Physiology seemed like a grab-bag of random processes which no one really understands. If you understand a physiological process—congratulations, that idea probably doesn’t transfer much to other domains. You just know how humans—and maybe closely related animals—do the thing. At least, that’s how I felt. (These sentiments tend to feel sillier when spelled out.)
I haven’t totally changed my mind. But I do know that it’s nice to look down at my hand and be able to pop through multiple understandings of my body. I start with the circulatory system and I might imagine how oxygenated hemoglobin turns bright red, tracing the flow back down to my median cubital vein (where blood is drawn). My mind’s eye flickers as I imagine the peripheral nervous system and its reflex arcs, wondering at the preconditions which trigger spinal short-circuits (and at what preprocessing is done to customize the reflex to the situation). Another flicker and I see the muscles and joints and their lubricants and connectives; gazing through flesh at my ulna and remembering the repetitive stress injury which once tormented me…
Nice, thanks!
If it helps, back in my military industrial complex days, I wound up excessively familiar with inertial navigation systems. An INS needs six measurements: rotation measurement along three axes (gyroscopes), and acceleration measurement along three axes (accelerometers).
In theory, if you have all six of those sensors with perfect precision and accuracy, and you perfectly initialize the position and velocity and orientation of the sensor, and you also have a perfect map of the gravitational field, then an INS can always know exactly where it is forever without ever having to look at its surroundings to “get its bearings”.
Three measurements doesn’t work. You need all six.
If it helps, back in my optical physics postdoc days, I spent a day or two compiling some fun facts and terrifying animal pictures into a quick tour of animal vision: https://sjbyrnes.com/AnimalVisionJournalClub2015.pdf
No, the lens focuses light into an extended image on the back of the eye. Different parts of the retina capture different part of that extended image. Any one part of what you’re looking at (e.g. the corner of the table) at any particular moment, sends out light that gets focused to one point (unless you have blurry vision), but the fleck of dirt on top of the table sends out light that gets focused to a slightly different point.
In theory, your whole retina could have rods and cones packed as densely as the fovea does. My guess is, there wouldn’t be much benefit to compensate for the cost. The cost is not just extra rods and cones, but more importantly brain real estate to analyze it. A smaller area of dense rods and cones plus saccades that move it around are evidently good enough. (I think gemini’s answer is not great btw.)
One way to think about it is, there are constantly water molecules bumping into the membrane from the left, and passing through to the right, and there are constantly water molecules bumping into the membrane from the right, and passing through to the left. Water will flow until those rates are equal. If the right side is saltier, then that reduces how often the water molecules on the right bump into the membrane, because that real estate is sometimes occupied by a salt ion. But if the pressure on the right is higher, that can compensate.
>The semicircular canals track changes in your head’s orientation. The otoliths track which way is down. But why not just combine them? Why did they evolve to be separate?
Here’s an idea.
The body is completely obsessed with inferring its state of poisonedness, and uses inner ear orientation sensors to help infer this. This is why car / sea / VR sickness exist. Since inferring poisonedness quickly is important, so it can start forcing itself to throw up, having two sensors is better because.. it’s more.. fault-tolerant? Not sure. But maybe there’s something here.
I just finished up a semester of head and neck anatomy. I went into it for the neuroscience, not expecting much from the other topics. I had a similar experience to you, finding many interesting things that are helpful in my day to day.
I found the Hyoid bone especially interesting. I remember my first time seeing it on a model skeleton and thinking “hu, someone attached an extra mandible to this guy… and it’s just floating. That’s weird.”
I then had my mind blown seeing it in a cadaver.
Side bar: If you ever get the chance to go into an anatomy lab and explore the cadavers I highly recommend. Take what they say about eating and hydrating before going in seriously. ~every 2 weeks someone fainted and banged their head on a metal table.
The other key takeaway for me was learning about the cranial nerves. Then having the realisation that mine have probably been compromised in some way. (Perhaps COVID?). Which has left me with the humorous and sometimes useful Specific Anosmia of not being able to smell farts.
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Reading the Manga Guide to statistics has been great for Anki cards. Easy image occlusion cards that make reviewing more fun.
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I wish I liked cells at work more. Still, I was able to explain where blood comes from to a kid yesterday because of things I learned in that show.
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We seem to have overlapping interests. So I’d like to recommend “Curious” by Lily Serna.
Perhaps it isn’t applicable to you. But it took me a day to read, and I added 100s of Anki cards derived from it.
Lily is famous for doing mental math super quickly, and the final section of the book is just a bunch of the tricks she uses clearly written out. With a bit of thought, these tricks combine into more powerful mental movements that have sped up my mental calculations quite a bit.
The rest of the book is cool math trivia and life hacks. Very fun, a bit simplistic.
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I’m enjoying these media reviews, excited for the next one!