Cardiovascular Lab

Abstract: Human beings are driven by our emotions. Knowing this, we guessed that the movie genres would have noticeable effect on our emotions. Horror films evoke fear, while action films entertain and thrill us. Likewise, documentaries can be very technical and sometimes evoke boredom, and romance films give us the fluttering butterfly effect. This is why we decided to form an experiment to determine how these emotions affect heart rate and blood pressure. We had two test subjects watch 5 minute clips of each genre mentioned, as we recorded their heart rate and blood pressure in one minute intervals. It was proven in our experiment that different genres of movies do effect our heart rate and blood pressure. However, we found that the reactions really depend on the person and their relation to the genres. During the horror test, our two subjects reacted differently because the first subject was familiar with horror movies, while the other subject was not causing her to reacted more. Both subjects had a level reaction during the action test, as well as during the documentary test. During the romance test, the subject’s reactions showed that the movie had a calming effec

Problem: Does the genre of a movie have an effect on people’s heart rate and blood pressure

Hypothesis: We believe that a person’s heart rate and blood pressure correspond to the genre of movie they watch. During the tests, we expect to see the highest heart rate/blood pressure during the horror and action test. Likewise, we expect to see a lower jump in heart rate/blood pressure during the romance and documentary tests

Materials:

Computer

Logger Pro

Hand Grip Heart Rate Monitor

Blood Pressure Cuff

Movie Clips

Procedure: 1) Select a movie clips from each of the following genres: Horror, Action Documentary, and Romance.

2) Have two test subjects watch each clip separately, while monitoring their blood pressure and heart rate.

3) Record and compare the data collected from each person.


Conclusion: After we completed our experiment on our two test subjects, we came to a conclusion that different genres do effect a person’s heart rate and blood pressure. However, we also concluded that the size of the reactions depends on the person. In our experiment, Sarah and Maria were consistent during the documentary and action genre tests. However, when it came to horror, Sarah reacted very strongly to the clip because she never watches horror movies. On the other hand, Maria is used to watching horror movies and hardly reacted at all. During the romantic genre both Maria and Sarah gradually dropped, as if the genre was soothing to them.

Heart EKG♥

My EKG Chart

An electrocardiogram (EKG) is a test that checks for problems with your electrical activity of your heart. The EKG translates the electrical activity to paper with a bunch of lines. Those lines are sometimes called waves. Each spike has a wave name! The names that they have are: P wave, P-R Interval, PQRS Complex, and the T wave. The P wave represents the atrial contraction. QRS is the Ventricular contraction, and T is the Ventricular Repolarization.

Cow Heart Dissection

Cow heart cut in half

COW HEART

The cow heart was not the biggest that was dissected, but it was pretty HUGE. The right atrium  was 3 1/2 cm, right ventricle was 3 1/2cm, thickness of the outer wall was 4cm, and of course you have the tricuspid valve. The aorta was 2 1/2 cm, pulmonary trunk was 2 cm,  left atrium was 4 cm, left ventricle was 2 cm, the outer wall thickness was 2 1/2 on the left side, then you have the mitral valve! In all hearts that were dissected, one side of the heart was always bigger then the other. The sheep heart had way smaller measurements then the pig and cow heart. The pig heart however had bigger measurements then the cow heart! all the measurements were measured in diameter!

Autism Presentation

Take The Autism Quiz Here!!!!

Leech Neurophysiology Lab

Neurophysiology Lab


Purpose: To observe electrical activity in a Leech neuron.



Hypothesis: My hypothesis is that the electrical activity in a leech neuron is going to be really high, just because of what they are capable of doing.

Materials: The materials include: Feather, probe, forceps, scissors, pins, scalpel, dissection tray, leech tank, 20% Ethanol, leech tongs, dissection microscope, micromanipulator, oscilloscope, and a leech.


Procedure:
              Step 1) Catch and anesthetize the leech in 20% ethanol solution.

              Step 2) Pin the animal dorsal side up through the anterior and posterior suckers onto a dissection tray, stretching the animal in the process.

              Step 3)Then get the scissors, make a cut in the skin along the mid-line of the dorsal surface, but not to deep so won't damage anything in the inside of the leech. Secondly, you get the forceps and carefully tease apart the skin along the cut, then pin down the left and right halves of the skin to each side, so that the leech is pinned open with the inside of the skin facing up. This will then uncover the innards of the leech, including the digestive, excretory and reproductive organs. You will not yet see the nervous system.

              Step 4) Carefully remove the gut and other internal structures to see the ventrally located nerve cord. The nervous system of the leech is encased within the ventral sinus, which is the dark green color.

             Step 5) Notice that there are many swellings up and down the sinus. These contain the segmental ganglia of the nervous system. To make one of them accessible, first we cut a window in the body wall underneath a ganglion, taking care not to damage the nerve cord or any attached nerve in the process.

             Step 6) Isolate a section of the animal by making two parallel cuts across the animal, but sufficiently separated  so that the strip you remove contains at least one ganglion.
Then with the forceps flip the piece of the skin over so that the outer skin is now face up. Pin the skin down.
             Step 7) Cut the sinus with an ultra fine scapel and using fine forceps, carefully tease apart the sinus to expose the ganglion. Individual cells can now be viewed under the microscope.
           
            Step 8) Now using a feather, probe, or forceps, push around the skin of the animal. Observe if the cell you have penetrated responds to weak (feather), medium (probe), strong (forceps), or any stimulus. Note the pattern of the response. The cell may fire action potentials or spikes. The response characteristics will be used when you are comparing your data with published data complied int he atlas. When you are satisfied with the electrophysiology, you can start the anatomical investigation by injecting the cell with a fluorescent dye. Push the button labeled "Dye Injection."
          
          Step 9) Next, we will visualize the morphology of the neuron from which you have just recorded using a fluorescent dye. having pushed the button labeled "dye injection" the amplifier system has passed an electric current from electrode that resulted in the ejection of the lucifer yellow from he tip of the electrode into the intracellular space. Lucifer yellow will passively spread throughout the cell after a while. Now you can turn on UV light by pushing "UV switch". Lucifer yellow fluouoresces bright yellow-green under UV and you will be able to visualize the cell.     



Results: The results that I have gotten from this lab is that in order to find out what exactly is going on with the leech and how their whole neuron system, you have to go in and take everything out and like actually test out their sinus and ganglion, so on and so forth. So it was really neat how you would have to do that!
Conclusions: Only some cells were sensory to some items and not all. They  can only effect some part of the leech's body in order to effect it!