I will start with the anatomy of a neuron. The neuron has a few primary parts (although not all neurons contain all of the parts.)

First every neuron has a soma, or a cell body. This is where the neuron’s nucleus is. Secondly all neurons have dendrites, which are little fingers reaching out than can grab information (often in a chemical form) from other cells. Then, many neurons, but not all neurons, have an axon. An axon is like a dendrite, except its main function is to transmit information. Axons have an axon terminal that is at its end and is specialized. Axons and dendrites as a class of things can be called neurites. An early view of the nervous system had it that the brain was a continuous thing, a network of merged cells. But, now we know that each neuron is its own structural or functional unit that can participate in larger structural or functional units.

The soma of a neuron is between 5 and 135 microns in diameter. A micron is 10^-6meters. That’s super tiny. And, axons can be anywhere from 100 microns to a whole meter in length. For example, the axons that run from your spinal cord down to your foot are going to be pretty long.

Neurons have different shapes depending on their use. That axon that I just mentioned that runs down to your foot will probably be attached to a soma with a few dendrites. On the other hand, an amacrine cell in the retina won’t have an axon at all and will use dendrites to send its information.

And, that’s just the beginning. Come back next week for a description of a how a neuron chemically sends and receives messages.

I picked out a pattern and some wool from Lion Brand. I’m normally not so brand-centric with my choices, but they were offering a discount through the facebook group and the pattern is a lion brand pattern and seemed really easy, so I thought for once I’d use the yarn <a href=http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/90312B.html?r=1>the pattern</a> called for instead of substituting it with something I’ve spun or found at a fiber festival or on etsy. The yarn is lovely and variegated changing from different shades of blue, red and purple.

Here’s the thing, though. When working with a new craft, you have to learn how it works and figure out its rhythms. You have to figure out how to do it right. And, not say, add stitches at the end of the row.

Or, lose stitches as you’re going.

This is okay because this is a learning project and I was intending on making this wrap for myself anyway. But, these little hiccups are why you end making things for yourself when you are just starting out. The people in your life love you, and are happy to have hand-made things. And, my Mom would probably wear, at least once, any piece I gave her. But, I don’t want her to feel obligated to wear something that looks like a five-year old made it. That’s just no fun.

So, what you have to keep in mind is that the internal pallidum is firing at random to begin with, or nothing that follows will seem wondrous. (Yes, that is a deliberate Dickens reference.) So, starting there, at the internal pallidum which is firing at random, you have inhibition going to the thalamus. It is like the internal pallidum is telling the thalamus to chill out. So, the thalamus is chilling and not really communicating with the cerebral cortex. But, if the striatum (the blue line with the arrow pointing to the internal pallidum) starts firing, it inhibits the internal pallidum, which means that the random firing in the internal pallidum slows down and it stops telling the thalamus to chill out. So, the thalamus starts getting excited and, in turn, it excites the cerebral cortex (motor areas in particular). This is called the direct loop.

I find this whole diagram fascinating, but the direct loop is particularly exciting. It is so cool that using just 2 things (inhibition and excitement) you can get so much done. And, that when you inhibit inhibition you get excitement. Our brains are so cool!

Last night I read a chapter which talked about maitri or loving-kindness. From what I understand it is (or at least includes) a notion that one should be gentle and forgiving of things. The chapter suggested you start with yourself. That seems reasonable. I can be incredibly harsh and, like most people I feel, I’m ten times more harsh with myself than I am with other people (and, if you know me you know how incredibly harsh with other people so, just be thankful I don’t say everything I’m thinking.)

Anyway, Earlier today I was having a conversation with some other people who have taught class about “dumb answers”.   We all have funny ones (people not knowing what a verb was, people thinking the bible was written by a 18th pioneer in publishing, people not knowing that Africa was a continent, etc) where someone clearly didn’t do the reading, or didn’t attend class, or didn’t understand the reading or didn’t understand the instructions or didn’t read the instructions.  As a consequence. what they’ve handed in to us was either unintelligible or was, from our perspective, stupid and ridiculous. And, I have to say in this situation, I was not very nice about it (I’m honestly still a little floored that someone made it to college without realizing that the bible predates the colonial expansion of European states).

Later in the day, I was studying for a midterm exam in a class where we are doing a lot of formal logic. Now, the nice thing about formal logic is that once you learn all the rules, you just apply them. And, all of the rules only work one way so, unlike in natural language, there are no ambiguities. While studying for this class, I was re-reading the text book and it kept saying things like, “Obviously, X.” I kept thinking, “X is not obvious at all!” But, then I realized this is the same situation. Once you’ve worked out all the rules, X does follow (obviously) from what they say. For our students, it must be the same thing. For us, how things work in our field is obvious.  We’ve done in a million times before, it is done in a certain way and the conclusions obviously follow.  But, if you’re coming to it for the first time, then that might not be the case.

