Heart Rate and Emotions

So in Anatomy we have been studying the heart! Mr. Ludwig separated us into groups to conduct different experiments about the heart rate. I got into a group with Madison and Ali. Together we created an experiment to see if your emotions affect your heart rate. To show our experiment and our results we put together a poster(seen on the right- Madison is very creative!)! All of our information we put together on the poster but I also put most of the information on this blog as well. Check it out!

Problem:
Does your emotional state affect your heart rate? 

 Hypothesis:
When your emotional state changes from watching different video clips it will affect your heart rate. 

-Sad Video~ We believe the heart rate will go up during a sad video because your body gets a certain tension.

-Scary Video~ We believe the heart rate will go up during a scary clip because your adrenaline is pumping and your heart will be beating faster with anticipation.

-Humor Video~ We believe the heart rate will go down because laughing tends to have a calming effect.  

 -Boredom Video~ We believe the heart rate will go down or stay the same because the body will be relaxing with boredom

Materials:

-Computer

-Youtube videos

   ~sad

   ~funny

   ~scary

   ~boring

-Heart Rate Bars

-Graph and Data Collector

-Two girls

-Two boys

 Procedure:

 1. Establish a base line heart rate. 

2. In a private place set up the Heart rate monitor and videos with first person.
3. Play the scary clip while monitoring the persons heart rate to see changes.(each person will watch a different scary clip that they haven't seen before to make sure the real emotion comes out) 

4. Play the humorous clip and measure the persons heart rate. 

5. Play the sad clip and measure the persons heart rate. 

6. Play the boredom clip and measure the persons heart rate. 

7. Repeat steps 3-6 on next person. (the clips should be played in a random order so the watcher does not know what to expect.)

8. Continue procedure until every person has gone.

Data:

(Our complete set of data is on our poster but here are some examples.)

Nick Standing Rate

Nick Humor

Madison Standing

Madison Humor

Conclusion:

During our experiment, each and every one of our test subjects had different changes in heart rates. While watching no video, all of our subjects had changes in heart rate due to movement and other environmental factors, which insured that movement changed heart rate more than their emotions. During our video clip that was supposed to create a bored emotion and leave a stable or decreasing heart rate some of our subjects their heart rates dropped and went back up. In others, they began to rise slightly the entire time. During the video that was supposed to evoke a sad emotion our test subjects also had heart rates that didn't completely make sense according to our hypothesis. During one of our test subjects, the heart rate had an outrageous amount of outliers. The heart rate went up and down constantly. During others, it slowly rose. We also showed videos that we were supposed to evoke a laughing or happy/funny video. Our last video was supposed to make our test subject scared. Our test subjects were also similar and heart rates and all of the heart rates differed slightly. Therefore, we believe that emotions do not control your heart rate as much as we thought. We can conclude that heart rates do not have a factor in your emotions due to our data we gathered. 

Well I hope you enjoyed reading about our experiment! It was a lot of fun to conduct! Keep checking back for my last blog! It's going to be a good one! I'll give you a hint!

It is a dissection! and MEOW!

Can you figure it out? Keep checking back!

Anatomy of the Heart

Now we all have a heart, even if it is harder to tell with some people. But did you ever realize how many parts the heart has? Do you know how the heart directs blood through our body? Well once you see how simple it actually is I think you will be surprised!

Ok so the deoxygenated blood comes into the heart through the Superioir and Inferior Vena Cava (FUN FACT: The superior vena cava carries blood from the upper half of the body while the inferior vena cava carries blood from the lower half of the body). It then goes into the Right Atrium. The blood flows through the tricuspid valve into the Right Ventricle. It then goes through the Pulmonary Valve into the Pulmonary Artery. This leads the blood to the lungs.

Once the blood gets to the lungs it becomes oxygenated. It moves through the arterioles, capillaries, then the venules. The the blood moves through to the Pulmonary Vein (blood flow is now red because it is oxygenated.) 

The blood enters the Left Atrium from the Pulmonary Artery. It moves through the Mitral Valve into the Left Ventricle. The blood then moves through the Aortic Valve into the Aorta. The aorta pumps the oxygenated blood throughout the body.

Well you just saw the flow of blood through the heart! Pretty simple right?! But there are still more parts of the heart to learn! 

