20 Time Final Post

My end result for 20 Time was a lot different than the result I imagined when I first started out. I thought that a drawing a week would be feasible, but school started to eat up more and more of my time and I underestimated the amount of planning that had to go into each drawing. Before I upload the pdf's of all the drawings there's some that still need to be inked, so as soon as that's done I'll be uploading those on this post. In the meantime, I have pictures of each of the drawings, but again, the ones that aren't inked are a little hard to see. 

Coloring Pages

Coloring Pages

I've included a video of my TED talk below: 

During the TED talk, I definitely rushed through the presentation. I was feeling really nervous before hand because I had worked hard on the project and I didn't want to mess it up or make it seem as if I hadn't done anything over the course of the semester. I prepared a lot for the presentation and had memorized my talk, but as soon as I got up there I felt like I forgot everything and had to glance down one or two times to get myself back on track. I missed some things that I wanted to say that would have added to my time, but overall I was happy with the final product and the presentation, even if I could have sounded more confident while giving the TED talk. I actually would have myself a 75/75 on the TED talk; although it wasn't perfect I think that I hit all of the requirements for it and showcased what I had done over the semester pretty well. From this project I definitely learned how to handle my mistakes better and to grow from them instead of letting them hinder you. I used to feel awful whenever I made a mistake, and I still do, but I understand now that it's impossible to grow or get through life without making mistakes, and if everything went perfectly all the time there wouldn't be anything to learn. I also learned time management from this project, more so because of the lack of time management that I had. I was really meticulous about it at first, but then I struggled to find a good design that I wanted to do or to find a way to make my coloring book stand out, which took up a good chunk of time that could have been spent making more coloring pages instead. 

20 Time Reflection

Doing this 20 Time project was a new and challenging experience for me. It was difficult to stay true to the timeline that I had prepared for myself in the beginning of the project, and I underestimated the time that it took to create each drawing, from finding and creating patterns to then trying to merge different ones together in a way that didn't seem like a giant mess. I chose to do this project because I wanted to try to help alleviate the stress of others at SHS. Saratoga is a really competitive school, and everyone is constantly pushing themselves to do better and competing with others in class and curriculars. Rarely to do we ever take a step back and take a breath, and I wanted to try and get people to do that with a coloring book. To actually finish the coloring book, I think I need a lot more time than one semester. I learned a lot about the different ways to create patterns, but along the way I realized that not everyone has the same idea of what should be in a coloring book. Some people like wide spaces where they can draw in their own designs while others like the small pre-made designs that let them use several different pencils to fill up. I think trying to balance those things stalled be for a bit and left me behind schedule, because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I would balance both of those things while still making the page as a whole cohesive and and full.
I think that next time if I had to do this project I would give myself a little more time to do things. Between AP Testing and the regular stress of classes, the challenge began to feel less and less enjoyable as it had in the beginning and instead started to feel like a chore and a new source of stress, which was surprising to me because it's a project that I'm really interested in. I would also give myself a little more freedom to explore patterns, and would try and trust myself a little more when I was drawing.

