For starters we had to read the first four chapters in the book Clinical Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously Simple by Stephen Goldberg. I've since discovered that clinical neuroanatomy cannot be made ridiculously simple, but I suppose it is made easier by this book. The illustrations are particularly helpful in understanding the structure of the brain and spinal cord. Hopefully this book should give me a head start on the neuroanatomy class that I need to take next semester. However, the nervous system and brain are incredibly complicated, and there is no way to make learning it very easy. If there was there would probably be a lot more people in the field of neuroscience than there already are.
Our task in lab this week was to divide up into groups and go over the first four chapters of the book with a fine tooth comb. We were specifically looking for information pertaining to brain injuries and how different symptoms mean damage in different areas of the brain. For instance, an occlusion, or blockage in your middle cerebral artery will cause you to lose both strength and sensation in the upper part of your body while an occlusion in your anterior cerebral artery will cause you to lose strength and sensation in the lower part of your body. There are more than quite a few different veins arteries and pathways that can be effected by a brain injury so we soon discovered that this was a fairly complicated task. When we come back from spring break we will have a test where we have an imaginary patient with a head injury. By asking questions such as; is your vision blurry? do you feel dizzy? where is your right leg in relation the rest of your body? we should be able to figure out where and what is injured in the patient's brain.