February Post

In the month of February, the good times sure were rolling. Many of my fellow classmates got to experience their first Mardi Gras and see what all the hype was about. Our class material about neurology and addiction was pretty relevant to this month. The physiological and neurological effects of alcohol on the brain and liver were most definitely seen during Mardi Gras.  Since I majored in Neuroscience, I found this module to be refreshing and fascinating.  I have always had a love for the brain and the mechanisms behind how the drugs exert their effects on it. We also saw how other factors, like head trauma, genetics, age, and sex, were associated with various types of brain diseases. For example, the risk factors for Parkinson’s disease include being over the age of 65, being a male, having past head trauma, and having increased expression of α-synuclein.

 I found that head trauma was one of the most common risk factors in many of these diseases, which was really fascinating to me. Since I played football and soccer in high school, I am interested in CTE and how head trauma could affect many of my other teammates and me in the future and possibly even now. One of the most famous examples of someone who endured brain trauma most of his life and then was diagnosed with one of these brain diseases is Muhammed Ali. I believe as time goes by, we will learn much more about the mechanisms behind how head trauma affects our brains and how we can help reduce these effects. However, I also believe that athletes obtain these traumatic brain injuries every day, and we should be putting more focus on finding resolutions for this damage. 

We also learned about different forms of anesthetics and when the appropriate situations to use them. Anesthetics are a relatively new and unknown field of medicine. As Dr. Clarkson mentioned in class, when he was in school, they still didn’t understand the mechanisms by which some of the anesthetics worked. We still don’t know all the targets of some of these drugs, which is pretty scary to think about. Before this module, I felt that anesthetics were relatively safe, but now I am a little hesitant. I really enjoyed this module because it showed me that we still have so much to learn about medicine and the brain. I hope that in the future I will be able to shed some light on these unknown questions.

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