Owl Pellet Lab Analysis

In this lab we analyzed the contents of an owl pellet. The goal of doing this was to determine the organism that the owl had eaten by analyzing the different bone structures of the animal. By inspecting these animal bones the type of animal it was can be determined by looking at key features of different parts of the bone. In this lab, we were given a chart that displayed the different types of animals that it could be and pictures of the unique bone structures. Some key features that we looked for in our animal included the skull, pelvis, tibia, and fibula. Unfortunately, the specimen that we obtained did not contain a skull so different means of identifying the animal had to be taken. Instead, we primarily focused on identifying the pelvis, tibia, and fibula.

After putting together all the bones that we found, we determined that the animal that we obtained was a vole. Although the data was somewhat inconclusive, some key features from the bones pointed to the animal being a vole. We were able to come to this conclusion because the some key features in our specimen matched the features in the chart that was given. For example, the pelvis of our animal matched the most closely to the pelvis of a vole. The triangular shape of the pelvis matched the picture of it on the chart that we got. Also, the superior side of the bones matched the thickness of the picture of the vole's pelvis. The gap that the bones make when they meet also was similar to the chart since it was much smaller than that of a shrew's. Also, the tibia and fibula were very similar to the vole's. The curve of the fibula when it bend over to the tibia was similar in that it was bent at about a 90 degree angle. This key feature distinguished it from that of a shrew's because the shrew's fibula bent at more of a 120 degree angle.

The fibula and tibia were similar to the ones on the human body because they are both connected and located in the lower leg. In both the human and vole, one bone was larger than the other; however, in the vole, the fibula was larger, while in a human the tibia is much larger. Also, the gap between the two bones on the vole was much larger and circular than it is in a human. This displays how these organisms have very similar features, but are unique in their own ways.

Another structure that was similar to a human's was the pelvis. Both pelvises have a gap, where the bones form loops. However, the pelvis of the vole is more triangularly shaped than the human's. The human pelvis is much wider and contains another large gap in it.

The spine of a vole was remarkably similar to the spine of a human. Both of the spines had individual pieces that connected together. Both spines appeared to have jagged edges, but the individual pieces of a human spine are much more round. The voles' spine is very jagged all around.

Nervous System Extra Credit

Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings   By: Gary L. Wenk

In book titled Your Brain on Food, which is written by Gary L. Wenk, talks about how the many different neurotransmitters and food in our everyday diet affect our brain. Throughout this whole book, Wenk expands on the concept that he explains by bringing up different instances that he himself has experienced, or past examples in history. He is successful in creating a compelling book that is both engaging and informative. The main point that Wenk argues in his writing is that the brain is an advanced organ in our body that can constantly become affected by our many foods in our diet. Because of this people need to eat less food since food in volumes because too much of anything never has positive health effects in our body for the long run, which can cause long lasting effects.

In the book, Wenk brings up lots of different drugs and neurotransmitters that each affect the brain in its own unique way. Throughout the whole book he explains how the drugs affect the brain and how nowadays scientists are able to change the chemical components of drugs to enable them to be more effective by making them more lipid soluble, allowing them to pass through the blood-brain barrier with much more ease. This scientific breakthrough allows drugs to have a much more potent effect on the body than the original drug would: “morphine, for example, became far more lipid-soluble and far more euphorigenic (i.e., pleasure-inducing) when scientists added two acetyl groups to it to produce heroin at the turn of the 19th century. Much later, amphetamine was similarly modified to make it more euphorigenic and therefore more addicting” (Wenk 58). This displays how this minor alteration of adding methyl groups completely changes the chemical structure of the drug, allowing it to become more addicting and have a greater effect on the user. This exhibits how people need to definitely be weary about what they take and the amount that they use because many drugs today are able to have a greater impact in the brain because of their new lipid solubility. Another example of this changing structure is the formation of ecstasy, which can have many adverse effects. Wenk describes how some of them include, “a dramatic rise in body temperature, or hyperthermia”(59). This depicts the serious consequences of taking such a potent drug such as ecstasy; Wenk warns readers to take caution in these warnings. Another drug, cocaine, is also described in this book. The author again warns readers about the negative side effects of this drug in large quantities through his in depth explanations and descriptions of what could happen: “excessive, long-term, intravenous use of cocaine tends to produce especially severe rebound phenomena, including psychotic behaviors together with delusions of grandeur and hallucinations” (72). This caution supports Wenk’s ongoing message to readers about staying smart about choices they make and to always take things in small quantities. His warnings allow readers to understand the dangerous possibilities of these drugs. Wenk later goes on in the book to talk about an everyday drug, caffeine, but more specifically coffee. While in small amounts it can have its benefits, coffee is able to affect people in different ways. A person that is extremely tired and drowsy will feel more alert after a cup of coffee, while a person that is well rested would not get that same effect. He explains how the coffee itself can have positive health benefits such as being, “a rich source of antioxidants caffeic, chlorogenic, coumaric, ferulic, and sinapic acids and silverskin… coffee drinking has been associated with a significantly lowered risk of developing Parkinson’s disease… moderate coffee-drinking of about two to three cups each day might reduce your chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease” (125-126). This displays how coffee does indeed have its own benefits, but in large quantities it is not good, as revealed through one of his students, where the student, “finished off the entire container of 32 packets [of instant coffee right out of the box]... three days later, he stopped having explosive diarrhea and finally fell asleep completely exhausted” (127). This is a strong example of how anything in large quantities is not good for you, which is what Wenk is able to argue for throughout this whole book.

