A typical monday

I had a lecture on ascending and descending tracts of the spinal cord first thing this morning, followed by gross anatomy of the peripheral nervous system and spinal cord. As well as looking at prosected adult spinal cords and foetuses with their spinal cords exposed, we did some quick experiments on each other. We poked ourselves with warm and cold sawn-off soldering irons, and plastic bristles, to find areas of skin that cannot sense temperature and touch. We then blind folded each other to find our ability to discriminate two points, and repeated this after removing the hair from a patch on the back of our arms, and after applying a pressure cuff to the arm. To record the results accurately we had to draw grids on our arms, so I now have a scribbled-on arm with bald patches! The second half of gross anatomy always takes place in the Computer Aided Learning lab, where we use a specially designed website to make notes and answer a few questions. Finally, this afternoon we had another clinical lecture at the Radcliffe Infirmary where the patient we spoke to was an elderly lady with Myasthaenia Gravis.