Friday, October 21, 2011

Central Nervous System, the Brain, and Amazing Prosthetics


Last week I covered the "nervous system" with my Human Body class. There is so much to talk about on this topic, I couldn't possibly do it all, so I focused on the brain and Central Nervous System this time. One of the things we did that was pretty fun was make our own "brain caps". I got the template from here, and I think it all came out pretty well. It was a good way to cover the parts of the brain anyway.

We also played a game where the kids pretended to be nerve cells. In the first game they were each their own cell and we simulated passing a nerve impulse across a synapse using a small die. Each person simply handed the die they had in their right hand to the next person after receiving one from the person on their left. The next time we pretended that they were all part of one nerve cell and demonstrated saltatory conduction (hopping of the electrical impulse over each myelin sheath) by having them pass one die on to each other by taking it into their left hand and then slapping it into the next person's left hand. The passing went much faster this way and they could see how the hopping across speeded things up. I got these activities from this site, which also has some other great "brainy" activities.

Incidentally, there is a great online video of nerve cells and their parts here, and a cute comic on the whole topic here.

Finally, I had shown the kids some pictures of some amazing prosthetics that are being developed today. There was an article in National Geographic a couple of years ago that showcased the work and specifically how one woman was getting fitted with an arm that was connected to her nerves and her brain. The pictures and article can be found here. By some sort of crazy coincidence, a TED talk was posted yesterday in which the physiatrist and engineer (Todd Kuiken) developing these amazing devices talked about the technology and brought in the same woman to demonstrate, who's name is Amanda Kitt. If you are interested, the talk can be found here.

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