2.5.15 Because Brains Are Cool
This is the assignment. For one time each week I'll be writing to tell the world about my thoughts, opinions and cool new things I learn in Neuroscience. Don't let that word scare you though. Neuroscience really is the study of everything, EVERYTHING, and well the brain too. It's worth a read. You'll learn a lot.
Anyways, I have two main things to rant about. For one, I get amazed at the essence of life. Everything you are, everything I am, everything human beings do--is all driven by the flow of a couple charged up atoms. We call these ions (in our bodies it typically a lot of sodium, potassium, calcium, and chloride doing most the work). Your body communicates with NEURONS, cells with long axons which are just like organic wires in the body carrying signals. And this wire is enclosed in a membrane, the whole cell is, and it keeps what it want in and only lets what it wants into the cell. So say you stimulate a neuron, that is you give it some signal, like something hot, well it goes and causes these gates to open in the axon, and then POOF. A bunch of sodium ions rush in. And this causes the next gate to open, then the next, and the next, and pretty soon this flow of Na ions reaches the end of the axon and releases a signal called a neurotransmitter. This makes the next cell do the same thing. Then, everything you are is just the sum of your brain interpreting all these signals--the rate at which the ions fire down the axon, how long in between each round of firing, how many does it receive at once. It amazes me. Your thoughts, actions, reactions, emotions, all of it is just the result of some ions moving across a membrane and making signals. It's mind boggling. So simple, yet so complex all at once.
Secondly, I dissected my first brain today! And oh goodness was it cool! Your brain, it's so fragile and durable all at once. Its encased in this stuff that's similar to shrink wrap, but more like rubber so it absorbs all the force if you ever hit your head. And the brain, it's not very hard. It's more squishy like tofu I guess. It would just spread out like jello if there wasn't the shrink wrap meninges around it.
So yeah. Brains are cool. They're everything we are. The world around us. What makes everything in life possible. To me, that's worth knowing about.