Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Mouse Party


Check out what the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah has put together. Mouse Party shows how drugs interact with the synapse. Quite a fun and interesting way to learn about drug use and the brain.

You can even download worksheets to go along with the animation!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad the SSDP staff have better things to do with their time than develop these complex animations.

Anonymous said...

What a lovely bit of marketing for vivisection - making it look like happy mice are all living together in a tank, administered drugs and not killed and dissected after. Totally sanitises the whole vivisection business for children - and is utterly misleading.

Bit worried about the accuracy of some of the animations - and the assumptions that it makes: so for example the understanding of how THC works at CB1 receptors is not 100% clear; there's evidence that it interacts with opiate receptors, and my increase dopamine in reward centres while down-regulating it in movement centres.

KFx drugs

Jonathan Perri said...

I think your going a little overboard saying that the animation is "utterly misleading" on the topic of killing mice. I think we all know that ther is also no tiny mechanical plush chair that picks mice up out of their cage. If anything, this has a comedic value to it that makes younger people enjoy learning more than looking at the average textbook or watching a bullshit VHS about drugs from your highschool health teacher.

It is clear that Mouse Party does not go into full detail about the effects of drugs on the brain. It states this before the animation even begins.

Anonymous said...

Cute picture. Like all of the pics. Toner