Neurobiology Assignments (X2)

Chapter 4 ( Soul made Flesh) comments:

I have to agree with Burd when it came to being fascinated with this chapter. There were some very mind blowing occurences that took place. Willis was one who resolved controversial things by consulting a"relevant passage in Galen or Aristotle”. This, alone, was very interesting to me because of how rare it is for people in the world of science to feel studies in other fields(such as philosophy and psychology) were important and relevent enough to incorporate those theories into their research. We have had many discussions in my past philosophy and psychology classes where professors have commented on how science professors feel that biology hold all the answers and that psychology & philosophy were not real sciences. Due to my prior understanding (from past experiences with the "rivalry"), I would have never thought they were once " partners that needed each other". It made me proud that they once worked well together and had a higher level of compatibility than they have now in this present time.

Secondly, finding out that Willis was the first person to describe the breakout of typhus was memorable for me because I enjoying learning about those who were keen enough to make medical breakthrough which will benefit mankind in a great capacity. The discovery (by William Harvey) of how the heart sends blood through the body was remarkable in the fact that he confirmed his theories by conducting experiments. That was a very admirable thing to do since there was so much errogenous ideas floating around during that time plus so many people how were looking to disprove everything being said/thought.

More information on William Harvey:
www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/William_Harvey.html

More information on Thomas Willis
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n06/historia/willis_i.htm

Writings by Thomas Willis = Cerebri Anatome:
http://www.jrsm.org/cgi/content/full/96/3/139


Scientific American Article Summary:

The article that I read was entitled:” Did Sesame Street Have It Right?" and the article was about how there is a new study out supporting the idea that shows like Sesame Street can improve language-processing abilities. While these kid shows are teaching children songs so they can learn the alphabet & numbers, they are also "improving a person's ability to decipher different tones" while also enhancing their reading and speech functions. The brain stem is thought to be a pathway for language and music. Instead of going along with the original thinking that the neural connections in the brain were fixed, they are finding that it is more flexible and is shaped by our senses.

Nina Kraus (a professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern University) and her team of researchers did experiments on twenty-nine, 25-year-old subjects. Sixteen of the twenty-nine subjects had been playing the musical instruments since five years old. In this two part experiment, the subjects were exposed to different stimuli and their brain activity was recorded. In the first part, the participants watched someone syllables of speech or they watched someone play the cello. In the second part, they watched a silent film to hold their attention while the sounds they heard they heard from the sounds from the previous segments.

The findings were that the musicians had "sharper and more enhanced encoding of important cues related to pitch and tone" when the sounds were alone and paired. The electrical responses were sensitive to timing. The musician’s brain stems responded quicker to the stimulus plus there was more neural activity. A correlation was also found that between the amount of brain stem activity and the amount of years the musician played their instrument. Thirty to forty percent of children who have learning and/or reading problems cannot transcribe sound. They, next, wanted to research different ways where musical training could be able to "improve auditory function by erasing those deficits."

Through studies on the cortical effects of music training, Jonathan Burdette (an associate professor of neuroradiology at Wake Forest University Medical Center) found out that students who played instruments were smarter than those who didn’t.

This article was very interesting to me because I heard, beforehand, that people who played instruments were smarter because they utilized the left side of their brains. Getting a better understanding of this interesting finding (which is supported by scientific research) was encouraging because it shows how we can help our children mentally early on. I want, now, to find out the correlations between neural activity and shows, which introduce songs along with different languages to children such as Dora, the Explorer. This shows allows for songs that teach children numbers, the alphabet, and other helpful words in English and in Spanish.