged as a powerful approach for detecting correlations of large, infrequent fluctuations in activity levels across functionally related brain areas. A collaboration across 35 laboratories in 10 countries compared patterns of brain-function connection (called connectomes) in 1,414 volunteers, yielding harmonized brain maps based on age and gender.² As with the human genome, this functional connectome is important not only for providing a reference wiring map of the human brain, but also demonstrating intriguing, stable individual differences. New projects on the human connectome, supported via the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, will be exploring individual differences and developing more precise tools for measuring connections in the human brain. http://www.humanconnectome.org/consortia/
   

Technical Difficulties...AAARRRGHGHGH!!!

Sorry about the short class yesterday, and the lesson in frustration.  Oh, you didn't mind the short class??? then sorry about the long homework and  the lesson in perseverance. [insert maniacal laughter here.]   Homework will be posted as soon as I can figure out this mess...  My brain hurts.

Muscle Memory

This week finishes off our first section of A&P which covered a lot of vocabulary as well as the skeletal and muscular systems, from the microscopic view through the tissues, organs and organ systems.  For homework, we will complete our study of the motor unit/sarcomere, complete our posters of the muscle system and put some sense into all those words naming the muscles.  And we will review the vocabulary and diagrams that we have covered up till now.  I have added two more pages, besides the homework assignment, for ongoing review: Nomenclature review (which is vocabulary- think of naming things "nomen"  and "clad" in groups) --lots of Quizlets, actually.  Reviewing with Pictures is a compilation of the diagrams and illustrations that encapsulate our first 6 weeks.

And to start off, a lesson on learning.

Make Your Sarcomere Model At Home!

OK, so we will do for homework what I could not manage in class: our goal is to make a model of the sarcomere, that smallest of structural units that make up our muscles.  I will give you a list of videos you can watch and you can also find your own resources (just google it) and using what you can find around your house, make a model to bring into class, and be prepared to explain how it works--also known as "THE SLIDING FILAMENT THEORY"

just to get you going:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Z7IijeTDg&feature=related

There may be a few extra videos too.  But the main thing is...Model a Sarcomere!  (see homework page on side)

Dem Bones

I love this picture, but it needs a caption.  What should it be?  Please leave a comment.






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Homework page is NOW COMPLETED.  Great class, I thought.  You guys are a delight to teach.

Just a note: it would be good to look over your notes shortly before class.  If you, like me, enthusiastically do all the homework on Tuesday, or even Friday, it is likely that you will have forgotten a lot by Monday.  Long-term learning requires that you go back over the materials several times over a period of days and weeks.  It really takes very little extra time when you get into the habit.