I just finished teaching Pritzker Medical students (Class of 2015). Once again, it was fun; I learned things and had new thoughts. Teaching is indeed learning. Today I want to share a recent teaching joy. Pritzker students gathered together on their own initiative to explore caloric testing, which I had talked about in class but never included in laboratory […]
Ryan McDonald and Andy Poulos (hidden) provide “oculomotor” control for two cameras. I wrote in a previous post about being confined to a tiny space as we film Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life. Now I am told that my confinement has been imposed upon me because I pace too much. Why would pacing be a problem? Well, […]
As I carried my cup of tea from the kitchen to the living room this morning, I once again thought about the wonders of the vestibular system, wonders which I feared may have been lost in the length and detail of my previous post. So here goes, a quick and bottom-line account. If I could keep my hand as steady as I can keep my gaze I could run with that cup of tea and not spill a drop. There is only one part of the body that gets the royal treatment. Lots of brain power is devoted to fixing (in the sense of keeping steady) gaze in space. We care very much about our hands and mouth but we can’t keep them steady. The one steady point that we have is gaze. Pretty cool, don’t you think? A steady gaze is such a given in everyday life that we will always notice and be extremely bothered when something goes wrong with our vestibuloocular reflex or VOR (a brainstem reflex that moves our eyes to oppose head movements; see last post). Without an operational VOR, the world does not stay steady, we become nauseated and as you may imagine, unhappy enough to seek medical help. And to return to the topic of blue-footed boobies, here is a picture of a particularly fetching one:
I was out on a small boat going to the Marietta Islands to fulfill a long-time dream of seeing blue-footed boobies (fun to say, don’t you think?) and was trying to take some pictures. Check out how that turned out: The pictures are not steady because my hands moved as the boat rolled, pitched, and rotated on the choppy ocean. […]
Join me and thousands of others in the next offering of Understanding the brain. The start date will be announced here when available.
To learn much much more about the brain in all of its splendorous detail, check out my textbook. The second edition is now out!! Get it here: textbook. 
The brain is sooooo cool! 