Anatomy, Physiology and Neuroscience

If headaches are caused by dehydration, why doesn't a tall glass of water do the trick?

If a test was done on a person in which they were exposed to different stimuli and their brain response time was measured what would be the fastest. I'm sorry if I've phrased this incorrectly. I'm essentially thinking of the following. While a person is connected to an EEG (or other such brain monitoring device) and they were exposed in turn to a flash of light, a loud sound, and an easily detectable physical sensation. Which of those would have the smallest amount of time between the stimulation and a burst of brain activity? Thanks! (I'm sorry if I stuck this in the wrong subforum)

Well, here I am being lame and reposting another blog entry of mine, but it's something I consider to be of monumental importance. The human mind has been a black box since the dawn of our existence, and once we open up that box and begin to tinker inside we will dramatically increase the rate at which the rate of change is increasing. Are you prepared?

We hear on the news and from the media all the time that exericse is beneficial to our health and is useful and in the management and prevention of heart disease, cardiovascular disease, overweight, Type 2 diabetes. Im just curious as to how that is. Like on a physiological level, how exactly does exercise improve out health? The only one that i know how exercise helps, is with type 2 diabetes. The rest, im stumped. :s

excess cholesterol is breakdown in the liver to form bile salt .. the bile salt is the stored in the gall bladder .. My question is , where does the boken down cholesterol goes if the gall bladder is removed from the pateient .. does it circulate in the blood stream ??

Have you come accross any latest developments in the treatment or cure of this painful disease? If so please share your knowledge with us...

Hi guys Lately I've been having a very weird thing happening to my arm muscles; every now and then (and quite often) it starts spasming and "bouncing" visibly. It doesn't hurt, it's just extremely uncomfortable. Like when you have your eyelid bounce up and down due to stress (or I was told its due to stress..). I've tried to figure out if there's something that might get me stressful, but there shouldn't be anything majorly stressing now in comparison to last month, say. I've tried to rub them, stretch them, work them out a bit, and it keeps coming back, whenever i put my arm to rest. Anyone knows why this happens? Is it stress or should I stretch my musc…

hey guys, im a first year pharm student and ive run into a lil bit of a pickle here. What are the effects on action potentials for having high concentrations of K+ in extracellular fluid? As I understand it, during an action potential there is Na+ influx which depolarises (makes more positive) the cell. Once threshold membrane potential is reached, an AP occurs. Then there is a K+ efflux to repolarise (more -ve) the cell. If there is increased concentration of K+ on the outside, the rate of K+ efflux would decrease so repolarisation will occur more slowly. THIS WILL MEAN AP OCCUR LESS FREQUENTLY / SLOWLY. So, the inside of the cell will be more positive th…

Everyone knows that the eyes invert incoming light so that the image projected on the retina is an up-side-down version of what's out there. I've also been told that the brain corrects for this so that we don't see the world as up-side-down. But what does it mean to say that the brain "corrects for this". Does it mean... 1) that the brain interprets the incoming signals as right-side-up so that we don't feel like we're standing on the ceiling, or... 2) that there is a physical correction somewhere between the retina and area V1 (back of the brain), like the nerve fibres cross over somewhere along the optic nerve so that whatever light hits the top of the retina co…

hello people say how we multitask, doing many thing at the sametime. as such will the brain begin redesigning itself for true multi -tasking. ex: driving and talking on the phone. though it would be considered multi-tasking. the mind is actually switching back and forth between task, with traject results if switching occurs ar the wrong moment. but if humans keep on doing such activities will the mind actually redesign itself so seperate portions could handle activities on their own. mr d

Depolarisation of the atria leads to a low amplitude ‘P’ wave, which indicates atrial contraction and is displayed as a positive deflection on an ECG monitor. ?

Hello. can someone please advise me on what to do. if you can. Story: i punched through a piece of wood... contacting with my middle finger's knuckle. (the knuckle at the top of your hand when you make a fist) an it dislocated partially.... when i went from a flat hand to a clenched fist i could see the tendon sliding over my knuckle an the knuckle had visibly been squashed down an was much like in two pieces... there is a whole or a cavity in the middle of the knuckle an it no longer protrudes out. it is plateaued. i got an xray at the hospital an there is no fractures or anything wrong with the bone an i got an ultrasound an the tendon is sitting more to the right …

My grandpa has been between a nursing home and a hospital for nearing a year. He has been diagnosed with nearly every neurological deterioration disorder imaginable, and no single diagnosis has gone unaltered for more than a few months. Quite sadly, he is in all likelihood going to pass within a week or two. My question is actually that of my father: he found out that on the staff at the home had replaced his diabetic food on his feeding tube with regular. His blood sugar recently soared through the roof and I am at the moment assuming that is the reason. Anyways, his question is whether or not the mistakenly switching the food could be the major contributor to his downwa…

Neurons obviously conduct electricity, but are they the only cells in the body that do this? Do other cells conduct electricity?

