The Finale

I don't have really anything different to say that isn't already here and in my presentation itself. Except for maybe the fact that I actually got distracted part way through my presentation and forgot to mention how easily distracted I would be during the actual process of creating the frames for the animation, but that's just about it. I plan on continuing this animation, adding color, making it flow even smoother, making it longer, and experimenting with some movements that I had to cut out of this animation because I just couldn't at all figure out how to animate them. But below will be the final product my animation that I was able to do for this class, and my presentation itself, since it was recorded.

Reflexes Lab

In this lab we worked with some of our different reflexes, for example, when something is thrown at your face or is jokingly fake thrown at your face, when you blink during that. A reflex is a rapid, predictable, and involuntary responses to stimuli. Reflexes work by setting off an electrical impulse that causes the unequal distribution of ions that goes through the nerves until it reaches the brain or spinal cord. Then the same process goes back through the nerves and to the body part, which then moves to react.
The photopupillary reflex is the automanic reflex, which is the reflex that regulates smooth muscles, heart, glands, saliva secretion, and changes in pupil size. For me the response of the pupil contracting at the sudden light worked really well, this function in humans is probably caused by us maybe used to hunt at night or from if we needed to, to defend ourselves from predators that might get us in the middle of the night.
The patellar reflex is the knee-jerk reflex, which is a two neuron reflex arc, which goes from the sensory neuron to the spinal cord, to the motor neuron, and back to the knee. At first it didn't work for me, but that's probably because of the fact that at first my partner wasn't hitting my leg in the right spot so the response didn't work, but when I did it to myself, the knee-jerk reflex worked perfectly fine. I believe that we have this response so that when we have to, we can start running after prey or away from a predator and our legs will be able to carry us the distance without our brain really thinking about having us run, instead it can be thinking on how to take down the prey or where to go to escape the predator.
The blink reflex is another automanic reflex, I believe, since most of the time we don't control when we blink, and we defiantly don't control ourselves blinking when something comes right for our face. When my partner threw the cotton ball at me when I was holding the clear plastic sheet infront of my face, and I blinked. I think that we blink when this happens, because it's our brain's response to protect our eyes from any foreign object from entering, so that they don't get damaged and we can continue to be able to see.
The plantar reflex I would say it's part of the somatic reflex or the withdrawal reflex. For me, my toes curled up, when the pen was dragged up my foot. This reaction, I'm pretty sure is because of us protecting our feet maybe, so it's basically either the same reaction when we step on a sharp rock or when we stub our toe on something.
The last part of the lab we did was to test not our reflexes, but instead to test our response time. We took a yardstick and taking turns, we put our hand under the yard stick while the other person holds the yardstick and drops it at a random time for the person to grab it as fast as they can, where ever they catch on the yardstick, that measurement will dictate how fast was their reaction time. After three measurements, we did the same thing another three times while texting to see how texting affects our reaction time. As expected, the average of my normal reactions was much faster than the average of my reactions while I was texting. My average reaction time was 0.13 seconds, while my reaction time while texting was 0.185 seconds. Texting really delayed my reaction time by a lot, for example, I used to be a pitcher in softball and if you didn't react quick enough then you would get nailed in the face by that line drive to your face. Comparing my two reaction times based off of that is just the difference of me having my glove up and catching the ball vs. the ball nailing me in the face and getting taken out.

20 Time Reflection

I decided to just try and create an animation of one of my characters that I've drawn before. The challenge for me was getting used to drawing digitally and teaching myself how to do some basic animations, and on top of that, finding a program that I could actually work with in making an animation actually work. The reason why I chose to do an animation for my project was because I've always loved watching animated things and animations that people online have done have always inspired me to either draw or want to animate my own characters in a similar way. Overall, I think I was more focused on self improvement, even though the whole point of this was to create an animation that actually has some good, smooth flow between each frame.
To achieve my goal of creating an animation, I first had to get myself a drawing tablet, which I successfully did and worked on getting myself used to drawing with it, since it is a bit different than what I'm used to with pencil and paper. Next I had to find an animation program that would work for me and that I could actually figure out how to use, which out of the three that I had tried, only the one worked, even though it was the worst out of all three of my options. The one that worked for me might have been the one that isn't that is recommend to use, it's the one I'm using because I figured out pretty quickly how to use it to animate, since it is pretty basic and most people would probably not be able to create something really well with it, but I'd say I was pretty successful on my end.
What I've learned from all of this is that if you're passionate about learning how to do something, you should just do it, and if you enjoy learning how to do it and doing it, then you should go ahead and do it and have it as one of your skills. If I had the chance to do this project again, I would have spent a lot less time practicing drawing digitally and I would have focused way more on the actual animation, which would probably give me a longer animation than the one that I get outta this. After this is over, I'm going to continue in teaching myself how to animate and hopefully improve on my skills that I have gotten by doing this project.

Brain Map

The following is answered using this website.

Cerebral Cortex

1.      What do the frontal lobes do?

 It controls your personality, but it's also where problem solving, memory, language, judgement, and impulse control occur.

2.      What is the relationship between selective attention and learning?

 Learning is all the information you are taught, selective attention is what paying more attention to the more important facts rather than the little details.

3.      What is the last part of your brain to develop and what can you do to prevent it from deteriorating?

 The frontal lobe is the last part of your brain to develop, and there are certain exercises you can do to prevent it from deteriorating.

4.      What does the neo cortex do?

 It helps you to be able to navigate your body, it controls your senses, spatial awareness, and motor skills.

5.      What is the role of the pre frontal cortex?

 It creates your personality and how you behave in social situations, it also organizes your thoughts and actions to match your internal goals.

