Med student comes home

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

SLEEPY EYE -- University of Minnesota Duluth Medical School student Tony Pelzel and schoolmate Andy Kopperud of Westbrook-Walnut Grove got a taste of teaching Friday.

The two medical students presented interactive neuroscience lessons including blind spot tests and actual brain matter to two St. Mary's 5th grade classes.

They showed grade school students what parts of the brain controlled vision, feel, smell, thinking, moving, taste and hearing.

Pelzel told students their brains were made up of 100 billion cells called neurons which conduct impulses as functional units of their nervous system.

Pelzel and Kopperud passed out blind spot test instructions that included a large black circle on one side of the paper and a plus sign on the other. Students held the sheet 1 1/2 feet away from their faces, closed their left eyes, stared at the + sign with their right eye and slowly moved the paper back and forth until the dot disappeared.

Students saw their blind spot with another test in which they rolled up the paper and looked at it lengthwise with their left eye and held their right hand in front of their face.

The event was part of a national program sponsored by the Society of Neuroscience and graduate medical school programs.

"It was fun doing interactive things with students," Pelzel said who went to Twin Cities school under the program last year. "Lots of kids asked questions. It helps expose kids to basic neuroscience and get them interested in it."

For more information, visit www.sfn.org or contact the Society for Neuroscience at 11 Duport Circle, N.W., Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20036 or call 202-462-6688.