The Coronary Arteries carry blood away from the heart. The aorta is an artery that pumps most of the blood around the body. The coronary arteries pump blood to the heart muscle supplying the atriums, ventricles, and septum with oxygenated and nutrient filled blood. The Coronary Veins drain blood from the muscular tissue of the heart.The Septum is the wall that divides the right and left sides of the heart. The part of the septum that divides that atriums(upper chambers of the heart) is the atrial septum. The part of the septum that divides the ventricles(the lower chambers)is the ventricular septum. The atrioventricular node, also know as the AV Node, is an electrical part that controls the top of the heart. It connects the atrium and the ventricle chambers electrically. The sinoatrial node, also know as the SA Node, is a group of little neurons that beat rhythmically. They set up the underlying beat of the heart.

Well even though it seems like it is pretty complicated it is a pretty easy thing to understand. Bet you won't think of heart candy the same way on Valentine's Day ever again! 

Virtual Leech Lab!~ All about Neurophysiology

So in Science(or maybe only in science with Mr. Ludwig) you don't always do conduct a lab in person. To learn about Neurophysiology our class did an online virtual lab that involved leeches.(I'm actually kind of glad it was an online lab!)

Objective:
In this lab we wanted to record electrical activities of individual neurons while delivering mechanical stimulus to the attached skin and inject fluorescent dyes into the neurons to visualize their morphology. We also wanted to identify the neurons based on the morphology and the response to stimuli, comparing them to previously published results.

(Some quick definitions to help you understand this experiment!
-Neurophysiology: A study of physical and chemical processes of neurons
-Neuron: A nerve cell
-Morphology: The form and structure of any organism or any of it's parts. ~In this experiment it is the neuron.


Materials:-Feather: This is used to give the leech skin a very gentle touch stimulation


-Probe: This is a blunt metal rod attached to a wooden handle and in this experiment ou use it to lift tissue, and to push the skin as a stimulus.


-Forceps: These are fine forceps for very fine manipulations.(also known as Dumont #5)


-Scissors: These need to be good dissecting angled scissors. For this experiment they cut open the body wall.


-Pins: These are stainless steel dissecting pins for pinning tissue to a dissection dish.


-Scalpel: For this experiment you need disposable scalpel blades because they are better for microsurgery.


-Dissection Tray: This is a tray that is half-filled with hard wax so that you can stick pins into it to secure the leech for dissection.


-Leech Tank: For this experiment it is best to keep leeches in pond water.


-20% Ethanol: This is used to anesthetize the leech. (Time for the first FUN FACT of the semester!: 20% ethanol is humane and stops the leech from moving, which makes it easier to pin it down.


-Leech Tongs: These are basically gross anatomy forceps and are used to pick up the leech.


-Dissection Microscope: This is a special microscope designed for dissections. It is basically a high quality high power magnifying glass.


-Micromanipulator: This is a device that is used to position items with sub- micrometer precision in three dimensions. In this experiment we mount our electrode on it to guide it accurately to a neuron.


-Oscilloscope: This is basically a sophisticated voltmeter. [On the screen you see a real time display of voltage(vertical) plotted against time(horizontal)]


-Leech: The thing we are dissecting!


Procedure:
1. First we caught the leech and anesthetized it in 20% ethanol solution.


2. We pinned the leech to the dissection dorsal(the top) side up. We stretched the animal out in the process.


3. Using the scissors we cut the skin along the mid-line on the dorsal side. We were very careful not to damage the deep structures. Then we used the forceps to carefully peel apart the skin and pin down each side of skin. (FUN FACT: DOing this exposes the innards of the leech, including the digestive, excretory, and reproductive organs!)

4. Next we carefully removed the gut and the other internal structures so we could see the ventral nerve cord.

5. We moved the leech under the Dissection microscope so we could look at the ganglia of the nervous system. (a collection of neuronal cell bodies. Using the scalpel we cut a window along the sinus(circulation system of a leech) under a ganglion. We made sure not to do any damage to the nerves.

6. Using the scalpel we cut a section of ganglion out of the leech making two parallel cuts that were perpendicular to the anterior-posterior axis. Then using forceps we flipped the piece of skin so that the outer skin was facing up and pinned the skin down.

7. Under the dissection microscope we cut the sinus with an ultra fine scalpel and using fine forceps we carefully peeled apart the sinus to expose the ganglion. We could then see individual cells under the microscope.


