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Here’s an interesting news item about deriving pluripotent cells from excreted cells and differentiating them into neurons. The News article at Nature. The risk of using induced pluripotent cells is that they have the propensity to form tumors. When these differentiated neurons were implanted into newborn rat brains, they did not form any tumors over time. This gives a lot of hope for treating diseases of aging and degeneration, like Parkinson’s Disease.

Here’s a video showing hope for spinal cord injury.

Rats with transected spinal cords could be stimulated to have some connections reformed through injections of growth factors, electrical stimulation and motivation. As discussed in class, recovery from central nervous system injury is difficult but can be improved through early intervention to circumvent the damage caused by inflammatory responses.

With respect to the lab portion of the course (even if you are not in my section), I have a review on some concepts of basic microscopy.
https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/bio1101-seto/2012/02/01/microscopy/
Please utilize this as a study guide.

Physiology is exceedingly complex. Our bodies are essentially machines made of simpler parts. The synergy of these parts forms a remarkable instrument. In our studies of Anatomy & Physiology, I hope to illustrate parallels between the function and form of our bodies. Sadly, many times, function is learned by dysfunction.

You are all responsible for the writing assignments. Our first features the story of dysfunction of the most sophisticated piece of hardware in your body, the brain. Our first assignment features the parallel stories of a biologist and a musician in a story called Unraveling Bolero.