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I loved reading Shayna's response to action potentials and neurons. I've taken basic biology and biochemistry and am familiar with action potentials, neurotransmitters and the whole jazz. I understand that there are a number of feedback regulation mechanisms in the body that control the firing of action potentials. I love how Shayna gave the system a mind in order to control the system. I also love how she stretched the idea to describe societal influence on our behavior, treating the information as ions flowing across our membranes.

It allowed me to realize how much scientists miss out on simply by neglecting to explore other perspectives. Shayna’s first impression of neurotransmission clearly exemplified her creativity, creativity that I lack, but thoroughly appreciate in others. I never knew it to be possible to take such a concrete, scientific topic and blow it into a more universal context.
What we fostered in this course is variability, what we didn’t explore is why? What allows for some to be creative and others to be athletic? I know a huge portion is due to our genetic makeup, but how much can other factors influence our personality traits? I did some exploring on the web and found that there is a whole sub-discipline of psychology dedicated to understanding the formation of personality traits and the topic could be a course within itself. Therefore, I narrowed my focus a little bit and found an interesting article describing how personality traits could be linked to facial features. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060213093344.htm) In the study, the faces of different couples were shown to participants who didn’t know which individuals were linked. The participants were asked to predict the attractiveness, age, and personality of the individuals and the study showed that couples were ranked to have similar ages, personalities and attractiveness scores. This study was aimed at understanding why a number of couples look alike, especially after dating for long periods of time. Hmm…I wonder if this study could be applied to owners and their dogs because I tend to see a lot of owners to look and act a lot like their dogs.