8. We moved the skin under the Micromanipulator to find the cells. We used the electrode to gain control of it and moved the electrode any place over the ganglion to stimulate penetrating the cell. (this is actually much harder in real life) We watched the oscilloscope so we could see when we had found a cell. The oscilloscope turned the signals from the cell into a sound wave display. Then we used a feather, probe, and forceps to see if the cell would respond to see any stimulus. When the cell showed a spike it responded in firing an action potential. Then we compared our data to the data in the atlas. Then we dyed the cells with the fluorescent dye to see where the different cells were located.


9. Next we used the UV Switch to see the dye. This let us see the structure of the cells.

10. At the end we used the electrophysiological and neuronanatomical data to identify each cell. After we identified one cell we went back and identified the other 4 cells using the same process.


Analyzing Data:
All together I identified 5 cells. I could tell what was each cell by how it responded to the different stimulus.

The atlas above is what I used to compare my results to. In this experiment I learned how the different cell types react to the different stimulus. For example cell type N only reacted to the forceps while cell type P only reacted to the probe. Some cells, like cell type R, fire action potentials without any stimulus affecting them and some cells, like cell type X, don't react to any stimulus at all. Cell type T responded differently to each of the different stimulus.




Conclusion:

This experiment taught me a lot about the body. There are so many different types of cells in one small ganglion. (a collection of neuronal cell bodies). All the cells are different. They each respond differently to the different stimuli. This virtual lab helped me understand the different types of cells and how they are different.



If you would like to try this online virtual lab follow this link! (I suggest it!)
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/vlabs/neurophysiology/index2startlab.html

Concussions and the Brain

This week I got together with Madison and Ali. We made a prezi about Concussions and how they affect the Nervous System. Then we had to give a presentation in front of the class and make quiz questions to put on a quiz! We'll here is our prezi!

See if you can answer the quiz questions!

-Name two common symptoms of a concussion? headache, amnesia, confusion 
-How long can symptoms of a concussion last? can be as long as weeks or months depending on the severity 

-How do concussions happen: the brain knocks around the skull and it bruises breaking blood vessels and affecting nervous system 
-True or False? Depending on the severity of the concussion a concussion can actually change the way the brain works......TRUE 

-True or False? A person can obtain a concussion only when they hit their head.....FALSE~anything hit that can make the brain move

Concussions on Prezi

Pituitary Gigantism and Acromegaly~Research

Recently I watched a video on Edmodo about Pituitary Gigantism and Acromegaly. Pituitary Gigantism is caused when there is a tumor on your pituitary gland that triggers a surge that causes excess growth hormones. This is what leads to the huge size of Pituitary Giants.
The excess growth hormones produce large internal organs. Pituitary giants have organs that are two times the normal volume of regular organs. Their organs are the right size for their bodies though becuase their bodies are two times the normal volume also.
The only organ that is the same size as the average human is the brain. This is because the excess growth hormaone makes the walls of the skull grow thicker. This gives the brain extra protection but it makes the cavity stay the same size. This prevents the brain from growing any bigger then the size of an average human.
Usually when you see a Pituitary Giant you associate their size with a lot of strenth. They do have a lot of muscle mass and have big muscles but giants are not as strong as they look. The excess growth hormones also cause an excess of salt in the muscle tissue. The salt makes the muscles swell up with water making the muscles bigger but not stronger. Their muscle development is also affected by the way their bones grew. In their extreme growth sometimes the nerves on one side of a muscle grow faster then the other side. This cause the bone to curve and it causes the muscles to be like rubber bands that are to long and to slack. In the end the muscles are weaker. Pituitary giants have bodies that are "wired" differently then the average person and this can also affect their muscle power. The excess of growth hormone causes problems with the peripheral nervous system. This makes a change on the way the skeletal muscles move. Their peripheral nerves span out from the centeral nerves of the brain and the spinal column. These nerves cause electrical impulses at very very high speeds(more than 200 miles per hour!) that cause the muscles to contract. These peripheral nerves are made of long cells that are surrounded by a protective insulation, think of electrical wires. In pituitary gigantism the excess growth hormone causes the inflimation to swell up. This restricts the movement of the nerve impulses and restricts the movement of the skeletal muscles. Their muscles lose strength and don't work like they usually would. Regular activities, like walking, can be tiring because of the excess growth hormone that gives them their size also makes them more tired.
Sometimes these hormones never stop. Sometimes surgery, radiation, therapy,and drugs can be used to get the excess growth hormone under control and stop the growing in pituitary giants. If the growth hormone doesn't get under control their bones still grow. The bones don't grow taller though. The bones grow thicker. This is called Acromegalic Gigantism. Once the body can't get any taller the bones start growing larger and becomemore prominent. The obvious signs of this are usually in the skull. Acromegaly causes a more prominent forehead, makes the eyebrow bones bulge, and causes more prominent cheekbones. It also causes the lower jaw to grow and push the bottom teeth out past the upper teeth. It can also cause a broader nose, thicker lips, and a larger tounge with a lower voice. Many giants have a male sounding voice. They can become winded very easily.

