Month: September 2019

The Peripheral Nervous System is the sensory and motor neurons that connect the Central Nervous System to the rest of the body. Within the Peripheral Nervous System contains the Autonomic Nervous System which then breaks into two more parts; the Sympathetic Nervous System and the Parasympathetic Nervous System. The Sympathetic Nervous System activates what is often called “fight or flight”. This stimulates the nerves (opposed to the Parasympathetic Nervous System) and is out of our control.

When your body gets ready to deal with the stress it will endure, you may experience your heart racing, hands sweating and pupils become dilated. This is what is referred to as fight or flight. Your body knows it is enduring fear, stress or excitement.

In the picture above, you see symptoms of the fight or flight response to the left. On the right, it explains the process of what is happening inside the Central Nervous System.

I think the idea of the Central Nervous System is so interesting. Most people think when you’re stressed or angry your body may shut down, which is not the case. Our bodies are meant to put all our energy into making you more alert in response to danger or stress.

A time I experienced this “fight or flight” was this summer while I lived in Center City, Philadelphia. I was walking back from my parking garage to my apartment building late after work one night. I saw a homeless man (which was normal in Center City) asking for money but I politely ignored him and kept walking. I then heard him call me rude names and start chasing after me with a knife. My heart immediately felt like it was beating out of my chest, I was sweating from every pore of my body and I started sprinting towards the police at the corner of Broad and Chestnut Street where they always stand. Thankfully the homeless man stopped once he saw I was heading towards the police but this was a time my body was experiencing intense fear and stress going into fight or flight mode.

Here is a YouTube link to help more about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GywoS77qc.

Venho, Niina. “PART 1: Fight or Flight Response.” Moodmetric Is a Tool for       Preventive Stress Management, 15 Aug. 2019,                https://www.moodmetric.com/fight-flight-response/.

The nervous system is broken into 2 general categories, the peripheral and central nervous systems. The Central Nervous System controls the brain and the spinal cord while the Peripheral nervous system controls about everything else. Within the Peripheral NS there are 2 sub categories, Autonomic and Somatic. The Autonomic NS controls all internal actions while the Somatic NS controls all voluntary movements. Now within the Autonomic NS, there is the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems. The Sympathetic NS is called the “fight or flight”, while the Parasympathetic NS is called the “rest and digest”.  The Parasympathetic NS works to calm the body down and to help conserve energy. The Parasympathetic NS helps to calm the heart rate down and to increase intestinal/digestive activity. For example, the Parasympathetic NS works best when we are asleep, so when people get less sleep than others, their Parasympathetic NS doesn’t have time to properly work/do its job to help calm the body. One experience I have of utilizing the Parasympathetic Nervous System is during and after Penn State game days. I am in the blue band, so the past few game days have been around 12-13 hours long for me. For the Buffalo game two weeks ago, I had to be at the building at 11am ready to go. Then we practice for about 2 hours which is us running through the halftime show and pregame, which is a lot of work in itself. Once we huddle around the ladder for our director to talk to us, my parasympathetic nervous system is helping me to calm my heart rate down after high stepping for a 15-minute pregame show and marching a 10-minute half-time show. The Parasympathetic NS also helps after I finish the parade into and out of the stadium. During parade the band does a bunch of different dances, and we also play various fights songs, all while marching in hot wool uniforms. My heart rate is constantly beating quickly during band, but once we get to rest for a few minutes, my Parasympathetic Nervous System kicks in and helps to calm me and my body down.

In class we discussed how attention and what you look at will effect the way you see things. This was illustrated through multiple examples like the monkey business video where a monkey walked through people passing a ball and about half of the people never see the monkey. Another example was a blinking picture that overtime changed to a completely different picture and almost everyone thought there were some changes but didn’t notice the whole image change.

I wanted to explore these concepts more and remembered a time in my high school class when we looked at examples which illustrated top down processing and how we can run into errors associated with them.

This is an example of The Necker Cube which shows two different perspectives when focused you focus on different areas. The way people see the image initially is based on our previous experiences. Below I have provided a few more examples of these double image images.

https://res.cloudinary.com/droz/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,h_480,w_720/v1558283303/prod-store/gallery/slides/slide6.jpg?itok=xwF2a4W5

In the above example the white will make a vase and the black will show two faces.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/02/14/12/duck-rabbit.png?w968h681

In the above example there is a bunny with the ears facing to the left or you will see a duck with its beak facing to the left

All of these images get processed in our brian by a certain way. There are three steps which our brain goes through. The first step is for us to take in all of the information we can get from the image we are presented with. This is what is called the sensory data. The next step is for our brain to recall previous experiences and memories which can be related to the sensory data. The final step is the brain will make a guess or inference based on what it learned above.

There is another process that the brain uses which is called bottom-up processing. Bottom up processing takes sensory information and then has it build upon itself until the fill picture or any other type of information is complete.

