My lab practical exam for Lower Anatomy is this Thursday, but we just took a practice exam and I got an 80%, which I'm sure I can push up quite a bit in the next few days, so I'm studying Neuro right now. More specifically, I'm studying the visual system and came across something that I thought people might find interesting.

When light from objects enter our eye through our biconvex lens, meaning its oval-like in shape, it is projected onto the retina in an upside down fashion. Through a short series of bipolar and ganglion cells, the rods and cones that are stimulated by the light send electrical signals through the optic nerve that exits through the back of the eye. Information from the nasal halves of the eyes is swapped and the optic nerve synapses onto the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus. From the thalamus, the information is sent to the occipital lobe of the brain, which is in the back. From there, information is sent to various centers of the brain that process the information so not only can we see what is projected onto our retina, but we can also understand what we are looking at.

What I found interesting was a particular condition called "prosopagnosia", which is caused by severing projections from the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe to memory centers in the temporal lobe, which is above and behind the ear. If these projections are lost, one would experience the inability to recognize familiar faces by sight alone. That means if your mother was standing right in front of you, but not saying anything and beared no familiar smell, you would not have any idea who she was. Then once she spoke, you would know instantly that it was your mother because your auditory system also has connections to the memory centers. How crazy is that???

Listening To: Tool - Right In Two
Angels on the sideline again
Wondering when this tug of war will end.