By Gaizka Dickinson (year 7)
Unlike human brains, those of chimpanzees don't go through a rapid explosion in neural connectivity during the first two years of life, which may explain humans' superior intelligence. Despite sharing 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees,humans have much bigger brains and are, as a species, much more intelligent. The Brain is split up into 5 sections the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the occipital lobe, the Cerebellum and the temporal lobe. The frontal lobe controls important cognitive skills in humans, such as emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behaviors. It is, in essence, the “control panel” of our personality and our ability to communicate. The parietal lobes can be divided into two functional regions. One involves sensation and perception and the other is concerned with integrating sensory input, primarily with the visual system.
The first function integrates sensory information to form a single perception (cognition). The occipital lobe is the visual processing center of the mammalian brain containing most of the anatomical region of the visual cortex. The cerebellum receives information from the sensory systems, the spinal cord, and other parts of the brain and then regulates motor movements. The cerebellum coordinates voluntary movements such as posture, balance, coordination, and speech, resulting in smooth and balanced muscular activity. The temporal lobe is located behind your ears and extends to both sides of the brain. The temporal lobe is involved in vision, memory, sensory input, language, emotion, and comprehension.
by Alyssa Dench (year 7)
The heart is a very important organ, it pumps blood around the body. The blood provides your body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs. It also carries away waste.Your heart is the strongest muscle within your body and it keeps you functioning.
Here is some facts about the heart:
The average adult heart beats 72 times a minute; 100,000 times a day; 3,600,000 times a year; and 2.5 billion times during a lifetime.
Though weighing only 11 ounces on average, a healthy heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels each day.
Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. In a lifetime, that is equivalent to driving to the moon and back.
All of the blood in your body travels through your heart once a minute.
Grab a tennis ball and squeeze it tightly: that’s how hard the beating heart works to pump blood.
Most kids are born with a healthy heart and it's important to keep yours in good shape. Here are some things that you can do to help keep your heart happy:
Remember that your heart is a muscle. If you want it to be strong, you need to exercise it. How do you do it? By being active in a way that gets you huffing and puffing, like jumping rope, dancing, or playing basketball. Try to be active every day for at least 30 minutes! An hour would be even better for your heart!
Eat a variety of healthy foods and avoid foods high in unhealthy fats, such as saturated fats and trans fats (reading food labels can help you figure out if your favorite snacks contain these unhealthy ingredients).
Try to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.
Avoid sugary soft drinks and fruit drinks.
Don't smoke. It can damage the heart and blood vessels.
Your heart deserves to be loved for all the work it does. It started pumping blood before you were born and will continue pumping throughout your whole life.
The Lungs are an incredible part of the body and we wouldn't be alive without it.
The lungs absorb oxygen from the air you breathe in and transfer it into your bloodstream so that it can get to every part of your body. As the cells in your body work, they produce a waste gas called carbon dioxide that is released into the bloodstream. Your lungs get rid of this waste gas when you breathe out.