Grp2 7/7/2016

Grp 2

7/7/2016

Alicia Au

Sharon Lau

Ingrid Luk

Doris Wong

Natalie Yeung

Selfie with Dr Maral Tajerian

After a good night's sleep, we began our day with a wonderful neuroscience class. Our teacher, Dr Maral Tajerian, first explained to us that neuroscience is basically the study of the nervous system. The two parts of the nervous system was explained, namely PNS and CNS. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spine.  As the brain is extremely important, it is protected by the skull. Meanwhile, the PNS is pretty much everything else. We moved on to a thought-provoking session on the structure of the brain and also had a 10 minute brainstorm on how to find out the function of a particular area in the brain. It was fun to exchange our views on common non-invasive and the controversial invasive methods of animal research. Dr Tajerian also played a little game with us to show us how neurons in our brain are not joined together, but they can still transmit signals to one another by chemical methods, using neurotransmitters. We were all fascinated by how neurons work! But then came some questions  to ponder over: how did we come this far? How did we discover what we know at present? The second part of the lesson was devoted to the history of microscopes and technological advancements in Neuroscience. The main obstacles faced by scientist in the 19th century were the inability to distinguish between brain cells and other tissues along with the inability to firm up the tissues. It was not until the 20th century that scientists were able to develop the right technology to support our discoveries today. We all appreciated the perseverance and effort of earlier scientists who contributed much towards what we are learning today. Last but not least, we got a chance to learn about the research done by Dr Tajerian.  A large part of her research focused on making the brain clear of cells and neurons. She even showed us a mouse's brain which was transparent.  It was definitely an awesome and inspiring lecture that we will never forget! By the way, we are sure that Dr Tajerian will get a Nobel Prize in the near future and we hope that she does. She is clearly a very outstanding scientist and if she does win the coveted prize, we can proudly claim to have been taught by her!

 

In the afternoon, we attended a lesson on how to write an interesting blog. The lesson began with self introductions followed by naming our favorite stories. Our teacher gave us an interesting lecture on the history of media with a fascinating description of the ‘Cave of Lost Dreams’. Although this ancient cave is now closed to public with only photos and videos to see, it still amazed us how the drawings and animations on cave walls were drawn centuries ago. Prof. Miljkovic also taught us different and essential elements that contribute towards shaping a good and interesting blog story. A 15 minute break was given to us, after which we continued writing our blog stories. We each made a blog entry about our few days at Stanford and expressing our true feelings towards this tour so far. We were also taught how to create aesthetic photos for our blog, making our blog more beautiful and memorable for us.  With sufficient time available to work on our blogs, we are now aiming to make use of what we have drawn from this lesson onto our media production and blog. Look out for our new and highly captivating blog entry!