Reflex Lab Analysis

In this lab, we tested out our reflexes in various experiments. The way we respond to a reflex is through a reflex arc, a pathway to nerve impulses that doesn't go through the brain, increasing the response time by not having to go through to the reception, integration and response pattern. Somatic reflexes are used to stimulate skeletal (voluntary) muscles, and autonomic reflexes regulate smooth muscles (involuntary). Knee- jerk reflexes are a two neuron reflex arc, going from sensory neurons to the spinal cord to the motor neurons in the knee. Withdrawal reflexes (like when you touch something hot) is a 3 neuron reflex arc. A sensory neuron is stimulated, and the action potential goes to the spinal cord, causing the finger to withdraw, and a second impulse is when the brain is stimulated and the person becomes aware of the heat after the stimulus has already been removed.
     The first experiment we did was to test our photo pupillary reflex, where we shone a light into each others eye after covering it for 2 minutes to see the pupil expand and contract when stimulated by light.  When light was shined into the eye, the pupil contracts automatically, demonstrating a autonomic reflex arc. We need to have a photo pupillary reflex so our eyes can adjust to high and low light levels.
     The second experiment was about the knee jerk reflex, a reflex that is often tested at doctor's office by using a hammer to hit the area just below the knee that causes your leg to kick out. There is only one synapse needed to create the reflex response. The sensory receptor that receives the signal is a propioreceptor that causes the thigh muscles to contract. Although it doesn't seem that a kicking reflex would be used very often, espcially today, we use this reflex a lot when it comes to simple tasks like running and walking, and it helps us maintain our balance.
     The next reflex tested was a blink reflex that is used to protect our eyes when we think something is about to hit our face. To test this we had one person stand behind a see through barrier in front of their face and then threw a cotton ball at their face. Nearly everyone blinked when the cotton ball was thrown, and in the cases that they didn't blink it was likely because they were expecting the cotton ball and were consciously keeping their eyes open.
     This test tested the plantar reflex, with one person sitting on a table and the other dragging a pen across the bottom of their feet. When this happened, the other person's toes wiggles and moved closer together. This is a neurological test so if someone had a disease (like Multiple Sclerosis) that damaged the nervous system they would not have this reaction and would instead would have a reaction that showed Babinski's sign where the toes spread apart and upward.
   For the last test we tested our reaction times by seeing how quickly we could catch a ruler that was dropped unannounced, and using the measurements on the ruler to correlate it to our reaction times. Then, to show the effects of texting on reaction time, we texted with one hand while trying to catch the ruler with the other. Our reactions were a lot slower when we were texting, with about a 0.10 second difference between the times, which seems small, but can quickly be amplified when it comes to reacting fast in life and death situations like driving. The data and averages for the class are collected below and displayed in a bar graph (thanks Mr.Orre!). It was really shocking to see how much texting affected our reaction times, but how laxly people still treat texting and driving Whenever I drive to/from school or when I'm picking up my brother from his school I never fail to see at least one person texting while driving. It's easy to think that we can do both things at once and not have a diminished performance in each of them, but our brain can't multitask the way we think it can. The term multitasking by itself is already somewhat of a misnomer, since we can't really do two tasks together, our brain just changes between the two tasks quickly rather than doing both simultaneously.

Reaction Time Graph (Period 2)

Your Brain Map

Your Brain Map: 84 Strategies for Accelerated Learning

 Website that the tutorial is from!

http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/learning-strategies/

Cerebral Cortex

1.     What do the frontal lobes do?

 The frontal lobes control your personality, and is where problem solving, memory, language, judgement and impulse control happen. This area of the brain basically deals with behavior. 

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

 Studies show that your intelligence level is related to how selective you are when remembering information, called "selective attention".  It improves your memory capacity since it allows you to prioritize important and more used information over unimportant information.  It's more about how you control the focus of your attention and giving importance to more important facts that equals a greater intelligence.

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

 The frontal lobe is the last part of your brain to develop, and is the first to start to deteriorate. One way that you can stop it from deteriorating is by performing exercises, being more engaged with your environment and transforming information instead of simply memorizing it. 

4.     What does the neo cortex do?

 The neo cortex helps you navigate your body, controlling your senses, spatial awareness and motor skills and is more receptive to your environment than other areas of the brain. 

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

 The pre frontal cortex controls your personality, and social behavior. It organizes thoughts and actions, and helps align these with your internal goals. 

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

 The pre frontal cortex has a "central bottleneck" that stops you from doing more than one thing at a time, meaning that multitasking is actually nonexistent and it's actually your brain jumping from one task to another quickly. This often means that the quality of both of these tasks is inferior. This kind of reminds me of a quote from Parks and Rec's Ron Swanson ,"Don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing". 

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 production, language, and interpretation of other's actions. This is also the area of the brain that's associated with learning a second language, and scientists believe that bilingualism has benefits for the brain because both language systems is active in a bilingual's brain, even when only one is being used, causing the brain to be forced to "work out". 

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

      Your somatosensory cortex is responsible for responding to touch, pain, and temprature. If the environment is too hot or cold, it sends a signal to move elsewhere or to think "is it hot in here or is just me". 

9.     What does your visual cortex do for you?

The visual cortex helps differ between colors and faces, and allows the brain to pick up on specific visual features. 

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

The occipital lobe deals with imagination and allows the processing of long and short term memories. This part of the brain is engaged when a kid is reading a book with no pictures (only words). You can engage your occipital lobes by visualizing yourself doing a task, and it would improve your performance of this action in real life (if you imagined it as closely as possible). 

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

 If they were damaged, especially  the medial temporal lobe, you would have no long term memory, so you would not recollect how to read because you would have no recollection of the alphabet. You would also be unable to recognize things that you do remember, and would need reminders. 

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

 The fast brains is the eye fields, that control your eye movements and allow your brain to register information quickly. It can pick up information in milliseconds. 

