Brain Myths and Other Stuff

Some quick Google searching turned up a bunch of sites with the title "Top X Brain Myths Debunked", with X being anywhere between 10 - 12. Here are links to a couple that were brought up in class.

New wrinkles as you learn something

You only use 10% of your brain

If there are more that we talked about in class that you remember, you can link to them in the comments, or if you can't find anything, let me know and I will look them up.

Here is a link to a game where you can replicate the studies done in split brain patients. Remember, these are patients whose corpus callosum, the thick band of nerves that connects the left and right hemispheres of the cerebrum, has been surgically split to treat epilepsy.

What do I need to know for the test?

Major topics to review (by chapter)

Chapter 11

Local regulation vs paracrine signaling vs hormones
Stages of cell communication
Types of cell surface receptors
Second messengers - what are they, why are they used, examples (Ca⁺⁺, cAMP, IP₃)

Chapter 39

Tropisms (phototropism, gravitropism, thigmotropism)
Early experiments on phototropism (Darwin², Boysen-Jensen, Went
Ethylene = fruit ripening (thought I took this one off)
Short-day vs long-day plants
Red vs far-red light
Photoperiodism

Chapter 45

Hormones vs neurotransmitters vs local regulators
Hypothalamus relationship to ant. pituitary
Selectivity of responses to hormones
Insulin/glucagon system - know this in some detail

Photosynthesis

Respiration PowerPoint

Entropy and Time

Just saw this, and thought I would pass it along. Pretty good review of the second law of thermodynamics.

Favorite quote:

After all, you are a very highly ordered person, I'm assuming. If you are somehow a disordered homogeneous cloud of gas, then please accept my apologies.

I will try to get some more posts up here, maybe not the once-a-week pace of the summer, but something more regular. And maybe there will be some extra credit possible for "comment of the week" or something.