6/47

We finished up with neuro today. So, the first week consisted of 3 painful, long days of anatomy and 3 a lot less painful, but very exhausting days of neuro. Tomorrow we have our first day off. To celebrate, I think I will study for 10 or so hours, and then go out to dinner. You know, take it easy.

I finished up making my neuro tapes tonight, but I still have 2 hours of tape to listen to tonight. I am still not completely convinced by the taping method. However, the neuro prof, who I will concede seemed to know what he is talking about and has the credentials to back it up (MD/PhD from Stanford, training at Johns Hopkins, working in the neuro department at UC San Deigo), gave us a mini lecture on just why the brain would respond to this method. So, the hippocampus, in simplistic terms, is the seat of memory in the brain. If you want to learn something AND remember it, you have to light up the hippocampus. There are lots of different ways to do this - add an emotional component to your learning, stimulate the brain in multiple different ways (why songs, reading outloud, listening can be helpful), and repetition to solidify all those new axonal connections you are making. So, when you hear something and the professor is funny or tells a story, you light up the hippocampus a bit more than if the prof is dull. Then when you read over the material again, you light up that same portion of the hippocampus and make the connection a bit stronger. When you read out loud what you have written you are doing the same thing. So, in theory, by the time you get around to listening to the tape, that bit of the hippocampus that you are lighting up should be good and bright. We are told that some people just have higher thresholds - why some folks can hear something once and remember it forever, while others have to hear it 100 times before getting a grasp on it. We are (pretty much) all capable of learning large number of facts - just takes some of us longer.

The prof also told us this story about sleep. There was this scientist trying to figure out the connection between sleep and memory. So, he had all these mice, and noticed that when they were running through their maze little bits of their brains would lite up in response to certain stimuli. So, a red well caused brain bit 1 to light up, a window caused brain bit 2 to light up, etc. etc. Then when these mice went to bed their brains randomly went over the bits of the maze they had seen that day - and you could tell because the same brain bits would light up. So, the scientist gave the mice a specific path to run, and made them run that path over and over again all day - so they were stimulating the brain bits in a specific order. When those mice went to bed their little mouse brains, in a very organized fashion, went through the maze again, but at 20-30 times the speed they had done in real life. As if the brain was actively trying to lay down the memory. the message: you have to sleep in order to learn. Not that I didn't know that repetition and sleep were good. I did know that. But, I like the story.

I joined the gym and have gone twice now. It is not the greatest gym, though I am told it is the largest Bally's in Dallas. I find that odd, given that it is about the same quality of the YMCA I went to in Chinatown in Boston (which was a nice enough gym, but certainly nothing special). Regardless, it is better than running outside. The one time I did run outside I got lost (no surprise there), was proposed marriage to by an old non-english speaking man, and followed by some guys in a pick up truck going at low speed for almost half a mile. And this was all before 7am.

The food has not improved. Who knew that veggies could be so overcooked and swarming in butter that they don't even taste like veggies any more. the pasta seems to come pre-oiled, and I remain unimpressed by the iceberg lettuce. Thank goodness for trader Joe's care packages, and baby carrots!