decision making

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Here's an article from the teacher of the Understanding the Brain class I took a while back, on the subject of decision-making (especially in the context of diminished ability to make decisions).

Many perplexing questions...........

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optical illusions.....

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understanding the brain.........

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Peggy Mason, who taught my neurobio class (Understanding the Brain), showed us many parts of the brain via demonstrations with actual brains.

She has put some of those videos up on her blog -- if you are curious about what's going on inside your head, I urge you to click through and have a look.

She's a very engaging and interesting speaker.

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cerebellum

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This week in Understanding the Brain we are learning about modulation of voluntary movement.  Our cerebellums are watching over us at all times, helping us learn to make new movements, helping us keep our gaze steady on an object despite the movement of our heads, helping the movements we make be smooth and coordinated, helping us adapt movements we know to new situations (walking on the beach is not the same as walking on concrete....), to name a few of the things our cerebellums do for us.

It won't surprise you to hear that all of this is complex and involved.



When your motor cortex tells your body what to do, it sends signals down motor neurons (possibly to other neurons) to your muscles.  Our prof calls it a game of telephone -- one whispers a message to another, who whispers it to a third, who whispers it to a fourth....

It is the cerebellum's job to anticipate what should happen, and to make corrections if a movement starts to go awry.  This morning I learned that when the motor cortex sends a message to a muscle, the motor cortex also sends a copy of that message to the cerebellum.  Then the motor neurons which receive that message send a copy of what they received to the cerebellum.  Then sensory neurons in your skin, muscles, and tendons send info to your cerebellum as to what is actually happening.

And your cerebellum takes in all of this info and makes corrections, so the actual movement can be as close to the intended movement as possible.

All in real time!

Isn't this amazing?



If you put the palm side of your hand flat against the base of your skull, so your thumb is where your skull meets your spine, your cerebellum is basically inside where your hand is.  It's in there, busily helping you with pretty much everything you do on purpose, all day long.

Helping you do the things you know how to do, and helping you learn new things, like how to type, or how to use chopsticks, or how to walk on a treadmill with a split belt -- even when one of the belts is going much faster than the other one! 




We were told that people even learn to walk on that treadmill if one of the belts is going BACKWARDS!

Amazing.  Hooray for cerebellums everywhere!!!



The more I learn about neurobiology and genetics and epigenetics, the more astonished I am that we ever got it together to breathe oxygen, let alone to crawl out of the water onto the mud, let alone to walk and talk and knit and program computers!

That all of the incredible complexity which makes up each one of us just basically works, nearly all the time, blows my mind.

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typing

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We're learning about movement, in neurobio.

I need to type things like "Emotional movements depend not on the corticospinal tract, or corticobulbar tract, but on extrapyramidal pathways."



I'm pretty much never typing "corti" on the first try.  My fingers are so used to "corgi" that "corti" is a struggle.

And then there's "extrapyramidal"..........................

Goodness, that's hard to type!

And, of course, "bulbar" comes out "blubar" more often than not.

I suppose I could still read my notes, with all of these typos.  Maybe.

Emotional movemetnd depnd not on the corgicospinal track or the corgicooblubar trackt, but on extryapygramls pathwys.

Maybe not.

lol...................

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totally awesome video about hearing

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Our Understanding the Brain prof sent us to see this "awesome video."

She's right -- "awesome" is mild praise for this video.  Totally cool and interesting.  Wow.

Video allows explanation of all of this in a way that works much better for my brain than words and static images.

I really hope you'll watch it.




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Did you know that your retinas are part of your central nervous system?

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I am scrambling to catch up in neurobio....  In Week 3, she's telling us about neuroanatomy and development, and she told us where retinas come from.

According to the Wikipedia entry on retinas:

In vertebrate embryonic development, the retina and the optic nerve originate as outgrowths of the developing brain, so the retina is considered part of the central nervous system (CNS) and is actually brain tissue.^[1][2] It is the only part of the CNS that can be visualized non-invasively.


Wow, eh?????  A definite "who knew??" moment for me!

I knew eye docs look for issues beyond strictly eyes, when they examine our eyes, but I never knew what they are actually looking at, nor did I know why they were able to see it, looking into our eyes........................

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empathy in rats

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Click through, if you like, to watch a video of my neurobio teacher, talking on the BBC about empathy in rats.  Really interesting, I think, and informative about a way  humans are NOT unique.....

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motor system communication

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Today's news from neurobio:

The motor system is how we control our body.

"The motor pathway is a hierarchy because information flows down far more than it flows back up. Motor cortex is the boss and motoneurons are the workers. And the motor pathway is not into back talk."

Editor's note:    :-)

"That said, there is some information flow upwards as information from sensory receptors in the muscles and skin is fed back into the system, reaching both motoneurons and also (eventually) forebrain motor control centers."

So there you have it.

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on squeaking terms

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Here's my neurobio teacher, talking about helping behavior in rats.

I think this is a really interesting video.




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update on my Coursera classes

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I have been "just listening" to all the classes I've signed up for so far this year.

How Things Work 1 ended a couple of months ago.  I feel bad about this one.  I was so thrown for a loop at learning that A) pounds and kilos do not measure the same thing, along with B) no one ever told me!, that I had to just stop dead and work on taking it in.  By the time I'd revised my world view sufficiently to proceed, I was so far behind that I never caught up.  I surely hope he offers this class again soon.  I would like to give it another shot.  I believe I can still listen to the lectures.  I should find out, and do that, if I can......

The Music of the Beatles is over (will be offered again in July 2014).  I listened to all the lectures, and listened to a significant amount of music related to the class on youtube.

Marine Megafauna: An Introduction to Marine Science and Conservation is over.  I listened to all the lectures but the last week.  That was when we got to the heavy-duty "conservation" part of the class, and I really don't think I want to listen to "Whales and the Age of Sail"..............  I have a general idea of the atrocities we perpetrated on whales, and I really don't want to know the details...........

Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets ended last week.  I took Secrets last summer, and loved it, so I took it again to enjoy the new bits and savor the old.  No notes/exercises/exams for me, this time around.

Roman Architecture ends this week (I have one lecture worth of videos to watch and take notes on).  I've listened to all the lectures, and have taken reasonable notes, for my own possible future reference (should I go somewhere where the works she described still exist), but have not written any papers nor taken any quizzes/exams.

Music's Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock 'n' Roll ends next week (and I'm caught up for this week).  Just listening.  No notes, no homework, no quizzes/exams.  Greater familiarity with some of the pre-rock music he is talking about has not helped me to enjoy it more.  Some of those styles just do not float my boat.  Unlike the other rock classes I've taken, he has played us a significant amount of music.  No whole pieces, but healthy chunks of many pieces.  I haven't felt compelled to search out more of it on youtube.


It's good that my plate is almost cleared -- in addition to Maps and the Geospatial Revolution and Epigenetic Control of Gene Expression, I'm signed up for Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life.  (all of these start next week)

Our neuro bio teacher is totally geeked about teaching the class.  She has a blog and a twitter feed.......  Gotta love her level of enthusiasm, and her conviction that the world would be a better place if everyone knew more about brains.


I'm not making decisions ahead of time about whether I will or won't do more than "just listen" in neuro bio or epigenetics.  I will do the labs for maps, because I learned so much from them last time, but I don't know if I'll take any quizzes/exams........


And -- I'm working at NOT looking at what other offerings might be available just now...........  Which is hard, because you can't count on these classes being offered in the future, and what if I missed the one offering of a totally dynamite class???

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