This book relates to what we have learned in class because it is all about the brain and some of the nervous system. This book explains how the blood brain barrier, which we have learned about in class, only allows lipid soluble hormones to cross, so water soluble hormones are unable to get through. This goes further into what we learned in our brain unit because we learned about all three of these concepts, but never exactly went into detail about what is able to pass through the blood brain barrier. This book also discusses action potentials, which is how neurons pass a signal down to each other. It went into detail about how that signal can become disrupted through different drugs. One main theme that was prevalent in this book that is similar to what we learned in class is the idea of simply eating healthy and getting a moderate amount of exercise. Wenk explains in his book that our body’s daily routine of metabolizing food is actually what causes our body to grow old. Because of this, people need to take care of themselves to last longer by exercising and eating the right foods. If I had the opportunity to ask this author two questions one would be how did all of these people in the past know so much about drugs? Were some lethal plants just common knowledge back in Shakespeare’s time? The other question would be why do some people get the “munchies” (102) after taking marijuana?

I think that the credibility of this author is very high; however, the credibility of this material at this time may not be that great. I am sure that back when it was first released it was extremely credible, but that was seven years ago; lots of things can change in seven years. This author is a professor at The Ohio State University in the Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience and Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics. He also has a PhD. I believe that the ideas explained in this book are very realistic. For example, Wenk explains how the placebo effect can cause many people to believe that they feel better, when in actuality they made themselves better by believing that some medicine healed them. I believe this is very real because I myself have experienced it and he explained some experiments that were done to test it out. He also explains how drugs that are more lipid soluble do not make your brain smarter, it simply works faster. He used a good analogy with a computer, explaining how newer computers are not any more smart than they were before; they just work much faster. This is how drugs work as well. It allows people to think quicker, which can sometimes seem as though they are smarter when they really are not. He then went on to explain that people that tap their fingers fast while thinking naturally think faster. I liked this idea because it made a lot of sense to me once he explained it. Also, I found it interesting that finger tapping correlates with the speed of a person’s thought process. The implications of this work are to inform the public about different drugs and how they affect the body. Wenk gets this and the message to take caution and use small amounts of everything across in his writing. This is not theoretical because Wenk describes many different experiments that have been performed to test these facts. This benefits individuals because it allows them to understand what is actually happening to them when they take a certain type of drug, and what some side-effects could be.

Unit 6 Reflection

This unit was all about the brain and its behavior. In this we learned about the brain and the many different structures and the functions of them as well. The brain is composed of the forebrain, midbrain, and hind brain. It is also has many other parts. The cerebrum is located in the area where the forebrain is. It is sectioned into a right hemisphere, which controls the left side of the body and overall picture, and the left hemisphere, which controls the right side of the body and language and detail. It is also sectioned into different lobes: frontal, temporal, occipital, and parietal. The frontal lobe is in charge of executive control. The temporal lobe is in charge of language, hearing, and memory. The occipital lobe is in charge of vision. The parietal lobe is in charge of sensation. The cerebellum, which is located in the back of the brain, controls motor control and motor memory. The pituitary gland is located right below the hypothalamus, which maintains homeostasis, and is in charge of sending off hormones. In our sheep brain dissection, we were able to physically view many of the structures in the brain. More explanations of the different structures and functions can be found there. We also learned how the brain can adapt as we grow older through brain plasticity. In one of our first readings titled "Women of 24 found to have no Cerebellum in her Brain," explained how the body can adapt to problems such as this. It displays how one part of the brain does not do one function; all the different structures work together in unison to allow a person to perform day-to-day activities. Also, the reading "A Woman Perpetually Falling," discussed a women that had problems with her vestibular apparatus. It described how she was able to find a doctor who found a way around this by taking advantage of the brain's plasticity. An article called "How to Come a Superager," explained how exercise prevents the brain from deteriorating as fast.

