OH MY GOD today was such an interesting day. I'm liking my learning and memory class already, and soc is gonna be pretty interesting...although meera suggested i take it for pass/no pass, which sounds very enticing. I'll have to see how i survive the reading assigments this week before i decide. Bio's gonna be fun. I know lots of people in it and i love the material and Dr. Cahill's not a bad lecturer. ICS, on the other hand, is painful and tedious and annoying...i hope i can survive it. meera and i already want to kill someone in the class for his incessant eagerness and kiss-ass-ing. Fortunately i don't think he's in our discussion section.
Anyway, LAB is where all the action was...i got to see and learn about surgeries and how to precisely find the amygdala, drill holes and insert cannulas into the brain, and secure them with dental cement...and then i got to help a grad student with the sacrifices...now that's kinda gruesome...so he first injects them with a high dose of anesthetic, and then cuts open the abdomen and through the rib cage and perfuses the heart with saline by injecting the saline needle into the left ventricle, and then cutting the right ventricle to wash out all the remaining blood and replacing it with the incoming saline...the cutting of the atrium was a little gross because all this blood starts gushing out and it's really dark and stuff..but after awhile it gets clear...the freaky part was that the saline needle was a little contaminated with formaldehyde...and the rat just starts twitching like mad! it's pretty much dead, of course, but the formaldehyde reacts wtih the muscle cells and causes them to twitch and contract...it's a little scary seeing this rat's heart being washed out and twitching at the same time...then they'e sent to the guillotine...and WHACK...the decapitated head is looking at you on the counter, the formerly red eyes glass clear. I had visions of Princess Mononoke running through my head at that point...heads coming out and attacking people...i may have nightmares or something...but i hope not.. then you have to take the brains out ....
sorry if it was a little too visual...but it's so vivid...
hope people aren't too grossed out...anyway...rat pee really really smells, especially after they're awakening from anesthesia...
Anyway, LAB is where all the action was...i got to see and learn about surgeries and how to precisely find the amygdala, drill holes and insert cannulas into the brain, and secure them with dental cement...and then i got to help a grad student with the sacrifices...now that's kinda gruesome...so he first injects them with a high dose of anesthetic, and then cuts open the abdomen and through the rib cage and perfuses the heart with saline by injecting the saline needle into the left ventricle, and then cutting the right ventricle to wash out all the remaining blood and replacing it with the incoming saline...the cutting of the atrium was a little gross because all this blood starts gushing out and it's really dark and stuff..but after awhile it gets clear...the freaky part was that the saline needle was a little contaminated with formaldehyde...and the rat just starts twitching like mad! it's pretty much dead, of course, but the formaldehyde reacts wtih the muscle cells and causes them to twitch and contract...it's a little scary seeing this rat's heart being washed out and twitching at the same time...then they'e sent to the guillotine...and WHACK...the decapitated head is looking at you on the counter, the formerly red eyes glass clear. I had visions of Princess Mononoke running through my head at that point...heads coming out and attacking people...i may have nightmares or something...but i hope not.. then you have to take the brains out ....
sorry if it was a little too visual...but it's so vivid...
hope people aren't too grossed out...anyway...rat pee really really smells, especially after they're awakening from anesthesia...
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