That’s a Knee-Slapper! Reflex Lab

Learning about all of the nervous systems and just like the EKG, there is a blog about Reflexes!! My partners in this lab had extremely fun getting the opportunity to hit each other, in a controlled environment of course

So Leeanne was so committed she decided to be our guinea pig! Down below is two graphs. The one of the left is the voluntary movement so we could have a basic graph to compare the results from when we began to tap her knee.

Voluntary/ Constant

Involuntary

We wanted to have a voluntary (constant) so that when our test subject was unaware of when she would be hit. On the right side is the involuntary graph. The activity has much larger intensity and I’m pretty sure that because Leeanne was relaxed and unaware it was her leg that was swinging. When she was aware like in the first picture the activity is shorter because she was trying to stiffen the leg right away.

EKG

EKG’s are used around to world whenever checking someone’s heart. An EKG shows five different parts of the pulse in the heart, to make sure that heart is healthy. When one part of the heart pulse is non-distinctive or not even apparent, there is a potential problem. The five parts that should be visible in an EKG Lab, are just called P, Q, R, S, and  T. Most of the time, others group Q R S together, which I’m not sure why, but I see them individually in the peaks and valleys. Down below is just a sample of what a normal graph should look like.

The P ‘bump’ in the graph is the beginning of the message that is about to be sent. Then the QRS is the wave impulse that had finally reached the ventricle and lastly is the T which is the recovery of the ventricle muscle.

Unfortunately, my group’s computer worker, forgot to take pictures of mine. Nothing biased but it was a prime example of what a graph should look like Now down below is going to be a graph of what Tiffany’s EKG is.

Her graph seems pretty normal to me except the fact that there is no definite valley

Tiffany’s EKG Graph

during the QRS section.

Heart Dissection

During our one week dedicated to hearts was very exciting. And also the same day as Valentines is when we got to start cutting at the hearts. For this lab, we observed three different hearts. The two that we dissected were a sheep and pig heart and then just observed a cow heart. During these two days, it was easy to notice the differences between each animal’s heart with size and fat content. Down below is a gallery of the pigs, sheep, and cow heart.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I can honestly admit that this was one of my favorite labs. The cow heart was probably as large as my head and I was able to stick my finger through the pulmonary trunk. This was a great example of how the ratio of the heart size is affected by how big the person, or thing is.

Brains!!

During the ‘Nerve’ week in anatomy, our class was given sheep brains to dissect and learn the difference between grey and white matter. The gray matter is actually the cells that make our brain work the way it does. The white matter is fat. The fat in the brain is very important because it allows the neurons to send messages between each other much quicker. As the person gets older though, the white matter starts to thin the thought process and motions of a person begin to slow down as well. Down below are a few pictures of the sheep’s brain that my group had dissected. we Dissected the brain coronally, like bread.

This picture right above is the brain that had been cut up on the coronal plane. Then just laid next to each other.

Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia

While learning about the nervous system, we were allowed to explore different issues that have to deal with the nervous system when there were malfunctions. Down below is a link to a prezi that Mandi Jebe and I had compiled. She did schizophrenia while I did the Bipolar.

http://prezi.com/gmtjuqu5igc5/schizophreniabipolar-disorders/?kw=view-gmtjuqu5igc5&rc=ref-4965284

Dissection Time!

As our class moves along into the section of nerves, everyone became excited with the idea of dissecting a leech. But with this experiment it was a virtual lab because our school is unable to afford the very expensive equipment. For this experiment, we were focusing on the different type of nervous cells and how they respond to different objects, such as a feather, probe, and a forceps. There were five different types of cells ( N, T, P, R, X).  Down below is a chart of what cells responded to what object.

So the main question I had was, if each cell reacts to different objects, how does the response carry through a line if each cell is different? Well if you refer to the chart above it shows the cells and what they respond to. Cell X didn’t respond to any of the following object, but cell R was the complete opposite. Then the next three cells, were more specific. Cell T responded to the three stimuli. Cell N only responded to the forceps and cell P only responded to the probe. From that information it is very simple to state that the cells’ N and P are the not as sensitive because they are very specific in what messages they are willing to send. The most sensitive one is cell R because it will send a message because of any object.

Chewing Lab

During the muscle week of class, we did an experiment with food. And obviously with high schoolers and food, it was a great success! We hooked up Chuck, a fellow classmate, to two sensors that would record the millivolts it took to chew up different types of food. So down below is a graph of the different types of food we experimented with. My hypothesis was that the crunchy peanut butter would have the most mV’s because with was in a paste form that would seem to be very difficult to chew. Also that with the whole peanuts within the paste would just be another layer that I person would have to chew through.

The results ended up that the cookie in fact was to food item that took the most mV’s to digest. Now that I think about it, the cookie took the most millivolts to chew because it was a semi-hard item that had chocolate chips within it.