Ramachandran's types of experiments

Wow, Dr. Ramachandran looks a lot different than I imagined him.... Anyways, in his famous book, Phantoms of the Brain, he did this really cool experiment based on the mirror agnosia diagnosis. He called it the "Looking Glass Experiment", named after Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, sequel of Alice In Wonderland. He made small notes about many great artists and writers who had obsessions with glasses, which could be a result of affections of the right parietal lobe. I guess that saying of Genius is close to Madness might be true.

So, the experiment went like this; he holds a mirror in front of a patient who's right or left visual field suffered damages. Then, he has a helper hold something behind the person, but is visible in the mirror to the viewer aka the patient. He did it with a pen and the neglect patients could not understand that the object they saw in the mirror was behind them. Instead, the patients tried to attack the mirror, looked to their left and right, said that the object was inside the mirror, and etc.

It was extremely weird, but Ramachandran hypothesized that the reason why the patients behaved as they did because of damages to the parietal lobe of the brain. It could affect spatial ability. It was super interesting. I wonder if they use this test at the hospitals now.

Reproduction

Before we began on the reproduction system, I already knew a pretty fair amount from Health and Safety along with 6th grade health classes. But, I learned a bit more in depth from the class.

We went a lot more in depth with the male reproductive organs. The male menopause phrase made me laugh because men also feel symptoms that women get. I still think its totally unfair for women to bleed for 3-5 days while men don't feel any pain. Okay, maybe they do when our hormones go out of wack and we start throwing chairs at them or something. The idea that every period makes me lose 50-150 mL of blood really made me feel sick. That's a lot of blood! I know some cases from friends where they did not stop bleeding. In fact, one girl's period went on for an entire month. She lost so much blood they had to give her a blood transfusion at the hospital!

Also, pregnancy is super scary especially the fertilized egg in the fallopian tubes! I suppose that's why when one is pregnant, they should immediately go to the doctor for a checkup. Also, the three types of sperm cells were funny: The runner, kamakazi, and the blockers. The runner are the ones that swim real fast to the egg, the kamakazi kills unknown sperm cells, and the blockers surround the egg only letting their own people fertilize the egg. Wow, men are pretty possesive, hahah.

Urine testing's great diagnostics

Peeing in a cup for medical examination is a lot easier than having blood sucked out from our veins, grimacing at our life's liquid flowing into a tiny tube. So, why not use wastes to identify our internal problems?

Introducing (Drumroll) URINE!!

Different colors mean different diagnosis.

If there is a redness, caused by blood, you have BLADDER INFECTION.

Orange or brown indicates Jaundice or Gilbert's syndrome.

Light orange - lack of vitamin B, so go buy bottles and bottles of vit. B pills

A Pinkish tint- possibly from eating too much watermelon. Usually harmless.

Black/really dark colored tint - Melanoma. A BIG indicator!! Black urine is very very dangerous!

Clear Urine - healthy urine

Reddish brown urine - poryphyria

Dark Yellow - dehydration

Fluroescent yellow/ green - too much vitamins.

Who knew urine had THAT many colors?

well, now you know. :D

Pig Dissections are very dirty

I think the title says it all. Although it has revealed several things in its process. First revelation. Henley is a pig molestor. After seeing his face sparkle with fascination over every little thing about the pig such as the fact that a pig has an ANUS (Oh, gosh, and I thought only humans had that!), I propose one should NEVER let Henley near ANY pigs in the near future. Secondly, the pig fetus was pretty large in size. I'm surprised that although the pig doesn't eat, it still has feces inside its body system.

The pig's body was very alike to its human counterpart. It's organs were merely of a smaller size; kidneys, lungs, heart, etc. It's rib cage surrounds and protects the lungs and heart, curving in. For some reason, our nearly full term pig's small intestines were connected by a very thick membrane to the stomach, therefore unable to uncoil. There was also some problem with cutting the kidneys because it was layered over with an extremely thick membrane, super glued to the back of the pig's back.

Cutting open the brain was the hardest part. The skull was extremely hard! My partners and I were extremely scared of crushing the brain along with crumbling the skull. Either ways, the entire dissection process proved to be a very learning process. I learned that I can never look at a pig the same way again or even eat it. Which is a good skill to acquire since the swine flu is spreading and all that jazz.

Digestive Video

I was reading the back of the digestive video cover when I realized that the Dr. Freddie was actually the creator of Body Worlds! That seriously creeped me out even more than I was because I was so sure that the guy with the raspy voice had a serious infatuation with the human body. When he slit open that poor corpse's stomach and poked around his/her small intestines commenting "Just Beautiful", I nearly threw up. I am not kidding.

Gunter von Hagens in the flesh - - - >

He invented plastination which is preserving the body by switching all body fluids for liquid plastic. The plastic then hardens, living organs intacted.

The entire length of the video truly was not for the unsteely stomach which for some things, I am. I don't throw up just by looking at a dissected corpse, but somehow, watching people play around with organs makes me really nauseated. I need to steel my stomach. I admit, I am not going to be a great anatomist in the future of anything, but I still appreciate the human body. Another thing that was really stomach wrenching was when he washed the feces from the human body. That really irks me. Another gross factor was the simple fact that anatomist took a pleasure in opening up the human body. Maybe its just me, but after watching the video, I do not want to donate my body to science. I think I'll like it rotting six feet under just fine.

Protecting self from infectious diseases

First of all, really, common sense, do NOT go near a person you know who HAS that infectious disease. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Follow that up with making sure your body is up to date. Make sure the immune system is in top notch shape and everything will be fine. Don't be too germaphobic because apparently, that makes the immune system weak which is just super weird. I feel real bad for all those neurotic mothers who cover up their children from toe to eyes. Hahaha. When I see them in the park, they're always running around with this little body of antibacterial.

Also, don't engage in random physical intercourse. Apparently, doctors are now advising all the "youth" to have their partners tested for veneral diseases before they start the baby making.

Always update on shots and know the latest bad thing out there.

Digestion

Oh Goshness. Digestion. It's definitely something I can't live without, hahah. And because it's so important, we need to protect, to nurture this beautiful organ.

First of all, don't eat what you KNOW we can't eat. I can not write how many times people have done the DUMBEST things such as trying to eat nails. That is just plain idiotic. If a dog did that, I would totally understand, But, humans are not dog, TEENAGE BOYS are not dogs..okay, maybe they are, meterphorically.

Eat good things for the stomach like yogurt. Never too spicy, sweet, or salty. I like frozen yogurt a lot a lot a lot. If I could, I would eat it morning to night. It's really good to the stomach because supposedly, the bacteria in the yogurt helps the digestive system.

Also, when eating meat or planning to eat it, make sure it's cooked ALL. It's bad to eat raw meat. Even though I LOVE sashimi. Let me tell you all a story about someone i know who ate raw mean. (I feel so old typing that) There was this guy who was very eccentric. He bought raw beef because he was going to make hamburgers. But, then the stove at his house broke down. He was still craving beef so he decided to nuke it in the microwave. For about 15 minutes on high. Then, he ate it. 2 weeks later, his stomach started hurting a lot. His parents took him to the hospital where the doctors did an ultrasound on him. They found....*drumroll please* A TAPEWORM about..an inch or so. So, they cut him up & took out the worm. The moment he woke up from surgery he said..."Can I keep the worm as a pet?"

Yeh, I was all ewww too when I heard it. & that is why you should never eat undercooked or raw meat. Unless you WANT a tapeworm...you don't right?