Final 20 Time Post!

At the end of my 20 Time Project, which was related to the Playground Pals Bus Stop Program, I have completed: a guidebook, an official PPBS website, and an official PPBS presentation. I have also successfully shared this program with one school district: the Moreland School District. The special education director of this district has guaranteed that she would implement this program into Payne Elementary School. Mission Accomplished! I am going to talk to 2 other school districts this week and hopefully some of their schools will also accept this program. Over summer and at the beginning of senior year, I will be completing the paperwork necessary for obtaining my Girl Scouts Gold Award, the highest honor a Girl Scout can receive. Click HERE to see my website!

 For my TED Talk (which is this video that you can click on to watch!), I explained to the class not only what my 20 Time project was, but more importantly, what I've learned from it. The process of preparing for my TED Talk in itself was a learning process. I wrote down a rough draft of a speech just as a brain dump, and ended up using it to help me format my slides. I also used notecards with small bullet points about each topic I wanted to make sure to mention. To practice and memorize my presentation, I practiced my speech in various ways: sitting down, standing up, reading straight off of the written speech at first, timing, without timing, using just notecards, using no aid, etc. I was extremely nervous right before the presentation, but once I got up there, I felt as if I were simply talking to another person. I lost all my nervousness, and because I know this topic like the back of my hand, I was able to talk about it instead of reading completely off of the notecards. Though I do admit I used the notecards quite a bit, I used them to make sure that I was staying on topic and that I didn't forget any important sentences. I could have definitely worked on memorizing the speech a little better so that I wouldn't have to look at my notecards as much. From this experience, I have learned that I probably shouldn't psych myself out for presentations as much as I normally do and I should focus more on preparation than the aesthetics of the presentation. 

20 Time Final Reflection!!!

My 20 time project is my Gold Award for Girl Scouts and it is geared towards helping others. My project's goal was to spread the PPBS program to at least one other school. I challenged myself because I pushed my boundaries; I had to make requests and be persistent with people to the point where I felt pushy (something I was not comfortable with, but something that had to be done). I’ve learned that everything does not come to us, we have to really fight tooth and nail to get people to notice you in this busy world. You have to be your own advocate. My goal was to propose my idea to the district office, and through that, start talking to school districts to propose my idea to specific districts. My project's still in the process, but I have gotten a date to present to two schools. I am hoping that these schools decide to take up this program (which they most probably will). If I could change anything about this project, I would have started this project earlier so that everything wasn’t clumping up within this last month of May. For my next steps, I hope to fully implement this program into one of the schools in the districts I will be presenting to.

Reflex Lab

In this reflex lab, we tested different reflexes and saw their results. A reflex, as defined by Merriam- Webster, is "an automatic and often inborn response to a stimulus that involves a nerve impulse passing inward from a receptor to a nerve center and thence outward to an effector (as a muscle or gland) without reaching the level of consciousness." Basically, a reflex is a response to stimuli which we respond to unconsciously. We began with testing the photopupillary reflex. This reflex occurs when the pupil is exposed to different amounts of light. When the eye is dark, the pupil opens up. As it is exposed to more and more amounts of light, the pupil constricts. We tested this by exposing one eye to no light for 2 minutes, and the opening it to a flashlight shined directly in the eye. We were able to see the pupil grow drastically smaller because the pupil was reacting to such a contrasting change in lighting. We then moved on to the knee jerk reflex. This reflex occurs because a stimulus hits the patellar tendon. We did see movement of the lower leg when the patellar tendon was hit. After completing 10 squats each, my partner and I tested our knee jerk reflex again. We were expecting to see a reduced movement in the leg, but we saw the extreme opposite; the leg jumped outwards. We believe this occurred because of increased circulation to the patellar tendon. Our third experiment was the blink reflex. This reflex protects us because whenever we feel like our eyes are in danger from something coming towards us fast, we blink to protect our eyes. In this experiment, we held seran wrap a few inches in front of our faces and our partners threw cotton balls at our eyes. These cotton balls wouldn't actually hit our eyes, but we did still see a blink reflex. This shows how overcautious our body is programmed to be. After this we tested our plantar reflexes. This reflex is an important neurological test. My partner had to take the cap of a pen and drag it from my heel all the way to the base of my big toe. My feet curled in. This shows that I did not show Babinski's sign, which means that there is no nerve damage in my foot. Someone with multiple sclerosis would show Babinski's sign because there is nerve damage in multiple sclerosis. Our final experiment tested how fast our hand-eye coordination was. My average time was .203 seconds while my partner's average time was .175 seconds. We expected our average response time to increase while we were multitasking while texting. The opposite happened. My average dropped to .160 seconds and my partner's dropped to .143 seconds. This was probably because we had practice catching the yardstick. 

