Created by Dr. Martin Shapiro
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Overview
Crescent Loom is an excellent website where people can build creatures that can swim around and interact with their environment.
The game allows you to build the body of your creature and create a nervous system in its brain that can get information from sensory systems and connect with muscles that control the movement of the body.
It allows for a great deal of creativity while learning about aspects of the nervous system such as excitatory and inhibitory neurons, pacemaker neurons, action potentials, connectomics, and repeating pattern generators.
It's also a lot of fun.
It was created by an independent game developer and former neurobiologist named Olive Perry or just Olive.
In this activity lab, you will be creating a creature with a nervous system that allows the creature to swim.
Instructions
You will go to the crescentloom.com website.
The website has excellent videos and instructions. Start on the homepage, scroll down, and read about creating the body and the mind of your creature.
Watch the trailer 2 to get a sense of the game.
Watch the 10-minute video called, "Exploring Connectomes in Crescent Loom" which was made by Olive about how to create a creature. You will how to build a creature, attach muscles, and innervate the muscles with neurons.
Go to the homepage press the "Play Online" button and read the "Troubleshooting" list to prevent any problems.
Press the Launch button. After it loads, press the "Tutorial" button and listen to the instructions as you practice making a creature.
Spend some time trying out different structures, muscles, sensory organs, and neurons for your creature.
Remember that sensory organs need to be attached to neurons and neurons need to be attached to muscles or they have no effect.
You don't need to learn all the incredible functions in Crescent Loom to do the assignment, but 20 to 30 minutes of practicing will help you with the assignment.
The object of this activity is to create a creature that swims and navigates through its environment and moves around objects using sensory organs attached to neurons that connect to muscles.
Download the worksheet and follow the instructions.
Worksheet
Crescent Loom Assignment Worksheet.docxStarting Instructions
This is a slide show showing step-by-step instructions for creating a creature, adding pacemaker neurons, muscles, inhibitory microcircuit, sensory organs, mouth, and decorations.
Starting Instructions.pptxHelpful Videos
Crescent Loom Trailer # 2: This is a short video that shows the capabilities of the game.
Exploring Connectomes in Crescent Loom: This is a video created by Olive (creator of Crescent Loom) on how to make creatures, excitatory and inhibitory neurons, and microciruits.
A brief introduction to Central Pattern Generators (CPG): This video was created by Dr. Elizabeth Leininger who has used Crescent Loom in her courses. She discusses CPG, which are imporant neuron ciruits in living creatures as well as Crescent Loom creatures
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