General Nervous System Lab
Purpose: The goal of this lab is to have students observe characteristics of the sensory and motor nervous system and develop a foundational understanding of cellular aspects of the nervous system.
This first activity is based on a constructivist mindset. Students will go through a series of activities that tests the speed of sensation and reflexes. The purpose of this activity is to have students experiment so they can draw associations with overall knowledge of the motor nervous system and the speed of reaction from initial perception of the ruler dropping.
The second activity models the first, but this time we are hoping for students to establish connections with sensory nervous systems that can be used later in the program.
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The reason why a constructivist model is important in this lab is to help health care students be able to recognize what an abnormality in sensation means. We need them to connect their experience with sensation and motor function to abnormal patient nervous system experiences.
The second part of this lab is designed for students to have an anatomical association with a term to its component of the cell. This knowledge is foundational to later disease pathology classes where it is discussed how specific mechanisms of disease affect the different components.
