Award-Winning Anatomy Tutors serving Vancouver

We covered approximately the first third of the Nervous System lecture in preparation for the upcoming exam. Topics included functions of the nervous system, parts of a neuron and their function, neurological cells, the CNS and PNS, sensory, inter-neurons, and motor neurons, the differences between the somatic and autonomic nervous system, the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system, etc. I have been very impressed with the student's focus and motivation during the sessions and she asks excellent questions.

We discussed the anatomy of the spine: we compared and contrasted cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacral vertebrae, looked at their form related to their function, and discussed the ligaments and joints that hold it all together.

We covered material for the student's final exam tomorrow, concentrating on the endocrine system- the area where she showed the greatest weakness this past semester. I also shared some last minute study tips.

Today we reviewed the body region vocab from last week. We also covered all of the general topics that the student should expect in the course. Lastly, we covered relative position (anterior, posterior, ventral etc...)

We reviewed her syllabus and began with a little review of what she had heard earlier in the day on the endocrine system. I threw her a few curve balls, in the sense of making her recall things from prior anatomy/physiology lessons...the role of osteoclasts, the idea that water follows salt, and she did fairly well. I still have not been able to acquire a copy of her text from the inter-library loan department of the library, but I have a very similar one. Her lab tests may be the most problematic because some of the questions require actually looking at slides under the microscope. As an example, she recalled that adrenal medulla was pale in the image she had been shown that morning. I emphasized, and her text clearly shows, that the medullary cells stain dark blue (on a good slide!). Anyway, we'll work on pattern recognition. She seems to have a pretty good notion of the functional side of the course.

The student is working on connective tissues in class! We covered the different shapes (squamous, cuboidal, and columnar), and where each type of cell is found in the body. We talked about how to identify different types of connective tissues from slide images, and what type of blasts from each type of tissue.