slacker... Tuesday, May 15, 2007 |
okay, so i realize i need to be a little more proactive about posting here.
that said... i've been posting things that I hope you all will find amusing/interesting. hopefully they are amusing/interesting (and not over anyone's head).
one of the problems with going to medical school is that your vocabulary balloons very quickly. i realize i have started using terminology that is a little beyond the normal, everyday vernacular ("the sequelae of necrotizing fasciitis caused by staphylococci involve an inflammatory infiltrate of polymorphonuclear cells and macrophages"). feel free to drag me back down to earth anytime things get confusing :). (here or elsewhere in my life, because i know i talk to all of you outside this blog)
okay, so where's the amusing/entertaining/interesting part of this post?
alright, alright. I have a double-feature for you today.
1) Neuro slides. We are studying sexual dimorphisms in neuro. The goal is to understand how sex influences brain development (if at all). The take home message is that there are differences, but we know very very little about what they are... Which means we know even less about what they mean. So what do we do? Why, we study rats of course. And the below slide was projected for a good 5 minutes as we learned about an experiment that predisposed rats to take on the female phenotype (arching of the back) or the male phenotype (mounting).
Our class woke up pretty quickly when this went up. Imagine this projected on a huge screen in a lecture hall. For once, I think everyone was paying attention.
2) Neuro movies! So, post-rat-mounting slide, we had the following slide. And then a link to "rusty the narcoleptic dog". Here's the link. It's truly hilarious. It's due to a brain lesion that causes him to fall asleep at any time, doing anything. Ok for a dog in the suburbs, but not so good for a human.
that said... i've been posting things that I hope you all will find amusing/interesting. hopefully they are amusing/interesting (and not over anyone's head).
one of the problems with going to medical school is that your vocabulary balloons very quickly. i realize i have started using terminology that is a little beyond the normal, everyday vernacular ("the sequelae of necrotizing fasciitis caused by staphylococci involve an inflammatory infiltrate of polymorphonuclear cells and macrophages"). feel free to drag me back down to earth anytime things get confusing :). (here or elsewhere in my life, because i know i talk to all of you outside this blog)
okay, so where's the amusing/entertaining/interesting part of this post?
alright, alright. I have a double-feature for you today.
1) Neuro slides. We are studying sexual dimorphisms in neuro. The goal is to understand how sex influences brain development (if at all). The take home message is that there are differences, but we know very very little about what they are... Which means we know even less about what they mean. So what do we do? Why, we study rats of course. And the below slide was projected for a good 5 minutes as we learned about an experiment that predisposed rats to take on the female phenotype (arching of the back) or the male phenotype (mounting).
Our class woke up pretty quickly when this went up. Imagine this projected on a huge screen in a lecture hall. For once, I think everyone was paying attention.
2) Neuro movies! So, post-rat-mounting slide, we had the following slide. And then a link to "rusty the narcoleptic dog". Here's the link. It's truly hilarious. It's due to a brain lesion that causes him to fall asleep at any time, doing anything. Ok for a dog in the suburbs, but not so good for a human.