Avg reaction times for the yardstick-catching part of the lab

Blink reflex. You can see the cotton being thrown and me blinking in response. 

Discovering the Brain!

Discover The Brain!

Cerebral Cortex

1. What do the frontal lobes do?

 The frontal lobes are our "central command center." It is in charge of personality, problem solving, memory, language, judgement, and impulse control. In charge of execution. 

2. What is the relationship between selective attention and learning?

 Selective attention is when intelligence levels depend on how selective an individual is with processing certain information. Selective attention IMPROVES learning because selective attention helps compartmentalize information and speed up the understanding process. 

3. What is the last part of your brain to develop and what can you do to prevent it from deteriorating?

The frontal lobe develops last. To prevent deterioration of this part of the brain, try and actively engage with whatever it is that you do. Switch up the way you study at times (the location, the type of studying, the number of people you're studying with, etc.)

4. What does the neo cortex do?

The neocortex is in charge of navigation, spatial awareness, and motor function. It controls senses. 

5. What is the role of the pre frontal cortex?

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for controlling personality (especially in social scenarios). It helps organize thoughts and actions.

6. What do we know about the pre frontal cortex’s relationship with multitasking?

Multitasking is not possible as you are not able to do more than two things at once.

7. Which part of the brain is associated with speech and language development?  Give an interesting fact about this region.

Broca's area is responsible for speech and language development. Those who learn 2 languages from birth onwards have one Broca's area, while those who learn 2 languages later in life have 2 Broca's areas: one for each language.

8. Which part of your brain is responsible for thinking the following: “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”
The somatosensory cortex.

9. What does your visual cortex do for you?

The visual cortex is responsible for helping distinguish between colors and complex objects.

10. State three interesting or significant facts about your occipital lobe.

Injury to this region can cause hallucinations. The occipital lobe doesn't only deal with real images, but imagination and dreams as well. It is useful for differentiating between imagination and reality. 

11. What would happen if your temporal lobes were damaged?

You would have trouble recognizing words, you may not be able to speak, and your memory will be impaired.

12. What is your “fast brain” and what does it do?

The eye fields. It helps the brain register things really fast.

Neuron

13. State 3 things that you could do that would influence your synapses, and have a positive affect on your life and health.

Not using drugs which mess up hormone and ion balances in brains, exercise, sleeping enough.

14. What is the relationship between multi-sensory or multi-modal learning and your dendrites?

It helps with memory of a subject; the more dendrites in the area, the stronger the memory retention.

15. How does “big picture thinking” and mnemonics affect dendrites and/or learning?

Mnemonics helps us associate one unknown concept with a concept which we do know. This helps us with remembering the definition of the previously unknown concept.

16. Describe a neurotransmitter that you feel is very important.  Justify your reasoning.

Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter because it helps us to remain positive and gives us our character. It is important because it makes us who we are.

Limbic System

17. What does the corpus callosum do?

The corpus callosum connects the left and right hemispheres of the cerebrum.

18. What is the relationship between music and the corpus callosum?

Music study increases the flow of information through the corpus callosum.

19. Why is the thalamus important?
The thalamus is responsible for relaying motor and sensory signals to the cerebral cortex. It is sort of like the gateway to the main brain from the brainstem and spinal cord. 

Relate and Review

Summarize what you learned from this tutorial.  Relate what you learned to your everyday life and how you can make it better.  Use at least 5 of the bolded words from the questions.  5-sentence minimum. You may use the back of this if needed.
This helped to clarify the different functions and locations of the different parts of the brain. I did not know about the limbic system and this website helped to clarify about it. The 3D model helped me to spatially understand the location of different parts of the brain, just like the sheep brain dissection did. I also was refreshed on how the dendrites and synapses help us with signaling and memory processing. I was also really interested in Broca's area and how it can duplicate based on the number of languages learned.

Sheep Brain Dissection

For our brain dissection in class, we used a sheep brain. There are many important structures in the brain. Usually since I end up doing the main cutting in the dissection, I wanted to give someone else a chance to take this role. Because I took a class over the summer on cognitive neuroscience, I feel like I know the brain's anatomy pretty well. So, I chose to be the photographer of this dissection. I saw (and felt a little) how squishy the brain can be. I've always been confused with the location of the optic chiasm as it didn't make much sense to me in 2D, but when I saw it on the brain, I was able to understand it's location and why it was placed there. 

