Interesting and Important Stuff of the Week

1. A standardized patient reflects on experiences with medical students - CLICK HERE 
I stole this from the facebook group our med school class has - we are super dorky and share cool articles / ideas with eachother!

Here's a quote from the reflection: "Over the course of three days recently, I had 23 head-to-toe physicals from 23 second-year students at the Georgetown School of Medicine. I was the first person these would-be doctors had ever fully examined on their own. Some were shaking so violently when they approached me with their otoscopes—the pointed device for looking in the ear—that I feared an imminent lobotomy. Some were certain about the location of my organs, but were stymied by the mechanics of my hospital gown and drape. And a few were so polished and confident that they could be dropped midseason into Grey's Anatomy."

2. Here is a picture of the nerves in the brain of a brainbow mouse. Yep, as in BRAIN + RAINBOW = BRAINBOW!!! (cited in my lecture slides to be from Jean Livet/Lichtman Lab at Harvard University)

I looked up the brainbow mouse, and found these amazing pictures. Art project anyone?
GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH FOR BRAINBOW MOUSE

The brainbow mouse was used to visualize different neurons in the brain so the brain can be mapped to create a "connectome"(figure out all the connections of all of the neurons in the brain). According to Wikipedia and the web, this technique inserts inducible genes for fluorescence into the mouse embryo, and recombination causes different neurons to express different mixes of colors, causing different hues. I may have gotten that wrong because there was no simple explanation of how it works, but for you science nerds, its technically done by Cre/Lox recombination.

3. Inner Life of the Cell - REALLY COOL VIDEO
This video shows how the cell works. I actually could explain most of the processes occurring in the video and what diseases occur if those processes failed, which is slightly exciting. But check it out, its pretty crazy to think each cell is doing all of these things. I meant to send this out a while ago, so here it is now!

4. What is a leg? I always thought, despite taking anatomy twice prior to medical school, that my leg was anything under my hip... Well I was wrong. My leg is anything under my knee. Between my hip and knee is my thigh. Everything below my hip is actually my lower limb. MIND BLOWN! I have been using the wrong term for something so simple for MY ENTIRE LIFE. Oh the things you learn in medical school...sometimes the simple stuff is just as fascinating as the complicated stuff!

5. Medical school is awesome and cool, as explained above, but it is also super stressful. I am often tired, grumpy, and feel like I don't have time to take care of myself. I am so thankful that the people with me in Boston are able to help me through these frustrations and hard times. I am also thankful for the support and understanding of friends and family outside of Boston, and feel like I could never survive medical school without everyone's help.