After doing further research I learned that most cases of Pituitary Gigantism can be helped with pituitary surgery. This surgery is known to usually cure most cases. The next choice of treatment for most people is medication. The most effective medications known are somatostatin analogs. These reduce the release of growth hormone. There is also a medication known as Dopamine agonists. These have not been proven as effective the other though. Sometimes radiation has been used as cures.

To see the video that taught me A LOT follow this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebhf1qKVA9A

To read the article I read follow this link:
http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/gigantism/overview.html

EMG Lab

To start off our unit on the Muscular System we had an EMG lab. EMG is a graphical recording of electrical activity within the muscles. When the muscles are activated by nerves it results in changes in ion flow across cell membranes. This generates electrical activity. In this lab we were trying to create a graph that represented the electrical activity of a muscle and how much energy was used when a muscle would contract. So for our experiment we did a chewing activity to evaluate the muscles in the jaw when chewing different types of food.

Hypothesis:

If our group tests the muscles in the jaw while someone chews different foods then the harder foods will make the muscles work more and will generate more electrical activity on the graph because your muscles in the jaw work harder to chew harder foods then they do to chew softer foods.

Materials:

Eater (to eat the different foods)

Different types of food

EKG probe and electrode tabs

Experiment:

After setting up the computer we hooked our "Eater" Sierra up to the probes. We put a probe on her upper jaw and lower jaw. First we set up a baseline by having Sierra clench her jaw 30 seconds. Then we gave Sierra different foods that were varying hardness to chew slowly. Sierra would rest her jaw for 5 seconds then start chewing the food until swallowing. The clenching data was used to compare to the other foods that were chewed. The foods Sierra tried were barbeque chips, a carrot, chocolate chip cookies, a banana, celery, beef jerky, and pudding. We also had her drink Dr. Pepper.

DATA:

Data Analysis:

From the data we collected you can see that the different foods caused higher and lower electrical activity. The clenching of the jaw we used as average jaw activity at 0.5 mV. The food that caused the highest amount of electrical activity was the pudding at 2.2 mV. We think this is because when people chew they normally don't open their mouth very much but when people eat pudding they tend to open their mouth wider. The food that caused the lowest amount of electrical activity was the chocolate chip cookie at 0.3 mV. Along with the cookie the Dr. Pepper also created electrical activity at 0.3 mV. The other foods rated everywhere between these two. The celery came the closest to the baseline at 0.6 mV.

Conclusion:

After our experiment we concluded that our hypothesis was not always true. Foods that are harder tended to make our jaw work harder but it is not always the case. Sometimes the way your mouth chews depends on the texture of the food. Something sticky and creamy like pudding can make your mouth open wider which causes more electrical activity. Our graph and analysis prove this.

Reflection:

I really enjoyed this lab. It was a really good way to start off the muscular system! I liked this lab because it made me think about muscles that I never really think about. I never thought about the jaw working in that way. Our group worked very well together to finish our project. I really enjoyed this lab because of how much fun we had doing it. It was also a good idea to call the lab a "Potluck!" I think our experiment was a great success and a lot of fun!

Muscle Anatomy

To learn about the Musclular System our class split into different groups and picked one of three things to research: Muscle Anatomy, Sliding Filament Theory(FUN FACT: This is how we think muscles contract!), and Neuromuscular Junction.

Well Ali, Madison, and I all got together to create a poster about the structure of a muscle (muscle anatomy). We all worked together to research the muse anatomy(on our IPads by the way!) Something I learned while making this poster....I have a little talent in drawing! Well I hope you enjoy our poster!