Power Tips for Dissection Activities | TAPP Episode 34

0:43 | Summer neuroscience workshop
3:45 | Ganglion cells
10:52 | Sponsored by HAPS
11:13 | Featured topic 1: Dissection lists
30:49 | Sponsored by AAA
31:02 | Featured topic 2: Pre-dissection practice

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Students don't often realize that they are their own best teacher. (Sr. Virginia Brinks)

1 | Summer neuroscience workshop

3 minutes
Thirteenth Annual Summer Workshop: Hardware and Software Experiments to Teach Neuroscience. Kevin participated in an earlier version of this workshop and got a lot out of it.

• During 2019, partial costs associated with the Workshop (lodging in MU dorms + meals) will be provided by a grant.
• See Neuro Workshop Flyer Summer 2019
  • my-ap.us/2AjU3Hb
• 1-week Summer Course
  • July 14 to July 20, 2019
  • Starts at 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 14, and ends at 5 p.m. on Saturday, July 20 (travel days of Sunday 14 July and Sunday 21 July)
  • Limited to 10 participants
  • Deadline of February 15, 2019
    • Review of applications may begin earlier

 

 

2 | Ganglion cells

7 minutes
Light-sensitive ganglion cells contain the visual pigment melanopsin that is involved a non-imaging kind of vision that helps us detect sunlight levels in our environment. This information helps us sync our biological clocks to our environment—and may affect our mood.

• Scientists Find A Brain Circuit That Could Explain Seasonal Depression (brief article and audio story)
  • my-ap.us/2Ar9xJJ
• Luxotonic signals in human frontal-polar cortex: A possible substrate for effects of light on mood (abstract of a presentation at Neuroscience 2018)
  • my-ap.us/2Af9yjO
• Light Affects Mood and Learning through Distinct Retina-Brain Pathways (research article)
  • my-ap.us/2AfaaWE
• Ganglion cell (overview of the ganglion cell of the retina)
  • my-ap.us/2AbluD5

 

 

3 | Sponsored by HAPS

0.5 minutes
The Human Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS) is a sponsor of this podcast. Did you know there's a one-day regional HAPS conference in March? Check it out. You can help appreciate their support by clicking the link below and checking out the many resources and benefits found there.
Anatomy & Physiology Society 
theAPprofessor.org/haps
 

4 | Dissections lists

19.5 minutes
Dissection lists are a type of "lab list" in which each structure required for discovery, familiarization, and/or mastery is listed in a clearly organized handout. This handout can be used by students for organizing learning and clarifying their learning objectives—and by teachers to help monitor student progress for effective coaching.
 

 

5 | Sponsored by AAA

0.5 minute
The searchable transcript for this episode, as well as the captioned audiogram of this episode, are sponsored by The American Association of Anatomists (AAA) at anatomy.org

• Searchable transcript
• Captioned audiogram 

 

 

6 | Pre-dissection practice activity

7 minutes
A simple handout with photographs of dissection specimens can be used by students to walk through their dissection activity before they arrive in the lab. This gives them a stronger preparation that a "cold start" in lab, which often gets chaotic of students aren't practiced in finding structures.

• A similar approach can be used for learning the skeleton
  • Described in Episode 10: Nine Super Strategies for Teaching the Skeleton

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Transcript and captions for this episode are supported by theAmerican Association of Anatomists.anatomy.org

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Virtual Immunology Lab

Looking for a supplemental hands-on activity with the immune system in your course?

Try the FREE online interactive Immunology Virtual Lab from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

It covers these concepts:

• The basis of humoral immunity 
• The foundation for ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay)
• Potential errors in conducting an ELISA
• Sensitivity and specificity of a diagnostic test

What can we use from this in teaching undergraduate A&P?

• Link to this virtual lab activity from your online syllabus, course web page, or LMS (or in an email  or tweet to students)
• If you want to give course points for the lab, consider an online quiz or lab report submitted through your learning management system (LMS) or emailed to you.
• Gives students a "real life" clinical lab application for the concepts they are learning in A&P.
• Provides an immunology lab option for online/hybrid courses or wet labs that don't have funding for immunology experiments.

Want to know more?