Neuron

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

 Exercise and a healthy diet can influence the omega fatty acids that affect the brain's synapse. Eating these omega three acids - like salmon - can improve the functioning of the synapses. It was also shown that socializing also improves your brain function. 

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

 Multi sensory or multi node learning was when you cross reference data in your brain that can convert the new knowledge from something that you have memorized to something to something you may have learned. 

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

 Using patterns is allows people to remember information easier, which is why mnemonic devices are beneficial to learning. Big picture thinking is also used to fully comprehend a subject, and then breaking down the subject into its relevant parts. By making your learning contextual, you can relate it to what you are interested in. A dendrite's lifespan is influenced by your experience and input activity, so by using these paths again and making them deeper to remember important information, it can help with recollection. 

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

 A neurotransmitter that plays a big role in the human body is dopamine. Our brains release dopamine when an experience is sensed as enjoyable, and is there to reward your brain for learning new information of having a new experience. Without dopamine, we wouldn't be interested in learning or trying new thinks, and it serves as an incentive for your brain to retain new information. The more interested you are in a subject, the more dopamine is being released. 

Limbic System

17. What does the corpus callosum do?

 The corpus callosum runs down the center of your brain and allows communication to happen between the left and right hemispheres. It deals with cognitive, motor, and sensory functions between the two hemispheres. It is where we get our oral language skills from and how we comprehend how language is structured. It is also involved in reading, which further ties into how important it is for comprehension. 

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

 Studying music can help strengthen the connection between the two hemispheres of your brain, but in order for this to be a lasting effect, you have play/practice music frequently. There was a study shown that showed that children who practiced music for 2.5 hours a week showed an increase in 25% of their corpus callosum, showing that the two hemispheres of the brain were now communicating more effectively. 

19. Why is the thalamus important?

 The thalamus is responsible for motor control, sensory information and sleep and wakefulness cycles. In addition, it deals with your memory, attention, emotions, consciousness, awareness and attention. It also relays information from the senses and sends the information to the cortex, and processes it as well. 

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 tutorial showed us how the different parts of the brains have their own functions but still come together as one to allow us to be fully functioning. It reminds me of when we did the reading of the women who kept falling down because part of her brain wasn't processing information correctly, and how other parts of the brain took over for that dysfunctional part. I thought it was interesting how the tutorial seemed to sectionalize the different parts of the brain rather than presenting it as one coherent piece like the reading did. It was cool to go deeper and more specific into the parts of the brain and what makes it up, like learning about the neurons. I think its amazing how even though theres so many neurons and so many synapses to get through, our brain manages to go through the cell body, axon, dendrites, and synapses in a flash to make our body do what we tell it to do. It was really interesting to see how important neurotransmitters are in the brain and how specialized they are to influence the brain in specific ways. I also didn't know that learning music helped strengthen the connection between the two sides of the brain and the matter in the corpus callosum,  it would have made convincing my parents to let me do band a lot easier in freshman year. There were also new parts of the brain that I didn't know about, like the neo cortex and the pre-frontal cortex, that helps navigate your body and control your personality respectively.  

Brain Dissection Anaylsis

In this lab we dissected a sheep's brain. We removed the membrane surrounding the brain and then marked the different sections with pins. Then we split the hemispheres of the brain and cut into them to see the white and gray matter sections. The white matter is lighter in color because it has large amounts of myelinated nerve fibers, while the gray matter is darker because it has more cell bodies with un-myelinated nerve fibers. The dissection really helped to piece together the different parts of the brain, and we were able to relate the different sections to the Clay Brain lab that we had done earlier in the month that showed the different sections of the brain by using different colored Play-Doh. Below are some of the questions that we answered throughout the course of the lab, as well as pictures showing the dissection itself.

Brain (side view) with labeling pins

Drawing of picture above with labels

Brain (above) w/ he labeling pins

LABELS :

White - Anterior Side of brain

Yellow - Cerebrum

Green - Cerebellum

Black - Posterior Side of brain

Red - Brain Stem

Function of each of the structures shown in the picture above
Cerebrum - Responsible for complex sensory and neural functions and the initiation and coordination of voluntary movements
Cerebellum - Receives information from the sensory systems, spinal cord and other parts of the brain. It regulates motor movements and coordinates voluntary movements such as posture, balance, coordination and speech.
Brain Stem - regulation of heart rate, breathing, sleeping and eating

Picture of white matter and gray matter 

Drawing of white and gray matter

3. What is the function of myelin in a neuron?
It increases the speed by which impulses travel down the neuron and the axon. It can also be used to protect the neuron and provide insulation.