6.      What do we know about the pre frontal cortex’s relationship with multitasking?

 That multitasking doesn't exist and what's actually is happening is that the brain is just switching from one task to another.

7.      Which part of the brain is associated with speech and language development?  Give an interesting fact about this region.

 Broca's area is responsible for speech production and language comprehension, and even people who have had a tumor in this part of the brain, were still able to speak perfectly fine. 

8.      Which part of your brain is responsible for thinking the following: “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”
       The somatosensory cortex is responsible for interpreting temperature.

9.      What does your visual cortex do for you?

It takes the visual data and sends it to the other parts of the brain to identify and organize it.

10.  State three interesting or significant facts about your occipital lobe.

It allows you to process short and long term memories, this part of the brain stores imagined and real autobiographical events, and imagining yourself doing a task over and over will improve your performance of the action in real life.

11.  What would happen if your temporal lobes were damaged?

If it was damaged, you could loose your long term memory.

12.  What is your “fast brain” and what does it do?

The eye fields are your "fast brain", it controls your eye movements and helps your brain register information really quickly.

Neuron

13.  State 3 things that you could do that would influence your synapses, and have a positive affect on your life and health.

Three things that will help are sleep, eating a healthy diet, and exercising.

14.  What is the relationship between multi-sensory or multi-modal learning and your dendrites?

If you learn using multiple senses, then you will learn better than if you only learn it using only one of your senses.

15.  How does “big picture thinking” and mnemonics affect dendrites and/or learning?

It helps you learn the information since your brain stores the information in sort of a pattern.

16.  Describe a neurotransmitter that you feel is very important.  Justify your reasoning.

Dopamine is released when you have an enjoyable experience, it's an important neurotransmitter because it helps keep important memories, since they set off the response that releases dopamine, it will stay in your memory.

Limbic System

17.  What does the corpus callosum do?

It connects the two hemispheres of the brain so that they can communicate and exchange information.

18.  What is the relationship between music and the corpus callosum?

It helps the two hemispheres to communicate with each other more, which strengthens the connection and leaves a long lasting affect.

19.  Why is the thalamus important?
      It is responsible for motor control, sensory information, it also helps with your states of consciousness. You could not live without it, and if it gets damaged, you could go into a permanent coma.

Brain Dissection

2. The function of each of these structures are as follows:
Cerebrum: integration of complex sensory and neural function, and initiation and coordination of voluntary body functions.
Cerebellum: coordinates and regulates muscular activity.
Brain Stem: connects the brain to the rest of the nervous system.

3. The function of myelin in a neuron is to protect axons and to enhance the transmission of electrical impulses.

5. The functions of the labeled parts are as follows:
Thalamus: consoisness, sleep, and sensory interpetation.
Optic Nerve: transfers visual information from the retina to the vision centers in the brain.
Medulla Oblongata: helps regulate breathing, heart and blood vessel function, digestion, sneezing, and swallowing.
Pons: connects various parts of the nervous system.
Midbrain: part of the nervous system associated with vision, hearing, motor control, sleep/wake, alertness, and temperature regulation.
Corpus Callosum: interconnects the two hemispheres and allows them to exchange information.
Hypothalamus: links nervous system to endocrine system.

Sheep Eye Dissection Analysis

We dissected a sheep's eye in class, here's some labeled photos that were taken during the dissection as we went step by step through the whole thing. On the topic of dissecting a sheep's eye, we were able to see and learn about the anatomy of our own eye essentially, since a sheep's eye is very similar to that of a human. The parts of the eye that we identified are the lens, the suspensory ligament, extrinsic muscle, retina, tapetum lucidum, sclera, vitreous humor, eyelid, optic nerve, fatty tissue, cornea, extrinsic muscle, pupil, iris, and ciliary body. The pupil is the hole in the eye where light can enter, the size of the pupil is regulated by the iris, which either expands or contracts the pupil depending on the amount of light. The lens of the eye is suspended a bit behind the pupil by the suspensory ligament, which is connected to the ciliary body. The ciliary body is able to change the shape of the lens very slightly to adjust the light so that it hits the retina. The retina is what detects the light and produces colors, using rods and cones. In the eye of a nocturnal animal, behind the retina is the tapetum lucidum which allows animals to see better in the dark and is also the reason why when you take a picture of some animals, their eyes will seem to be glowing. In the middle of the eye is the vitreous humor, which is a clear jello-like substance that helps the eye maintain it's shape. Around the inside of the posterior part of the eye is the choroid, which is dark and thin, it brings nourishment through the posterior end of the eye. The cornea is the thin layer that is at the anterior end of the eye and goes over the pupil and iris, with some aqueous humor (liquid), found behind it. Two things that effect the eye are cataract and glaucoma. Cataract is when because of aging, the lens turns cloudy and it reduces the amount of light that is able to reach the retina. Glaucoma is when the fluid pressure of the aqueous humor and vitreous humor becomes too high, which causes eye damage.

Well, That Didn't Work

So, looking back at my last post about my project. About that program I was waiting for to download. Yeah, you see, it did not download at all, during the multiple hours I was letting it download. So I just ended up stopping the "download" and removed all of that completely from my computer. That being said, I know that Paint isn't the best thing to animate with and that it won't produce the best results that I could have been able to create if the other programs that I tried had worked. But seeing as they haven't worked for me at all, my only option is to use Paint and to try my best to go forth with the animation. Which so far has gone really well, except for the fact that I've had to delete the same frame twice since I've now ran into a part of the animation that I have no idea how to do the motion that I want to do. So this is going to be pretty interesting, I have to relearn how the head moves from a almost side view to a face on view, and all I can really say is that it's way harder than it sounds. I'll leave this with a sneak peak of the animation with a couple of frames that I have done.