Immunology Virtual Lab

• BioInteractive. Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Accessed 16 Sep 2014.
• This virtual lab teaches the procedures of performing an ELISA test to determine whether a particular antibody is present in a patient's blood sample.
• my-ap.us/YPWv3f

ELISA

• MedlinePlus. National Library of Medicine. Accessed 16 Sep 2014
• Brief overview of what ELISA is.  You can link your students to this as a brief intro to the virtual lab.
• my-ap.us/1o1dVjg

BioInteractive Virtual Labs

• BioInteractive. Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Accessed 16 Sep 2014.
• List of all the FREE virtual labs offered by HHMI's BioInteractive project.
• my-ap.us/1wAX92q

Immunity Topics

• Kevin Patton. The A&P Professor. Various dates.
• List of previous blog posts on the topic of immunity.
• my-ap.us/XdWVyO

Google Body Browser

My editor Jeff recently pointed me to a story about Google's recently launched Body Browser.  I was amazed at this latest creation of Google Labs.

The Body Browser is a FREE online tool that you and your students can use to explore the anatomy of the human body in a "virtual dissection" format.  Using the familiar Google Maps navigation tools, you can . . .

• Peel (or fade) away layers of the body . . . removing the skin, then muscles, then bones, to reveal the internal organs
  
  
• Select systems (skeletal, muscular, nervous, cardiovascular) to view
  
  
• Click on any structure to show its label
  
  
• Type the name of any structure in the search box to find it in the body
  
  
• Tilt, zoom, turn the body to a variety of positions to see organs in more views that usually available in a textbook, atlas, or chart

The Body Browser runs inside any WebGL-enabled browser, meaning that you don't have to worry about having the latest Flash or Java plugins installed.

I think Body Browser a is a great FREE tool for A&P students to have access to an online model of the human body that can be used for a beginning study of anatomy.  Because it allows the user to type in the names of organs for which they are looking, you don't need to worry about it being too high (or too low) a level for your course.

There are a few minor limitations of the Body Browser:

• The only available specimen is female (that is, there is no male specimen available to complement the female specimen)
  
  
• The specimen is partially clothed.  Although one can see some of the underlying surface structures as the "skin" layer fades back, it's not the same as seeing these structures clearly.  An odd feature that makes certain regions of the body "off limits." (I've seen some hacks to fix this, but none of them work for me using the Chrome browser)
  
  
• Some of the organs are roughly rendered, so it's not as detailed (at least in some areas) as you may like to see
  
  
• Only a few systems can be shown in entirety.  Some useful system views that are missing are the lymphatic system and the respiratory system
  
  
• You cannot select or hide individual organs for display
   
• I could find no documentation or even a help button (pretty typical of Google Labs resources)

Even with some minor limitations, Body Browser is still a fantastic study and teaching tool.  As an A&P professor, you might use Body Browser as . . .

• a presentation tool during a class lecture or discussion to demonstrate the location and structure of specific organs
  
  
• you could use it live or you could record a session with Jing or similar recording tool and use the pre-recorded exploration
  
  
• a tutoring tool with which you can send the URL of a specific view (perhaps with a label) to a student or group of students
  
  
• a testing tool with which you can create specific views that can then be used to test from on a quiz, test, or lab practical . . . perhaps using a screen capture tool such as Jing
  
  
• alternative lab model to use along with, or in place of, physical models in the lab
  
  
• it may be useful as a reference to side by side with a laboratory model
  
  
• use it in place of a laboratory model in a distance learning course

I'll be listing some ideas for student  uses of Body Browser at my blog The A&P Student.

Do you have some other ideas for using Body Browser in an undergraduate A&P course?  Just use the comment feature and share your ideas with us!

Check out this video to see a demo of the currently available features of Body Browser

FREE respiratory images

You already know that I'm slowly adding to the Free Image Library at The A&P Professor website.  I've recently added a few images related to the Respiratory System to the collection.

All the images are either copyright-free or provide a free license to re-use them with permission.  So you can use them to . . .

• Add them to your PowerPoint slides.
  
  
• Use them in handouts or outlines.
  
  
• Use them in tests or worksheets. Many of them have numbered and/or unlabeled versions that make this easy for you.
  
  
• Provide them to students to use for their reports, projects, or concept maps.
  
  
• Use them as icons for your website or learning management system.
  
  
• Illustrate case studies with medical images or clinical procedures.
  
  
• Use pathology images to hammer home concepts of normal anatomy and physiology.
  
  
• Make your own anatomy T-shirts using iron-on transfer paper to print the images.
  
  
• Receive inspiration to become a scientific illustrator.  (Then call me, I can use your help!)

Why not just use the images provided by the publisher of your textbook?

• No textbook contains all the variations of how to draw a structure or concept.  Use alternate images to help drive home a particular point.
  
  
• Students aren't really learning their anatomy and physiology if they memorize a particular diagram.  Using alternate diagrams on worksheets and tests pushes them to learn where things really are in the body. . . not where they happen to be labeled in the book.
  
