The Women Who was Perpetually Falling Relate and Review

In an excerpt from The Brain That Changes Itself, written by Norman Doidge follows a scientist named Paul Bah-y-Rita, who has dedicated his research in aiding people to regain sensory control. It explains how he was able to help a woman named Cheryl Schiltz, who would perpetually fall because of her damaged vestibular apparatus. She shared that "There have been times... when [she] literally lose[s] the sense of the feeling of the floor ... and an imaginary trapdoor opens up and swallows [her]"(2). I found this extremely shocking because I could never imagine not knowing the feeling of the floor. It seems scary to think that you could feel like you're floating because your balance has been so damaged. Bach-y-Rita helped Cheryl solve her problem. He developed a hat for her to wear that sends electrical signals through her tongue to allow her to balance again. The hat worked and after wearing it Cheryl could balance normally for short periods of time: "Cheryl wore the hat for two minutes and the residual effect lasted about forty seconds. Then they went up to about twenty minutes, expecting a residual effect of just under seven minutes. But instead of lasting a third of the time, it lasted triple the time, a full hour"(8). I found this very intriguing because just after wearing this device, Cheryl was able to have normal senses for short spurts of time. This is amazing considering the fact that she had only 2% usage of her vestibular apparatus. Later in the article, the narrator explains that "old people are more frightened of falling than being mugged. A third of the elderly fall, and because they fear falling, they stay home, don't use their limbs, an become more physically frail"(7). I found this very surprising because getting mugged seems like a more reasonable fear to have than falling. The irony to this excerpt is that they only are making their fear more prone to coming true since they make themselves weaker by not moving around. As the article goes on, it explains how Bach-y-Rita goes on to make more devices to aid in the senses and becomes very successful in doing so. This relates to what we are learning about in class because it has to do with the function of the brain and how the different parts can be manipulated with machines to work again.

The Clay Brain

For this assignment, we had to create a model brain out of play-dough. My partner and I used different colors to represent a different part of the brain. 

The Women with a Hole in Her Brain

The article titled "The Women with a Hole in Her Brain" describes how doctors found that a woman that has no cerebellum in her brain. The women originally went to see the doctor when she was feeling light headed and the doctors discovered the missing cerebellum in her brain. The cerebellum controls much of the motor control and learning. Hence, she has always had trouble walking normally and learned to walk and talk at an older age than usual children. This relates to what we have learned because we are going over how the brain works and the different parts and functions of it.

The parieto-occipital sulcus is located at the posterior end of each hemisphere in the brain. The main part of this brain is to separate the occipital and parietal lobes in the hemispheres of the brain. Without this divider, the brain would still be able to function, but it would probably just not function as productively. A person could most likely survive without this part of the brain because it just separates two lobes. I don't think that any parts of the brain could take over this job since it just acts as a barrier.

Unit 5 Reflection

This unit covered the digestive system, fuel metabolism, endocrine system, and the lymphatic system. There are six main functions for the digestive system: ingestion, secretion, mixing/propulsion, digestion, absorption, and defecation. The digestion of food begins in the mouth where the tongue and teeth begin the digestion to transform the food into bolus. From the mouth, the bolus moves to the pharynx and down the esophagus to the stomach. After passing through the stomach and becoming chyme, the chyme enters the small intestine, which is separated into the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum. It then heads through the large intestine, which is composed of the ascending colon, transverse colon, and descending colon. It then goes through the rectum and exits the body through anus. The three stages of digestion are the fed state, where food is mostly absorbed; the fasting stage, where all the glucose in the bloodstream is used up; and the starvation stage, where the body solely relies on fat or protein for energy. Diabetes is a condition when the body cannot properly regulate its glucose levels. In type one diabetes, the body is unable to produce its own insulin. In type two diabetes, the body does not respond to insulin properly. The endocrine system is used to help send send signals throughout the body with hormones. The main functions of the lymphatic system are immunity, lipid absorption, and fluid recovery.

This unit went okay for me. These topics were more confusing to me than some of the other ones were in the past. The concept of the GLUT-4 transporters and how they worked. I also found it difficult to understand some of the concepts in fuel metabolism because there are many different ways that the body can get its energy from. However, I did understand the endocrine system well because in AP biology we covered cell to cell communications last semester so that helped me understand the concept a lot faster than I normally would.

During this unit, we did the Digestion System Lab, where we cut string to the approximate size of our own digestive systems. In this lab, I learned how long our digestive system actually was. It was surprising because it was much longer than I was tall and I did not expect it to be that long. We also read an article titled Does Your Metabolism Need an Overhaul? that explained how our muscles are what actually controls the metabolism the most. I found this article interesting because it explained how people can still have diabetes even when they are skinny since they would be doing cardio instead of working out their muscles.

I want to learn more about how our metabolism seems to slow down as we grow older. Adults are not able to eat the same way that they did when they were younger and I am curious to know what factors contribute to the slow down of metabolism.

I have not been doing well on my new years goal at all. I have not been working out everyday since I've been lazy and tired. To fix this I need to motivate myself more into working harder. I also wanted to connect to what we learn to how it relates to me in my everyday life. The digestive system really relates to what I do on a day to day basis because I always eat food. Also, learning that metabolism is directly related to working out your muscles has made me realize that I should also work my muscles out as well.