Download lab

Pre-Lab Procedures. IMPORTANT!!!

1. Starting at dinner the night before lab, please attempt to consume a “normal” amount of liquid, and try not to intake unusual amounts of caffeine or alcohol. Record what you eat and drink starting at dinner the night before your lab.

2. Do not drink or eat anything but water during the 2-hour period before lab. (thus, either eat a late breakfast or have lunch before 11:30 AM). You may drink as much water as you wish.

3. Urinate one hour before coming to lab (note the time). Do not urinate again until the first collection at the beginning of laboratory.

4. If you have circulatory problems, poor kidney function or have any medical condition related to diet, do not volunteer as a subject for this experiment.

After completion of the lab, please fill out the spreadsheet below that corresponds to your assigned treatment.

Urinalysis Lab Data Spreadsheet

• Organize it around a question
  • develop a strong hypothesis with good intellectual content potential
  • Look up background information in your book about the physiological mechanisms you are interested in and what is already known about them
• Design the experiment thinking about the best treatments and controls to isolate your factors of interest
• Think about potential outcomes and their implications – if you get pattern A it will mean X, if you get pattern B, it will mean Y, etc.
• Can you foresee any issues in coming to clear conclusions?
  • You might want to strengthen your hypothesis or adjust your experimental design
• Think about potential to develop your intellectual content by highlighting your hypothesis through the introduction, methods, results, and discussion — given your hypothesis, what are important points to hit?
• Maximize your intellectual merit by writing to convince the reader that your study is important, useful and compelling.

For background, please watch the podcast on Muscle EMG — especially the motor control portion toward the end, and check out the reading:

Eckert ch. 10 (under the readings tab):  Mechanics of Muscle Contraction 375-379, Active State, Twitch and Tetanus 391- 392, Motor Control vertebrate 410 – 411

This is a group lab

Lab 6 protocol download

lab-6-emg-lab-protocol

This lab is very cool, we will be isolating the sciatic nerve to observe refractory periods and conduction velocity.

Download Lab 10

Toad Muscle and Nerve Dissection Guide

Please review the podcasts and notes from when we discussed nerves in class.

Look for discussion of Neuron Structure and Compound Action Potentials in the Synapses and Signal Propagation podcast at around 24:00.

Look for discussion of Refractory period in the Neurons podcast at around 23:00.

This will be our first invertebrate lab. We will be studying the control of the neurogenic heart of crustaceans using the lobster as a model.

Work quickly! You will have 30 min (and very lucky if you have an hour) once you open the carapace. Keep your animal chilled (they are Maine lobsters!) and irrigated with cold Lobster ringers at all times.

Please check out the powerpoint notes and the review paper on the crustacean cardiac ganglion by our very own Dr. Ian Cooke who was an emeritus faculty from the Zoology Department and PBRC, a pioneer in invertebrate neurophysiology!

6-heartcontrollobster

Lobster Heart Lab Manual

lab-5-revised-lobster-heart-lab-2015

The assignment for this week is a full group lab report. Please take what you have learned from the individual worksheet assignments and apply this to these reports. We will go over what our expectations will be for these reports in lab.

Aloha class, really good improvements on the human ECG labs this week, especially in the results. Just to make sure weʻre all on the same page regarding any remaining confusion on the WorkSheets here are some clarifications:

1. The goal of the worksheet is to help you focus on making a strong hypotheses (section 1+2) , and linking data (3) to interpretation (4).
2. For the Hypotheses, you need to clearly articulate mechanisms and how they will be demonstrated (section 1) and expectations – the parameters involved and how they are expected to vary in the data (2).
3. Results – What the data show. Make sure you have a result for each hypothesis. Basically follow the lab grading rubric, but shorter. Get straight to the point.
4. Discussion –  Interpret the results. Link the evidence (data) back to the mechanisms and explain the physiology.

The comments below may or may not apply to you – use your judgement. If youʻre not sure, please ask your TA.

For Hypothesis section 2, some people didnʻt have clear expectations. Some didnʻt explain HOW the parameters would vary. Heart sounds happen with which phase of the ECG, etc? This is not the time for definitions, but what do you expect to see in the data? Any necessary definitions would go in section 1.

For Results, some folks forgot to address the heart sounds and ECG hypothesis regarding the role of the valves in the cardiac cycle. This was a major omission. Some folks were not clear on what the figure is. Is it ECG amplitude or duration? We know HR increases, but did everything increase to the same degree?  Details make for deeper inference. If you donʻt look carefully at the data, it is hard to make good inferences in Discussion.

For Discussion, Dig deeper into the results. Summarize the important result, but then go further and interpret. For example, When HR increased, which interval(s) was most responsible? What is going on at that time in terms of cardiac cycle? Does that make sense in terms of increasing cardiac output? etc. … really dig into their numbers and link back to what you know. Connect the dots. How might it be important?

Most of you are making excellent progress! Keep it up. If you donʻt understand why you got the grade you did, please ASK. Any Questions, please ask ask ask.

We know youʻre working hard. We want you to do the best you possibly can.