Immediately after realizing this, it occurred to me that this might be a good place for some gentleness and forgiveness and maybe a little flexibility.

It would appear that I have your snow day and you have my snow. We only got about six inches of the fourteen we were promised and the University canceled classes last night. I’d suggest we have an exchange, but we all know I’m not giving up an opportunity to spend a Wednesday in my pajamas. So, feel free to think nasty thoughts about me while you’re trying to get to work and/or school.

Love,
Kate

Well, I’m not a distance runner. In fact, I’m not a runner of any kind. But, if my friend raved about them, if they are good and can be cooked into anything, and are a good source of time-release energy, I’m so there. So, I bought some. Chia seeds can soak up to ten times their own weight in water. So, you start off by putting a small amount of them into a bunch of water and letting them do their thing.

Chia seeds, soaking up some water

After they’ve had a soak, I’ve been adding a little juice (I’ve tried grape juice and lime juice) and some sugar and then taking it to school with me. They’ve been pretty tasty, a little like bubble tea but with much smaller tapioca pearls. I’m not sure I’m any more energetic, but at least it is fun.

Chia seeds with lime juice

This morning, while I was bundling up to go out and brave the cold and the snow I thought to myself, “Getting all bundled up like Nanook of the North.” And then I thought, “huh, wonder where that came from?” Now, in the Kateolect, I know exactly where it came from: My Mom used to say it when we were little and we had to put on our snow pants and coats before we went out to play. But, that isn’t interesting. what is interesting is that Nanook of the North is the title of the first feature-length documentary film. It was made in 1922 and is a silent film about Inuk man living in the Arctic circle in Canada. Apparently, some of the sequences may have been staged by the director, but even so it was one of the first twenty-five films to be added to the National Film Registry.

And, potentially also interesting is the fact that my Mom probably got it from her Mom, not being a big silent movie buff. It was fun, sometimes, to chase down where these expressions come from and speculate about how they came into and then why they stayed in the language.

As it turns out though, I don’t do anything as quickly as I like to which means I never get as much done as I like to. So, I put together these lists of things that I’d like to accomplish, like the 2010 book challenge (which is based largely on the previous year’s book list) and I don’t even accomplish half of what is on the list. But, as you can see from the bottom of the list, it isn’t that I’m not reading. (As a graduate student, it sometimes feels a little like I’m never not reading). I just don’t always read for fun and when I do read for fun I’m not always up for the intellectual challenge or George Eliot, Sir Walter Scott or P.J. O’Rourke.

So, I’ve decided that I’m going to try to read two short stories a week for the next year; that is my challenge. I don’t have to feel guilty about spending time on a fun book because short stories aren’t that involved, I’m still reading and discovering new things. And, I can keep adding whole books to the challenge list and picking them off one by one. I think this may be a good plan for me. And, I’m pretty excited about it.

(I don’t work for NASA, but the process NASA goes through before they send astronauts into space is the same process we go through before sending an experiment to the lab.)

So, first, you identify the problem. For NASA, the problem was that two components on the Hubble telescope that had failed. They had to figure out how to repair/replace these parts. So, they came up with a way to fix things. And, then they tested it. Then, they fixed the problems that occurred in testing. And, on and on. Even with all this preparation, things still had to be MacGyver things during the mission.

The whole process is so awesome. You read something and you think, “I don’t think that’s right.” So, you come up with a process that will test it. Then, you think of all the problems that could occur with your testing. You account for those problems (by changing your experimental items, maybe). Then, when you finally run the experiment, you find that maybe you have an effect but its possible something crazy has happened that you didn’t forsee and you have to deal with that. It is glorious! What a fantastic process!

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘if this isn’t nice, i don’t know what is.’
Kurt Vonnegut

So, Friday after getting almost no sleep to make sure I turned out a presentation that didn’t suck Friday morning. I had a draft of a paper overdue. I went to a workshop on eye-tracking (which the professor the draft was due to was also at). Then, (with the professor’s blessing) I had a beer with some colleagues. Just one. We all went home after to work on stuff that has to be done by this week. I stopped on the way home (I was walking) at a local curry house and picked up dinner.

Walking home through the slush from the snow, I had one of those moments Mr. Vonnegut is talking about in that quote. I thought to myself, “Its Friday night. I’m 30 years old. I’m single. I live alone with two cats. I’m going home to work on a paper about Uniform Information Density after I’ve eaten this curry. And, you know what? If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

It is wonderful when that happens. When you realize you are perfectly content with your life, no matter how stressful or hectic or boring it might seem to an outsider, just the way it is.