Anatomy, Physiology and Neuroscience

Obviously pain can sometimes serve a useful purpose. Eg, you put your finger onto a very hot object. The heat causes your finger to feel pain. This pain lets you know, that physiological damage is being caused to your finger. To avert this damage, you take physiological action: you move your finger away. So the pain served a purpose: it prompted you to take the necessary action. But suppose you get toothache. Your tooth aches, and the torment of the pain goes on and on. What physiological action is this tooth-pain supposed to prompt you to do? Wrench the tooth out with your bare fingers? Visit a dentist? But there weren't any dentists for 99% of hum…

i am doing research on hypertension, and mainly test on the function of aortic rings of hypertensive rats. Sometimes, i can not get a full contraction (>0.5g tension) induced by phenylephrine(PE,10-7M) but i can get the >0.5g tension contraction induced by high k(KCl,80mM) in the same ring. i have not incubate any drugs yet. Please tell me what's wrong with the rings? Thanks.

When I first read about a brain computer interface being used to enable a monkey to control a robot arm, this was the first ... application that occurred to me. As wonderful as the human body is, it is also very messy (eating, excreting, and so on), and it is vulnerable, on account of its very complexity, to many maladies (mainly, I am thinking of cancer, organ failure, and aging) which are difficult to treat. So anyway, let us assume in the near future that the problems of neural scarring for BCIs and growth of artificial organs are resolved. Let us also say that we have the technology for electronic eyes and ears by this time that are close in capability to the …

Hi guys. I'm in trouble with these who questions: 1)If a patient breathes air with 5% of O2: - His pCO2 grows (I think it's true but I also think he should iperventilate!) - His Davenport pH curve should go to the left ( T or F ?) - Is blood should be acid (T of F) 2) The fact that air has got such big dielectric constant causes its limitate diffusion through the membrane (Is it true?) Please....I'm having the test this week! Thank you so much

I've recently pondered the question, "Why can men often get bigger than women in bodybuilding competitions?" Would this have to do with the Y chromosome?

Hello, I have been trying to find info regarding the "perivascular sheath" but can not find a simple explanation anywhere. A medical journal that I read some time ago said that when an artery is completely transected, vasospasm occurs and the artery then often retracts into the perivascular sheath. I fully understand the concept of vasospasm, but have never heard of the perivascular sheath before. Am I right to believe that it is similar to the carotid sheath - i.e a connective sheath which surrounds arteries? If so, do all arteries have such a sheath or only certain sized arteries? Also, what exactly is the purpose of this sheath? I look forward …

Surprisingly, I have been unable to find a clear answer to the OP question from the Internet. And I need to know which neurons have myelin around them specifically and which do not. Any replies, references to reviews or papers welcomed.

I was fiddling with a back molar and 2 small pieces came off I was able to crush them into a powder in my fingers!!!! I brush twice daily and listerine at least once daily I do not floss but my teeth are well spaced allowing tooth brush bristles to clean very well.. Needless to say I will be going to the dentist right smartly but I thought it very peculiar for the tooth to just crumble!!!! What would cause that!!???? and how would one correct it? Oh it's worth mentioning I am a smoker. I have no cavities and have not since I was a kid.

I often experience the same set of symptoms after engaging in any of a rather odd range of activities....I (almost certainly) experience thickened saliva, dilated pupils, and goosebumps (along with the usual tingly, shivery feeling that goes along with them) after doing things like relaxation exercises (yoga or tai chi), sexual release, and (oddly enough) popping pimples! These are the only activities that I can think of off the top of my head that cause this, but the symptoms never fail to show up. I have absolutely no experience studying medicine or physiology, so the only explanation I can come up with is that it would have to be caused by the release of some common ho…

Hello first post here! I can't find an answer to what hue of green/yellow exactly is the human eye most senstivite to (in RGB). These are the most informative articles I could find: http://en.wikipedia....n_the_human_eye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell This could be useful for stuff like enemy color in FPS games that allow brightskins for enemies, etc. #edit: http://www.powertech...sensitivity.pdf This is interesting. Does it mean that if I play quake in dark settings then I should set my enemies to blue color. But again -- which hue of blue?

I want to be clear that I have no direct research experience on "mirror neuron" although I have been interested on this concept for years. The reason for me to start this topic is because SMF challenged my opinion about mirror neuron in another topic. I owe a clear explanation to him, especially because of a quality source he provided. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2773693/?tool=pmcentrez) I like to hear the argument about the concept of mirror neuron from the people in this forum, especially from neuroscientists. Here are my opinions about mirror neuron: 1. Mirror neurons were discovered in frontal area F5 of the macaque monkey since …

What is an experience? what creates it? although the brain can produce calculations, what causes these calculations to be experience by the conscious being within? I cannot comprehend an experience, for we cannot create experiences in computers even if we recreated the brains network exactly, that means an experience may not be created by a known brain function. Like the brain inherits information from the external world but what causes the experiencer to inherit the informaiton inside the brain? there must be some sort of force or mechanism that creates experience within the brain that we just don't know about?

eyes allow us to view everything. this is because the light is focussed in to the retina and the signal is carried on by the optics nerve.