Cerebellum and Alcohol Consumption

The brain has many different parts but the section of the brain that intrigues me the most is the cerebellum. Nicknamed the “little brain”, the cerebellum contains fifty percent of the brain’s neurons within only ten percent of the brains volume. It lies under the temporal lobes and the occipital lobe and has its own divisions known as the primary fissure, anterior lobe, vermis and posterior lobe. Its main functions are motor learning, sense of position, balance and equilibrium, and speech. It is one of the parts of the brain that gets affected when people consume alcohol which explains the word slurring and loss of balance that occurs when intoxicated.

I have many friends that experienced changes in their cerebellum while intoxicated. This past weekend my friend had severe effects on her cerebellum. She drank too much alcohol and I was noticing changes in her speech, like slurring and jumbled words, and motor movements, like holding onto a cup and walking straight. The police tend to pick up on these signals as well when looking for which students to cite at a tailgate. Because of my friend’s inability to walk straight, the police approached her with questions of how much she drank and how long she had been drinking. When watching this I thought about how she was being affected and how they picked up on an unsafe amount of alcohol consumption based on the visible characteristics of an affected cerebellum.

The police breathalyzed her and sent her to the hospital because her blood alcohol level (BAC) was over the legal limit and unsafe. This shows that her blood was being “diluted” with more and more alcohol and the brain was taking more time to communicate. When outside fluids are in the blood stream and passing through the brain, parts like the cerebellum cannot coordinate the actions for which they are responsible. The alcohol also depressed the central nervous system which caused her slow reaction time and stumbling.

https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s3/chapter05.html

Description:

The idea of the brains plasticity stems from the suggestion that the brain is sculpted by our genes, although, also by our experiences. For instance, when someone experiences an injury or a certain illness, the brain has the ability to modify itself in order to try and keep the body protected from the same type of harm. Some people might argue that the brain is “wired” solely by the genetics that were passed down to a person, although, first hand I can say that this is not the case. Due to experiences I have had there is no question that the brain can also adapt and be modified by different experiences that you can encounter as life goes on.

My story:

Ever since I was a young boy I was a huge fan of watching and playing the game of basketball. I had a ball in my hand starting at the age of four and ever since then I never wanted to put the ball down. Unfortunately, I have had extremely bad luck with injuries throughout my career. With two broken ankles, a torn meniscus, a torn ACL, and four concussions, my playing style has changed, not due to my skill increasing or decreasing, but due to the fact that mentally my brain has adapted habits because of all of the injuries. Both parts of brain plasticity can possibly be applied to my situation, the genetics part, and the adaptation through experience. My father and grandfather both have had bad knee, ankle, and hip injuries/problems, and I believe that could have been passed down to me, maybe it could be due to weak bones. In the other aspect, I have seen myself change the way I play, being more cautious after each injury goes by. The way I jump off of two feet instead of one on layups now to try and have a sturdier base, or the way that I am extra alert when an opposing player is going to bump into me on a screen, it all happens because my brain is telling my body to protect itself from experiences that I had in the past.

How it all ties together:

Clearly as time has gone on our brains have advanced and they will only keep being able to function at a higher and higher level as time passes. The brains plasticity has had a major impact on my life, as it has most likely changed my basketball playing style and could definitely have protected me from having many more injuries. It is important to add though, just because my story is about tying in my injuries in basketball to brain plasticity, illnesses and certain events that you have been through can also be effected by the brains plasticity. This mechanism that is in all of our brains is why we can keep making advances and major breakthroughs, as it helps us adapt and advance using our own genetics and personal experiences.

https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html

The brain is one of the most complex organs in the human body. It is made up of more than a billion nerves that communicate via synapses. The brain has many parts to it that are specific to different tasks. For example, the cerebellum, also known as the “little brain” is found in the back of the brain and is responsible for coordination and balance. So, what does that mean exactly? The cerebellum is the part of the brain that allows us to drive, to walk, and to throw a ball and it even helps with vision and eye movement. Ultimately, the cerebellum helps humans with anything involving movement and coordination. In fact, when we get drunk, the cerebellum is affected hence people not being able to walk right or slurring their words. Many cerebellar disorders result in difficulty speaking, not being able to walk, abnormal eye movements, and lack of muscle control. Although the cerebellum is known as the “little brain” the cerebellum plays a huge role in our everyday functions. 

In my personal experience, my second cousin suffers from an injury that partially damaged the cerebellum. He had fallen off a deck and hit his head resulting in many surgeries and eventually the doctors stated that his cerebellum was among one of the parts of the brains that was damaged. What was the result of this damage? Well, it took him a while to learn how to walk again and talk again and he still to this day cannot drive despite the injury being over 20 years ago. Today, he has difficulty walking and it takes him longer to get from point A to point B. With practice and many physical therapy sessions, my cousin has gotten a little better at walking but still will not be as healthy as he was before his injury. His injuries also affected his speech. He often slurs words and can forget certain things he says. He repeats himself time and time again because he lacks the part of his brain that lets him to speak clearly. That being said, the cerebellum is an extremely important part of the brain that helps us do normal things.   

Cerebellum, www.neuroskills.com/brain-injury/cerebellum/.