Dr. Nicholas

Dr. Nicholas is probably one of the coolest doctors that we have had give lecture so far in medical school. He gives the majority of our neuroanatomy lectures and makes it somewhat interesting. What I like so much about him though is the fact that he has slicked hair that is parted almost directly down the middle and he always wears a leather bomber jacket to class every morning. He makes comments that are meant to be taken as jokes, which are funny in themselves, but mostly funny because he is saying them.

We have been learning how important the brainstem, and more specifically the medulla, is in keeping us alive. So of course he had to make the comment that if you wanted to shoot yourself in the head, you would want to put the gun in your mouth and aim just slightly up instead of putting it against the size of your head. It warranted our module director getting up at the end of the lecture and saying, "These are not suggestions." Of course it gave everyone a good laugh.

Then today in class we were talking about a specific site in the brain that is the pleasure center. His story started out something like this: "If you took a mouse and put a probe in this part of his brain and allowed him to push a button that sent a shock through his brain, the mouse would look like this (as he jerks his head to the side and pretends he is having a seizure over and over again [eh, eh, eh, eh, {sound effects}]). The mouse would continue to push that button over and over again to shoot that pleasure center up." I think what was more funny than the story was actually picturing a mouse with a metal probe in his head pushing a button and making some funny sounds.

Ole good Dr. Nicholas.