Left-lateralized early neurophysiological response for Chinese characters in young primary school children Abstract Adult readers consistently show an enhanced early event-related potential (ERP) response, N170, for visual words compared with other stimuli at left posterior electrodes. Developmental studies with words in alphabetic languages showed that this neurophysiological specialization for print develops rapidly from 6 to 10-years of age and becomes established around 10–11 years of age. Here we report for the first time the development of the word-related N170 in Chinese children learning to read Chinese, a logographic writing system radically different from …

Hey scienceforum physiologists Yesterday we got into a discussion about sports and physiology, among which why does Shaquille O'Neal shoot such poor free shots. We considered that the shear weight of his arms is making coordination in such a fine tuned movement difficult, combines with the length of his nerves. And other mechanics seem to play a role too, his hands seem simply too big to hold the ball precisely. But how about his physiology? How much blood does such a huge guy's body contain? 147 kg, 2.17 meter (I live in Sweden). Considering he is a well trained athlete. And how much would it be if he were a fat guy, not trained at all. Thnx for helping

I learnt a few years ago that even vitamin and mineral supplements can be lethally toxic if an overdose is taken, when I saw a program on TV. A family was moving houses that week, so Mum had packed the contents of the medicine cabinet, along with just about everything else in the house. Their little boy went digging in the box, found his vitamins, and started eating them like they were Halloween candy without telling anyone. By morning he had flu-like symptoms. Mum wasn't worried until she found spilled vitamins on his clothes, and around half his bedroom. She rushed him to hospital, and his stomach had to be pumped. He'd taken in too much iron or something. The boy was f…

what can be done for sever headaches that otc pain revelers don't help very much with? the NSAIDs i have been tacking are beginning to damage my stomach (i consistently have stomach pain that only goes away with antacids) and the headaches remain! what can i do about this.

Can someone enlighten me as to the homeostatic purpose of inflammation? eg. muscle inflammation

Excuse my ignorance, I'm starting my adventure into pre-med next year, so this is my run-up to ensure my knowledge base is solid (meaning there will be more questions of this nature). =p Okay, so I understand the uvula has a function similar to that of the epiglottis (sp?) in closing access to airways during swallowing (whereas the epiglottis restricts access to the trachea, the uvula prevents food particles from traveling UPWARDS into nasal cavities). Is this correct? I was also wondering about the gag-reflex. Obviously coughing is a mechanism to remove foreign particles from the lungs and trachea, and sneezing removes them from the nasal cavities, but…

weight: 184 lbs (83.4 kg) - height: 5' 7" (1.7018 m) - age: 40s - sex: male - activity level: sedentary mostly; but i consistently ride 14 miles/day on my bike, 1 hour/day, 5 days/week - weight goal: 135 lbs. hello forum, 5 months ago i started a bicycling workout regime to lose weight. for approx 1 hour, i ride for 14 miles at approx 14-16 mph on average. i meticulously monitor and record every calorie i consume and expend. without boring you with the details, i pretty consistently have a daily calorie deficit of between 1000-1100 kcals. for most of the past 5 months, i've lost on average approx 2 lbs/week. sometimes my metabolism plateaus. when it does, i …

First of all, I would love it, if someone could explain to me the process by which the body burns calories. And as a matter-of-fact, I dont really know what it even means to "Burn Calories". Is burning calories, an actual unit being removed, or is it the amount of energy it takes to complete an action? I basically need a whole entire lesson on this, because I know nothing of it. And that brings me to the question I mean to ask. Can you by means of a natural or man-made substance increase the rate by which your body burns calories?

I've got a quiz coming up room in which we have to label all of the small muscles in the forearm, wrist, and hand... and I believe that I'm doomed....... does anyone have any suggestions for how to memorize all those tiny things?

Hey, people how many of you have heard of Halo (game franchise, books)? well in the games and books you either play as or read about humans who were augmented through a series of procedures (to be named later) basically the human becomes what is known as a SPARTAN a military program designed to make a super soldier who has incredible reaction time along with reflexes, incredible visibility (can see nearly perfectly in the dark), inhuman intelligence, memory, and creativity, immense strength (can lift 4 times there body weight which is about 400kg), and nearly unbreakable bones. so my question is could one of these super soldiers exist do we have the technology to today or…

Y. Lee, et al, "Glucagon Receptor Knockout Prevents Insulin Deficient Type 1 Diabetes in Mice," Diabetes, 60 (2) 391 (2011) [no abstract yet on Pubmed] have just presented some remarkable research which suggests that insulin action during glucose absorption is not primarily directed toward helping glucose cross from the blood over the cell walls and into the cells, but is instead largely directed toward overcoming the hepatic action of glucagon. In the experiment, mice with their pancreatic beta cells chemically destroyed and thus with no native insulin production showed no symptoms of diabetes, and their glucose tolerance tests even improved after beta cell destruction,…

i accidentally spilled (very) hot water on my hand when attempting to strain noodles for pasta it hurt for a couple of seconds but it doesn't hurt now. will there be a burn there? or is it like where people can touch fire and not be burned if as long as they are moving fast enough?