We also learned about our senses and the difference between sensation, which is the receiving of input from the environment via sensory neurons, and perception, which is the brain interpreting and organizing sensory info. There are four main senses: sight, hear, taste, and smell. In sight, the main organ is the eye, and it uses photoreceptors. We were able to physically examine the path that light travels through the eye with the sheep eye dissection. We learned that in a myopic person, which is known as nearsightedness, an individual's eye is too long, causing the image to land in front of the retina. In a hyperopic, or farsighted, person, their eyes are too short, causing the image to land behind the retina. In hearing, the main organ is the ear, which has mechanoreceptors. The ear can hear by the auditory ossicles magnifying sound which amplifies to the cochlea, which contains the tiny hair cells that physically process the sound waves. The organ for smelling is the nose, which has chemoreceptors. Sensory cells in the nose are located higher up, allowing the chemicals that enter the nose to travel there. Taste is very similar to smell. It uses the organ of the mouth, which also uses chemoreceptors, to sense taste. Taste buds on the tongue take in tastants, which dissolve in saliva to enter one of the five specialized receptors. The reading "Fit Body, Fit Brain and Other Fitness Trends," showed that exercise greatly decreases the deterioration of brain function and young fit people tended to have better brains as they grew older. Also, it prevented chromosomes from deteriorating.

The article "How we get Addicted" explained how addiction is a real and serious disease that many people fight. It talked about how people struggle to get clean and the reasons that they get addicted in the first place. This related to the next chapter of the unit, which was neurons and some of the nervous system. A neuron is composed of a cell body, axon, which conducts nerve impulses away from the cell body; axon terminals, which pass the signal from the dendrites; dendrites, which receive impulses and move them to the cell body; and a synaptic cleft that separates axons from each other. The signal gets moved along through action potentials, which is basically the rapid changing of charge along the axon, with sodium ions coming in and potassium ions going out, allowing the signal to be passed on. When it reaches the synaptic cleft, it releases neurotransmitters that pass through the synapse, sending the signal on to the next neuron. The nervous system is made up of the central nervous system, which acts as the command center, and the peripheral nervous system, which serves as the communication lines. In these nervous systems, there are many different diseases that can form. One example of a central nervous system disease is meningitis, which is the inflammation of the meninges, which usually creates a blood-brain barrier for the brain. An example of a peripheral nervous system disease is shingles, where the body develops painful and itchy rashes on the skin. We discussed how addiction is in fact a disease because there are signs and symptoms and many risk factors. Addiction can cause some change in the brain that include brain structure, brain pathways, and brain chemicals. The four C's of the addiction cycle are craving, compulsion, loss of control, and continued use despite consequences.

I think that some of my bigger strengths are the nervous system because I have already learned about it in biology. Even though it is not a topic that I did particularly well on, I still have learned it earlier, making the relearning process much easier. One of my weaknesses is the different diseases and structures of the brain. Even though we worked on the brain for a good amount of time, it is still difficult for me to grasp some of the locations of the parts. Also the diseases in general are hard to learn in such a short period of time. I want to learn more about specific aspects about the brain such as seizures. I want to know more about what exactly causes them to happen besides the fact of an overload of information. Why does extreme exhaustion affect them? What distinguishes a dangerous seizure from a harmful one? I also want to go more into the topic of concussions since it is a very prominent topic in sports and around people that I know in general. I don't think that I have been doing that well on my New Years Goals physical wise. I have not been able to find the willpower or time to go out and run on my own. I have still been exercising though. However, I think I've done a good job relating what we learn to my own life. I know many people who had brain issues and I was able to think about my own eyes and how the light would travel through them.

Reflex Lab Analysis

In this lab, we were able to test out the some of the different reflexes on our body. A reflex is a rapid, predictable, and involuntary response to stimuli. The reflex arc is the pathway of nerve impulses that do not go to the brain. The different reflex experiments that we did relate to what we learned because neurons transmit the signal that goes straight to the spinal cord, then back out to the area of the body reacting to the stimulator. 

Photopupillary Reflex
From the results obtained from this experiment, the concept that the pupil is controlled by autonomic reflexes was confirmed. In this experiment, one partner covered his/her eye for approximately two minutes. After the time went by, the partner uncovered his/her eye and the other observed as the pupil, which was large after being in the dark, quickly shrunk in size to adjust to the bright light. This occurred because photoreceptors in the eye were able to sense the amount of light, which allowed the autonomic reflexes to take over. 

