The Neurobiology Lecture
& The Hungover Student

The marveling student was sitting front and center amidst a mystifying undergraduate neurobiology lecture on the auditory system when mid-sentence a student's serious slouch in the back-corner of the classroom invaded the professor's periphery promptly abducting her speech-intention - causing a brief digression from the lesson…

The sound waves of the professor repeating their name aloud again and again attempting to recapture the attention of this lost sleepy student combined with the subtle tapping of the bored foot a psychology student gazing down at the clock on her phone to jostle so fluidly the airy sea of this sacred-learning-place --- inspiring the matter-elements of the classroom, each object in their own unique resonance to compress and rarify with the breathable space at varying frequencies but constant pace and these pressure waves swim to rhythmically beat the threads of the ear-covering wool hat encapped upon the mentally-absent fool with desk drowned in drool whose silly overuse of alcoholic GABA agonists the night prior had presently efferently deafened him to seven-tenths hung-over sleep…

And now still unbeknownst to the semi-conscious perceiver "itself" – the psych student's subtle tapping and professor's pressure waves surfed down both ear canals like a ringing bell, oscillating – relatively more intensely ipsilaterally - both of the hungover student's tympanic membranes – where there, symmetrically cloned within each lateral side the three little drummer bones: the interlocked malleus, incus and stirrup like a Rube Goldberg device are set into motion so as to shake their oval window's membrane and summon within the aqueous-gelatin matrix of the spiral-frequency-mapped labyrinths an imperceptible tempest sending those millions of microscopic filaments arranged chronologically for logarithmically scaled frequency sensitivity into a gated-spring-loaded frenzy of negative feedback with ions on a driving-force-driven Sisyphean transmembrane journey toward their ever elusive electrochemical equilibria, and this Mobius nature of the ions' transmembrane journey so selflessly contributes to power the relentless ribbon synapses who using the awesome bio-physics of their evolutionarily formed functions send coded afferent shocks of tonically released glutamate so as to excite the many countless spiral ganglion cells who sum together bilaterally to become the lovely auditory-cochlear nerves; just like - crickets hidden in unobtrusive mass chirping each a separate tone together to sing sound's symphony amidst the mental leaves of neural grass - setting into further coincidental motion a myriad of synapses from both ears to the ancient medulla oblongata where now there the freshly transduced pressure waves are processed into frequency codes by the dorsal cochlear nuclei and further then into timing and intensity codes so ingeniously by the medial and lateral olivary nuclei (with contralateral assistance from the Medial nucleus of the trapezoid body), respectively, where now once processed by the second-order neurons of the ventral cochlear nucleus the unconscious signals are sent to synapse onto the inferior colliculi so as to compose with the medial geniculate nuclei an electrochemical symphony for the auditory cortices, which upon hearing this symphony performs then so effortlessly a miraculously vast number of obscurely intermingled computational mysteries hierarchically executed virtually instantaneously within columnar maps organized tonotopically and interwoven jungles-gyms of integrated circuitry that decode the 'crypted pressure waves in that barely conscious hungover brain constructing the subconscious perception of the repetition of the professor chanting the name: "Aldous…Aldous…Aldous…wake up!" and the neural codes revealed the sound to be coming from straight ahead...

Somehow or another – like hearing one's name across the room of that cocktail party everyone truly wanted to be at - the professor's utterances abruptly broke the efferent trance: capturing and opening Aldous's hearing-door-of-perception, arousing commanding-motor-neurons to communicate and mediate a flexor-tensor yin-yang that lengthens his spine into a postured line lending then his head to lift which caused the aqueous gel-matrix in the semicircular canals to equally and oppositely shift – inspiring the calcium-carbonate crystals – those earth-centered otoliths of the saccule and utricle -who with acceleration do love to rock n' roll allow then to unfold increased afferent activity to flow exciting the principle cells of the vestibular nuclei of the brain-stem, which in turn domino to excite motor neurons of the ipsilateral medial and contralateral lateral recti to command the ciliary muscles to appropriately align the visual field so that Aldous's eyeballs are now in proper place to perform the mirror optical show of miracles the eyes both so reliably do…