Questions:
1. 

2.

Structure	Color	Function
Meninges	(not shown in our dissection)	Used to adhere to and protect the spinal cord and the brain.
Anterior side of brain	White	Front of the brain
Posterior side of the brain	Black	Back of the brain
Cerebrum	Yellow	Integration of complex sensory and neural functions and the initiation and coordination of voluntary activity in the body
Cerebellum	Green	Recieves information from the cerebrum, the brainstem, and the spinal cord. Coordinates voluntary movement, balance, coordination, speech, and movement of smooth muscle.
Brain stem	Red	Control the flow between the brain and the spinal cord/rest of the body. Controls primitive functions such as breathing, swallowing, heart-pumping, etc.

3.Myelin sheaths are also known as Schwann cells. They are useful because they help to speed up the relay time of an action potential. Instead of rushing down the axon's full length, the action potential jumps from Nodes of Ranvier. These nodes are created by the opening of the axon between axon covered in myelin sheaths. This image provides a visual for this: 

4. 

5.

Structure	Color	Function
Thalamus	Yellow	relay motor and sensory signals to the cerebral cortex.
Optic nerve	Green	transfer visual information from the retina to the vision centers of the brain via electrical impulses.
Medulla oblongata	Red	regulate breathing, heart and blood vessel function, digestion, sneezing, and swallowing, circulation
Pons	Green	Bridge between the cerebrum and the cerebellum Controls intensity, depth, and frequency of breathing Controls sleep cycles
Midbrain	Blue	Vision, hearing, motor control, sleep/wake, alertness, temperature regulation
Corpus callosum	Red	Connects two hemispheres of brain Integrate motor, sensory, and cognitive performance
Hypothalamus	Blue	Links nervous system to endocrine system via the pituitary gland temperature regulation, thirst, hunger, sleep, mood, sex drive, and the release of other hormones within the body.

6. 

The Sheep Eye Dissection

Yesterday, we completed a sheep dissection in class. The images below represents the different stages of our dissection. The first image shows the cornea, which is the clear layer of proteins covering the main portion of the eye. What is fascinating about the cornea is that these transparent proteins do not require any blood or oxygen as there are no capillaries in the cornea. Also shown in the first image is the sclera, extrinsic muscle, and fatty tissue. The sclera is an EXTREMELY tough (it took a bunch of cuts with our scalpel to finally break through it) which protects and contains the contents of the eye. Onto the next image. As you can see, my partner and I (finally) cut through the sclera. In essence, we opened the eye. On the left half of the eye, we see the jelly-looking substance: the vitreous humor. This jelly helps to maintain the pressure inside of the eye. On the right half, the banana-looking structure is the retina. The retina receive light that the lens has focused, convert the light into neural signals, and send these signals on to the brain for visual recognition. The black and iridescent blue film behind the retina is the choroid. This is used to reflect light. The tapetum lucidum, the iridescent blue portion, is used to help nocturnal animals see in the dark. Humans do not have a tapetum lucidum. In the third and final image, the eye is completely take apart. The vitreous humor, the cornea, the choroid, the tapetum lucidum, and the sclera are visible. Three new pieces are the lens, which is to the right of the vitreous humor and to the left of the cornea, and the pupil and iris, which is between the upturned half of the eye (with the choroid) and the cornea. The iris is the brownish region in the sclera. The pupil is the opening inside the iris. The whole job of the iris and pupil is to control the amount of light that gets into the eye. The lens, by changing shape, functions to change the focal distance of the eye so that it can focus on objects at various distances, thus allowing a sharp real image of the object of interest to be formed on the retina.

An untouched sheep's eye

A sheep's eye with the back part removed.

From left to right: vitreous humor, lens, cornea, front of eye,
and back of eye

Almost finished!!!

I have learned that I need to persevere and ask for what I want. I have also learned about the continual slowness and not-promptness of schools and replying. Recently my mom came up with the idea to just send one email to 100 or so school principals and special education directors so that I can hopefully get a reply from someone. And I did!!! The Loma Prieta school district finally replied, and I am in the process of setting up a time to meet the coordinator to present about this program! I can apply this to myself because this project is teaching me that I need to make my own path and make myself be heard.