I'm not much of an expert on cancer, but after reading a few articles, I wonder if the same mechanism that drives cancer cells to replicate at an accelerated rate (mitosis malfunction) could also be the same mechanism that halts neurons from undergoing mitosis when mature? Anyone have any ideas?

Why is it that many drugs, including some of the most potent, contain the methyl group?

hello thought it was time to suggest another odd idea, this time dealing with the brain and dreaming. people are always asking why do we dream, as it appears most if not all mammals do. or for that matter why do we need sleep. attempting to reason this out i conclude it must have to do with the way the mammalian brain is designed to function structurally. your brain needs to co-ordinate bodily functions and recieve and process external stimuli, but also must handle internally generated data return from those functions as well. added to this is the shuffling of stored information as required to preform tasks, and sort and store data collected. plus …

This is my first post on the forums, which will become quite evident, however I'm curious what ways do people increase their concentrations, reactions and improve mental agility etc. Apologies for a rather short and brief post, though I've been following the forums for a little while now, also please move this thread to its appropriate place if it's in the wrong section, thanks.

hello had a strange thought. people always talk about how human kind is always repeating past mistakes, and how we fail to learn the great lessons of history. was wondering if that could neurologically be built in to the human experience of learning, that we as physical beings can not simply accept learning from books or words to form our understanding of the world. do we require a certain amount of physical input to enforce knowledge into our brains. example: children are warned fire is hot, but almost all children seem at one time or another to try to touch a flame (please prevent if you see happening). or you yourself my have been told not to look at the …

I was perscribed Zoloft about 2 years ago after I suffered from PTSD when my dorms burnt down causing me to lose everything. I continued taking Zoloft for those 2 years. Last month I ran out of Zoloft and decided not to get it refilled to see what would happen. Surprisingly a lot of things changed, and for the better I might add. After coming off Zoloft I've noticed the following: - The intensity of my emotions has increased greatly. When I am happy, I actually FEEL happy. When I am sad, I'm truly sad. SSRI class drugs(I've been on a few) seem to make the world "grey." When using SSRI's there are no extreme ups and downs, every thing is kind of... blah. …

What does one need in order to survive on a vegan diet? I mean, does the vegan need to take any supplements or monitor their food intake carefully? Is there anything in meat, milk, or any other food groups that's essential for health and survival that doesn't exist in the fruit & vegetable food group?

This is probably going sound like an odd question, but what is the function of the fornix - that structure that connects the hippocampus to the mammillary bodies and septal nucleus? Is it just to relay information or does it correspond to subjects' mental abilities/experiences?

Hi guys My sister was in the hospital a few days ago: From what I could understand, she suddenly and quite violently began throwing up continuously on Friday afternoon. The emergency service doctor that came to our house checked her for 5 minutes with accute pains in the abdomen, and decided she has to run to the emergency room emmediately, as he suspected appendicitis. She got there while still not stoping to throw up, and was quite dehydrated as a result. The doctors ruled out appendecitis and gave her something to calm her stomach a bit, and ran some tests. She ended up staying for observation for almost four days in a row; The doctors couldn't quite find w…

Hello, im wondering if this is a common misconception: That a man who is more muscley an obviously has bigger arms can punch faster than an person with smaller arms. there strength is relative to each other. like a heavy wweight boxer compared to a light weight is spose.

Listening to a Republican science critic I really got the feeling that the general public believes that the human inability to formulate a comprehensive scientific (i.e. material/naturalistic) theory of consciousness in some way demonstrates that consciousness must have an immaterial component. Or to put it more simply, we've tried the materialistic approach, that hasn't worked, therefore Cartesian dualism must be correct. I'm something of a passionate materialist. I feel if we had a comprehensive scientific theory of consciousness, the Singularity would be upon us as it wouldn't be long before we had self-improving artificial intelligence (i.e. seed AI). Neverthel…