Aldous's photoreceptors of his opened eyes now hyperpolarize with the incoming classroom light reducing the amount of glutamate tonically unleashed from those awesome ribbon synapses altering the graded potentials that are laterally inhibited by cells arranged horizontally until the remaining signals are shuttled down the retinal bipolar cells where the graded signals are relayed and transformed into action potentials coding photon-points in space that saltatorily fly passively down the retinal ganglia which do amalgam to become the magno and parvocellular pathways of the optic nerves who on a chiasma journey carrying motion, color, forms, and position information separately eventually synapse onto the lateral geniculate nuclei where color, form, position, and motion are still all coded separately in fields of similar retinotopic spatial receptivity… Which then with geniculate fibers that terminate to layer 4c of the primary visual cortices where the signals are relayed to – simple-cells who hypothetically stitch together to become excitatory and inhibitory complex cell pairs which end on end-stopped complex cells – who – all three together – stich the coded retina-born points of space into monocularly dominated columns of receptive fields selectively sensitive to the specific orientation of edges, contrast, and corners, where there the signals venture through the striate laterally via the constellations of stellate cells and explore the higher visual cortices via neuronal pyramids who combine into circuits that flow to create the so-called ventral pathway which integrates the coded mosaic of electric-chemical impulses to become the visible form standing in front of the whiteboard staring back at Aldous, and the desks in his retina's periphery registered through the dorsal pathway a storm of cognitive computations that recognize and identify the scene he is seeing is the classroom - - not his bed or some other space; while simultaneously the ventral pathway performed further elaboration with the hippocampus and fusiform gyrus to recognize the foveal target up front as the neurobiology professor with a not-so-happy face…

Then suddenly becoming conscious of the evoked activity arising from the cutaneous receptors on Aldous's mouth's skin reacting to the cool air that had passed over his drool-covered upper lip a jiffy prior when he had quickly straightened-out his sleepy-slouch because the signals from the wet lip were delivered to the brain-stem and like a game of telephone the afferent signals were whispered on their way to the grand intersection of the sensuous universe: the thalamus, where there the coded sensations made their way to the registered-regions of the Homunculi-maps representing his upper lips and smoothly coordinated so elegantly with many integrated servo-loops known and unknown to science presently a pattern of code that Aldous's motor neurons descending motor pathway use to initiate and execute a flexor-extensor dance to carry out the wiping of the hung-over drool off of his upper-mouth…

Where then now – the chemoreceptors in the carotid arteries sensed carbon dioxide accumulating from all this metabolic activity carried out from having been woken up by the professor repeating the sounds of his name, and had sat up straight with eyes opened and focused on the face of the individual he has recognized as "professor", and the afferent sense of the moisture on his philtrum and its surround inspiring the descending motor pathways to choreograph the intricate muscle-dance so as to wipe his lip with his hand and so, oh so faithfully the carotid arteries sent messages to the brainstem to expel the accumulating toxin and to invite in more consciousness-fuel: the holy dioxygen molecule; and so as the neural-story goes the brainstem let the spinal cord know to remind the medulla and the pons to sing a song of harmonious pattern-generation to inspire the alpha motor neurons within phrenic nerves to relax the intercostal muscles and contract the diaphragmatic dome as to permit yet another cycle of respiration…

Whence then now ready to make a peep Somehow still now so mysteriously Aldous set the gears in motion so he could intentionally speak; voluntarily initiating a synchronous contraction and relaxation of many muscles so he himself — this hungover star-dust-born fool could unleash the magnificent power of the language pathways to consciously say aloud like a tool, "I'm sorry professor, I missed that, can you repeat what you just said?" To with which the professor so seriously replied, "Sure, Mr. Huxley, I was trying to wake you up so you wouldn't miss my lecture, on obtaining recordings from the chemoelectric song birds who secretly nest deep in the neural circus-trees of the poetic mountain-jungles of consciousness and cognition…" At this response the bored psych student with foot still tapping looked back down at the clock on her phone covering her empty notebook, and seeing not even a minute has past since she looked last she rolled her eyes glaring a look of dismay releasing from her diaphragm a frustrated sigh --- yet another audible pressure wave…

The marveling student sitting front and center beamed a smile at this whole scene and laughed inside at the psych student's bored sigh, then looked up ahead at the chalkboard covered in jargony terma, models, equations and figures flooding him with blissful curiosity; he then continued using his brain as he consciously decided to digress his attention from the lesson and began creating a poem about how he feels the endlessness of the brain and the majesty of an intellect that's sane 'nd further how the joy of the neuroscientist arises from the experience of the nature of the brain mediating the investigation of the brain's nature by observing, studying, and experimenting upon itself to probe into how the brain naturally is, behaves, and operates and its own role in ultimately producing the experience of conscious life being-in-itself the brain being-itself ---- all in hopes so as to penetrate that lofty vault of knowledge and wisdom that thrives within…