About the In Sickness and In Health Project:
The purpose of this project was to make people think about their health as well as their risk of getting certain diseases. Typically this is something that people don't necessarily want to think about, but the truth of the matter is that if you are not thinking about sickness, then you can't plan to be healthy. In our humanities class, we created oral history videos about a person in our family that has had the disease we are studying.
I created this oral history video about my great grandmother who had Alzheimer's disease:
The purpose of this project was to make people think about their health as well as their risk of getting certain diseases. Typically this is something that people don't necessarily want to think about, but the truth of the matter is that if you are not thinking about sickness, then you can't plan to be healthy. In our humanities class, we created oral history videos about a person in our family that has had the disease we are studying.
I created this oral history video about my great grandmother who had Alzheimer's disease:
My group and I created a painting to show how neurological diseases can affect people as well as how it can be prevented. The person in the painting is very thin and frail, we chose to make it this way because of the fact that people with Alzheimer's Disease can begin to lose weight in later stages. The person can be seen with strands of DNA wrapped around his body, which is supposed to represent how your genes can be a burden on your health. The book on the top of the painting represents the idea that keeping your brain stimulated can be a good way to prevent the disease.
We also created self portrait paintings titled: "Pieces of Me"
The idea behind these products was to create a visually representation of ourselves in a symbolic and biological way. I decided to paint my background as the ocean along with some trees and rocks because I really like to be out in nature. I felt that this was a great way to tie in a representation of myself with biology, as biology is the science of life and living organisms.
We conducted interviews with scientists, researchers and doctors that study the diseases the students are profiling. We wanted to learn more about current and novel research being conducted with regards to the top four killer diseases in the U.S. One of the interview questions prompted us to share their research or day to day activity visually to be commissioned in an art piece. We used their ideas to portray what the researcher does on a daily basis. Finally, we transcribed their entire recorded interview and displayed it with a summary of the researcher as the artist statement.
This was the creative commission that I decided to create for UCSD researcher James Brewer Ph.D. :
This was the creative commission that I decided to create for UCSD researcher James Brewer Ph.D. :
The Interview:
Q: Your name, position, organization/laboratory/hospital. James Brewer, M.D., Ph.D.
A: Associate Professor
Radiology and Neurosciences
UC San Diego
Q: How did you come to research human memory processes? I was always interested in the human brain, from the time of childhood.
A: When I entered college, I planned to train to become a physician. In my sophomore year in college, I got the opportunity to pursue an experience in research, and it fit my personality exactly. Digging into a question and not coming up for air until it was
answered. Even though it was organic chemistry, it still fascinated me. Immediately after that, I found an experience for research in Alzheimer's disease using brain imaging and I was hooked.
Q: Can you tell me a little about your current work and its implications?
A: I use functional brain imaging to examine the activity
in the brain that is related to forming and retrieving memories. I also direct the imaging core for the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study, where I use advanced quantitative image analysis to determine whether a drug is slowing or halting the neurodegeneration
of Alzheimer's. Though these two directions in my lab are quite distinct, they each lend a lot of excitement to my efforts. Studying memory function in healthy people does not have a clear and direct clinical benefit to any patients, but it is exciting to
be first (in all the time of mankind!) to see how a human brain processes memories. The work in Alzheimer's is exciting to me, because I have seen the devastation that this disease brings to patients and families, so I am glad to have a part in a larger organization
that is working to solve the disease.
Q: We are interested in what your life is like as a researcher/clinician on a day to day basis. Is there something that you would like to share with the general public or community that cares about prevention, therapies and cures for the disease?
A: The best part of our days are in the lab, working on new discoveries. Unfortunately, that gets pushed aside quite a bit by the duties of working in a highly regulated environment and a challenging funding environment. Too much time is spent on the work of applying
for grants, keeping grant agencies appraised of how you are using their money, showing that you are not overly conflicted with business interests, filling out forms to keep your credentials current, etc. Recently, I have worked to bring some of our discoveries
directly to patients, and I have learned how hard that can be to take something directly from the research lab to make it available. I have therefore had to work with industry to do this, and it is a unique experience with challenges of its own. Nevertheless,
I think this should be encouraged, if we truly want to bring our discoveries out of the "ivory tower" of academics.
Q: As part of the 11th grade project we will be creating an art piece in studio art that I hope can serve to represent a piece
of your work. Is there an image or idea that represents what you do that I can work towards to represent the important things that you do? If you don't have ideas now, we will be starting the artwork on Nov. 7th and would love to hear any ideas before then.
Anything would help and would be amazing!
A: See attached for a dissection of the brain with the hippocampus (Sea horse... The brain's memory structure) left intact. Actually I just checked and I don't have that on this computer.. I attached instead a picture of an MRI technique called DTI, used in a rat brain in this case, but that I often use in humans. This technique measures how water diffuses in the brain and it tends to go lengthwise along with the myelin fibers (the wires connecting neurons) instead of across those fibers. The color shows the direction of water movement with green depicting left-to-right water movement, Red depicting fibers going into and out of the screen, and Blue showing fibers going from the top to the bottom of the screen.
I also found a powerpoint from a Mock trial I did for the AAAS organization (the name "Mr. Johnson" is not real, so you can feel assured that this is not real patient information). This was called "the Brain on Trial" and discussed the implications of having a criminal perform, for example, a murderous act and later be found to have a brain lesion that would have influenced his judgment and impulsivity. Is it truly "his fault?" Does it have implications for charging him with "premeditated murder" etc.
I also added an article about Phineas Gage, which you should know about. He was one of our first examples showing how our personality, and what we often see as "who we are" is largely driven by what is in the frontal lobe of our brains- and it can change in an instant! (in this case, an explosive instant).