5. Function of each of the structures shown above

Left and Right Brain with Labeling Pins

(attempted) drawing of the left/right brain 

Labeling pin for the optic nerve

 LABELS:

Yellow: Thalamus

Green: Optic Nerve

Silver: Medulla Oblongata

White: Pons

Blue: Midbrain

Red: Corpus Callosum 

Black: Hypothalamus

Thalamus - Controls motor systems in the brain that control voluntary movements and coordination. It can receive input from the retina which it then relays to the brain through the optic nerve. It is also involved in hearing, touch, and sleep/wakefulness.
Optic Nerve- The optic nerve connects the eye to the brain and carries the impulses formed by neurons in the retina (back of the eye)
Medulla Oblongata - Located in the hindbrain, it helps regulate breathing, heart and blood vessel function, digestion, sneezing, and swallowing (involuntary functions)
Pons - Controls several automatic functions and helps bridge the cerebrum and the cerebellum, the lower part of the pons controls things like breathing intensity and has also been associated with sleep cycles
Midbrain - Connects the forebrain and the hindbrain and enables brain to integrate sensory information (from eyes and ears etc.)
Corpus Callosum - Connects the two hemispheres of the brain (right and left) and integrates sensory, motor and cognitive functions on one side of the brain to the other
Hypothalamus - Production of many of the body's essential hormones, houses the pituitary gland and others and helps bridge together the endocrine system and the brain via the pituitary gland, aids in autonomic and endocrine functions

Sheep Eye Dissection Analysis

In this lab we dissected a sheep's eye. A sheep's eye is very similar to our own, except they need to see in low light environments, meaning that they have a tapetum lucidum on the choroid coat that allows light to reflect more onto the retina. 

Eye before the dissection 

The cloudy part seen here is the cornea. While the animal is living, the cornea is not cloudy and is only cloudy now because of the non living tissue. Compared to the sclera, the cornea is relatively thin but serves to protect the eye from debris.

Eye after all the extrinsic muscle and fatty tissue is removed

The schelera of the eye is shown above, the white part of the eye. The sclera is tough, and helps protect the eye and inside because of its toughness. The extrinsic muscles and fatty tissue attach the to sclera of the eye as well. The muscles help facilitate eye movement, and can move the eye depending on which muscles are pulled. The fatty tissue serves as a cushion for the eye and ensures that it fits snugly in the eye socket. The fatty tissue is more yellow that then the brown muscles.

Choroid coat and tapetum lucidum 

The choroid is used to nourish the back of the eye, and has several blood vessels running to and through it. The tapetum lucidum is used to reflect light onto the retina and is part of the choroid layer ( the shiny blue seen above). It is used in mostly nocturnal animals or animals that need to see in low light conditions. When we take a flash picture of an animal at night, the reason that its eyes glow is because of the tapetum lucidum and the light being reflected back. Humans don't have this structure since we aren't nocturnal and have no need to see in low light conditions to survive. The retina contains the photoreceptors for our vision and allows us to see. These signals are transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain where they are interpreted. Because of the way that the optic nerve is connected, humans have a blind spot at that point. However, this spot is barely noticeable because of the way that our right and left eyes work together to create a complete image of whatever we see.

Photo of the Lens

The lens is the structure of the eye that changes shape to focus light on the retina. It is relatively hard to compress, but is still rather squishy. Ciliary bodies and sensory ligaments surrounding the lens help shape it and focus light on the back of the retina. The lens can also become damaged or cloudy and impair the animal's vision. A cataract, for example, is a cloudy lens which prevents or reduces the amount of light that can reach the retina. Another way the eye can be damaged is glaucoma, a condition where the fluid pressure of the eye is too high and causes eye damage.

Lens, vitreous and aqueous humors removed so pupil is visible

The pupil is the opening in the iris through which light passes. The sheep's pupil is rectangular (see above) while a human's is circular.

Labeling of all the parts!

20 TIME - What's Next?

For my next coloring book page I was thinking of doing something that would follow the lines of what a traditional coloring book has so I could have a new and trusted way of trying out some new patterns. I'm not sure how to go about it; I talked to some people on what they looked for on a coloring page and I got very different responses. Some said that they preferred detailed pages so they could create more intricate patterns. Others said they liked large patterns where they wouldn't have to change color pencils often and they can make broad strokes.
I haven't had a chance to draw the pattern yet, but I found some patterns/videos that seem to be really interesting and cool to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw9z6fXpuFk

I wouldn't do something this large, but it's interesting to see how he was able to incorporate so many different patterns into a single mandala.