Knee Jerk Reflex (Patellar Reflex)
Based on the results gained from this experiment, the idea that the monosynaptic reflex causes the lower leg to kick out was confirmed. In this experiment, one partner sat on a high table, while the other partner hit the other's leg until the correct spot was hit. When the spot was hit with the correct amount of pressure and accuracy, the leg of the person sitting would involuntarily kick out. This reflex occurred because the mechanoreceptor on the knee was able to quickly take in this signal and send it to the spinal cord, where it was able to be transferred to a motor neuron back to the knee, allowing it to kick out. After the initial test, one of the partners did 30 squats to experiment how it would affect the reflex. The reflex after doing the squats was much more vigorous than the first time. The extra blood flow in the muscles by them being warmed up by the squats allowed for a more severe reaction to the reflex. This feature could have helped back when humans lived in the wild and needed to react quickly and more vigorous when they were on the run. 

Blink Reflex
Based off of the information obtained from this experiment, the idea that people blink as a reflex was confirmed. In this experiment, one partner held up a piece of plastic wrap in front of their face, while the other threw a cotton ball at them. When the cotton was thrown, the partner blinked immediately, supporting the idea that blinking is a reflex since it was done involuntarily. This reflex allows the eye to protect itself without having to really react so it will better protect the eyes.

Babe, what's your sign?
From the results gained from this experiment, it was confirmed that the plantar reflex causes the toes on the foot to curl as a result from a stimuli. In this experiment, a pen was rubbed down the bottom of an individual's foot. As a result, the toes involuntarily curled, supporting the idea that this is a reflex. This supports it because the toes curled, showing that the nerves there are sensitive and allow this reflex to occur.

How Fast are You?
In this experiment, the idea that texting while performing an activity lowers proficiency was confirmed. In this experiment, a ruler was dropped above the open hand of an individual, and it was timed to see how fast they were able to react to the dropping of the ruler. In the second part of the experiment, the individual sent a text on his/her phone while they still had to react to the dropping of the ruler. In the controlled experiment, my average reaction time was .13 seconds. However, with the phone as a distraction, it was .22 seconds. This .7 second difference between experiments supports the idea that texting decreases performance. This also correlates to texting and driving, supporting the commonly known idea of not to text and drive, as it decreases one's reaction time.

Sheep Heart Dissection Analysis

In this lab, we dissected a sheep's brain. We made two basic cuts into the brain: on the medial plane and a cross sectional cut on the cerebellum. With these cuts we were able to observe the main structures of the brain and the many different parts that enable it to function properly. This relates to what we have learned so far because we were able to take what we have learned in class and apply it to an actual brain. It was basically a step up to The Clay Brain, where we made our own model of the brain with play-doh. Also, we were able to see the features of each structure to better understand how it enables the function of that feature.
1. Drawing of brain:

   Picture of brain:

This is a picture of the brain with pins pointing out the main structures. Red: brainstem, black: posterior side, green: cerebellum, yellow: cerebrum, white: anterior side 

2. Function of structures:

3. The myelin insulates the axons, which allows the signal in the brain to not be interrupted and travel at a faster pace.

4. Drawing of cross-section:

    Picture of cross-section:

This is a picture of the cross section of the brain with major structures labeled. Black: pons, silver: medulla oblongata, yellow: thalamus, white: hypothalamus, blue: midbrain, green: optic nerve, red: corpus callosum 

5. Function of structures in cross section:

6. Drawing of cross section with grey and white matter:

  Picture of cross-section with grey and white matter:

This is the picture of the cross-section of the cerebellum. The grey matter can be identified by its darker color. The white matter is the lighter sections. 

Sheep Eye Dissection Analysis

In this lab, we dissected a sheep's eye. Through this lab, we physically examined the structures where light travels. In the eye, the light passes through the cornea first. The cornea is the outermost layer of the eye that protects the eye itself. It appears clear and almost looks like a contact. After that, it travels through the aqueous humor. The aqueous humor is a clear-like liquid substance that nourishes the eye. It then goes through the pupil, which is basically a hole in the eye. The size of the pupil is controlled by the iris, which also displays the color pigment of the eye. After passing through the pupil, it hits the lens. The lens is a round-clear ball that is about the size a marble. The lens allows the eye to see at different distances by changing shape. After hitting the lens, the light passes through the vitreous humor. The vitreous humor is a thick fluid like substance with the consistency of snot. It is very clear to allow light to clearly pass through the eye. It is important for the overall health of the eye and helps it maintain its shape. After this, the light hits the retina, which is a thin sheet of tissue that helps convert the light into neurons for the optic nerve, which is where the light travels next. When it gets to the optic nerve, it takes the signal from the retina and sends it off to the brain. In it's appearance, the optic nerve is a solid-looking, cylinder structure on the posterior of the eye.