Week 2 Overview 2

The cells of the blood are one of the systems that we turn over or replace regularly throughout our lives, so “hematopoiesis,” which means blood-making, is important all the time. The blood is the body’s highway, transporting nutrients from the intestine, waste products to the kidneys, oxygen to all cells, and messages from here to there. So we’ll find out who the players are, and how we observe and measure them. Thousands of blood transfusions are done every day. Why are they relatively easy to do, compared to organ transplantation? Because certain molecules, called antigens, are much simpler on red blood cells than they are on any other cells of the body.

Here we’ll discuss the unique properties of the blood groups, and discover the clinical situations in which they are important. We’ll continue with an introduction to the structure and function of the control center of the body. The human brain has been described as “remarkable, yet not extraordinary” because it obeys the rules for brain design that seem to apply to other animals. The human brain is so good, say the researchers, because it’s so big, and therefore can do much more interconnecting than smaller brains can. Traditionally there were 5 senses; but actually there are all sorts of senses, some of which we aren’t even aware of. For example, do you know what you’re doing when you use your proprioception sense?