Neuroscience, overview.

The end of Year 1 of Medical School finished with 2 fascinating subjects: Neuroscience and Behavioral Science.

Neuroscience…it’s pretty fascinating stuff! Neuro has been really interesting, learning the pathways of how we feel, how we move, our sense of our surroundings, and what happens to our nervous systems when we have diseases like Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Schizophrenia, Tumors, Syringomyelia, Spinal Cord Transections/Injuries, Alzheimer’s, etc. We’ve also learned about “learning”, memory, how we see/hear/smell/taste/balance, and what our brains do while we sleep, to name a few more interesting topics. Here’s a little interesting neuro 101: did you know that you can lose pain and temperature sensation while maintaining the sensation of touch and vibration and proprioception??(it depends on the lesion in the spinal cord as to what sensations are lost, as there are 2 sensory pathways leading from our skin to our brain). It’s good stuff. It’s not always easy to remember all of the motor pathways and their interactions and the cranial nerve pathways and what happens when a lesion occurs here or there and all that, but it is really interesting, and I know it’s knowledge that I will definitely utilize when I am a physician.

Another subject we are being taught is Behavioral Science, which I really enjoy. I find it really frustrating that some people inside of the medical community (as well as outside) just don’t believe that psych disorders are real. The more we understand about the brain and how it works, the more we find the underlying physical/biological causes for some of these disorders. Like Schizophrenia (associated with excess dopamine —specifically with the D2 receptors), and Depression (low serotonin levels/too few serotonin receptors). I think the more we grow to understand how our brains function (and dysfunction), the more we will understand and be compassionate towards those who suffer from psychological disorders, and they will be viewed as a real, organic disease and the patients will be treated with more respect.