Good luck!
Exhibition
The week before exhibition the eleventh was very hectic as we prepared for our In Sickness And In Health Exhibition. There was still a lot to be done before our family, friends, and community members would come and see all of the work we have done so far this year. In order to make our classroom look presentable by exhibition night, we were broken into groups. Each group was responsible for one area of our classroom. I was selected for the art group, and was responsible for setting up the biology classroom and putting up our creative commission pieces.
With only a little more than a week to prepare for exhibition, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time to prepare a good speech , but doing practice run throughs really helped me to be more confident in my speech. The most valuable experience of exhibition was the moment I realized that we had an amazing exhibition because we put in the hard work earlier and were able to teach the community about our content, not just a flashy display. A moment that sums up this exhibition for me was when I was explaining the Pieces of Me project to someone and they commented on how well our whole team could connect our projects together. This moment made me extremely grateful and proud to be a part of this team and this amazing exhibition. I was the most proud when we were informed that we were the first exhibition to produce no trash!
Q: Your name, position, organization/laboratory/hospital. James Brewer, M.D., Ph.D.
A: Associate Professor
Radiology and Neurosciences
UC San Diego
Q: How did you come to research human memory processes? I was always interested in the human brain, from the time of childhood.
A: When I entered college, I planned to train to become a physician. In my sophomore year in college, I got the opportunity to pursue an experience in research, and it fit my personality exactly. Digging into a question and not coming up for air until it was
answered. Even though it was organic chemistry, it still fascinated me. Immediately after that, I found an experience for research in Alzheimer's disease using brain imaging and I was hooked.
Q: Can you tell me a little about your current work and its implications?
A: I use functional brain imaging to examine the activity
in the brain that is related to forming and retrieving memories. I also direct the imaging core for the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study, where I use advanced quantitative image analysis to determine whether a drug is slowing or halting the neurodegeneration
of Alzheimer's. Though these two directions in my lab are quite distinct, they each lend a lot of excitement to my efforts. Studying memory function in healthy people does not have a clear and direct clinical benefit to any patients, but it is exciting to
be first (in all the time of mankind!) to see how a human brain processes memories. The work in Alzheimer's is exciting to me, because I have seen the devastation that this disease brings to patients and families, so I am glad to have a part in a larger organization
that is working to solve the disease.
Q: We are interested in what your life is like as a researcher/clinician on a day to day basis. Is there something that you would like to share with the general public or community that cares about prevention, therapies and cures for the disease?
A: The best part of our days are in the lab, working on new discoveries. Unfortunately, that gets pushed aside quite a bit by the duties of working in a highly regulated environment and a challenging funding environment. Too much time is spent on the work of applying
for grants, keeping grant agencies appraised of how you are using their money, showing that you are not overly conflicted with business interests, filling out forms to keep your credentials current, etc. Recently, I have worked to bring some of our discoveries
directly to patients, and I have learned how hard that can be to take something directly from the research lab to make it available. I have therefore had to work with industry to do this, and it is a unique experience with challenges of its own. Nevertheless,
I think this should be encouraged, if we truly want to bring our discoveries out of the "ivory tower" of academics.
Q: As part of the 11th grade project we will be creating an art piece in studio art that I hope can serve to represent a piece
of your work. Is there an image or idea that represents what you do that I can work towards to represent the important things that you do? If you don't have ideas now, we will be starting the artwork on Nov. 7th and would love to hear any ideas before then.
Anything would help and would be amazing!
A: See attached for a dissection of the brain with the hippocampus (Sea horse... The brain's memory structure) left intact. Actually I just checked and I don't have that on this computer.. I attached instead a picture of an MRI technique called DTI, used in a rat brain in this case, but that I often use in humans. This technique measures how water diffuses in the brain and it tends to go lengthwise along with the myelin fibers (the wires connecting neurons) instead of across those fibers. The color shows the direction of water movement with green depicting left-to-right water movement, Red depicting fibers going into and out of the screen, and Blue showing fibers going from the top to the bottom of the screen.
I also found a powerpoint from a Mock trial I did for the AAAS organization (the name "Mr. Johnson" is not real, so you can feel assured that this is not real patient information). This was called "the Brain on Trial" and discussed the implications of having a criminal perform, for example, a murderous act and later be found to have a brain lesion that would have influenced his judgment and impulsivity. Is it truly "his fault?" Does it have implications for charging him with "premeditated murder" etc.
I also added an article about Phineas Gage, which you should know about. He was one of our first examples showing how our personality, and what we often see as "who we are" is largely driven by what is in the frontal lobe of our brains- and it can change in an instant! (in this case, an explosive instant).
Good luck!
Exhibition
The week before exhibition the eleventh was very hectic as we prepared for our In Sickness And In Health Exhibition. There was still a lot to be done before our family, friends, and community members would come and see all of the work we have done so far this year. In order to make our classroom look presentable by exhibition night, we were broken into groups. Each group was responsible for one area of our classroom. I was selected for the art group, and was responsible for setting up the biology classroom and putting up our creative commission pieces.
With only a little more than a week to prepare for exhibition, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time to prepare a good speech , but doing practice run throughs really helped me to be more confident in my speech. The most valuable experience of exhibition was the moment I realized that we had an amazing exhibition because we put in the hard work earlier and were able to teach the community about our content, not just a flashy display. A moment that sums up this exhibition for me was when I was explaining the Pieces of Me project to someone and they commented on how well our whole team could connect our projects together. This moment made me extremely grateful and proud to be a part of this team and this amazing exhibition. I was the most proud when we were informed that we were the first exhibition to produce no trash!