The Brain Game

I have now completed a total of three weeks of neuroanatomy with the med students at IUPUI, and have passed my first exam. It is a never ending job of studying. It is one of the most interesting, yet mind-blowing subjects I have even taken. The below picture is one that came up in a google search and I had to laugh...it captures my life. The rest of the post may give you insights into the life and times of a neuro student, but always remember the kitten picture.

This is one of my textbooks, the small one. It is the atlas of the brain with tons of pictures and diagrams. I like pictures for studying because the lectures make you drag your jaw across the ground. I can actually say a few lectures made me listen with a "dumbfounded stare". They are good lecturers, but too smart for their own good OR mine. The other text for the class are course packets. They are preprinted versions of the lecture notes that fill a 2 inch binder per half semester. It comes down to only about 50-60 slides a class/about 25 pages of notes per class period. Did I mention the class is 60 minutes a day, 5 days a week? I am not the math expert in the house but I am pretty sure that is a slide a minute...good pace for detailed diagrams.

Here is just one basic CT image we get to learn. By the end of the semester I should know every square inch of the picture, but I really don't want to. Just so you know the center black areas are the lateral ventricles, the largest ventricles of the 4, where a large portion of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is stored. The CSF is made in the cornoid plexus which are stored in the ventricles. This is a very common image that is used to diagnose many head conditions and to look at the levels of CSF.

This picture shows all of the 12 cranial nerves. The cranial nerves serve many different essential functions to survival and perceiving the outside world. For example the the optic nerve helps with vision, the olfactory nerve serves as your sense of smell, and the vagus nerve (my favorite) is the nerve that allows us to breathe because it innervates the diaphragm. The 12 nerves are named and numbered so people commonly remember them by using a pneumonic. The nerves in order with starting letters are: OOOTTAFVGVAH, which to me means: Oh, Oh, Oh, To Touch And Feel Very Green Vegetables AH. I know it doesn't make much sense but it helps me remember. I chose to use the PG version of the pneumonic, but there are other vulgar ones that many others use and didn't feel would be appropriate for such a post. It just goes to show everyone has their own way of remembering difficult things.

I want to finish this post by instilling a little neuro knowledge upon all of you who are reading this. It is an interesting fact I learned. Heroin the highly addictive opiate based drug is actually less potent than morphine. Morphine is created by the breakdown of the inactive heroin. So why is heroin then more addictive and abused than morphine? Heroin is able to cross the blood brain barrier 70 times better than morphine, meaning more heroin gets to the brain and converts to morphine than a straight morphine injection would for the same dose. A less potent drug is therefore more potent because of how it works in the body. I thought it was cool and interesting, but then again I enjoy the class.

I now know how I learn, but don't know if that really helps me with neuroanatomy. I guess I need to build a few more glial cells. HAHA...neuroanatomy joke, I guess you needed to be there.