  
• Textbooks must conserve space to remain a practical tool.  There are many images that would be great to show students . . . such as medical images, portraits of A&P heroes or sources of eponyms, or amazing micrographs . . . that are simply not appropriate for a beginning-level textbook.
  

This image of an iron lung is not appropriate for a textbook, perhaps, but it might help you explain the concept of how pressure affects the mechanics of breathing.

Please send me your ideas for images that you need (maybe I can find them for you).

I'll be updating you when I add more topics to the Free Image Library.

If you have any suggestions for additional subjects for images, let me know and I'll try to find them for you.

Winking Skull

Looking for a FREE web-based anatomy exploration for you or your students? Try the Winking Skull.

Created by the publisher Thieme to accompany their Atlas of Anatomy, this web-based tool is FREE for any user . . . even if you don't have the book. Of course, if do have the book (with an included access code), then you'll have access to more features than in the free version.

But as I mentioned on my blog for A&P students, The A&P Student, last week . . . the free version is pretty good, even without the extra "PLUS" features. Oh, I almost forgot this . . . if you want to use all the features of the free version, you have to sign up for a free user account.

You can navigate to different regions of the body, and from there click on any of the thumbnails of detailed anatomical art. Once you arrive at a piece of art, you can view it WITH LABELS or WITHOUT LABELS . . . a useful feature for self-quizzing or when using this resource in class to supplement the images in your presentation or while helping students in lab.

A little drop-down menu at the top, right corner of the screen allows you to choose between English labels and Latin labels for anatomical structures.

The images can be zoomed in and out. You can also quickly flip to different views of the region you are exploring.

There are also built-in, timed quizzes where the user can set the parameters of the quiz.

Let us know what you think of it!

Check out The A&P Professor website for more FREE stuff!

FREE lab simulations

How about some FREE online laboratory simulations?

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) offers FREE Biointeractive activities at their website, including these virtual labs that may work in your A&P course:

The Cardiology Lab

The focus of this lab is on heritable diseases of the heart. You are cast here as a virtual intern to accompany a doctor examining three different patients. Each patient is examined using more than one diagnostic tool, and at each stage, the doctor will invite you to examine the patient yourself and ask for your opinion.

The Neurophysiology Lab

Record electrical activities of individual neurons while you deliver mechanical stimulus to the attached skin. Inject fluorescent dyes into the neurons to visualize their morphology. Identify the neurons based on the morphology and the response to stimuli, comparing them to previously published results.

The Immunology Lab

Components of the immune system called antibodies are found in the liquid portion of blood and help protect the body from harm. Antibodies can also be used outside the body in a laboratory-based assay to help diagnose disease caused by malfunctions of the immune system or by infections.

This virtual laboratory will demonstrate how such a test, termed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), is carried out and show some of the key experimental problems that may be encountered.

These labs are also listed along with more FREE ONLINE STUFF at The A&P Professor website.

[Lab descriptions are from the HHMI Virtual Labs web page]

Urine luck!

If you discuss urine sediment in your course, you might find the urine sediment images at Cornell's Urine Sediment Atlas interesting and useful.

It's set up for veterinary students primarily, but is very useful for human biology as well.

These might be good for linking to your lectures, labs, case studies, test/quiz items, wallpapering your desktop, whatever.

Check out more image sources at The A&P Professor website!

Body Painting

Introduce body painting into your A&P class?!

I don't know . . . I'm not so sure this would be a big hit in my rather conservative community if word got out that our students were doing body painting in class!

But an article in the current issue of Anatomical Sciences Education (ASE) titled Body painting as a tool in clinical anatomy teaching has me thinking that maybe it's a good idea. The author, Paul G. McMenamin used body painting in his anatomy class to help his students learn about muscles, nerves, dermatomes, joints, bone markings, and surface projections of various internal organs by using this method of instruction.

McMenamin allowed students to work in single- or mixed-gender groups and gave them the option of working behind a screen. He found that gender and cultural issues never seemed to be an issue with his students.

He found that these exercises were very effective, and were perceived by students as being effective, in learning anatomical concepts. McMenamin cited the multimodal and interactive aspect of this method as probable reasons for the demonstrated success of body painting as a learning tool.

Click this link Body painting as a tool in clinical anatomy teaching to access the abstract of this article FREE of charge. (See note below for access to full article.)

Have any of you tried a similar method? Share your experiences with the rest of us by clicking the Comments link at the end of this article. (Or send it to me and I'll post it here or on The A&P Professor website if appropriate.)

[NOTE: Wiley InterScience, publisher of ASE, offers the journal FREE to institutions for a limited time during the journal's inaugural year. Click here for information to pass on to your college library to get the journal FREE!]