Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 2, Intro to Neurobiology (5th -6th)
Dear SAVY Families,
We had another great day with our brilliant students! We began the day by spending a good amount of time reviewing what we learned yesterday, including the insights that learning is not a zero-sum game, and we each have our own time zone, functions of the nervous system, neuron structure, and the basic concepts that would help us understand action potential such as electricity, potential energy, Brownian motion, etc. Most of our students found the recap helpful. During the recap, there was a great question from our students about where electricity comes from and how we power things with it. This is a fundamental question, and I was very glad that our students started to see through the multifarious phenomena in the world and get closer to the most basic laws of how the universe works. Many students contributed their ideas about this question, I was very impressed by the breadth and depth of their knowledge. Our students talked about conduction, hydropower, wind power, and how a generator works. Then we got into the law of conservation of energy. Such high-level thinking is very precious and also helpful when it comes to neurobiology because concepts in physics like these play a crucial role in explaining how our body, including the nervous system, works.
Then we dove into new content. We continued to learn about concepts that will help us understand action potential and synapses. We learn about the structure of cell membranes, like their selectively permeable feature, bilayer lipid, and protein channels. Our students were amazed by a video depicting what a cell membrane looks like and especially how the protein channels open and shut to let in or block ions. Afterward, our students spent some time making cell membrane models with paper! They have to make those little ions that come with the membrane and fold parts of the model to form protein channels.
When our students were back to lunch, we finally got to see how an action potential occurs. All the concepts we had learned or reviewed for the past day and a half appeared all at once in action potential, which made the effort seem very worthwhile. Our students watched a video made by Harvard for details of action potential – it was often easier to follow with animation. Then we got to see a video depicting real neurons firing under a microscope, which our students found really cool. Then we talked a little bit more about why myeline sheat is important for information transmission – because it can increase the transmission speed.
Then it was group project time! Our students had been sitting around 4 tables, so they would work in four groups. Each group picked a cool group name and was given instructions to look up information on a demyelinating (losing myelin) disease – multiple sclerosis. Students then went into a computer lab to search for information on all aspects of this disease, such as its definition, symptoms, causes, treatment, current development, future research directions, and its discovery process. Our students turned out to be enthusiastic about the project and also demonstrated amazing teamwork. They divided roles and responsibilities among the group members – some were in charge of consolidating information and making PowerPoint slides, some looking for information on websites, and some examining videos that would be shown as part of their presentation to aid the audience’s understanding. One team even developed a skit to educate us on how this disease’s symptoms would manifest and how it would be diagnosed – we haven’t had our official presentations yet, but I saw a little of them rehearsal, and it was very realistic, respectful, and relevant to our theme. At the end of the day, all four groups had turned in their presentations, and they will present their findings in front of the class first thing tomorrow!