The picture below shows the model of the brain my classmates and I made over the course of a few days. Modeling the brain helped me better understand the 3-D anatomy of the brain and where the specific regions of the brain lie in relation to each other. This was one of my favorite activities in neuroscience!
This is a silly little music video my friends and I made to accompany our presentation on MDMA.
The primary resource we were given, Neuromuscular Synapse, was written by David S. Goodsell. In his paper, he provides a colorized, detailed illustration of a neuromuscular synapse. To accompany his image, he provides details on how and why he chose to represent the different structures within the cell. In the illustration, the junction is between the axon of a motor neuron. In the presynaptic neuron, vesicles carrying acetylcholine (neurotransmitters) travel towards the presynaptic neuron membrane. The vesicles move around with the help of synaptobrevin proteins. Once the vesicle is docked, it intertwines with syntaxin and Snap25 proteins and fuses with the membrane. Once docked and fused with the presynaptic neuron membrane, the vesicle releases the acetylcholine into the synaptic cleft. The presynaptic active zone is filled with proteins and is inside the nerve terminal. In this region there are hundreds of proteins that are inside the axon membrane. These proteins bring vesicles to the surface and facilitate their fusion the membrane and release. A large amount of the proteins in the presynaptic active zone mainly just move the vesicles to the area of fusion. The acetylcholine travels into the protein rich synaptic cleft after leaving the presynaptic neuron. Synaptic basal lamina are a matrix like structure that organizes and maintain presynaptic and postsynaptic interactions and promotes robust neurotransmission. The process of neurotransmission includes acetylcholine traveling through the synaptic cleft to the acetylcholine receptors located on the membrane of the postsynaptic cell. Once the information is passed on the acetylcholine receptor releases the acetylcholine back into the synaptic cleft. Then the acetylcholinerase breaks down the acetylcholine.
What are Miracle Berries?Miracle berries, or Synsepalum dulcificum, are berries found in West Africa that alter the way you perceive acidity in foods. Somehow, the berries block the taste receptors you have for acid, making sour foods taste sweet. Scientists aren't exactly sure how the berries work, but perhaps someone in our neuroscience class will figure out one day. The Miracle Berry ExperienceDr. Shingleton gave us the berries in tablet form. We let them sit on our tongues for about ten minutes to dissolve completely and then tried out the variety of foods Dr. Shingleton prepared for us. Lemons, limes, grapefruit juice, apple cider vinegar, salt and vinegar chips, Sriracha, pineapple, grapes, and sour gummy bears were the foods that we sampled. My favorite food by far was the pineapple. I'm already a big fan of pineapple, but the miracle berry tablets heightened the flavor and took it to another level. Lemons and limes were my second favorite as they tasted just like candy, Meanwhile, the apple cider vinegar tasted like spoiled chocolate milk. Near the end of the taste tasting, I ate half a lemon to cap off the miracle berry experience. While it tasted good at the time, the acidity from the lemon made my stomach feel pretty bad for the rest of the day. Questions I have about Miracle BerriesWas there a chemical reaction between the acids and the miracle berry?
Is some of the effect of the berry due to a placebo? Could miracle berries be used as an artificial sweetener in foods? On the first day of class, Dr. Shingleton handed my table (consisting of Margo, Ukasha, and Vishal) these little contraptions called mystery tubes. She told us to observe the tubes, and to record any information we found that was interesting. You can see what I wrote down in my notebook found just below. At first, I was really confused as to what the purpose of this assignment was. I wasn’t sure if the point was to actually create a functioning mystery tube or to just gain experience about the scientific process. In reality, the purpose of this assignment was a blend of both, giving us a taste of what real scientific inquiry looks like. At first, we thought that the tube had a pulley system and weight inside of it because of the properties we observed while playing around with it. You can see our initial design right below. During class, Dr. Shingleton had us put on a “mystery tube gallery” where each of the groups put their concept drawings on display, during this time each person left a positive note on each drawing, and let a note on something they could change in their drawing. For our group, most of the positive comments mentioned some of our specificity in our drawing, while the lack of an explanation for our pulley system was something most people said we should change. You can see how many notes were left for our group below. While testing out our concepts, we modeled our string mechanisms on the outside of the tube, just to be sure everything would work. We quickly realized while modeling that a pulley system couldn’t possibly be the mechanism inside the tubes because there were too many parts and the pulley system would be too large to fit inside the tube. Because of this, we thought of a much more practical solution to our mystery tube mystery. Our final solution was two strings and a washer. It was simple and easy to make. In fact, my group assembled our final model just 20 minutes before class. You can see the actual model we constructed just below. The saying “All models are wrong, some are useful” is a helpful saying to keep in mind when using models to understand concepts. Unfortunately, this saying didn’t hold true when it came to our group because we constructed our model literally perfectly. Other than using the exact same materials the original, we couldn’t have come closer to making an exact mystery tube. For the purpose of a reflection however, I’ll go back to my previous experience with making a model in a science class, my mitosis & meiosis modeling project in genomics. We modeled mitosis and meiosis using candy. Obviously, we weren’t anywhere close to actually replicating the real processes of mitosis and meiosis, but the experience helped deepen our understanding of how they actually worked. In doing so, we learned that the saying “All models are wrong, some are useful” refers to the fact that models are inherently flawed, yet they deepen our understanding.Much like the process of building a mystery tube, true science doesn’t reveal the “solution” immediately. Much like studying a living person’s brain, we couldn’t just cut into the mystery tube to figure out how it worked. Rather, we had to collaborate, share, and analyze our ideas with others. One factor that I think our group excelled at compared to other groups was our consideration of practicality for our tube. We realized early on that a pulley system was very complicated and would really not be practical, so we searched for a different solution to our mystery tube problem. Much in the same way, science requires us to be practical and look for solutions that we could actually achieve.
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AuthorAllan Kalapura. Holland Hall class of 2019. Archives
November 2018
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